Chapter 22
Dace hurried back to the bedroom carrying the laudanum. He almost dropped it at the sight of his wife unconscious, curled up on the bed with her head lying on Angel’s thigh.
“Lizzie!” he cried.
“I’m fine. Just a little faint. It helps if I keep my head low.” She propped her chin on Angel’s leg. “I have the metal piece between my fingertips and I am not going to let it go. Don’t worry, Mr. Anston.”
“I like it when you call me Edward.” Angel paused before he urged, “When you have recovered from your swoon, pull it out. I beg you, Lady Felmont.”
“As we are going to be intimately connected for some time, Edward, you had better call me Lizzie.” She stopped leaning on his leg. “Drink some laudanum for me.”
Dace poured a healthy dose.
He held the glass while Angel sipped. “Too much. Bad dreams.” When he’d swallowed the last of it, the wounded man berated Lizzie in a mournful whisper. “For God’s sake, why won’t you pull it out?”
“Because I will not be your murderer, no matter how much you’d like that, Edward.” His wife gave a nervous glance to make sure Angel had not managed to escape his bonds. “We are going to wait for the surgeon.”
“You cannot hold on to it for so long. Pull it out for God’s sake!”
“Hush, I can hold it for eternity if I have to. Though, I doubt the surgeon will be as long as that.” Lizzie turned to him. “Would you take my shoes off, Felmont, and cover my feet. I don’t want to risk shivering.”
Dace did as she asked, then covered her to the waist with a blanket. He went to stoke the fire.
How lovely she looked sitting there, bravely ignoring her fingers covered in blood. She took care not to look down. He had seen that carefully composed look on her face often since his return.
Sweet Lizzie.
He went over to sit in the chair next to the bed, to warm her cold, stocking-clad feet with his hands. Her toes curled at his touch.
Angel asked, “Lizzie, why do you call your husband, Felmont, yet you call me Edward?”
Dace gave a weary sigh. He did it twice, but neither one took any notice of him.
He felt Lizzie uncurl her toes, distracted by the question.
“I call my husband other things in private. Why do you not use your title? Miss Rackham told me you are an earl.” His wife changed the subject with efficiency. Angel was not his usual self—he let her.
“Not my father’s son,” was the brusque answer, uttered with half a breath.
Dace wondered if he should start talking with that whisper Angel used. His friend could ask the most personal questions, which other men dared not, and women listened to his every word as if he were the archangel Gabriel himself.
What seemed like hours later, the surgeon appeared with his assistant, though the clock had not long chimed three. Angel Anston slept fitfully through most of the surgery. His hallucinations ran to murderous incidents from his past, mixed with awful memories of his childhood. Only those who knew him well could understand what tormented him, from the fragments spoken aloud.
Fortunately, Lizzie did not understand his soft murmurings, his invitations to try again, so politely spoken. Lethal encounters reenacted by a shrug of the shoulders, a twist of the wrist.
When the shard of metal finally slipped from Angel’s belly, Lizzie still held the tip.
Dace carried her away from the bed and they dropped it into the cinders in the hearth, together.
“You can put me down, Felmont.” His wife tried to order him about. Dace began to see some justice in the duke’s attitude to women. “I am not the least bit disturbed. He didn’t smell at all. Once I got over my faintness, I had only to keep my eyes closed while the surgeon used his knife about my fingers. Do let go.” Her elbow tried to pry him away from her side.
He insisted on holding her close to his heart. But he could not break through the barrier she held over her emotions.
Lizzie Tempest Ruins A Viscount (Felmont Brides Series Book 1) Page 32
