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She scratched harder.
A gasping inhale and his whole body jerked, his eyes flying open.
A blink. Another.
He flew upright on the bed and heat instantly left her chest—his hand, his arm had been splayed across her torso.
“Pen? Pen?” The sound of her name cracking, rough, he leaned over, hovering above her with wild eyes, his hands on either side of her face, clutching her to look at him.
“Strid—” The sound stopped for lack of moisture on her tongue. She swallowed hard, trying to make her tongue to work. “Strider—you are not well?”
His forehead wrinkled. “Me not well? Pen, you took a bullet meant for me. A damned bloody bullet meant for my back.”
“I did?” Her eyes closed, the pain in her body radiating out from her side suddenly making sense. She opened her eyes to him. “But you look like death—are you injured?”
A crooked smile crossed his lips. “No. Not at all.” His hands tightened about her face. “I look like death because you were flirting with death and I did not care for it.”
She nodded, which seemed like the least offensive move against the pain she could make. Spikes of torture still jabbed down her back with the motion. “Your cousin?”
“Dead.”
Pen exhaled.
It was all she needed to hear. Sleep sounded like a nice idea.
She drifted off, Strider’s face above her.
All she needed.
~~~
It was progress.
Wrapped in a robe, Pen sat on a chaise lounge by the fireplace in Strider’s room.
Pillows were propping her up, true, but her strength was mostly back. She’d made it from the bath to the lounge on her own two feet, and now her toes warmed by the fire as she set a comb through her hair. The maid had offered to get the tangles out of her hair, but Pen wasn’t accustomed to someone offering to help her at every turn. Especially with things she was perfectly capable of doing on her own.
One of Strider’s maids had been in the room almost continuously since she’d fully woken up two weeks ago, but it felt good to send the maid off and run the comb through her hair on her own. Her arms were now working as they should without sharp jabs of pain racking her body. The wound on her side where the bullet had gone in was now more of a dull ache that she could ignore if she kept her mind occupied elsewhere. Books helped with that, but not much else. Juliet—the only other person at the Willows aside from Strider she knew well enough to talk to—had left the estate soon after she had been shot.
And Strider had been steadfast in his refusal to talk about anything beyond these four walls and her recovery. When he was in the room, he cut their conversations short. She had thought it was because of the maids always present, but she was beginning to get the sense he was avoiding her.
A knock rapped on the door and she stifled a sigh, hoping for more time away from the maid’s presence.
“Come.”
The door opened and to her relief, Strider walked in. He stopped by the wide chair that sat opposite the chaise lounge by the fire, his left hand going to rest on top of it. A strong leather wingback chair that was as manly as Strider’s room. She knew the chaise lounge had been brought in especially for her. It was a woman’s lounge through and through—fat cushions in a pale pink and black damask. Strider hadn’t mentioned where he had been sleeping. She only knew it hadn’t been in this room during the last two weeks.
A weak smile came to his face. While he was clearly as fit and strong as ever, the dark circles under his eyes had faded, but were still present. He wasn’t sleeping. Not well, anyway. “I brought your friend, Daphne, here from London.”
“Daphne? You did?” Pen smiled, her eyes lighting up as she pulled herself straighter on the lounge. “She is here? I will be so happy to see her. I still feel terrible about disappearing on her when she was counting on me.”
“I explained everything to her and apologized profusely. She’s just happy you are alive and well.”
“Youapologized profusely?”
He chuckled. “I did.” He moved to the side of the lounge, his left fingers tapping along the outside of his dark trousers. “She’s here to take you back to London.”
“Take me back to, London?” Her head tilted to the side. “You must need to attend to business there? Is this about the title—is it all settled? I didn’t want to ask with a maid in the room.”
