Page 79

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Cordelia awakened in the dark. Her head had cleared, and she was thirsty. She stirred a little, just to test her limbs. The ache in her shoulder was steady, and her right arm remained limp. Her head had been raised on pillows, and she turned her gaze to the glow of a banked fire in the hearth. A lamp burned somewhere behind her. The sighs and rustlings of sleepers came from a row of little beds against the far wall. Her sisters, she thought.

A light footfall told her someone else was near, and she looked up. “Graymont?”

He stood next to her, looking down. “Your nurses are asleep,” he said. “May I get you anything, love?”

She smiled. “So, it’s come to that, has it?”

“It has,” he said, taking her hand. “Am I ahead of myself?”

“No,” she said. “I’m right with you. When did you know?”

He twined their fingers together. “I was in it long before I could admit it. And you?”

She thought for a minute. He had it right. She, too, had been in it before she knew. “The news that a falling plank nearly killed you was, perhaps, the first sign, but I needed Viola to show me that you must be married to no one but me.”

“Someday,” he said, “when we are not wringing her neck for her antics, we can thank her.”

“But we need to save her reputation first, don’t we?”

“Will you marry me?” he asked.

The question surprised a laugh out of her that made her shoulder protest. Her head felt made of wool.

“Hush,” he said, putting a finger to her lips. “Don’t wake your sisters.”

“You’re serious?”

“I am.”

“Oh, I thought we were speaking of Viola.”

“You don’t like my solution? There will be no scandal for Viola when I put an announcement of our betrothal in the papers. People will look up from the Morning Chronicle or the Gazette and scratch their heads and say things like—‘Which Staveley girl did you tell me Graymont was going to marry, dear? Well, you’ve got it quite wrong.’”

“You are enjoying this, aren’t you? Your sister will be furious.”

“She will.” He gripped her hand tighter. His expression darkened. “You know there has never been any closeness there. But my family must be quite dead to me now. You all will be my family. If you can still say yes, after …”

For a moment he said nothing more, his head bowed, his brow drawn into a frown, the boy in him replaced by the man who knew too much of the world’s ills. And she thought, perhaps she’d missed something. Something had happened while she slept to raise a barrier to their love.

“You know what happened to me, don’t you? It isn’t Viola’s fault, is it?”

His gaze met hers again. She felt him tense, a man braced for loss. “If it is anyone’s fault, other than the shooter’s, it is mine.”

“Yours?” It was as she feared, perhaps worse than she feared, but she would fight the thing, whatever it was. “Can you tell me?”

“There is reason to suspect that Lionel shot you.” He paused. “That he intended to shoot me, that he mistook you, in that dark cap, for me,” he finished. It was an anguished admission.

She gripped his hand tightly. She did not ask why Lionel had done it. Graymont had lived with his brother’s enmity for a long time. She knew how troubling it was to have in one’s family a person to whom you owed love, but who spurned that love. Gray believed that he was responsible for Lionel’s hatred. She knew what she must do. “Ask me again.”

“What?”

“Ask me to marry you again?”

“Now?”

“Yes, now … now that I know what you suspect of Lionel.”