The Duke Is Mine - Eloisa James [125]
As his vision cleared, he could see that Olivia’s face was faintly blue. He suddenly remembered to feel for a heartbeat, but when he pressed his hand to her chest he couldn’t feel anything. Then he realized he was trying to find a heartbeat on the wrong side of her body.
“My brain’s garbled,” he mumbled. Then, fiercely: “You must breathe.” He shook her again, willing her to open her eyes, but her head fell back like a blossom on a broken stem. Her face swam in front of his eyes and he realized that he was crying, his hands moving over her chest, trying to find a heartbeat that wasn’t there.
Lucy was there too, barking hoarsely at her mistress’s ear.
But Olivia did not move. She would never move again.
He lowered his face to her neck, trying to smell that wonderful, elusive perfume that was Olivia, but all he could smell was smoke.
Something twisted hard inside his chest, and all the grief he had never expressed came boiling up, sobs rising so hard that his body jerked as if he were having a seizure. There was no stopping these cries; the world turned into a black swirling hole of grief. Alfie, Olivia, even Evangeline and Rupert . . . they were all dead.
Howls tore through him, bringing with them words that he had never spoken aloud, because a duke is always controlled, a duke never pleads.
This duke pleaded.
Please, God, help. Help.
Finally he realized that he could see Lucy licking Olivia’s cheek; the room was clearing of smoke. The chimney fire must have been extinguished. Lucy uttered a bark that sounded like a low bell, like that of a Great Dane.
The bark of Cerberus, the dog who guards the gates of Hades, perhaps.
His last sob brought with it a strange clarity, a deep calm. “I cannot bear it,” Quin said, talking to the thin air. “I cannot bear this again.” He couldn’t go back to his sterile house, to the pages of mathematical equations, to his mother’s strictures. Without Olivia and Alfie, there was no point in living.
Lucy was still licking Olivia’s cheek. He reached to push her away—and he thought he saw Olivia shudder. He grabbed her shoulders and lifted her toward him. “Please, Olivia! Breathe. Please!”
Nothing.
He pulled her body against his and rocked back and forth, those damned tears falling again.
She coughed.
Tarquin Brook-Chatfield, Duke of Sconce, made a fool of himself that night in France. He always remembered it, and looked back with a tinge of embarrassment.
The man who never cried, not even at his own son’s funeral, wept.
And when Olivia Mayfair Lytton came to, coughing and hurting, but otherwise fine, she—who never cried either—wept as well.
Thirty-two
A Warrior and an Amazon
“It was the mattresses,” Olivia told Petit two hours later. She was sitting on a chair in the middle of the courtyard, taking deep breaths of fresh, sea-scoured air. Her chest ached, but it was already feeling much better. A steaming hot bath had helped. “Your mattresses saved our lives.”
But his eyes were agonized. “It was I, I, who almost cost you your life! I blocked the chimneys to force Madame to leave the kitchen, and then one of them caught on fire. By the time I realized you had not used your key, I couldn’t get through the smoke. I failed!”
“It was an accident,” Olivia told him. “But you must promise never to do something so dangerous again.”
“I will not,” Petit gasped. “Never, never, never.”
“You can make up for it,” Quin said, appearing at his shoulder. “Carry Lucy to the rowboat next to Père Blanchard’s hut, if you please.” He handed over the little dog. “She’s too tired to walk with us. Give her to a sailor named Grooper, who should be waiting.”
“I will run all the way,” Petit said, suiting action to word and tearing out the front gate.
“My goodness.” Olivia watched him go. One of Lucy’s ears was just visible, blowing backward in the wind. “Lucy must feel as if she’s in a race.”
“Petit is taking the road,” Quin said. “We’ll cut through the woods, and we should meet him not