His hands came around her face, wiping the streaming hair from her eyes. She coughed and then she was in his lap and he was holding her and hot tears covered her cheeks.

“Duchess,” he said harshly, then “Duchess” again, over and over, his lips upon her brow and cheeks. She sought his mouth with hers. He kissed her, fusing them, his hands cradling her head, holding her to him.

Her fingers tangled in his shirt. He was warm, solid, strong, and whole. She had gone without him for too long. Now she wanted to pour herself into him.

He pulled away abruptly and grabbed her shoulders. “On which bank of the river are we now? The house side?”

She shook her head.

His hands tightened on her. “Which bank? Speak!”

“The opposite bank.” She lifted her hand to his face. His eye was closed and swollen red, his brow tight. An angry welt crossed his temple. “Downriver a hundred yards at least. Beyond the copse.”

He pulled her up as he rose. His hands were cut in a dozen places. His head was bent. “Do you see the fence?”

She nodded. “What—”

“Do you see the fence?”

“Yes! But I don’t under—”

“I cannot see, Arabella. You must lead us to the gate. Quickly now. They will discover your absence.”

He couldn’t see?

“Yes. Yes.” She wrapped her arms around his and drew him quickly away from the river and toward the copse, her skirts dragging and his steps faltering. He stumbled many times, but she held onto him tightly and gave him what little strength she had and her sight.

HIS KNOCK ECHOED for at least a minute before Arabella heard the bolts being thrown, and then the great door slowly opened. She shivered, frozen, her gown clinging.

The young woman before them stared open-mouthed.

“I am the Count of Rallis and this is my wife,” Luc said between teeth clenched against chattering. “We should like an audience with the headmistress at once.”

The woman ushered them in.

Within minutes Arabella was seated before a fire in a comfortable sitting room of amber hues. She clutched a blanket around her.

“I had not thought I could be c-colder than that night on your ship,” she stuttered. “Do you suppose they will give us b-brandy?”

He said nothing. He stood beside her, his hand clenched on the back of her chair.

The door opened and a woman came in and directly to them, the hem of her plain dark gown nearly to the floor.

“Good day, my lord. My lady.” She curtsied. She was not young; her brown hair was streaked with silver and her voice was mature.

Luc bowed, his hand never leaving the chair back. He did not open his eye. “My wife and I have come upon a spot of trouble and wonder if you might assist us in returning to London.”

“We should be honored to assist you, my lord. My lady, if you will”—she gestured to the door where another woman stood now—“Miss Magee will show you to my personal chambers where she can assist you in changing into dry clothing.” She turned to Luc. “My lord, I fear that the only men in residence in our school at present are the drawing master, who is a considerably smaller man than you, and our coachman, who is rather more your size.”

“I shan’t mind changing my wedding finery for another sort of groom’s garments,” he said.

The headmistress’s brows rose.

“Today we were to be wed,” Arabella explained. “A second time.”

But the woman seemed to be studying his face. He had not yet opened his swollen eye, and the scar showed livid against his cold skin.

“My lord, despite your civility you are clearly unwell,” she said. “I shouldn’t mind helping you both today, but I don’t fancy finding myself burdened with a lord in a burning fever while trying to hold the curiosity of seventy-six innocent girls at bay. Let us get you both dry with haste, and then you can tell me all about your thwarted wedding.”

Arabella laughed.

Luc did not quite grin, but his shoulders seemed to relax. “Madam, at the risk of broaching the delicate subject of a lady’s age, I don’t suppose you were the headmistress at this school twenty years ago?”

“I was, in fact. Newly headmistress. The challenges of the position weighed upon me greatly in those days, and I used to take walks about the park to settle my thoughts. Once, in fact, I invited another refugee into this chamber, a boy who wandered onto our property several times,” she said, watching him carefully. “In the twenty years since, I have sometimes wondered how that boy fared.”

Arabella did not understand, but she wanted desperately to touch him and tell him she was near.

He turned his face toward the fire, or perhaps toward her. “He fared as well as any boy could hope.”

SHE CHANGED INTO dry clothing and was told the drawing master was assisting Luc to dress. She waited at the door, and when he came out she took his arm, and whispered directions to him as they walked. His steps were careful; she allowed him to set the pace. But even in her exhaustion she felt the bunching frustration in his muscles and saw the anger in his tight jaw.

He declined tea. Night was falling and he thought it best to return to London without delay.

When they were inside the school’s carriage, she reached for his hand.

“Luc—”

He drew his hand away. Arabella swallowed back her grief and allowed him his silence and his distance.

“YE SAY IT burned till ye went in the strict, then the pain went aff?”

“Yes, the river water seemed to wash away the initial hellacious agony. But you have asked me this before. Two dozen times in the past three days.”

“I’m a man o’ science. I must be thorough.”

“You are a quack and I am astounded I have been allowing you to see to my physical welfare for twenty years.”

Gavin’s callused fingertips pressed against Luc’s brow, pulling his eyelid wide.

Luc knocked away his hand. “I can do that myself. I’ve still got hands.”

“Aye, all cut up but ye winna allou me to bandage them.”

“I look enough like a fool with this bandage across my eye.”

A splash of warm liquid hit Luc’s eye. Drops. He blinked. All the sensations were still there—cold, heat, pain—though considerably less pain than at first. Only the pictures were gone. The light.

“Yer a trying patient, lad.”

“I don’t care to be fussed over.”

“Ye dinna care to need anybody. Makes ye as mad as a bull no’ to be the one protecting everybody else.” He replaced the bandage. “ ’Tis a guid thing all my patients aren’t like ye, lad.”

Luc settled the kerchief over his scar again. “You haven’t got any other patients. Not paying patients, anyway.”

“As sore as a boar, ye are.” He slapped Luc on the shoulder.

Luc sat forward and rubbed his temples. His eye still wanted to see and it made his head ache like the devil. It hadn’t been nearly as bad with the first, but this eye was still whole. Only useless. “Well, make up your mind. Am I a bull or a boar?” he grumbled.

“Both. But I’d be worse if it were me.” The clasp of Gavin’s case clicked shut. “I’ve no’ got a bonnie lass to read to me an’ to caress ma scars when they ache, nou do I?”

There’d been no caressing of scars—or of anything—in the three days since he’d been blinded by the housekeeper’s dust. Gavin thought it must have been pepper. Luc only knew it’d felt like fire.

And now his whole world had changed. It had become black, and confined to the chambers in Lycombe House that he had already come to know well enough that he could mostly avoid bumping into furniture. He feared to fall. He feared her seeing him fall. Even more so he hated that if she fell he would not know it, and that he would not be able to help her rise because he could not go to her.

He feared that if she disappeared he would not be able to search for her.

She had thanked him for dragging her from the river. Thanked him. And he had barely spoken a word to her since, because he simply could not. He could not bear the shame of weakness. He could not bear to be, after so many years, helpless again.