Page 202 of Courting the Wrong Duke

“Also alive. Less obedient.”

“That sounds more serious.”

“It is.”

William smiled, only to regret it when even that small movement pulled painfully at his side.

Rosalind noticed immediately. “Do not laugh.”

“You have become remarkably authoritarian.”

“I have had two days to practice.”

He was about to answer when the last clear memories of Bryn Hir began returning. Algernon in the cellar. The pistol appearing in his hand. William throwing himself toward him before the weapon fired.

After that, everything became confused.

He remembered falling and Rosalind’s face above him. There might have been other voices, perhaps someone he did not recognize, but every attempt to reach for more made the memories seem to retreat farther away.

“What happened after I was shot?”

Rosalind’s teasing disappeared. Still holding his hand, she told him what he had missed. Pembry had heard Algernon’s confession from upstairs and witnessed the shooting.

Isabella had finally opened Edmund’s cell with the keys she had taken from Algernon, and once her father was free, they had locked Algernon inside while the magistrate went about arranging for sufficient men to take him into custody.

“And Gabriel?”

Something suspiciously amused entered Rosalind’s expression. “He went for the physician.”

“I remember that.”

“No, you do not. You were unconscious.”

William frowned, certain there was some memory of Gabriel leaving, though he could not decide whether it belonged to that night or had been supplied later. “Then someone must have told me.”

“I did. Yesterday.”

“There. You see? I remember perfectly.”

Rosalind gave him a look. “You were mostly unconscious then too.”

That made arguing his case considerably more difficult, so William wisely abandoned it.

“Gabriel sent the physician back with a message,” she continued. “Instead of returning here, he rode directly on to the Duke of Merriton’s estate near the border to arrange a carriage for us.”

William stared at her. “He kept riding after spending most of the night fetching the physician?”

“Apparently.”

He considered Gabriel’s longstanding belief that unnecessary physical exertion was one of society’s great failings. “Is he alive?”

“I assume so. I was quite certain he would escape mortal danger. I was less certain he would survive that much riding. He is not nearly as tough as he believes himself to be.”

William laughed before remembering that laughing was currently a terrible idea. Pain pulled sharply at his injured side, and he sucked in a breath as his hand moved instinctively toward the bandages.

Rosalind leaned forward at once. “I told you not to laugh.”

“Yes, I am beginning to understand why.”