Chapter Five
I WAKE UP WARM, WHICH is wrong.
The last thing I remember is cold. Cold so deep it felt permanent, like it had replaced my blood and my bones and everything that made me alive.
But I’m warm now, warm and heavy and aching everywhere, and there’s a beeping sound, steady and rhythmic, and something attached to my arm, and the air smells like antiseptic and lavender.
I try to sit up and immediately regret it. My muscles scream. The room tilts. There’s an IV line pulling at my arm and I’m wearing a hospital gown that isn’t mine.
The lake.
The memory hits all at once. The crack. The scream. The boy in the green scarf disappearing through the ice. Me running, diving, the water so cold it stole everything. The darkness pulling me down while my body stopped working.
The boy.
Is the boy okay?
I jerk upright despite every muscle fighting me, fumbling with the blankets, trying to get my legs over the side of the bed because I need to know, I need to find out—
The door opens.
Veil walks in.
And he looks wrong.
His hair is disheveled, falling across his forehead instead of its usual careless perfection.
His clothes are different from what he was wearing at the lake, scrubs and a blanket draped over his shoulders, and there are shadows under his eyes like he hasn’t slept.
When he sees me sitting up, his entire body goes rigid in the doorway.
“You’re awake.” His voice comes out rough. Raw. Like it’s been scraped over gravel.
“The boy,” I say immediately. “Is he—”
“He’s fine.” Veil crosses the room in three strides. “Thanks to you.”
The relief pulls me back against the pillows.
He’s okay.
He’s fine.
It wasn’t for nothing.
I press my hands against my face and breathe, and for a moment I’m back in the water, kicking upward with the boy’s coat fisted in my numb fingers, my lungs burning, the surface impossibly far above me.
But he’s alive. A ten-year-old boy with a green scarf is alive, and that’s the only thing that matters.
When I lower my hands, Veil is standing beside the bed staring at me with an intensity that makes the beeping monitor speed up.
He’s looking at me like he’s seeing me for the first time, or like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he blinks, and I’ve never seen him without his mask before.
Not once. Not in all the days I’ve known him.
Even at the calligraphy workshop, even in the study, there was always something held back.
Some layer of control, of calculation, of the duke assessing and measuring and deciding how much to reveal.
That’s gone now.
Whatever is on his face right now is completely unguarded, and I don’t know what to do with it.
“How long was I out?” My voice cracks.
“Six hours.” He pulls a chair closer to the bed and sits down heavily, like his legs have stopped cooperating. “You had moderate hypothermia. Dr. Faulke said you were lucky. Another minute in that water and—”
He stops.
Clears his throat.
Looks away.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t think. I just saw him in the water and I—”
“You saved his life.” His eyes snap back to mine. “You jumped into freezing water without hesitation for a child you’d never met.” A pause. “You nearly died, Evianne.”
It’s the first time he’s said my name without the “Miss” in front of it.
Just Evianne. Stripped bare. Like the formality burned off somewhere between the ice and this room.
The realization settles into my chest, warm and heavy, and I don’t know what to do with that.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, because I don’t know what else to say, because he’s leaning forward now with his elbows on his knees and looking at me with such intensity that I forget how to breathe, and this is the man I spent five days avoiding, five days running from, five days pretending I didn’t feel exactly what I feel, and he’s sitting here beside my hospital bed in scrubs with shadows under his eyes because he’s been here the whole time, hasn’t he?
Six hours.
He sat here for six hours.
“Did you—” I start. “Were you here the whole—”
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No deflection. No mask.
Just yes.
And I don’t know what to do with that either.
The silence stretches between us, filled with the steady beeping of the heart monitor, which is doing an excellent job of broadcasting exactly how not-calm I am right now.
“I need to tell you something,” Veil says.
His voice is quiet. Steady. The kind of steady that isn’t calm at all but is being held in place by sheer force of will.
“Okay,” I say, because what else do you say when a duke who’s been sitting by your hospital bed for six hours tells you he needs to say something?
“I spent five days telling myself I didn’t care that you were avoiding me.”
Oh.
He knew.
He knew I was avoiding him.
“I told myself it was irrelevant. That you were just another assistant, just another woman passing through, and that your professional distance was exactly what I wanted.” His jaw tightens.
“I’m a very good liar, Evianne. I’ve had years of practice.
But I couldn’t make myself believe a single word of it. ”
My heart monitor is absolutely betraying me right now. The beeping is faster, noticeably faster, and if he looks at the screen he’ll see the exact moment his words started affecting me, and this is deeply, profoundly embarrassing.
“And then you ran across that ice.” His voice drops lower. “And dove into water that could have killed you. For a child you’d never met. Without a single moment of hesitation.”
He’s looking at me the way he looked at the first edition Pride and Prejudice in the study. Like he’s holding something rare. Something he didn’t expect to find.
“I watched you disappear under that ice, and I have never been more terrified in my life. Not since my father died.” He says this simply, factually, like it costs him nothing, but I can see his hands gripping his knees, knuckles white.
“And in that moment, every wall I’ve spent fifteen years building came down. All of it. Gone.”
Don’t cry, Evianne. Don’t you dare cry.
“I’m in love with you.”
The words land in the quiet room like a stone dropped into still water.
I stare at him.
He stares back.
The heart monitor beeps wildly, and honestly, at this point, I wish someone would just unplug the stupid thing.
Did he just—
Did I hit my head?
Am I hallucinating from hypothermia?
“I—” I start, but nothing else comes out because my brain has completely short-circuited.
“I know the timing is insane,” he continues, and his voice is still that terrifying, unshakable steady.
“I know you’ve been avoiding me for a reason.
