“Th-thank you,” she whispered.
“At your service, my lady. My name is Morecombe if you require assistance. I am His Lordship’s valet.”
She nodded, too overcome with fear and grief to summon an answer. Trembling she clung to the chair while Morecombe left the room. Antonia hardly noticed. Her gaze was fixed on the man bathed in shadow.
She straightened, the pressure in her chest building. With shaking hands, she tugged off her bonnet and dropped it onto the chair. Gingerly she approached the huge bed where for a few precious hours, she’d discovered heaven.
Was that only days ago? She felt like she’d aged twenty years since.
If Nicholas died, she’d never feel young again.
He stretched out on his back, the sheet folded at his waist. His guinea gold hair was dark and matted with sweat. A thick white bandage covered his bare torso. His arms lay straight at his sides and his hands splayed flat upon the mattress.
Her heart slammed to a stop. Dimness frayed her vision and she swayed. A choked whimper escaped.
Dear God, she was too late . . .
Then she noted the almost imperceptible movement of his chest. His unnatural stillness resulted from unconsciousness, not death. She sucked reviving air into aching lungs.
With the clear, seeking regard of newly acknowledged love, she studied him. The commanding nose, the high cheekbones, the dark circles beneath his eyes, the lips pale with pain, for all that he lay as still as the statues downstairs.
It seemed sinfully wrong to see him in this neat, unrumpled bed. He wasn’t a restful man. He devoured life, stirred turbulent whirlpools of energy wherever he went.
She couldn’t let him go. She didn’t care what his doctors said. They were wrong. They must be wrong. Johnny Benton wasn’t man enough to destroy her beloved.
With a shaky sigh, she dropped to her knees and reached for one of those frighteningly lifeless hands. His flesh was cold under hers. She bit her lip so hard, she tasted blood.
“Nicholas?” she whispered, as though he merely slept. She knew better. He hovered on the brink of the next world.
She’d felt sick with dread since hearing of the duel. But in this quiet room where he remained stubbornly locked away from her, fear deepened to hopelessness.
Tears welling, she pressed her face against his hand. “Nicholas, oh, Nicholas . . .”
She lifted her head and stared into his face, expressionless as it never was when he was awake. He’d moved too far toward oblivion to hear, but she couldn’t silence the desperate words. “How could you do this? Johnny isn’t worth one moment of your time. I don’t care about Johnny. I told you over and over.”
Silence greeted her. And in that pause, something clicked at the back of her mind. She stared into that austere, drawn face and a great wave of revelation washed over her.
Nicholas, you fool. You gallant, misguided fool.
As if he’d explained every step he took toward his calamitous decision, she knew why he’d challenged Johnny. What had made no sense suddenly made perfect sense.
The duel wasn’t, as she’d immediately assumed, over petty jealousy.
Of course Nicholas understood that her first lover meant nothing to her now. Nicholas knew her better than anyone else and he knew she no longer loved Benton.
He hadn’t set out to eliminate a rival. He was too clever to view Johnny as serious competition for her attentions. Nicholas was also too clever to imagine that after abducting Cassie, he’d inveigle his way back into Antonia’s favor by shooting the man she’d eloped with so long ago.
Johnny’s death wouldn’t promote his suit.
As she looked at him, something struck up an echo in her mind. An echo of a man who kidnapped Cassie to avenge a beloved sister.
Because that remained as the only recompense he could offer to a woman forever lost to him.
Were all Nicholas’s sins born from the same quixotic impulse to balance the scales of justice? Was she right about his desperate, ill-judged, but strangely courtly purpose in challenging Jo
hnny?
Was the duel some idiotic attempt to redeem her tarnished honor?