“Thank you.” Dante leaned over and kissed Lydia on her forehead and with a fear so great, he felt as though he would drop to his knees, he left.
Feeling at odds with himself, he wandered the corridor to the room the doctor had mentioned. With a quick change of mind, he strode to the front desk that they passed on their way in. A young man sat there and looked up at his approach. “Yes, sir?”
“I would like to send a note to family members. How do I do that?”
“We have a runner who works for the hospital. If you use that desk over there,” he gestured to a small wooden desk next to the far wall, “I will have it delivered.”
“Thank you.”
Dante sat at the desk and found a stack of paper, two pens and a filled ink well. He penned a quick missive to Hunt, Driscoll and Lydia’s father, Lord Sterling. His notes were brief, but with the urgency he felt. He hadn’t wanted to trouble the doctor to give him any sort of prognosis since he’d rather have him working on Lydia, but the unknown was killing him.
He paced the corridor, the front room, and the street outside. About every five minutes he checked the waiting room where he was to meet the doctor.
All that time his head was spinning. One look at Lydia lying on the ground, pale-faced and looking as if she were already dead had hit him in the gut like a cannonball.
He could not live without her. Oh, he would wake each day and do his work, but never again would he feel the joy and love, yes love, that he felt for his wife. The sun would never shine again, and he would go through each day simply waiting to die.
What a fool he’d been thinking that leaping from one woman’s bed to another’s was a fulfilling life. He’d watched his two brothers succumb to their desire for their wives turn into love and laughed at them. Never would that happen to him, he assured his arrogant self.
Even when he married Lydia he didn’t feel as though his heart was engaged. He liked her company, certainly desired her body, and thought if there were children, she would be a fine mother. But love?
No. That wasn’t part of it.
He folded his hands and tapped his lips with his index fingers and stared at the floor as he paced and thought of the time they’d had together. He smiled at the contention when they’d first met and how he thought her an upright, overly-moral spinster with her head in books. She, in turn, thought him an arrogant rake with no morals and very little to recommend himself.
They were both wrong. Perhaps they brought the best out in each other. His head jerked up as Hunt and Diana came racing through the hospital door. “How is she? Your note didn’t say much.” Diana sat on a hard wooden chair in the front room and attempted to catch her breath.
Dante shrugged. “I haven’t seen her or talked to the doctor since we brought her in.” He waved to the waiting room. “Why don’t we sit in there? That is where the doctor said he would meet me when the procedure was over.”
They had barely settled when Driscoll and Amelia joined them, with Lord Sterling on their heels. The poor man looked dreadful. He was as pale as Lydia had been and looked as though he’d aged ten years. “How is my daughter? What happened?”
There was simply no way to answer in a kind way. “She was stabbed in the back at Paddington Station while I was buying our tickets. We had been working on that Home Office assignment, which is now finished, and were warned that we might be in danger. We were on our way to Bath to consult with a friend who might be able to help us when Lydia was attacked.” He ran his fingers through his hair again. “We had a footman with us, but the culprit took advantage of the crowded station.”
Dante hopped up and began to pace, slamming his fist into his palm. “I should have taken a carriage instead of the train. Or I should have left Lydia here under protection. I should have—”
Hunt stood and stepped in front of his brother. “Stop this, Dante. Two people were killed while being fully guarded. Let’s just make sure Lydia is all right, and then, like it or not, the two of you need to be shipped off to the country until this is straightened out.”
Everyone was assuming Lydia would be all right. But none of them had seen the knife. The huge knife sticking out of his wife’s slender back. He felt as though he wanted to slam his fist into the wall.
“Mr. Rose.” Dante turned to see the doctor standing in the doorway. He was covered in blood. Lydia’s blood. Black dots appeared in Dante’s eyes and he thought for a moment he would disgrace himself and pass out like some swooning debutante.
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Yes. How is she doctor?”
The second it took the doctor to answer terrified him. Was she dead? Oh God, no. Please don’t take her from me. I will be the best husband in all of England. I will tell her how much I love her dozens of times a day.
“It was a terrible wound,” the doctor began. “Fortunately for her the knife missed her lung and her heart. That would probably have taken her life. Upon examination it appeared no main arteries were involved. We cleaned her up, stitched the wound closed and I am confident the young lady will survive.”
Dante covered his face with his hands, then turned on his heels and left the room. He barreled through the front door of the hospital and charged down the street, going nowhere, tears sliding down his cheeks. She would not die. He would have her for years. And years, and years.
Forever.
“Dante, for heaven’s sake. I’m fine. Stop coddling me.” Lydia grew grouchier by the day and she felt bad about that. But the man she married, the arrogant, devil-may-care rake had become a hovering nanny.
It had been three weeks since she’d been stabbed at Paddington Station. She understood from Hunt and Driscoll that Dante had been almost crazed with panic that she would die. But he refused to leave her alone since she arrived back from hospital.
Even while under guards that he had hired while she was there hadn’t assuaged his fear. Once dismissed from hospital, he’d kept her in their bedchamber at Hunt’s townhouse while he scoured London looking for the man who had stabbed her. Lyons had done his best, but the man managed to escape in the crowd the day she’d been stabbed.
“I’m not coddling you,” he said in answer to her complaint. “I just want you to take it easy for a while.”