Page 37 of The Hidden Duchess

“Thank you,” Caroline mumbled.

“But good heavens, Emily, what happened?” A knock sounded at the door indicating the arrival of the next tray. He returned with another kettle and a piping-hot meat pie. He set the old tray outside the door and came back to his work. Caroline brought her arms forth from the blankets and accepted the pie into her still trembling hands.

She did not know where to begin.

“I did not leave. I was taken,” she said while blowing onto the pastry. “And I was not a part of their group, I was their unwilling hostage.” He nodded. “And my name isn’t Emily.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and bade her to explain. He did not even seem all that ruffled when she had mentioned the bit about her name, or perhaps he had not heard her because at the same moment he had been digging through the chest at the end of his bed and come up with what looked very much to her like a sewing kit.

“No. No. No!” she repeated as she tried to inch away from him but only came up against the headboard.

He only shrugged and began threading a needle.

“Why did they take you?” he asked. He was so calm it was irritating her. She wondered if he were merely asking questions to keep her busy and not listening at all. He was so focused on her wound that she wanted nothing more than to rattle him, to keep that sharp needle away from her tender flesh.

“Did you hear me?” she cried.

“I did,” he replied.

“My name isn’t Emily,” she repeated. “It’s Miss Caroline Graves. Or, I suppose it’s Bennington now, but I never had a chance to use that so it hasn’t stuck.”

When she said his own last name, the needle had dropped from his hand and onto the floor at his feet. So, he had been listening. He stared at her without moving. Without breathing, it seemed.

“That is no joking matter,” he said in a mere whisper.

“Then it’s a good thing that I am not joking,” she replied meeting his gaze without hesitation.

He bent down to retrieve the needle, disappearing out of her view for longer than she thought was necessary. She would give him the moment to collect himself but she would not pretend any longer.

When he stood he did not meet her gaze.

“I told you that there was much more to tell,” she set the meat pie aside. She was too anxious to eat at the moment. “Are you ready now?”

He steeled himself, glanced up, and presented his challenge. “Are you ready now?” he countered, needle in hand. She understood the trade. He would stitch both sides of the wound while she wove her tale. She supposed that the distraction would help her through the pain but this was not how she had imagined the conversation going. Maybe he too needed the distraction. Maybe having his hands busy would help to soften the blow.

She nodded, and it all began to spill out.

She told him of the byway and how it had delayed his father’s journey north for a fortnight at Gravesend Manor.

She hissed as the needle pierced her flesh.

“Try to be still,” he said gently.

She nodded. She told of her tempestuous engagement, although she left out the part about her father’s duel. Perhaps one day she might tell him, if he ever spoke to her again after this.

She poured all of the aching details of the highway murders into the air between them. She had not told anyone, had not realized how much it had needed to be said. She found he was nodding along with her when there were parts that only she could have known, like that the duke had been shot through the heart and his valet through the eye or that they had taken a diverted path because of the hay carts that had collided. She told him of her suspicions that it had been a trap from the outset.

This caught his attention, and he paused in his stitching.

“Why would you think that?” he wondered.

“I did not at first,” she admitted.

He bent again to his work, and she gasped when he pulled the wound closed at its widest point. She laid a hand on his arm. “Stop a moment,” Caroline panted.

“I am almost finished,” he said, and she looked at the neat stitches and the still gaping hole. She sucked in her breath.

“Don’t you faint,” he said.

---