Page 42 of Adoringly, Edward
Vivienne swallowed the accompanying grief of unrequited love. He’d had several opportunities to confess if he returned her feelings. But he’d only proposed out of obligation. Not love.
“What is it?” she asked, frowning. “Am I too young for you? Am I too much like a friend? Are you interested in someone else?”
To distract her distressing thoughts, she eased Edward out of his stiff jacket and spread a blanket over him to keep him warm. A white handkerchief peeked out of the breast pocket of his vest, and she reached to tuck it back in.
But then her fingers paused their task as she spotted a flicker of brown against the white cloth.
Carefully, she pulled the handkerchief out of the pocket and gasped when she found a lock of hair threatening to fall out. No, not just any lock of hair.Herhair. From when she’d gifted it to him on the night of the masquerade.
“You’ve carried it all this time?” she murmured, unfolding the square cloth to find the lock of hair well-preserved, a faint golden sheen in the small strands of brunette. Perhaps he trulydidcare. Unless he told her differently, she refused to give up hope.
“Stay with me,” she whispered one more time as she leaned over him, placing a gentle kiss on his forehead. “We’ll get through this. Together.”
She swore she felt his hand twitch in hers, and she hoped more than anything he would hold on. If not for himself, then for her and the child she was growing in her womb.
She glanced toward the door just as another nurse shuffled in with more blankets, but no one else lingered outside the door from what she could tell from her vantage point.
If necessary, she would guard Edward from whatever threat wanted him dead. If they dared to try again…
They would have to get through her first.
QUITE FRANKLY, EDWARD found himself growing tired of waking up in a bed after no recollection of falling asleep in the first place. And in an immense amount of pain at that.
His chest felt heavy, and each breath he took was like the stab of a knife through the ribs.
Slowly, he blinked his eyes open, but his disorientation only grew when he stared up at an unfamiliar ceiling, lying on an unfamiliar cot in an unfamiliar room. Rather than walls of bumpy stone, he faced a flat surface a light green in color.
On the bedside table lay a variety of medical equipment, including an uneaten meal of bread and cheese and a glass of water.
His parched throat begged for the water, and unable to stop himself, he reached for it with a shaky hand, only to find another hand darting out to snatch it first.
He inhaled sharply, only to glance up to find Cedric offering him a sympathetic smile.
“Slowly,” his friend cautioned as he helped him drink the lukewarm water. Some of it spilled onto his shirt, but most of it made it down his throat.
“Where am I?” Edward croaked after he finished half the glass and glanced around with bleary, confused eyes.
“The palace infirmary. You collapsed outside. Well, your lung collapsed, too. But the doctor is treating it.”
“You’ve stayed with me this whole time?”
“Of course.” He chuckled sheepishly, running a hand over the back of his neck. “I had to be thoroughly inspected before I was allowed to be alone with you, stripped down and changed into new clothes. But I think I’ve cleared my name. Or at least, I hope.”
Confusion swirled in his mind as he tried to make sense of Cedric’s words. “I don’t understand.”
“You were poisoned,” the doctor from the palace infirmary—Doctor Clark, if he remembered correctly—said from the doorway. “Actually, it has been an ongoing poisoning for the past year.” The man crossed the room and sat in a chair beside his bed. “Do you know anyone who wishes you harm?”
His mouth dropped open as disbelief worked its way into his fatigued body and slow mind. Sleep and disorientation still flitted around his head, his mind finding it difficult to grasp the man’s meaning.
“No one would harm me,” he insisted in a raspy voice.
But then his lips pressed tightly together as he thought of his sister and how she would sometimes strike him. But poison him? Even she wasn’t cruel enough to do something like that. Surely.
The doctor inspected his chest, mouth, eyes, and watched as he took several deep breaths. Next, he set out a variety ofingredients, naming each one out loud as if wanting him to know he wasn’t trying to harm him in any way.
“Your fiancée is quite the spirited one, isn’t she?” The man glanced at him from the corner of his eye as he began adding ingredients to his mortar. “Wouldn’t leave your side until I forced her to step away to get some rest.”
“My what?” His confused and troubled mind couldn’t catch onto his words, unable to make sense of them.
