Page 44 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

Chapter Thirty-Five

All roads lead back to you. The footpaths and the highways too. The sea lanes. All of them. You are the journey and the destination. There is nowhere else but you.

My lady.

-Captain Devyn Winter

(message found among uncovered personal effects)

* * *

“Out of the way!” A voice called that sounded like someone’s father and brother at once.

Was it Devyn’s father or Devyn's brother?

His eyelids felt too heavy to hazard a glance. At least two Army orderlies carried a stretcher up what felt like a lifetime of stairs. The canvas at his back had started to chafe against the sweat of his linen-wrapped skin.

The labored rise and fall of his chest took so much of his concentration. If he was back home in England, where was she? Was there a pair of ocean-colored eyes and a golden head of hair waiting for him at the end of all those stairs?

The familiar smell of expensive brandy hit him, with it so many memories.

Peregrine. His brother. The man who gave him his first brandy when he’d had to have stitches when he was nine for fighting another boy who made a crude comment about the same older brother who’d rocked Devyn to sleep, who’d taught him how to climb a tree, how to take all their father’s jibes and threats and lay them down.

Peregrine had been born serious and Devyn had been born careless, and together, they’d survived all the shit that shit parents do to children they didn’t really want but were supposed to have.

The man who had placed a hand on Devyn’s temple, who was ordering the servants to move his things to his own room, who had tears in his voice, was all the father that Devyn had ever known, without having ever had much of one himself.

“Lord Clairville,” that would be the doctor, following behind.

“Tell me,” the rasped voice said, one that sounded scratchy from excessive drink, lack of sleep, and hope that felt more like fear.

“Bullet to the hip, he’s made it through the worst,” the doctor explained.

Devyn had been barely conscious for so long that his brother’s house felt like another world, another life away.

She was still another world away too, probably.

“An Army postillion roused me from sleep in the early hours for transport. He was liberated at Bamiyan and General Dennie had him sent back to England to recover, given his rank, as their surgery was spread too thin. He’s been given enough laudanum to fell a tree to get him here due to the pain.

He isn’t able to walk at the moment; but with assistance, he will get there in time. ”

Peregrine ran his hands over Devyn’s face, pushing back the too long hair in his eyes.

“I knew you’d never leave for good,” Peregrine said.

Devyn clutched his brother’s hand. Devyn was weak, a feeling he’d never been familiar with even as his father had tried to tell him that he was.

Moria’s name sang through him on a tide of longing, he wanted to go to her.

God, I’m always missing her. Was she missing me too? Does she know where I am?

Devyn wasn’t even sure he knew where he was until he heard Peregrine giving directions.

“Take him to my rooms. I’ll move to a smaller one down the hall.

He’ll need the one at the top of the stairs.

It’s got a servant’s entrance at the ante chamber as well.

Corbett!” Peregrine’s authoritative voice called for the housekeeper, “Have my things moved to a smaller room. And get the doctor whatever he needs.”

“I kept… my promise,” Devyn spoke, eyes barely adjusting to the light, strained and searching for something familiar in a world of foreign blurs.

“I never doubted you,” Peregrine returned, squeezing his brother’s hand as he was carried to his rooms.

Devyn was poked and prodded, and then given something else; it was probably something to help him sleep again.

It was a too-welcome relief when his eyelids drifted shut again, dreaming about a blonde with eyes like twin oceans, staring at him across a church, tracing her eyes over his body underneath a willow tree, wearing a gown dusted with celestial shapes like she was wrapped in a starry sky.

“He’s alive,” Perry’s voice broke to someone as the door snicked closed behind them.

“I gathered. You were right not to give up hope.”

Had anyone ever comforted my brother before in all his years of comforting everyone who needed him?

“He can’t walk. He was shot in the hip.”

Devyn’s body knew that, felt the marks and the aches; his mind, however, registered this belatedly.

How am I to get to her if I can’t walk? How am I to stand in front of a church like I promised her? I’d made it this far, I would crawl if that’s what it took.

“You are linked by blood, and more than blood, that’s what you told me, remember? He will be alright, because you will make it so. There isn’t anyone in the commonwealth who can stop you when your mind’s made up.”

Peregrine ran a hand over Devyn’s shoulder.

The other masculine voice spoke again. “I never knew he had so many tattoos. His chest, his torso, his arms…”

Peregrine sniffled. “I was older, he was bigger. Father put more marks and scars on him than he did to me. I suppose he found a way to cover over them.”

“Christ, what a monster. I’m glad that you had each other. I’m glad you didn’t lose him.”

“So am I.” Devyn heard Peregrine echo his thoughts.

“I’ll stay.”

“You’ll…stay?”

“You’ll need a hand. He’s quite heavy. And your cook’s rather decent. Your cognac’s better than mine, too.”

“Tristan, you are far from impoverished.”

There was a long pause, in which Devyn slowly felt some of the energy start to re-enter his body, in which he felt the weight of his family curse that had kept him from staying in England with the woman he loved, kept his brother from something close to happiness with the person he seemed to care for.

“I want you to stay,” Peregrine said, finally.

Devyn barely heard it, felt awful for hearing their confessions, and wondered if his big, weighted body was actually still asleep.

“Then I’ll stay, however long you’ll have me,” and the words Tristan Valentine whispered, the words Devyn should have said to the woman he loved, echoed on repeat in the dark valley of Devyn’s laudanum filled dreams.

