Chapter 18
The following morning Belle woke up with a sour taste in her mouth and nauseating feeling in her stomach. To say she felt horrid would be quite the understatement. Her muscles ached with even the slightest bit of movement. Worse, her arm burned like the devil scorched it with hisfork. With a groan, she lifted her head to squint at her surroundings and noted she’d at least made to her bedchamber without incident.
She seemed to be setting a new trend for herself.
Gah!
She did not wish to rise from the bed today. She wasn’t even sure she was able to, for that matter.
An unbidden vision of Simon filled her mind and her head snapped to the pillow beside her, noting with bafflement that the telltale indents of his head were unmistakably missing. Had he not stayed in her room during the night?
Her recollections were a bit hazy but she recalled that they’d exchanged words. Again an image shimmered in her mind, words of love echoing from her lips. A sudden fluttering leaped in her heart. Another image came to mind, one of Simon standing in front her and saying that he loved her.
She shook the image away. She must have dreamt it, for there was no way he would confess he loved her. Oh, he may care for her, perhaps even a great deal, but that did not mean love. It must be her heart, playing tricks on her.
Without conscious thought, her hand brushed her wound, and she stilled. Her head whipped to her arm, her fingers coming away wet and red-stained.
“Drat,” she muttered as her back shot upward, pulling away the covers to be greeted by blood stained sheets. She’d forgotten they’d only patched the wound—rather sloppily, it would appear. Then later she’d forgotten tend to it because she had been a bit dizzy from drink. Was it any wonder she felt so groggy and her limbs so heavy? She’d been steadily losing blood during the night. Being no expert, she still knew that this was unlikely to be a good thing.
With a sigh, Belle threw the covers from her person, exposing her nightgown and the aftermath of her rebellion. To the eye, it might look as though she’d been butchered, but alas she was still very much alive.
Well, unless she had already perished and now haunted the halls of her home.
Oh, stop being so dramatic.
She attempted to sit but found her limbs reluctant to move, dizziness overtaking her. The loss of blood, no doubt. Needless to say, she needed to rid of this damning evidence before—
A curse whipped through the room.
—it was too late.
“What the bloody hell did you do?” Simon exclaimed, reaching her in three strides. “Damnation, where are you bleeding?” He asked as he kneeled at her side, his face white as snow.
“It’s nothing, just a harmless scrape,” she managed to whisper.
He ignored her, inspecting the wound with care before shooting a glare her way. With unusual speed he lifted himself to his feet and stormed from her room, only to return a few moments later with a cloth that he proceeded to bind her wound with. The tick in his jaw was a telling sign of his anger.
“I’ve summoned the doctor.” He paused and Belle watched him visibly try and calm himself. “What happened?”
She stared helplessly back at him. “Where did you sleep last night?”
He shot her a look with a raised brow. “Do not change the subject.”
Belle cringed at the steel in his voice. His eyes were bloodshot and still she saw the calculation there, trying to map out when she could have been hurt. “Likewise,” she shot back.
He regarded her for a single moment that felt as if it spanned across lifetimes before he finally said, “I was here,” he motioned to the chair a few feet away, “I couldn’t sleep, so I plied myself with liquor.”
Again, an unbidden image arose but it disappeared before she managed to grab hold of it.
“Where did you hurt yourself?” he asked again.
She wanted to lie, but only sighed in resignation. “Yesterday, in the park.”
At his expression, she almost took the words back. He looked appalled by her words, and then his wide eyes hardened. “You were shot and you did not deem it fit to tell me? Were you even foxed? Did someone give you something for the pain?”
She shook her head. “I had brandy to calm my nerves.”
He inhaled sharply. “You had brandy while you were bleeding to death?”
