Chapter 23

Chapter 23

The whisky tasted almost stale on Henry's tongue. Flat and flavourless in a way that had nothing to do with the whisky itself and everything to do with the emotions coursing through him as he drank another long, hard draught of it straight from the bottle.

His head spun as he paced, his heart thumping unevenly in his chest.

He wanted to go back to Josephine, but his feet felt rooted to the floor beneath them, as if he were trapped in the room despite the constable already having left. They'd had to practically drag him away from her when they'd said they needed a statement. In fact, there might have actually been some physical dragging. He couldn't much remember. He'd been so loathe to leave her side before the doctor said anything.

So terrified that when he came back next, it would be to find her in worse condition or …

He couldn't do this again.

He didn't know how he'd survived it the first time.

He wasn't sure that he had. If he walked back up those stairs and found that Josephine was gone?

The whisky he'd only pulled out for the constable felt heavy in his hand.

Surely, if something had happened, they would have come and told him.

But then also surely, if there was good news, they would have done the same.

He needed to be with her.

He needed to know that she was okay.

But the alternative … He couldn't go back to the man he had been before he met her.

"I was a ghost," he muttered, his eyes lifting hollowly from where he had been staring at the floor to stare at the portrait of Martha that he'd come to stand in front of. "I was half a man at best."

Or less than that, even.

She'd taken every vestige of his humanity with him, he'd thought. Taken all the love and warmth out of the world.

And then Josephine had shown up …

She'd entered his life and breathed sunshine back into it. She'd shown him the promise of a life more than half-lived.

And now she might have been taken from him, too.

"I can't apologize for loving her," Henry whispered, his voice ragged. He stared into the painted eyes of his late wife and felt his heart constrict. The guilt he had felt had faded with the realization that he might lose Josephine.

Just like the denial and confusion over what he'd felt had faded.

It wasn't that he could fall in love with her. Not even that he might have started to.

That time had come and passed.

He loved her.

He loved her just as much as he had Martha, though it was different.

He loved her past the point of distraction, past the ghost of his past.

"And now I might lose her," he whispered, his voice cracking.

All because he had been too blind to see the threat in front of him. All because he had been too distracted and arrogant even to consider that Catherine might be capable of doing what she had.

"Your sister …"

How had he missed it?

Maybe it might have been excused in the beginning, before she had made that first pass at him. Before she had threatened Josephine.

But after?

"I should have put the pieces together," he groaned, the whisky sloshing in the bottle as he lifted his opposite hand to scrub it down his face. "I should have known. I should have protected her!"

Like he'd failed to protect Martha.

Now, the price of two lives might be on his hands.

His breathing was ragged, his heart stuttering in his chest as he tried to blot out the pressing dread that gathered around him. As he tried to convince himself not to drown himself in that bottle in his hand.

"I thought I might find you here."

Henry jumped as Simon entered the room, his face a mask of understanding and concern as he looked from Martha's portrait to Henry.

"Is it over?" Henry asked hollowly, that beat of his heart in his chest almost ceasing then and there.

Simon's eyebrows rose, his eyes darting one more time before understanding fully dawned.

"Henry … the physician came out a half hour past. Has no one come to tell you?"

Henry staggered, his hand catching the wall as he felt those iron fingers in his chest constrict even further.

No, no one had come to tell him. But they were probably too consumed with their own grief, with–

"Catherine was taken to the asylum. She's being admitted under her husband's permission now."

Henry didn't care about Catherine, though he knew he should. The knowledge of what she had done, what she had done again, rendered any familial concern nonexistent in its wake.

"And Josephine is fine. The doctor packed the wound, Henry. She stopped bleeding. She woke up about a half hour ago. She was stable and alert. Her parents were filling her in on what had happened."

She was stable and alert.

She was stable and alert.

She was stable!

Everything else Simon was trying to say fell to the wayside, a nondescript hum in the back of Henry's mind as those words punctured through the seal of his grief.

She was alive.

He stumbled forward, the bottle of whisky shoved forward into Simon's chest thoughtlessly.

She was alive.

Simon spoke from behind him as Henry blindly left the room, but whatever he said was lost to Henry. Whatever he called after him was just the buzzing of bees.

All he could think about was Josephine.

He didn't even know when his walk turned into a run, the walls blurring to the side of him as he crossed the entirety of the house in a matter of minutes.

He paused for no one as he burst through the door, the two other bodies in the room outside of Josephine's coming to their feet immediately upon his entry.

"Josephine."

Her name was a prayer on his lips as he stumbled over to the bed.

Josephine was propped up against pillows, the sheets drawn up around her chest as she offered him a small, wan smile.

She was pale and frail, surrounded by all of those pillows, her features strangely unanimated, but she was sitting up. Whole and in one piece.

"I was hoping you would come," Josephine whispered, reaching towards him despite her parents' continued presence in the room. "Are you okay? Did they tell you? Oh, Henry, I'm so sorry."

Sorry?

Henry blinked owlishly at her, sinking onto the bed beside her as he took her one hand in both of his.

"Sorry? What do you have to be sorry for?" he asked haltingly. "It is I who should be begging your forgiveness. I never imagined …"

"How could you?" Josephine struggled to sit up, her blue eyes flashing, but Henry gently eased her back onto the pillows. "She tricked all of you! Don't you dare apologize to me over the ravings of a madwoman! She took so much from you …"

Henry's chest tightened, wonder creeping in amongst the relief as he stared at the pale warrior woman before him. She looked ready to rise up and go into battle in his name regardless of her injuries right then, a righteous fury filling her eyes.

Out of the corner of his eye, Henry saw her parents steal from the room, leaving the door cracked for propriety behind them – but even that only by the barest bit.

