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He shook his head. “I don’t.”
She smiled, but there was no amusement in the expression. “Are you sure about that?”
His brows furrowed, and a wave of weakness crashed over him.Dammit.If he hadn’t been stabbed, he could think. He could put it together. Who she was. Who her father was.Danny had said something. Why couldn’t he remember?“I think I might...” He gave the seat his full weight, leaning his head back against the carriage behind them. “Shit.”
She was already around the other side of the vehicle, pulling herself up beside him. “Duke?”
“Don’t call me that,” he said, which was a ridiculous thing to say, but suddenly it felt important. He closed his eyes. “Last night you called me Henry.”
She sighed and gave him what he wanted, her words soft and sweet in the darkness, almost as though she liked them. Almost as though she likedhim. “Alright, Henry. We have to get you somewhere safe.”
But he was already unconscious, and could not hear her.
Chapter Twelve
Five miles from the Hungry Hen, down several short lanes, two of which tracked back toward the inn, there was a long drive tucked behind a collection of fence and brush that made it impossible to find if a body wasn’t looking for it.
Adelaide was looking for it.
She urged the horses up the drive to the small cottage at the top of the hill—a cottage that sat empty most of the year, except on nights like this, when an emergency forced one of the Duchess of Trevescan’s vast network of contacts to seek safety.
Adelaide drove as quickly as she dared, using only one hand for the reins.
With her other hand, she applied pressure to the wound in Henry’s side, trying not to think about the remarkable amount of blood—blood that soaked through the length of linen she’d stolen from the inn and coated her hand. To keep them both from giving up, she did the only other thing she could think to do—she talked to him.
She began with ridicule and exasperation, having been born in a world that prized this response above all others when faced with extraordinary events. “This is what happens when you learn to fight at some school for rich boys with nothing to do, toff,” she groused as they exited the drive of the Hungry Hen, leaning overhis unconscious body to make sure they were not followed.
“Six years at Eton is nothing compared to a drunken lout with a dull wit and a sharp blade. Of course you’re out cold. Nothing else can be expected.” She paused, and added, “Though I will admit I remain impressed with the force of your facers.”
Threatening did not work, either; he did not respond to “If you don’t wake up, I ought to just tip you out of the carriage and let you fend for yourself.” Nor to “I have neither the time nor the patience for whatever you’re about to bring to my doorstep, Your Grace. What I do have is a team of women more than willing to help me disappear you.”
She tried coaxing him awake. “Come on, Clayborn. If you wake I’ll let you ask all your questions. I’ll tell you all the answers. I’ll give you the file—let you see all we know about your brother. About you.” She left out the realization that they knew far less about him than they should, considering how well he lurked outside warehouses and took down brutes. Instead, she tried a different tack. “I’ll let you win the race. Let the lovebirds get wed. Just wake up.”
And when none of the other strategies worked, she settled on pleading as they trundled up the rise to the cottage, a simple litany of words that might have been prayer if praying were a thing Adelaide did. She’d never found a deity willing to listen to her, so she prayed to things that were not deities. She begged the carriage not to throw a wheel and pleaded with the horses to move more quickly. And she prayed the house would be well stocked with supplies.
But mainly, she prayed to him, she supposed. To him to keep breathing. “Please don’t die,” she whispered again and again. “You promised me you wouldn’t die.Please.”
It shouldn’t have felt so weighty, that request. She’d seen plenty of people die in her young life—a girl didn’t grow where and how she had without knowing the face of death. But somehow, the idea thatHenrymight die...
It shouldn’t have stuck in her throat and stung her eyes. Shouldn’t have been full of such panic. Such worry.
Please don’t die.
And then, on the heels of the silent thought.
I like you too much.
She sucked in a breath—knowing the words were silly and selfish. Frivolous. Irrelevant. He would live or he would die, and her feelings about him were irrelevant.
He wasn’t for liking. Not for her. Especially not now that he knew she wasn’t Miss Adelaide Frampton, cousin to the Duchess of Trevescan with a hobby for petty larceny, but instead Addie, daughter to one of the worst criminals in London, raised in the gangs of the South Bank.
She’d do well to remember that—to cloak herself in the truth of it and protect herself from whatever was to come with this man. Emotions were a luxury Adelaide could not afford, so she pushed disappointment and anger and frustration and shame and no small amount of fear aside, focusing, instead, on the house as it came into full, shadowed view, close enough now to loom darker than the darkness around them. No one was inside.
She drew the horses to a stop out of view of anyone who might decide to look up the hill as they rode past, and leapt down with a “Don’t move.”
When she returned a few minutes later, having lit several lanterns within, hanging one on the west side of the house, in the center upstairs window, Henry hadn’t moved.
He was still as death.
