My Darling Duke

A hiss slipped from Alexander as pain crowded his thoughts. Sweat coated his skin, and an odd weakness quivered through him. Despising any form of fragility, he pushed to his elbows and shoved the sheets from his body. The billowing dark blue curtains hanging from the four-poster bed served only to increase the heat. With a grunt, he made to move from the bed, and a cold knot of fear iced through his veins. “Why am I not feeling my legs?”

Dr. Grant came forward, his eyes serious and worried. He pushed his spectacles up his nose before answering. “The spasms this time were bad, Your Grace. We fear the constant movement over the last few weeks did more damage than good. The inflammation seems extreme, and…and…”

“And what? Come, man, do not quibble,” he snapped.

It was Dr. Monroe who stepped forward. “There is a possibility you may never walk again.”

A flash of horror pierced his soul before he buried it under layers and layers of ice, suppressing all emotions. The darkness that had slowly hovered slipped around him, and in its embrace, he found the cold comfort of silence.

For several moments, the only sound in the room was the crackling fireplace and his harsh breathing, before even that faded away as he exerted his will over the raw emotions that could tear him apart if he allowed them to. They watched him, anticipating his reaction perhaps, but he had nothing to give. “I have been told that before,” he said flatly. “Provide another prognosis at once.”

“Your Grace…your many fractures healing would have always taken years. Inflammation is a recurring problem, and there are theories that when the ligaments and muscles are overly inflamed, it can lead to an infection and irreversible damage to the bones and structures, which have struggled to heal themselves over the years. We… I will summon Dr. Perrott from Edinburgh right away. But I am not hopeful a life out of the bath chair is possible.”

“Do not say that,” a fierce voice whispered from halfway across the room; then the door was gently closed.

A ripple of awareness pierced through him. Katherine. He’d not heard her entrance.

Footsteps echoed, and she appeared in his line of vision, striking in her loveliness. He tried to swing his foot from the bed to stand, but his body did not respond, and it took every ounce of willpower he had built over the years not to bellow his rage, frustration…and fear.

She glared at the doctor, a righteous yet frightened lady given the paleness of her face and the redness of her eyes.

She had been crying. For him.

“Surely you are aware of the manner of man Alexander is,” she said. “He will walk again. If your words will not be positive, you will leave this chamber!” Her voice cracked, but she lifted her chin in that familiar defiant way of hers.

The doctors stared at her as if she were an unusual creature.

“I beg your pardon,” Dr. Monroe said with a stiff upper lip. “And who might you be?”

“Leave me,” Alexander commanded, staring at his doctors. “I wish to speak with the lady for a few minutes.”

“Your Grace, you are fevered, and we must—”

A wave of anger burned through him. “I will not repeat my request for privacy with Miss Danvers!”

They complied immediately, leaving him alone with Katherine, who watched their departure with an air of anxiety. She whirled to face him. “We will fight this, and I believe with all my heart in your full recovery,” she said, her eyes alight with fear and pity. “Please allow me to summon back the doctors to tend—”

The pity sent fury surging though his heart, and the awareness he would have to permanently let her go sliced through him like a poison-tipped blade. “We?” he said with such lethal softness, she flinched.

She searched his face and firmed her trembling lips. Her chin lifted once more, and her beautiful eyes flashed their defiance. His brave, foolish Katherine then leaned in and brushed the softest comforting kiss along his jaw, scattering tender kisses up and down its rigid curve. “Yes, my darling, we.”

Her assurance was a hot lance through his heart. He disentangled himself from her soothing embrace

and reclined against the headboard. “There is no we. My problems, whatever they might be, are my own.”

“Do not be a stubborn, boorish—”

“You bore me, Miss Danvers,” he said, softly but with cutting precision. “As agreed, the instant my interest wanes, our agreement has ended. Whatever happened in the conservatory was an aberration that is unlikely to ever happen again, for I would never allow it.”

He cleared his throat and gripped the bedsheets, bracing against the pain he would cause them both. “Now I will ask you to leave my chambers and prepare to return to London. The rent on the town house there is paid up for a year, and the carriages and horses are yours. I will leave it to you to decide when to inform society the farce of our engagement has ended. But understand me clearly, for I shall not repeat myself. Whatever madness pushed me to blackmail you to stay here has ended.”

A raw breath hitched in her throat, and the vulnerability that lined her face shredded through his soul. She held his gaze, her eyes huge and heart-stoppingly delicate, and they filled with tears.

“Come now, what nonsense is this? Tears, Miss Danvers? We hardly know each other.”

The words felt like glass scraping at the inside of his throat.

And he knew if she cried…dear God, if she cried, he would pull her into his arms and consign her to share his damnable fate.