"What if," he mused, his heart full as he looked at her, "we agree not to apologize, either of us, for her actions?"

Josephine's eyes flickered, her shoulders relaxing slightly as the barest hints of a smile played about the corners of her lips.

"Then let me apologize for the grief you must feel, at the very least, knowing what really happened." Josephine's other hand lifted, covering his knuckles as she stared into his eyes.

Henry swore she could see parts of him that he hadn't even known existed.

"Only if you allow me to apologize for the pain you must still be feeling physically," he compromised, squeezing her hand before removing one of his to pull back the sheets she was under.

He didn't want to see the injury, but he needed to verify that it was bandaged. The same way he needed to still hold her hand in his other to verify that she was really there, alive and well.

Or, at least, relatively well.

"What a pair we make," Josephine murmured, lifting the hand he didn't hold to brush lightly through his hair.

The move was so familiar and fond that it caught Henry's breath.

His eyes lifted slowly back to hers, his body inclining forward all on its own until he could press his lips against her forehead, his whole body sagging when he did.

She was alive.

She was alive and in one piece.

He didn't think he had ever been so fervently thankful before in his life.

"Am I allowed to ask how you are doing, really?" Josephine pressed, her knuckles pausing against his cheek as he pulled back from kissing her forehead.

He laughed, the sound more of an exhalation than any real amusement.

"I … am glad to know why Martha was murdered. And by who," he admitted haltingly. Even if the knowing did hurt. "There is a peace in knowing, at last, that she can well and truly be set to rest."

Josephine nodded, relief colouring her own features along with a sadness that would have been out of place on anyone else.

But she felt so deeply. He knew, even without having known Martha, that she was just good enough of a person to care about it herself as well.

"I was so terrified that I had lost you too," Henry whispered, lifting his hand to cup her face. Her skin was cold in his hands, clammy almost, and he cursed the injury that likely had made it so. "I thought I had lost you just like I lost Martha and …"

His throat constricted, cutting his words off.

Josephine looked surprised, her eyebrows furrowing. She searched his eyes but said nothing for a moment, her smile hesitant as she leaned into his hand.

"Well, I am glad not to have been lost," she muttered with an attempt at humour. "I wouldn't want you retraumatized by such a thing."

Her joke fell flat, and Henry found himself frowning.

"You misunderstand me, Josephine." His thumb arched, tracing the line of her cheek as he took in her features again. He couldn't stop looking at her. It was as if he needed to be touching her, seeing her, memorizing her, just in case. "I wasn't terrified of reliving losing her again. I was terrified of losing myself when I lost you."

For a long moment, his words hung between them, his heart along with them.

"I never imagined a life anything more than the half-life I had conscripted myself to." His thumb dropped, tracing the secretive well at the right-hand corner of her lips. "I was shocked to find I could feel anything for you at all. Shocked and pleased." His lips twitched at the memory of the night before, at the way that her cheeks grew rosy as she likely thought of the same memory.

"I told myself that I couldn't possibly love you," he continued, laughing at the absurdity of it in hindsight. "I really didn't think it would be possible. And yet …"

"Henry … Are you trying to tell me that you love me?" Josephine's voice was small, and her words stilted as she looked between his eyes as if expecting him to laugh or try and deny it.

There was nothing funny about it, though. Certainly, nothing for him to deny.

"I love you past the point of reason," he admitted solemnly. "I knew if I lost you, that I lost, too, my last chance at love." His eyes drifted from her eyes to her lips and back again, his whole chest tight like it had been stuffed too full. "I don't expect you to say the same nor to feel it," he rushed to assure her. "It is enough tha–"

"You silly, stupid man." Josephine laughed suddenly, her voice cutting off at the end as she winced, and her hand jerked from his face to drop to her midsection where it was bandaged.

Henry's eyebrows rose, surprise and confusion warring with his concern.

"You realize that many people, injured or otherwise, would hesitate to talk to a duke in such a way?" he teased her gently, checking her wound with her as she sank back into the pillows with a wan smile.

"Take it up with me when I am well," she muttered.

"Are you going just to insult me then? Or do you plan to share with me why I am a ‘silly, stupid man' for loving you?"

Josephine's eyes softened, her gaze drifting over his features with such deliberation that, for a moment, Henry worried she wouldn't explain.

"For loving me? I'm sure I could think of something. But that isn't what I called you silly or stupid for, Your Grace." Her lips shifted, her smile growing even more fond. "I say it because you are a fool to think that I do not share the same sentiment," she whispered. "Though I can't tell you exactly how or when. I fell in love with you before any of this."

The air around them seemed to gather, to press in on them as he leaned in again, resting his forehead against hers as he took a deep, appreciative breath.

She had been stabbed. His wife's murder was solved. His sister-in-law was in the custody of the asylum.

But she loved him.

It was such an odd turn of events to be grateful for.

"I suppose this is normally the bit where I would fall to one knee and propose," he mused, his nose brushing against the side of hers with a deliberate softness.

"But we're already engaged," she said, laughing breathlessly.

"So we are," he agreed. He paused, looking between her eyes for any sign of displeasure or uncertainty, but she stared back at him with her heart shining from those blue depths …

And he felt as if his own eyes matched. They had to with as hard and heavy as his heart beat in response.

"I love you, Josephine," he said aloud finally, putting words to the emotion plaguing him for days.

"I love you, Henry," she whispered back.

And it was all he needed to lean that last bit forward and capture her mouth with his own.

There would be more questions later, he was sure. More conversation and explanations.

They would need to talk to the constable and likely Lord Brisby, too. They would have guests to explain things to and a wedding to finish planning and commence with.

But for now.

For now, he kissed his wife-to-be, revelling in the reality that she was that and that she was in his arms at all.