Page 199 of Courting the Wrong Duke

“Anything.”

Isabella had taken a seat on the opposite side of the bed. For once, she seemed to have no clever remark waiting.

“My mother used to sing when I was frightened,” she said after a moment. “I remember almost none of the songs anymore, but there is one.”

She began hesitantly, her voice so soft that Rosalind had to listen carefully to make out the melody. It was a simple lullaby, the sort meant for dark nurseries and children reluctant to surrender to sleep. Isabella stumbled over one of the verses, paused, and quietly began that part again.

Rosalind closed her eyes and listened.

For the first time since the pistol fired, terror was not the only thing filling the room.

When she looked at William again, his face remained pale against the pillow. A strand of hair had fallen across his forehead, and Rosalind brushed it gently aside.

In the candlelight, she could almost imagine it touched by afternoon sun.

Peach-gold.

Her chest tightened.

She remembered the painting in his mother’s gallery, the rolling countryside beneath that strange bright sky and the path winding through empty fields. There had been no houses or villages, no destination waiting at the end. Only a solitary traveler who could continue for as long as he wished without anyone demanding to know where he was going or who he intended to be when he arrived.

He could be anyone.

She had called it an unspeakable freedom.

Rosalind bent closer to William. “Do you remember the painting?”

Isabella continued singing softly behind her as Rosalind stroked her thumb across William’s hand.

“The one in your mother’s gallery with the ridiculous peach sky. You insisted there was nothing ridiculous about it, although I still think I was right.”

A tear slipped down her cheek, but this time she smiled.

“You should go there now. Just for tonight.”

She lifted his hand and pressed her lips against his fingers.

“Go somewhere warm. Somewhere with that ridiculous sky and a path that goes on forever. There are no titles there. No brothers who need saving or fathers who need finding. There is no one waiting for you to become anything at all.”

Her eyes closed, and she pictured the place as clearly as she could. Golden fields rolling toward distant hills, a peach-colored sky stretching endlessly overhead, and one narrow road leading nowhere in particular.

A place where William could simply be William.

“You can be anyone you want there,” she whispered. “You can go anywhere you like.”

Isabella’s lullaby grew softer until it seemed almost part of the quiet surrounding them.

“Go there and rest.”

The words had barely left Rosalind before fear twisted through her.

Rest.

She tightened her fingers around his.

“But you have to come back.” Her voice broke, and she bent until her forehead rested against his hand. “You hear me, William? You may go anywhere you like tonight, but you have to come back to me.”

She pressed his hand against her cheek and closed her eyes.