Page 88 of Heartbreaker

The Duke of Clayborn rarely slept for more than six hours at a time.

Oh, he told his valet that he was a man who did not require more than a few hours’ sleep. He woke early for morning rides and worked late into the evening, and he simply lived a life that neither required nor had space for languishing in bed.

It was a fine tale, but a false one.

Henry did not sleep, because he dreamed. He dreamed in full, vivid color, with loud sounds and intense smells—the kind of dreams that left a man drained and exhausted when he woke. And sometimes, they left him wishing for something beyond his stern, serious existence.

So he had trained himself to go to bed late and wake early.

But that night, as he lay in that strange bed in that strange house on the top of the hill in the depths of Lancashire, Henry dreamed.

That night, and the next, and the next, as the fever took hold, raging through him, the dreams came wild and vivid and inescapable.

Ominous shadows. Men lurking at the edge of his vision, disappearing every time he tried to see them more clearly. Secrets.

A woman, hair like fire. Eyes like velvet. His name on her lips like the cool water on his brow.

Sometimes, she was joined by another. They made a pair—bright-eyed highwaywomen on tall, stolen horses, stopping carriages to collect more members of their merry band. And the one with the fire in her hair wore enormous skirts that tied round her waist with long, brightly colored ribbons. She twirled and twirled while they waited for the next carriage, the skirts going wide, expanding until he could touch them from where he watched, miles away. But just as his fingers brushed soft silk, she disappeared.

A broken carriage. A boy in a tree.

The flame-haired woman again, this time laughing as she leapt from the edge of a dock into the cool blue lake at his country estate, breaking the water like a mirror. Wait. Was it the country estate? No. It was the Thames, those brightly colored skirts spread out around her as she floated away, her laugh on the wind as he chased her, terrified that he would lose her to the current. To the muck. Terrified he wouldn’t be able to keep her safe.

He couldn’t catch her; she didn’t want to be caught.

But he chased her down the bank, first on the docks and then on the boats and then onto the water itself, then into it, frustration in his chest as he tried to shout for her, but somehow couldn’t find her name. He was desperate to get to her, knowing that this chase, however long it took, however it ended, was all he had.

And then, when he caught her, by chance, by the tip of one long, golden ribbon, she turned to him, the ribbon coming loose, a bright, ornate key at the end of it.

He tucked it in his pocket, close to his heart, keeping it warm, as she had done, and they floated, the water cool on his heated skin, her fingers stroking down his arm, tangling in his own.

“Henry,” she whispered.

Stillness.

The water was still, a mirror once more. Repaired.

The dream was over, but he could not wake.

***

It had been four nights since they’d packed the wound and he’d fallen asleep. Four nights of watching him writhe on the bed. The fever had come mere hours later, Adelaide sleeping fitfully in the chair at the side of his bed, waking to spoon broth down his throat and change his bandages and spread salve on his wounds.

On the third morning, they stood watching him as he twisted and turned and kicked freshly washed blankets from his body, and Lucia had voiced the concern Adelaide was too afraid to contemplate.

Or, at least, she voiced half of the concern, sounding more serious than Adelaide had ever heard her. “If it doesn’t break soon...”

Adelaide’s throat closed in the heavy silence that trailed after the words, the place behind her nose stinging with frustrated knowledge. “I know,” she said, barely recognizing her voice, exhausted from worry and lack of sleep and the constant repetition of his name—the only word she spoke, because she didn’t know what else to say.

She asked Lucia to track Helene and Jack—to make sure they’d found their way to Gretna and were somewhere safe. She might not be able to keep Henry safe, but she could damn well find his brother. Her friend left, tucked beneath Tobias’s heavy arm, promising to do what she could, and Adelaide returned to Henry, finding different words now. More desperate ones.

Don’t die.

Not now... not just as I’ve found you.

He’d promised he’d wake up, hadn’t he? He’d said it.I will take better care of you.He’d said it like she was precious. Not just a woman to be traded for partnership, or a thief to be used for business, or a quiet watchman in a ballroom full of awful toffs collecting information worth more than money. Not just a girl from the South Bank dreaming of a duke.

He said it as though she was worthy of care simply because shewas.

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