Page 194 of Courting the Wrong Duke

William’s eyes began to drift shut again, and panic immediately cut through her.

“No. William, look at me.”

His lashes lifted with obvious effort. Rosalind pressed trembling fingers against his cheek, needing to feel the warmth of his skin beneath them.

“You are not allowed to sleep yet.”

“I am tired.”

“I do not care.”

The faintest suggestion of a smile touched his mouth, and the sight nearly broke her. She wanted to be angry with him for joking now, wanted to kiss him for still being able to, wanted somehow to force every drop of blood back where it belonged and make this entire terrible night disappear.

“You are going to be well,” she said, holding his gaze as though sheer determination might make it true. “Do you hear me? You are going to be perfectly well, and later you may complain at length about how dreadful I was while nursing you.”

“That sounds unpleasant.”

“It will be unbearable.”

His smile flickered again, but this time it vanished beneath a sudden tightening of his face.

Rosalind’s fear surged back.

“Enough. Do not speak anymore.”

She was still watching him when voices began to rise elsewhere in the cellar. Isabella and Gabriel were speaking, but there was another voice among theirs now, one Rosalind did not recognize.

Keeping one hand against William’s cheek, she looked over her shoulder.

Through the thinning dust, Isabella stood near the stairs beside a man Rosalind had never seen before. He was perhaps fifty, plainly dressed beneath a heavy traveling coat, his expression grim as he surveyed the cellar.

Algernon stared at him.

For the first time since Rosalind had known him, the Duke of Aldermere looked genuinely stunned.

“Who the devil are you?”

The man stepped forward. “Mr. Pembry. Magistrate for the district.”

Algernon went still.

Rosalind looked at Isabella.

Isabella was breathing hard, her hair half fallen from whatever arrangement she had made beneath her borrowed hat.

“I found him upstairs,” she said. “Or rather, I nearly struck him because I thought he was one of Algernon’s men.”

Even now, Gabriel made a strangled sound that might have been disbelief.

Mr. Pembry glanced at Isabella. “An understandable mistake, apparently.”

“What are you doing here?” Algernon demanded.

The magistrate’s expression hardened. “Lord William Sinclair came to me two days ago.”

Rosalind looked down sharply at William. His eyes were closed again, his face frighteningly pale against her skirts.

“He told me he had reason to believe a man might be unlawfully confined at Bryn Hir,” Pembry continued. “He could not yet prove it, and he did not wish to delay the journey while he gathered the evidence he expected to find here. He asked me to follow as soon as I could and bring assistance if possible.”