She drew a slow breath, the turmoil in her eyes battling with anxiety.
“I am sorry,” Patrik forced out, doubting anything could ever cleanse his soul. “Never will I try to harm you again. That I swear.”
“When I believed you dead, I was relieved.” Nichola’s voice trembled; Alexander walked to her side, clasped her shoulder. Nichola shot him a thankful glance, and then faced Patrik. “When you first rode through the gates, I was as angry as I was afraid. The terror of your attempt upon my life left me feeling weak. For that, I hated you. For that, I wanted you dead.”
“And now?” Patrik asked, his question but a rough gasp.
Nichola shook her head. “As Mistress Emma pointed out, your actions were guided by the tragedies of your past.”
“Emma?” Patrik hesitated. “What do-does she have to do with this?”
“She is an interesting woman,” Nichola replied, “and loves you very much.”
“Lo-Loves me?” He grunted with disgust. “She betrayed me.”
“She did,” Nichola agreed. “But she also faced your brothers, admitted everything, her real name, and that she was hired by Cressingham. She risked her life to save yours.”
Head pounding, Patrik turned away. “I-I do not wish to speak of her.”
“Why?” Nichola demanded. “Because someone you trusted did naught but use you, gave but false words to achieve her goal?”
“Aye,” he hissed, his anger finding a foothold. “Nothing she said was the truth.” Including her feelings for him, and that hurt the worst.
“Think you, you are innocent?”
At the bite in Nichola’s words, he met her gaze. Shame washed through him as he recalled his own deception when Alexander had first brought Nichola before them ashis captive. Patrik had spoken to her with respect disguising his outrage; he’d plotted to keep her and Alexander apart. When that had failed, he’d abducted Nichola with the intent to take her life.
Humbled, Patrik shook his head. “Nae. Emma’s path is one I, too, have trod.”
Thick silence filled the chamber as his brothers witnessed his shame.
“Will you forgive her?” Nichola asked.
The oddity of her question struck Patrik, but he would offer her truth. “Forgive her? How, when I know not if I can ever trust her again?”
“And that,” Nichola said, her voice breaking, “is exactly how I feel.”
Alexander drew his wife against him, stroked her hair as her quiet sobs filled the chamber. “Go,” he murmured. “You have said enough.”
She broke free of his hold, faced Patrik, her gaze fierce. “No, I must know why you took an arrow aimed for Alexander, why you saved his life?”
Emotion clogged his throat. “Be-Because Alexander is my brother, the father of a beautiful son, husband to an incredible woman whom I wronged.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away. “Patrik?”
At Nichola’s nervous whisper, he tried to speak, but heaviness weighed upon him as if a hand pressed against his chest, and his entire body seemed as if on fire.
“Patrik?”
Through the haze of pain, Nichola’s voice seemed more frantic. Patrik tried to speak, to make his mouth work, but naught would come. A sense of doom filled him, a heartache that swamped his every thought. Tired, he was so tired. Thankful, he gave in to the sheer exhaustion, closed his eyes and succumbed to the blackness.
Alexander cursed. “He has passed out.”
Nichola laid her hand upon Patrik’s brow. “He has a fever.”
The healer’s words rumbled through Alexander’s mind. He met his brothers’ worried gazes, turned to his wife. “Nichola, await me in our chamber. Please.”
She hesitated. Then, as if understanding that he needed to speak with his brothers in private, she left.
