The Virgin Who Ruined Lord Gray - Anna Bradley Page 0,118

Tears stung Sophia’s eyes as she thought of how close he’d come to never opening those gray eyes again. A few tears escaped down her cheeks, but she brushed them aside and settled herself into the chair beside his bed.

Tristan was alive. She could see his chest moving up and down with each of his shallow breaths. This wasn’t a time for tears, but a time for gratitude.

She stayed by his bed for the rest of the day and into the evening, leaving his side only when Giles Wakeford chased her from the room so he could assess his patient’s condition and change his dressing. Tristan slept through it all, oblivious to everything around him. Sophia had hoped he would wake, if only for a moment so he’d see her, and know she was there with him, but hour after hour passed and his eyes remained closed. Finally, worn out with watching and waiting, Sophia folded her arms on the edge of the bed, rested her head on them, and fell into a fitful sleep.

When she woke, the bedchamber was dark, the fire having burned down to embers. She blinked groggily, uncertain why she’d woken until she felt the softest touch on her head, like fingers moving slowly through her hair.

She lifted her head and looked up. Tristan’s face was turned toward her, and he was gazing down at her with gray eyes so soft her heart melted like warm honey in her chest.

“I knew you were here, pixie. Even before I woke, I knew you were here.” His voice was thick and raspy, and though he tried to hide it, Sophia could see by the white lines around his lips that he was in a great deal of pain.

Sophia smiled and slid her hand into his. “How did you know?”

“Your scent. Honeysuckle. You smell like honeysuckle.” A faint smile drifted over his lips, but it faded as he searched her face. “You won’t leave me?”

“No. I won’t leave you.” She held his gaze as she raised his hand to her lips. “Never, Tristan.”

Chapter Twenty-four

It was five days before Tristan was alert enough to make sense of his surroundings. The time before that was hazy, just a series of images drifting through his head—drape-shrouded windows, soft voices, white-hot, burning pain in his chest, and a tall, dark-haired man with kind brown eyes and silver frosting his temples leaning over the bed.

There’d only been one constant, only one thing that made sense.

Sophia.

Each time he forced an eye open she was there beside his bed, her anxious gaze fixed on his face, her fingers tucked into his hand. He tried to talk to her, to swim to the surface, but the dizziness kept sucking him back down again. At one point he thought he’d spoken to her, had watched her lips moving in reply, but when he struggled to consciousness much later, he wondered if he’d dreamt it.

He couldn’t make any sense of time as he floated in this nebulous state. Once or twice he woke and couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard Sophia’s voice. He’d fallen into a panic each time, and flailed and thrashed in the bed to get to her, but he was too exhausted to struggle for long, and inevitably unconsciousness would wrap him in silken threads and draw him down into darkness again.

Then, late one afternoon his surroundings came into focus at last.

Sophia’s was the first face he searched for.

“Well, good afternoon, Lord Gray. How pleased I am you’ve woken at last. We were growing rather concerned.”

That voice…cultured, but with a faint hint of amusement underlying every syllable. He recognized it at once.

Lady Clifford.

Tristan blinked up at her in confusion. Where was he, and why wasn’t Sophia—

“You’re in a bedchamber at the Clifford School, my lord. I daresay you would have been more comfortable in your own home, but given a good deal of your blood had already vacated your body before we got you into the carriage, time was of the essence.” Lady Clifford leaned over him, her brow furrowing as she studied his face. “Not quite yourself still, I see. Do you remember what happened?”

Tristan squeezed his eyes closed. The light from the fire made his head ache, but he tried to think. He’d been at St. Clement Dane’s Church, hadn’t he? Yes, he remembered riding there, but everything after that was fuzzy, as if it had happened long ago, or to someone else.

But…something awful had happened, hadn’t it? Uneasiness stole through him as