Dear boy. He used that affection as his opportunity to continue forward once more. “I would very much like to play with him.”
Vallen clapped, and bounced up and down on Lady Prendergast’s knee. “We play!”
The old woman made to set the little boy on his feet, when her gaze landed on a place past Clayton’s shoulder. Her smile immediately withered into a harsh, hard, and—worse—threatening line.
Even without looking back, he registered the small crowd of people behind him, hovering at the entrance.
“Stop,” she cried, pointing her pistol at Clayton’s chest, freezing him in his tracks. “I am angry at you. Very, very disappointed.” As she spoke, she shook that weapon at him. “You are being very naughty.” She wrapped her other arm tightly around Sylvia’s son, dragging him close to her chest. The boy immediately began to cry.
Clayton detected an audible intake of breath, and knew it as Sylvia’s. And even as that telltale mark ravaged him, he made himself concentrate all his attention on the threat before them.
Lord Prendergast stepped forward. “Libby, what are you doing?” he said plaintively. “You said you just wanted to see him. That was all you wanted.”
“I am trying to play with my son. And all these people are interrupting me. And I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.” There was a strident quality that lent an added layer of danger to the volatile situation.
Clayton needed to get Vallen away from her. She was going to snap. It was a certainty.
“Libby, that isn’t your son. Norman is dead,” her husband implored.
Clayton did not know what the right words were to defuse the unfolding crisis, but he knew reminding Libby Prendergast that her son was dead was not the wisest of courses.
Her eyes flashed with unhinged rage. “You stupid, stupid man. I am holding him right now. Don’t you see?” She jerked the sobbing boy so her husband could see him. Vallen cried all the harder. “Look what you made him do. You’re making him cry.”
Sylvia and Lady Prendergast spoke at the exact same time.
“Mama is here.”
“Mother is here.”
“Libby,” her husband tried again. “Our son is dead.”
“Stop!” she cried. “You will not take him.”
Terror beat like a drum in Clayton’s chest. At his back, he registered the cries that went up.
And then Vallen began to cry anew, and the marchioness’s lip quavered. “Hush, dear boy. Mama is here.”
“Libby, it is your grandson,” the marquess tried once more.
“Don’t you dare try to take him from me,” she cried to her husband, now waving the pistol in the direction of the collective group behind Clayton, to that place where Sylvia stood at the center.
Vallen squirmed and cried all the harder.
“Shut up!” she screamed. Madness blazed from the depths of the older woman’s eyes, and she blinked. “Oh, come, dear. Mama is sorry. So very sorry.”
Her grip on Vallen slackened, and the little boy scurried from her lap and raced past Clayton toward Sylvia.
“Noooo!” Lady Prendergast wailed as she raised her pistol and pointed it once more at Sylvia.
Clayton moved quickly, charging the marchioness. Time unfolded in an unnatural way, a dizzying mix of rapidity and slowness that lent a cacophony to his mind and the moment.
The loud report filled the room, followed by the echo of the shot, mingled with Sylvia’s scream and the dull thudding of Clayton’s own pulse. Everything came distant, as if down a long tunnel, and then he pitched forward, collapsing onto the stark-white coverlet.
A spot of red appeared, staining the fabric, spreading out slowly, in a widening swath, of crimson . . . blood. It was his blood.
“I’ve already told you. It happens in a bedroom, on a red blanket . . .”
A red blanket. “By damn,” he whispered weakly. “She was right, after . . .”
Clayton closed his eyes, and remembered no more.
Heaven was noisy.
Or mayhap that meant Clayton had landed himself in hell. Now, that would make far more sense. Which would also mean hell included his sisters’ chatter.
“I told you it would be a red blanket . . .”
“Oh, hush. Your brother is there, dead, and you’re more focused on triumphantly predicting how he is going to die.”
“He isn’t going to die.”
And from that, a fight ensued, with all the voices of his sisters rolling together as they fought about whether or not he would die. A sharp whistle cut across the noise, bringing them to silence.
Yes, this was very likely hell.
He forced an eye open . . . and then another.
Hell looked a lot like his bedchambers.
A pair of enormous brown eyes collided with his. Eris blinked slowly. “You aren’t dead!” she said happily. And then, hopping up onto her feet on his mattress, she proceeded to jump up and down. “He’s not dead! He’s not dead! Huzzah!” Her jumping jostled the mattress . . . and his side that was on fire before she leapt off and onto the floor.
He groaned. Yes, no “very likely” about it. This was absolutely hell.
Another face appeared before his.
His mother’s beaming, smiling one. “I told you my boy would break the curse upon him. Probably confused it, you did.”
“Tricked it,” Anwen reminded. “That is how we each have to cheat death, and you did it, dear brother.”
“Who would have imagined that it would be Clayton to do so?” Cora marveled aloud.
“Not I,” Daria said in her haunting voice.
Clayton attempted to push himself up onto his elbows, and a hiss of pain exploded past his lips. He collapsed back.
“Rest easy now.” His mother kissed the top of his forehead the way she had when he was a small boy who’d suffered a bad dream.
“Yes, it isn’t every day a man cheats death,” Anwen said, sitting gingerly upon the mattress, at his feet, with an awareness that after Eris’s bouncing he was appreciative of.
“What . . . happened?” he whispered, his voice weak as he tried to make sense of why his entire side ached with a dull, throbbing pain. Or why he was surrounded by his family, celebrating his triumph over the curse.
“Thou know’st ’tis common, all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity . . .” Delia smiled. “But this is not that day, dear brother. You broke your curse.”
He’d . . .
And then he remembered . . .
Lord Prendergast’s visit.
The shock and horror as the marquess had revealed all to Sylvia. And hurt. There’d been that, too. Oh, God . . . the agony of that remembrance, her face etched in shock and confusion greater than the pain cleaving at his side. He’d never been capable of getting anything right with her.