I know you’re dealing with things I don’t fully understand.
And I know that sitting in a hospital room telling a woman who nearly drowned six hours ago that I’m in love with her is not my most strategic move. ”
A sound escapes me. Half laugh, half something else.
“But I’m done being strategic.” He leans forward. “I’m done playing games. I’m done pretending I don’t feel what I feel because my pride won’t let me admit it.”
I can’t breathe.
Actually cannot breathe.
My lungs have forgotten how to function, and the heart monitor is making a spectacle of itself, and he’s sitting there saying these things like he has every right to say them, like he has any right to sit there calmly dismantling my entire carefully constructed avoidance strategy while I’m lying in a hospital bed in a gown that ties in the back.
“Veil, I—”
“Don’t answer now.” He stands abruptly. “You’re exhausted. You nearly died. This is the worst possible time for this conversation, and I know that.”
“Then why—”
“Because I sat in that chair for six hours watching your heart monitor and swearing to myself that if you woke up, I wouldn’t waste another day being too proud to tell you the truth.” His eyes hold mine. “You’re awake. So I’m telling you.”
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again.
Nothing comes out.
“Sleep,” he says, and it’s not a request. “We’ll talk when you’re stronger.”
He’s heading toward the door.
He’s actually heading toward the door.
He just told me he’s in love with me and now he’s leaving, like he just delivered a quarterly report and not a declaration that has fundamentally altered the chemical composition of my brain.
“You can’t just say that and leave,” I manage.
He pauses at the door. Looks back at me with those devastating blue eyes.
“I just did.”
And then he’s gone.
The door clicks shut behind him, and I’m left staring at it, my heart hammering so hard the monitor sounds like a drumroll, and I press my hands against my burning face because the Duke of Veilcourt just told me he’s in love with me.
He loves me.
The Duke of Veilcourt.
Loves.
Me.
The woman who has spent five days strategically rearranging her schedule to avoid him.
Who still has an engagement ring in her coat pocket.
Who hasn’t called her cheating fiancé. Who jumped into a frozen lake without thinking and nearly died and is now lying in a hospital bed having a complete emotional breakdown because a man she’s known for barely two weeks just said the most terrifying, wonderful, impossible thing anyone has ever said to her.
How did this become my life?
The door opens again.
I look up, expecting Veil, expecting him to come back and take it back or explain that the hypothermia affected his brain too or tell me he was joking—
But it’s Lady Hampton who steps in, her expression gentle and knowing and slightly amused.
She looks at me. Looks at the heart monitor, which is still broadcasting my emotional state to anyone within earshot. Looks back at me.
And then she signs, ‘My son doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.’
I stare at her. At this woman who held my hand on a plane while I cried over another man. Who’s shown me nothing but kindness since the moment I met her. Who keeps looking at me with that Mona Lisa smile like she knows something I don’t.
‘I don’t—’ My hands are shaking so badly I can barely form the signs. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
Lady Hampton sits down in the chair Veil just emptied and takes my hand. Her grip is warm and steady, and she doesn’t sign anything else. Just holds on.
And I’m crying again.
Not the quiet, contained tears from the plane.
These are the messy kind, the kind where your face crumples and your shoulders heave and there’s absolutely no dignity left to preserve, and I’m crying because I don’t understand how any of this is happening.
Two weeks ago I was in New York with a ring on my finger and a fiancé who called me boring, and now I’m in Wyoming in a hospital bed with a broken engagement in my coat pocket and a duke’s love confession ringing in my ears, and I don’t know how to hold all of it at the same time.
Lady Hampton squeezes my hand and waits.
Patient. Not pushing. Just there.
Eventually the tears slow. I wipe my face with the back of my free hand and try to pull myself together, which is laughable at this point, but I try anyway.
‘He sat here for six hours,’ I sign to Lady Hampton. ‘While I was unconscious.’
She nods. ‘He wouldn’t leave. The nurses tried.’
‘He dove in after me. Into the water.’
‘I know.’ Her expression flickers with something fierce and tender at once. ‘He’s his father’s son.’
I look down at our joined hands. My fingers are still pruned from the lake, the skin raw and reddish, and Lady Hampton’s hand is smooth and warm and holding mine like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
‘I’ve been avoiding him,’ I sign. ‘For days. I’ve been rearranging my entire schedule so I wouldn’t have to see him because I’m scared of what I feel, and he knew. He knew the whole time and he let me do it.’
Lady Hampton’s lips curve into that smile. That Mona Lisa smile.
‘And now?’ she signs.
And now.
That’s the question, isn’t it?
Now a duke has told me he loves me, and I’m lying in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm and a heart monitor announcing my feelings to the room, and somewhere in my coat pocket is an engagement ring from a man who never bothered to see me, and somewhere on the other side of this door is a man who apparently sat in a chair for six hours watching me breathe.
‘I don’t know,’ I sign honestly. ‘I don’t know how to be someone who gets chosen.’
Lady Hampton studies me for a long moment. Then she signs, ‘You jumped into a frozen lake for a stranger’s child without thinking twice. You already know how to be brave, Evianne. You just haven’t figured out how to be brave for yourself yet.’
The words land somewhere deep, somewhere I wasn’t expecting, and I feel my eyes sting all over again.
Lady Hampton squeezes my hand once more, then stands. ‘Rest now,’ she signs. ‘Everything else can wait until morning.’
She pauses at the door, and that Mona Lisa smile deepens into something that looks almost like certainty.
Then she’s gone, and I’m alone with the beeping monitor and my racing thoughts and the echo of Veil’s voice saying my name without the “Miss.”
Just Evianne.
Like I’m someone worth knowing by heart.