Page 193 of Courting the Wrong Duke

“William?”

She was already moving toward him when Algernon shifted behind her.

Gabriel reached him first.

Gabriel seized the iron bar from the floor and drove it hard against the stones directly in front of Algernon, forcing him back without striking him.

“Do not move.”

Algernon froze, and Gabriel remained between him and the others, breathing heavily as he gripped the iron bar in both hands. Dust clung to his coat and hair, but it was the expression on his face that caught Rosalind’s attention. She had never seen him look at anyone with such cold fury.

“If he dies,” Gabriel said, his voice barely carrying through the ringing in her ears, “I will kill you with my own hands.”

“Gabriel.”

Isabella’s voice came faintly through the haze, but Rosalind barely registered it. She had already dropped to her knees beside William, and the sight of the blood spreading darkly across his coat drove everything else from her mind.

There was so much of it.

She could not even tell precisely where the bullet had struck him, only that the fabric near his side was rapidly growing darker. Her hands hovered over him, trembling with the need to do something and the fear that touching him might somehow make it worse.

“William.”

His eyes opened slightly at the sound of his name, and relief rushed through her so fiercely that a sob caught in her throat.

“There you are,” he murmured.

His voice frightened her almost as much as the blood. It was weak and distant, without any of the warmth and easy humor she knew so well.

Rosalind slipped one hand carefully beneath his head and lifted him into her lap. “Do not move.”

“I think,” he said after a moment, “that advice has come somewhat late.”

A broken laugh escaped her despite herself, only to dissolve almost immediately into a sob.

“Do not joke.”

William blinked slowly up at her, and whatever she might have said next disappeared.

There was so little color in his face.

Rosalind had never seen him pale before. William seemed made for warmth and sunlight, for laughter in gardens and brown hair turning peach-gold beneath an afternoon sky.

Not this. Never this.

His gaze drifted past her shoulder. “Your father?”

“He is safe.”

Something eased in William’s expression, and his eyes closed briefly in relief. “I promised.”

Rosalind frowned down at him. “What?”

“I promised I would find him.”

Her throat tightened. Of all the things he might have been thinking while he lay bleeding in her arms, somehow he was still thinking about the promise he had made to her.

“You did,” she whispered. “You found him.”