Except . . . that hadn’t been the sole source of his misery this day.
There had been the marchioness, gone mad, with . . . Vallen.
“Vallen,” he rasped, surging upright so quick his ears buzzed and his vision went briefly black.
“He is fine. You are the one who is not. However, the doctor said you will live if you have a care,” his mother said, firmer than he’d ever heard her.
And when he managed to open his eyes and look once more, it was Sylvia who stood there before him.
Why was she here? She surely hated him after what Prendergast had revealed. She’d ordered Clayton gone. “Sylvia,” he whispered.
His mother and sisters shared a look, and then for the first time ever, they all fell silent at the exact same moment and filed in an orderly line past Sylvia.
The door closed with a click.
Perhaps he was dead, then, after all. Only this? This would be heaven . . . he and the woman he loved deeper than he’d ever loved a soul, together.
She was there. Her hands twined together before her, stiff, silent. Her features . . . ravaged. “Clayton,” she said, her voice breaking . . . and then tears flooded
her eyes.
He groaned. Nay, back to the original assessment. Indeed, hell. For the sight of her suffering, he owned as his. “Vallen is—?”
“He is fine,” she said quickly. “Happy and entertained by my mother and Clara and Lila. Thank you. You saved me and my son, and I . . . I have no words to express my appreciation.” She cleared her throat. “This time, they brought the marchioness to Newgate and all are aware of her sins.”
That was why she was here, then. To express her gratitude . . . and to explain what had become of Norfolk’s evil parents? He should just be grateful that she was here, and speaking to him. But he was selfish, because he wanted her and them the way they’d been . . . before Prendergast had outed Clayton for his lie to Sylvia.
“It was nothing,” he said woodenly. “I would happily and gladly give my life for you or Vallen.”
She swept over. “It was . . . nothing?” she cried. “My God, you could have died. You almost did,” she corrected. “You lost so much blood, and we worried you would never wake.” Sylvia hugged her arms around her middle while she continued to silently weep, that noiseless expression of her grief somehow all the more devastating.
“I am fine,” he insisted, willing a greater strength than he felt into his voice so as to alleviate her pain. “Why, I was just shot, and look how sturdy I am. Already awake.”
Sylvia looked at him as if he had lost control of his faculties. “Eight days ago,” she whispered, and then moved swiftly, joining him at the side of the bed.
His eyebrows flew up. “Eight days.” That much time had passed?
“Yes.”
“And . . . you are here, now?” Eight days later? Surely that meant . . .
Sylvia caught a sob with her palm. “Of course I am, you silly man. I’ve remained here, waiting for you to awaken. I love you, Clayton. That has not and will not ever change.”
She’d stayed beside him. She loved him? He closed his eyes once more. “I am dead, aren’t I?” There was no other accounting for the ease with which she stated her love.
She laughed midsob, and stroked her fingers through his hair.
Clayton tried to pick through the cobwebs clouding his mind and his memory of that day with Sylvia and Prendergast that may as well have been moments ago, as he’d been in this suspended state of rest with time and life after it unmoving. “But . . . you ordered me to leave.” He’d not imagined it.
“No. I didn’t. Silly, silly, silly man. I ordered him gone. I didn’t want to hear anything else of what he had to say.” Ever so gently, Sylvia claimed the spot beside him. She rested her palm on his, her fingers soft and yet so strong as they stroked his. “I know your sense of responsibility. I don’t hate you for coming to me for that reason.” She wrinkled her nose. “Perhaps I was annoyed and stunned when I realized, but . . . I could not, would not, ever let that be what kept me from living a life with you.” She stopped that butterfly-soft caressing but left her hand there, covering Clayton’s. “Because I know that even if it began as one thing, that when you continued to come, it wasn’t all it was.”
“No. No. You are right,” he said hoarsely, struggling onto his uninjured side.
She made a sound of protest. “Please, don’t. You need to rest.”
But Clayton managed to get himself upright anyway. “I will be fine . . . as you are here with me, Sylvia.”
Sylvia lowered her mouth close to his. “I will be with you, now and forever. I love you, Clayton Kearsley. I always have and I always will.”
It was all he’d ever wanted. Nay, she was. A future with the two of them, together.
“And I love you,” he whispered. “From the moment I saw you in Lady Waverly’s . . . and joined you in a meeting that wasn’t accidental.”
She gasped. “It wasn’t?”
“No. I couldn’t stop watching you all night. I needed to—”
She kissed him, gently and tenderly, and he lay back against the pillow, with Sylvia coming carefully over him. Clayton surrendered to the warmth of that joining.
When they parted, there came a whisper of sighs and giggles.
“Whoever loved, that loved not at first sight?” Delia’s muffled voice carried through the wood panel, and he and Sylvia shook with silent amusement.
And folding an arm around her, he pulled Sylvia onto the mattress and against his uninjured side. “Who indeed?”
And this time, as she curled into him, they gave in to the laughter that now came so very easily. For at last, they would be together.
And this time . . . it would be forever.
Clayton smiled.
About the Author
Photo © 2016 Kimberly Rocha
Christi Caldwell is the USA Today bestselling author of numerous series, including Lost Lords of London, Sinful Brides, Wicked Wallflowers, and Heart of a Duke. She blames novelist Judith McNaught for luring her into the world of historical romance. When Christi was at the University of Connecticut, she began writing her own tales of love—ones where even the most perfect heroes and heroines had imperfections. She learned to enjoy torturing her couples before they earned their well-deserved happily ever after.
Christi lives in southern Connecticut, where she spends her time writing and looking after her twin girls and amazing son. Fans who want to keep up with the latest news and information can sign up for her newsletter at www.ChristiCaldwell.com.
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