Gasping, she collapsed, flying back. Reggie landed hard, all the air bursting from her lungs with Stephen’s small body draped over hers.
Her chest moved rapidly, and she closed her eyes. Blood seeped through her gown, a sticky warmth that knocked her from her shock.
The room dissolved into chaos.
Quint and the marquess wrestled Walsh to the floor, even as a constable came rushing in. Reggie’s arms folded around the slight boy in her hold. Panic pounded at her chest, making breath impossible. “Stephen,” she moaned.
He flashed a crooked smile. A weak one. “I saved you,” he whispered.
She cried out. Gently rolling him to the floor, she came up over him. No. No. No. No. It was a litany that played out in her head. “Why did you do that?” she sobbed, tears dampening her cheeks, and she blinked back the useless drops that blurred his little frame. With fingers that shook, Reggie ripped open his shirt. “A doctor,” she screamed.
Abandoning Walsh to the constable’s care, Quint raced from the room, tripping over himself.
Blood seeped from the wound at Stephen’s side. Another agonized moan belonging to a tortured animal spilled from her. There was so much blood. So much of it.
“Stephen.” That hoarse cry brought her head snapping over. Of course—he should be here.
Jerking off his cloak as he went, Broderick stormed into the room. He is here.
“He’s h-hurt,” Reggie said in between wrenching sobs.
Doing a quick sweep of Stephen’s wound, Broderick pressed the garment to staunch the flow of blood.
Stephen winced, and over his prone form, Reggie’s and Broderick’s eyes met. Her own terror was reflected in his gaze.
“Reggie,” the little boy whispered, his voice threadbare, snapping all her focus immediately back.
“Yes, love,” she soothed through her own tears, stroking his cheek. “What is it?”
He flashed a weak smile, cocksure even through his pain. “Told you I didn’t hate you . . .” His eyes rolled back.
Reggie’s keening cry pealed around the room.
“No,” Broderick chanted. “No. No. No.” He collapsed over Stephen’s tiny frame and poured his tears into the boy’s blood-soaked shirt. Broderick’s words were an incoherent jumble of pleading and prayers of forgiveness.
A faint groan split through that heartbreak.
Yanking his head up, his eyes wild, Broderick searched his brother for a sign of a pulse. A strangled cry tore from his throat. “He is alive.”
Reggie dimly registered the floorboards shifting under her as someone fell to a knee alongside her and Broderick. Reggie glanced blankly at the marquess.
His jaw slacked. He closed his mouth, but it fell agape. He shoved past Broderick, ripping that makeshift bandage from his fingers. With his other, trembling palm, he traced the birthmark at the corner of Stephen’s navel. “I didn’t believe . . . I didn’t trust . . .” The marquess’s eyes weighted closed. “August,” he whispered his son’s name, and then crumpled over the child’s supine body.
Chapter 29
For nearly three days straight, it rained.
Until later that third day, the sun broke through the thick grey clouds, bathing London in a calming light.
“I’m fine, you know,” Stephen muttered for a fourth time as Reggie checked his bandages.
He’d been patient with her attentiveness these past days. “I do,” she murmured. “There’s no one more resilient or stronger than you.” Hers weren’t words to stroke a boy’s ego. He’d endured graver injustices and miseries than most old men took on their way to meet their maker.
Stephen would survive.
“I like havin’ you care for me more than my sisters,” he said matter-of-factly. “Because you don’t treat me different.” Treat him different since he’d been claimed by the marquess. “Perhaps he’ll let me stay,” he ventured tentatively, and Reggie’s fingers stilled.
The man who just four days ago had sobbed over this very child and had accepted the truth he’d denied himself over a fortnight wasn’t one who’d relinquish his hold forever. “No, Stephen,” she said quietly, refusing to lie to him. “He won’t.” She glanced up at the somber little figure lying on his back, staring mutinously overhead. “But do you know, Stephen?”
He refused to look at her for a long while and then grudgingly moved his attention over.
“A man who searched all those years to find you and who wants you back in his life so desperately, and still allowed you time to make your goodbyes, is not a bad man.”
Stephen turned his face toward the window.
A knock sounded at the door, and she glanced up, hope filling her breast.
The Killoran sisters filed in.
Reggie fought disappointment. It had been two days since she’d seen Broderick. He’d been called away on business after Stephen had been brought to convalesce with the Killoran family.
And he’d just . . . cut her out.
Before he’d gone, there’d been no talk of his duchess or his promise for the future.
“Your sisters are here,” she murmured. Lowering his shirt back into place, Reggie rose to greet the trio as they came forward.
“How . . . ?”
“I’m fine,” Stephen mumbled, interrupting Cleo’s question. “It was just a flesh wound.”
“He’s fine,” Reggie mouthed.
Gertrude offered the small bouquet over to Stephen. “I’ve brought you these,” she said gently, pushing them into his hand.
“What am I going to do with these?” He wrinkled his nose. “Boys don’t like flowers.”
Reggie’s lips twitched, and she accepted the flowers from Gertrude. “Will you put them in the music room?” Gertrude asked.
Stephen shoved himself into an upright position. “I’m fine,” he exclaimed when all three Killoran sisters rushed forward.
“He is going to be fine,” Reggie repeated once more. The bullet had sliced into his side and exited clean through, leaving more of a vicious gash.
“See?” Stephen shot back for the other women present.
Reggie made to leave and allow the family one of the few remaining moments they had left together. Ophelia stepped into her path.
She bit at her lower lip. “I didn’t know,” she said on a rush, “about you and Broderick and how you felt about him, or how he felt about you. I simply thought you were like a sister to him,” she rambled.
“It’s all right,” she promised.
“It’s not,” Ophelia whispered, her voice catching in a crack in her usually unflappable composure. “I introduced him to another woman.”
Nay, not just any woman. A striking widow who also happened to be a duchess. Reggie gripped the flowers in her hands. “You didn’t know.”
“Ophelia?” Stephen snapped, and his sister glanced over.
“Go,” Reggie urged them. And as the gathered family continued on, she let herself out. Flowers in hand, she found her way to the room that had proven a sanctuary of sorts. When thoughts of Broderick had kept her awake the past nights and questions swirled about their future, she’d come and played.
And where music had represented a balm and hope for the future, she’d confronted the truth she’d desperately fought: It would not be enough. For she wanted him to share in those joys and endeavors. She wanted him to be her partner through life.
Emotion wadded in her throat.
Reggie entered through the doorway and stopped.
With the tails of his jacket hanging over the back of the bench, Broderick sat before the pianoforte. “You returned,” she breathed, motionless. “Where have you been?” She hated the desperation to that query but had no pride where this man was concerned. She never had.
Broderick bowed his head, and his hands flew over those keys, strumming a cheerful tune. Her heart caught.
“Just give me your hand,
Tabhair dom do lámh.
Just give me your hand
And I’ll walk with you,
Through the streets of our land,
Through the mountains so grand.
If you give me your hand.
Just give me your hand,
And come along with me.”
The flowers slipped from her fingers as she rushed forward, stopping beside him. Each note wrapped in his slightly off-key song, a perfect partner to her melody.
“Will you give me your hand,
And the world it can see,
That we can be free,
In peace and harmony?