Page 173 of Courting the Wrong Duke

Exhaustion had hollowed the familiar lines of his face until he looked older somehow, diminished by however many weeks he had spent in this place.

The sight of him hurt.

But he was standing. His eyes were fixed upon her with the same disbelief she felt, and when he reached for the bars, Rosalind saw his hands trembling.

He was alive.

Relief crashed through her so fiercely that it left no room for anything else.

Rosalind ran to him.

Edmund reached the bars at the same moment, and she thrust her hands through the narrow gap until his closed around them.

“My darling girl.”

That was all it took.

The tears came before Rosalind could answer. She clung to his hands, laughing and crying at once, overwhelmed by the warmth of his fingers and the impossible, wonderful certainty that he was truly there.

“You are alive.”

“Of course I am alive.”

A broken laugh escaped her. It was such a perfectly ridiculous thing for him to say that for an instant he sounded exactly like her father again, not the exhausted man she had found imprisoned beneath a house in Wales.

Edmund reached through the bars and caught her face between his hands as best he could. His thumbs brushed clumsily over her wet cheeks.

“How are you here? How did you find me?”

“We found your letter.”

“My letter?”

“The one you supposedly left before you disappeared.”

Confusion crossed his face. “I left no letter.”

“I know. Isabella realized it was forged.” Rosalind covered one of his hands with hers, unwilling to surrender the contact even for a moment. “Then William found another letter mentioning this place.”

Her father’s expression changed so abruptly that Rosalind’s relief faltered.

“William?”

She looked over her shoulder.

For several moments she had forgotten anyone else existed. William had remained near the outer door, the lamp still in his hand, giving them what little privacy the cellar allowed.

“He came with me,” Rosalind said.

Edmund followed her gaze, and something in his face seemed to collapse. “William.”

William turned toward them.

Edmund’s fingers tightened around Rosalind’s before his head bowed. A sob escaped him, raw enough that her relief vanished beneath a fresh rush of alarm.

“Papa?”

William crossed the cellar immediately. “Lord Eastmere?”