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“Remove yourself from my path. I need to see her.”
“Father,” Elliot said from behind. “Evie would want to see him.”
The earl hesitated and then stepped aside. “She is in the third room on the right.”
“Thank you,” Richard said, then rushed to the chamber.
He gently opened the door and entered, with Elliot his shadow. The ache in Richard’s chest became a physical thing, and as he strode to her bedside, there was no ease in its tightening grip. Ah Christ, now it seemed so damnable foolish how he had kept her at arm’s length, the one woman to have been his constant dream companion for so many years. He couldn’t touch the thought of life without her.
A maid who had been pressing a compress to Evie’s forehead glanced up.
“Let me,” he said. “Get some ice and more cool water.”
She responded to his command without question, and with a quick bob, hurried from the room.
He drew a chair from the window to her bedside and lowered himself into it. Evie appeared so damned vulnerable, a pain he had never felt before in his life arrowed through his heart. “Evie…” His voice was hoarse, his throat felt raw. He lightly encircled her wrist. Her pulse was weak, yet fluttering so fast. Her skin felt so damn hot. The red marks left from the device they used to bleed her filled him with despair and rage in equal measure.
In all the years we have been friends, this is what you truly believe in me as a person?
Richard closed his eyes against the whisper of her hurt.
“You are haunting me,” he said softly.
Elliot stiffened, but Richard hardly gave a damn.
“You truly care,” Elliot murmured. “Why did you not offer marriage…after…” His teeth snapped together as if he couldn’t bear admitting out loud his sister was no longer chaste.
Self-loathing ripped through Richard’s gut. “I feared I would ruin her. You know my reputation, and you know how bloody my hands have been. While I hardly give a damn when polite society tries to besmirch my honor and reputation, it would gut Evie. How could she withstand a man like me in her life? She is truly gentle…and so wonderful…and kind…and if they hurt her, I would make them suffer for it.”
A resigned sigh echoed from Elliot. “You are right. Evie is very weak and inconstant, she wouldn’t have lasted a month as your marchioness. Her days would have been spent weeping to our mother—”
“Evie is not weak,” Richard said, low and hard. “Hell, she never truly shied away from my dastardly reputation. It was like she chose not to see it, ignoring polite society and doing what she pleased and damned the consequences.”
The awareness of it settled in his gut like a boulder. He’d wanted to protect her from her own folly and hopeless generosity of spirit. Evie had never really possessed the air and pretentiousness of the ladies of the ton. She stood firm even when his own family had shunned him publicly. He never wanted her to endure the tearing loss he had felt in those first several months, where he had longed to sit and argue with his father, endure the clucking of his mother to find a wife, and his sister…how he had missed her. Yet at the heart of that…he simply hadn’t trusted in the gentle strength that had been staring at him since he’d met her at sixteen.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. Could I really have been so blind?
“Do not speak of your sister as weak, especially now when she is fighting to be with us.”
Elliot’s lips barely moved in a smile. “I was simply checking to see if you knew her worth and strength. Evie would never abandon you, even if our mother and father were to exile her. You are her happiness, and I’ve known it a long time.”
The softest of moans came from her, and he hoped it was not distress because she heard his voice. The depth of emotion Richard felt for her was somewhat frightening. He’d once advised Wolverton to hold onto his duchess, instead of even wasting a second of time he could spend with her. If only Richard had taken his own advice. “Evie, please fight…”
The maid returned to the room with chips of ice. He took the bowl, collected the ice, and wetted the dry cracks of her lips for several minutes.
He then spent the next hour sponging the skin he had access to, telling her stories of his children, asking her for forgiveness. Not once did the fear leave his heart, for he saw no improvement. The doctor returned, and when he tried to bleed her again to reduce a supposed inflammation in her blood, Richard grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and threw him from the house to the shock of everyone.
Wolverton’s own doctor had been summoned, but because Dr. Greaves had been in Cornwall visiting his family, the hopes were that he would be arriving today. The duchess came and went from Evie’s chamber, taking turns in sponging and singing softly to her. Adel’s voice was ter
ribly unmusical, but he believed it provided some relief to Evie.
Almost six hours had passed since he arrived at Rosette Park and not once had he left Evie’s chamber. Her father sat with her for a while, reading to her, even Elliot reasoned with her for a while, and Richard simply remained a shadow at her bedside. Her mother was prostrated with worry and had taken to her own bed. Even there she had to be occasionally revived with smelling salts. The countess was too frail to visit Evie.
For the first time since he arrived, he was alone with her.
He held her hand in his, her hot flesh scalding against his hand. “I am not the man I thought I was. I never thought I was a coward. I knew I adored you and because of fear…a fear that seems so damnably stupid now, I hurt you.” He pressed a kiss to her knuckles and fought the urge to kneel in despair. “Fight this, Evie. Please fight. Your family cannot lose you. I…I…cannot lose you.” The idea she would succumb as his brother did sent chills deep into his heart.
A terrible silence lingered, and he had no sense of how much time had passed before the barest whisper of sound rode the air. He tensed and listened keenly.
