“The Duke looks terribly upset,” she murmured to Cassandra.
Cassandra laughed. “And you care, why? Soon, you shall have Lord Owen, and I shall be the new duchess.”
Beatrice fell silent, biting her lip. Her loyalty to Cassandra battled relentlessly against the guilty conscience she found herself with. Lord Owen would never forgive her if he found out about her role in the whole situation.
Another, louder voice worked its way around the drawing room. Percival was speaking his own rumors, targeting the Duke of Blackthorn, stating how they were both as terrible as one another. He used his charm to sway loyalty, and Beatrice felt ill as the weight of it all hit her. She stood up, thinking that she might tell the Duke of Blackthorn what had happened, and her part in it all, and Cassandra’s organizing of the ladies that day in her garden party, when a messenger burst into the room.
“It is the Duchess of Blackthorn!” the messenger cried, his eyes wide. Suddenly, the music ground to a halt. “There has been an accident!”
***
“Duke of Blackthorn, you must come quickly!”
A messenger boy had burst in through the door, taking in the room with wide eyes. Graham had already begun moving at the mention of his wife’s title, pushing through the crowd with urgency.
He rushed to the messenger. “What has happened?”
The boy’s face was white as he caught his breath. Dread pooled in Graham as he resisted the urge to shake the words out of him.
“Tell me!” he shouted.
“Graham!” Felicity admonished.
“What has happened to my wife?” he growled, unable to calm himself.
“It—the carriage—they say she was in there!” the messenger gasped,trying to form the words coherently. “The carriage has overturned, Your Grace. It lies at the bottom of the hill, just beyond these streets, near the corner of the Golden Hand inn.”
Graham’s vision shrank, the room getting smaller and smaller. His breath escaped as an image of a broken carriage filled his head. Terror filled him—terror, and dread, and everything awful in between. Shoving the boy aside, he raced out of the townhouse. Rain lashed his face as he bolted down the streets, his boots slipping on the wet cobbles. He did not care—his wife, his Amelia. Heavens, no. She could not be hurt—she couldnot.
He ran and ran, the rain blinding him and soaking him through.
Blood on his hands. A friend’s life slipping through his arms.
No. He could not lose someone else. He could not loseher.
Footsteps behind him gained, and he only spared a look long enough to know it was Owen and Lady Eleanor as they ran with him. Graham wound through the streets, his awful last words to her replaying in his head. Heavens, how could he have been so blinded?
As he skidded around the corner of the Golden Hand, he stopped, and an anguished cry tore from him as he fell to his knees. The carriage had turned over and over, crashed into a heap. One wheel had come complete off, leaving a snapped spoke in its wake. The body of the carriage was crumpled beyond repair, and there…
“Oh, Heavens—” Lady Eleanor’s curses filled his ears.
Graham snapped back into action, on his feet in a moment.
A pale hand among the debris. A pale hand reaching outward as if begging to be saved, asking for a chance to survive such a crash. Tears streamed down Graham’s eyes as he launched himself against the side of the carriage, his hands already reaching to wrench parts of the carriage away. Polished wood came off in chunks and splinters, and he did not even care when wood pieces dug into his skin. He could only cry out Amelia’s name, beg her forgiveness, uncaring of the rain or the mud. The only thing he cared about was finding her and gathering her in his arms.
“Amelia,” he panted, tearing apart more of the carriage as more hands came to help. “Amelia, forgive me. A thousand times, I will beg your forgiveness. Oh, Heavens, Amelia, I am sorry. I amsorry,do you hear me?”
He choked on another sob as he ripped a larger part of the carriage away. If he hadn’t been so terrible. If he had finally realized his own awful behavior and been able to change it sooner.
Now he was on the brink of losing the best thing in his life, and he could not endure anything happening to her.
No, he thought.No, I cannot lose her. I will not.For he now realized: the thing he had been calling a connection was a budding love, and he hadlet his fear of his curse come between them.
He finally wrenched away the last piece of the carriage, exposing the bloodied, bruised form of his wife. A torn cry came from him as he grabbed for her, carefully pulling her free of the worst of the wreckage she was trapped in. Her dress, her beautiful dress, was covered in blood. A wound on her head pooled with it, and her face was white, so, so white.
“Amelia,” he sobbed, brushing back her loosened hair as he cradled her in his arms. “My Amelia, hold on. Hold on for me, please, I beg of you. Do not leave me. Do not leave me—not when I shall never have the chance to tell you every damned word I have kept locked up inside of me. Just hold on. Please, my duchess. Forgive me, Amelia. Forgive me, and when you open your eyes, I swear I shall make you the happiest wife alive. Just hold on to see that, please.”
“Graham.” That was Owen’s voice, and Graham looked up at his friend, staggering beneath the weight of his anguish. “Graham, you must let the physicians take her back to Blackthorn.”
