Page 33 of Adoringly, Edward
She just didn’t quite know how to accept it.
“Everything will be all right, little one,” she murmured as she rubbed her belly. If only she believed the words herself.
Her mother strode into the room at that moment, pausing as her attention lingered on her belly. Quickly, Vivienne dropped her hand, her cheeks flaming as she stared at the ground.
“No more of that until you are married.” She gestured to all of her with her fan. “Duke Hastings is to call on us at the palace in two days’ time. Should he propose, I expect you to accept.”
Holding back the emotions threatening to capsize her, she nodded dutifully. To protect her family from her mistakes, she would do what she must.
“Then let us depart. We’ve been away from home long enough.”
But as they climbed in their carriage and left the estate, Vivienne couldn’t help thinking as the property grew smaller and smaller from the window…
She was leaving the only place that had truly felt like home.
And she may never see it nor the man who held her heart again.
“How is he doing?” a voice asked from outside his bedroom door.
Edward’s attention shifted blearily from the book in his lap and toward the door closed between himself and whomever resided in the stairwell. He could hardly read the words, anyway, when they kept blurring, making reading difficult.
“Not well,” Clara answered quietly as if the two of them didn’t think he could hear them.
He turned his head toward Cedric, who sat in a nearby chair reading his own book, which rested atop a bouncing knee. “Who’s here?”
“I believe your uncle had planned to visit today,” his servant replied quietly.
Although Edward’s attention returned to the door, he couldn’t bring himself to stand. He couldn’t even lift his head from where it rested against the back of his chair. The outing with Vivienne had taken an enormous toll on his body.
A frown pulled on his mouth, his heart aching as he recalled her tears, the way she’d fled, and how he hadn’t been able to find the strength to climb back up his tower. He’d stumbled into the servants’ quarters to find Cedric, and he’d helped him climb the set of stairs leading to his room.
Of course, Cedric had taken the bedsheet rope away from him to “wash it,” but he knew he wasn’t going to see it again in his lifetime.
It was just as well. He wouldn’t be seeing Vivienne again, either.
His hand moved to his breast pocket where her lock of hair resided within a folded handkerchief. He needed to let her go.
He just didn’t know how.
Finally, he recognized Uncle Maxwell’s voice. “What can we do?” he asked in a distressed tone. “Should we try a new medicine? We can’t lose him, Clara.”
“We’ve tried everything possible. What more can we do?”
After a few moments of silence, someone knocked on the door. When his voice refused to cooperate when he tried to call out for them to enter, Cedric stepped in for him.
“Come.”
Uncle Maxwell entered the room with Clara at his heels, a worried look in her eyes. Maxwell adopted a cheery expression as if wanting to believe Edward would make it through this.
But they all knew he wouldn’t.
Cedric abandoned his chair and made himself scarce on the opposite side of the room while his uncle replaced him. Itcreated a physical ache in Edward’s chest at just how alike his uncle and late father looked to one another. Similar black hair. The same hazel eyes. They’d had such a good friendship between brothers, and Edward had looked up to him all his life because of it.
“How are you faring today?” his uncle asked as if he had not just asked his sister the same question a minute earlier.
“As well as I can be.”
The other man leaned forward on his knees and smiled reassuringly. “I’ve been in contact with a physician from across the sea. He can be here in a month from now. Many of his methods are more extreme. But they are tried and proven, and I’m hoping they can help.”
