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He lay down. “I am not clothing.”
“But think of the embroidery you’ll wake with,” she retorted, forcing herself to sound light, as though she were not terrified of what was to come.
He reached for her then, his thumb rough on her cheek. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s a scratch.”
“I want it gone when I wake.”
She smiled at the arrogant directive. “You can’t will it away. This isn’t Parliament. You cannot orate at it.”
“Do whatever you want to me,” he said. “But you are more important.”
She swallowed. It was not even remotely true, and yet this man... this magnificent man. “You are the one who must wake, Duke. You’ve a world to change.”
“You’re already changing it,” he said quietly. “You first.”
“Oh, I do like him,” Lucia said softly.
He didn’t look away from her, but he replied to Lucia. “Her first.”
“Henry,” Adelaide said, catching his hand and holding it tightly, letting herself pretend, for just a heartbeat, that there was more between them than a few stolen kisses and a night of pleasure. That there might be hope for the future they’d whispered about in the darkness.
She looked to his wicked wound, still seeping with blood. Lucia poured liquid from a small brown bottle onto a clean length of cloth, and extended it to her.
Taking it, Adelaide returned her attention to his beautiful blue eyes. “You asked who would protect me earlier.” Even the memory of the question warmed her—what a strange, wonderful thing to have someone worry about her.
“I will.” His gaze tracked over her face, his thumb stroking over her cheek again. “You’re so beautiful.”
Her heart pounded in her chest. Thisman.
“Tonight, let me protectyou.”
He didn’t like that, she could tell. But before he let her know how much, Lucia spoke up, meeting Adelaide’s eyes across the table. “Time.”
There wasn’t much of it. They had to move quickly.
Without hesitating, Adelaide leaned down and placed a quick kiss on his mouth. His hand came to the back of her head, fist clenching in her hair. She broke the kiss and whispered, “See you soon,” then placed the cloth in her hand over his nose and mouth, and knocked him out.
“Remarkable, that stuff,” Lucia said. “Imogen has really changed the way we do business, hasn’t she?”
Adelaide looked down at the cloth, doused in something Imogen called chloric ether. Harmless and extremely helpful when it came to felling villains. Or, in this case, dukes who required sewing up. “It helps to have a genius in the crew,” Adelaide acknowledged.
“I wager your duke won’t agree,” Lucia said with a pretty laugh. “He’ll be furious when he wakes up.”
“He’s not my duke,” she said immediately, because of course she did. But he was hers, in that moment. He was hers to fret over. Hers to keep safe.
“Ah, so we are calling him your Henry now?” Adelaide gave a half smile at her friend’s jest. “Addie,” Lucia added softly. “People survive stabbings.”
Adelaide didn’t look away from his sleeping face, bruised and battered and somehow still impossibly beautiful. “Not all of them.”
Fever could come quick. And it often never left.
There was a long silence while she worked, putting a row of neat stitches into Clayborn’s side. When she was done, she clipped the thread and packed the wound, spreading it with honey before they worked together to bandage it and the rib he’d broken. When they were through, her gaze tracked over his still face, the even rise and fall of his bruised chest, his long arms.
Finally, she looked to Lucia. “Thank you.”
The other woman raised a brow. “For what?”
