Page 71 of A Highland Duke to Claim Her Heart

Ewan raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t have the energy to argue or even to ask further questions. He needed his strength for something else.

Taking her hand again, Ewan pressed it firmly, until her eyes snapped to his.

“Cassandra,” he murmured. “You must allow me to speak.”

Her hands trembled, but then she set the cloth aside and looked at him very seriously.

“Very well,” she said. “I will listen.”

“I am frightened, Cassandra,” he began, his voice barely above a whisper. “For myself, yes, but mostly for Annabelle. The doctor thinks there is a chance I will not make it. And if I do not—” she seemed to flinch at these words, but he kept going, “—then I need you to take care of her. Christopher will be the duke then, and I do not know if he will provide for her. But you, you must be a mother to her.”

“You do not need to worry about that at all,” Cassandra said fiercely. “I will always take care of Annabelle. But you are not going to die, Ewan. You are going to get better. You will see, after a few days, you will be all well again.”

But Ewan was shaking his head. “We do not know that,” he muttered. “And I must be prepared.”

Tears filled her eyes, but she did not look away.

“I have been a fool,” he continued, emotion clouding his voice as well. “A fool to waste the little time we had together in fear.”

“Stop,” she whispered. “We have time still!”

“When you walked into my life, Cassandra, you rearranged everything,” he said. “I could not have known, when I saved you from that loch, how much you would come to change my life. You have taught me so much about myself, about the kind ofman I want to be, and about how to open myself to someone. How to trust again. The things I feel for you do not even have names, I do not know what to call them. Only that they fill the room you are in and follow out of every room you leave. And I hope—” his voice broke slightly “—that you can forgive me for being too proud and too frightened to say it when I was strong enough to deserve you.”

“You always deserve me,” Cassandra whispered, the tears leaking down her cheeks. She pressed his hands to her lips, kissing his knuckles. “And you are going to get strong again, say these things to me when you are not ill, but when you are healthy and hearty.”

“But if I do not,” he said quietly, “then I need you to know.”

“You do not get to say this and then leave!” she cried, as her tears intensified. “You have a daughter who needs you! And not just a daughter. I need you as well, Ewan. I need you here with me.” She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to his, so that he could feel the tears dropping onto his face. “Do not leave me, Ewan.”

But he could not promise her that he would not leave her. There were so many promises he would have liked to have made to her, but even he could not defy death. And so he let her cry against him, shaking and sobbing, until at last, she quieted, then lay across his chest, holding him.

At last, sleep began to take him, and he felt Cassandra lift herself from him and move to the door. The doctor was there, Ewan could just make out Dr. Ludley and Alaric, even as darkness began to cloud his vision. The three of them were consulting, Cassandra was nodding. Ewan tried to blink away the fog of tiredness, but it was too strong. Sleep was taking him.

The last thing he saw was the doctor raising something up for Cassandra to look at. It looked very much like a small medicinal vial, like the one that Christopher had given to Ewan.

Chapter 26

“How is His Grace?” Dr. Ludley asked, looking anxiously over Cassandra’s shoulder into the room where Ewan was now asleep.

Cassandra glanced back as well. Ewan’s eyes were closed, and he was breathing deeply and gently. It was good to see him breathing without difficulty, for once. In the last hour, she had noticed that his breathing was a little less ragged than it had been.

This gave her hope.

Perhaps they were not too late.

“I think he is improving a little,” she said, turning back to the doctor and Alaric. “His breathing is better, and he was able to speak for some duration to me without coughing.”

“You should not have let him speak,” the doctor said sharply, giving her a disapproving frown.

“I know,” she said, and she tried to look apologetic. She was sorry. But she also was not. She had needed to hear those words from Ewan. Especially if he did not recover. She moved closer tothe doctor, lowering her voice as she glanced along the corridor. Thankfully, they were alone.

“It has been many hours now since he has eaten or drunk anything that was not approved by you, Dr. Ludley,” she said. “Could that be why he is improving?”

The doctor swallowed, then pulled the vial again from his pocket and held it up. His hand, she noticed, was shaking slightly.

“I have examined the powder,” he said, “and from what I can tell, combined with the duke’s sudden symptoms, I am ready to conclude that has been receiving doses of arsenic, administered in very small quantities over several weeks. I found traces of the poison in this vial, but this dose would not be enough to cause the intense symptoms the duke has experienced. Whoever has done this has most likely also been putting it in his food and drinks.”

“Whoever has done this?” Alaric repeated incredulously. “We all know who did this! We all know who gave him the vial.”