Chapter Forty-Three
Devlin slowly became aware of the sound of voices mumbling in the distance as the darkness slowly lifted from his vision. He blinked several times before feeling a burning sensation down his side.
“God damn it, where am I?” he rasped, seeing muted tones of what appeared to be a bedroom but had shadows and light dancing on the walls around him. Was he in hell?
“Devlin!” he heard Sophie gasp.
He twisted his head around toward her and saw her run over from the doorway where she’d been conversing with a man. Well, he certainly wasn’t in hell if Sophie was with him. He realized the dancing lights were from the hearth in the corner of the familiar room, which crackled away merrily and kept the chill at bay.
He blinked away the fog from his eyes as she came to a halt at the edge of the bed he lay in. She leaned over and began to pepper his face with kisses.
“Thank God, I thought you’d left me,” she said. But then she pulled back, and a weariness came over her features. “How do you feel?”
His throat was as dry as sandpaper, and his stomach felt like a poker had lanced it. “Just dandy,” he replied.
“Do not ever scare me like that again!”
He managed a weak smile. “I only closed my eyes for a bit.”
“A bit! You’ve been unconscious for two days!” She lightly hit him on his shoulder. “You scared me half to death.”
Devlin grunted. “No need to strike me.”
“If you ever scare me like that again, I shall shoot you myself!” She wiped away some moisture from the corner of her eye.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Thankfully, your men arrived just after you had passed out,” Sophie began. “And luckily, Stokes also thought Alec’s services might be needed.”
Devlin’s eyes narrowed as the man in question walked into the room. Bloody Alec McGuiness, the cad in love with his fiancée!
“God damn it, Sophie!” he managed to snarl, weak though it was. “What the hell is he doing here?”
She pointed at him sternly. “Don’t you dare complain, Devlin Markham! Alec is the one who saved your life.”
Devlin tried to sit up but winced and abandoned the effort as the pain in his side intensified. “What the devil did he do to me?”
Alec’s jovial face appeared in his peripheral vision. “You were shot, Your Grace,” he advised. “The bullet was lodged in your side, so I had to operate on you and retrieve it. Thankfully, it didn’t hit any organs, and I got all of the fragments out.”
“Then why does it bloody hurt so much?” Devlin gritted out, the pain sharpening.
“It needs time to heal,” Alec said. The man sounded too jovial by far, for a medical professional. “I’ve left instructions with Sophie on how to change the dressing and what symptoms to notify me about right away. I shall leave you both now.”
The man sauntered out of the room, closing the door firmly behind him. Devlin glanced over at Sophie, who had her hands crossed over her chest, a rather mutinous expression in the green depths of her gaze. “Why are you upset with me? I should be furious with you for even having that man in here—actually, where are we?”
“Huntington Court,” Sophie replied. “We couldn’t risk moving you to London, and Alec needed somewhere clean and close to operate on you.”
Devlin slowly nodded. He’d thought so, though he hadn’t been certain. He’d rarely been back to his family’s ancestral estate. Though it held horrid memories of his grandfather, he’d always actually rather liked the place, so perhaps it was time to change that. Particularly as his father had told him so many stories of it from when he was a boy.
He licked his lips, feeling suddenly parched.
Sophie reached over to the side table and poured him a glass of water. “Be careful not to drink too much.” She helped him lift his head up and take a sip.
“Thank you,” he acknowledged as she returned the glass to the table.
It was odd, but there was an air of awkwardness between them.
“Do you remember much of what you said before you passed out?” Sophie asked him, suddenly fixated on the flames in the hearth.
Devlin felt his heart start to thud faster. “I do.”
Her chest rose as she swiveled her gaze onto him. “And did you mean what you said? Or did you simply say such things because you thought you were dying?”
His throat felt tight as his old fears began to resurface. But then as he stared into her emerald eyes, which were bravely staring him down, even though he could see the flicker of uncertainty in them, he felt the fear disappear. This was Sophie. His Sophie. And if one thing his near-death experience had taught him, it was that life was indeed too short to allow fear of losing those you loved stop you from loving at all.
“Sophie Louise Wolcott,” he began. “I love you. And I said those things because I love you. I was a fool for ever trying to push you away. You are everything to me. My world. My life. I will love you from here to eternity and back. There is not a second I will not love you.”
“Really?” Her voice was raw.
His heart was so full at that moment, he could barely speak. “Yes, really.”
A tremendous smile lit her face. “Oh, I love you, too, Devlin!” She bent down and gently kissed him. And he felt complete. At last, the Devil Duke no more.
When she finally pulled back, he grinned feebly at her. “And you said you’d never fall in love with a rake.”
“I didn’t,” Sophie replied rather pertly. “You were never truly a rake. Just a slight devil, who I was brave enough to make a deal with.”
“Yes, and swindled me good in the bargain, too.”
“Do not worry, my darling.” Sophie looked down at him in sympathy, then leaned over and kissed him on the lips once again. “Just think of the happiness you will get from donating to Grey Street. Surely that will make the ache in your side disappear.”
“Trust me, it does not,” he managed to utter between the shooting pains in his side.
“Hmm,” she murmured. “Well, perhaps you should think of all of the other wonderful charitable organizations I wish for us to donate to. Just think, my love, a great deal of your money is going to be spent on such worthy causes. Has that brought a respite?”
Devlin groaned. “Yes, that worked.”
Sophie laughed, and her smile was his whole world at that moment. “I rather thought it would.”