* * *

Peregrine sat by his brother’s side for nearly four days until he was fully conscious. Tristan never left. He brought Peregrine meals which he ate after helping Devyn to eat no matter how Devyn insisted his brother eat first. Tristan even shaved Devyn a time or two, rather skillfully, in fact.

“God, I guess I never realized that you must have shaved every day, that’s how burly you are.”

The Devyn before would have laughed at that, this one wasn’t sure he remembered how.

“Did I choose the wrong brother?” Tristan said, cleaning the razor in a bowl of warm water, eyes lighting on Peregrine with this affection that Devyn was beginning to understand, but felt was something rare.

Peregrine made an effort to involve Devyn in games of cards, reading to Devyn, getting him to drink water, checking his bandage to make sure it didn’t get infected.

Through all of it, Devyn had been biding his time, waiting for the moment someone would escort her into a room, or answer his questions.

Finally, Tristan brought up the one thing they’d all been dancing around: the woman Devyn loved. Clearly his brother and Peregrine didn’t think he could hear them through the open door or thought that he was asleep, but it was the first real answers he’d been given.

“What about…her?” Tristan urged.

“What about her?” Peregrine retorted. Devyn didn’t like the defensiveness in his voice.

“Shouldn’t someone tell her he didn’t bleeding die?”

“What business is it of hers? She’s marrying a duke.”

Devyn pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. He pulled at the ends of his hair as his heart fought its way out of his chest. A strangled sob escaped him. The words ran him through worse than a dull lance.

How could she? But then, how could she not consent to marrying a duke, a prince, a king even, because that’s what she deserved.

Devyn rubbed a hand over the ache in his chest. He’d never been enough for her. He’d been fighting like hell the last seven months to get back to her, and to recover the last week to get her back, but what did he have to recover for now?

“Once my brother makes it through his next hurdle of fighting the infection of his gunshot wound, and then standing on his own, I’ll let him tell her himself.”

Devyn heard his brother’s words like they were at the surface, and he was falling head first under waves of relentless ocean water.

Tristan returned in a low voice. “What if he doesn’t tell her?”

“Don’t see how that’s my problem.”

“She’s gutted,” Tristan pushed.

Images of her in pain, the heartbreaking shade of blue her eyes went when she cried, tears hanging from her lashes, the heavy pout of her fuller lower lip, the way she must hate him for doing this to her and then not being able to comfort her, all drowned him further in his grief.

“I would hope so, she did claim to love him.”

“Just be the man I love, the man who loves me. That’s enough for me.”

Had she said that to me? Had all of it even been real? God, I’m not clear-headed enough to sort this shit out.

Tristan’s voice sounded a bit pleading. “And she doesn’t want to marry the duke.”

How did he know? Had he seen her and not shared any details to avoid setting back Devyn and his recovery?

Peregrine’s voice was neutral. “No one’s forcing her.”

“Aren’t they?”

Fire frenzied along his veins. Devyn couldn’t take it anymore.

Using one leg to stand, bracing himself on a chair, he leaned over to the nearby table and swiped its contents onto the floor.

A loud groan and a crash accompanied a parade of glass shards before him where there once had been bottles of laudanum.

Peregrine stood in the doorway, assessing Devyn’s shirtless form and cocked up hair and red-rimmed eyes, the mess he’d made.

“Oh, Devyn. What about the pain? Your last dose-”

“Was my last dose,” Devyn interjected. “I need to move without it.”

He needed to think without it, he couldn’t stand the way it heightened everything and then left him dull and hollowed out.

He had started to count the minutes down to his scheduled dose and he knew if he followed where that would lead.

He was definitely no use to her a slave to the contents of a bottle.

“But your injury-”

Devyn rotated his shoulders, stretched his arms almost above his head, winced, then brought them back down.

“I’ve felt worse,” he groaned.

A maid entered with a broom and a dustpan. He felt like an ass, so he took the instruments from her small hands and told her to step back, biting back a grimace as he did so.

“You’re as stubborn as father,” Peregrine said, shaking his head.

“If I were less stubborn, I’d probably be dead,” Devyn said, cleaning up the large shards of glass first and putting them in the dust pan with a handkerchief.

“If you were less stubborn, you’d have given up your commission when you were asked.”

Devyn could feel his face falling, and Peregrine’s regret was written in his eyes.

How much sleep has my brother lost over me? Why was I always taking from the people I cared for? What had she seen in me anyway?

A tremor shot from his hip through other parts of him and Devyn braced the side of the bed for support.

“You’re probably right,” Devyn said, his head falling backward onto the bed as he sat on the rug stretching out his legs, the fight leaving him.

“Holy shit,” Peregrine replied. “You’re worse than I thought. You hate admitting when I’m right.”

For the first time, Devyn gave him a half smile and watched Peregrine inhale a deep breath.

“I might have come to that conclusion myself, sometime between entering a shoot-out and being hit with a bullet.”

“I’m glad you’re stubborn, I’m glad you’re here. Devyn, I was sick with worry.”

“I know you would hate to live without your reckless brother causing you constant worry.”

“I would hate to live without my brother. That is all.”

Devyn’s dark eyes met his, lingered over the grey at his temples, the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, his frown lines. “Even though I’ve cocked it all up?”

Peregrine took up the broom and finished sweeping the bits of glass, then sat beside Devyn.

“You didn’t. A man is alive because of you. I’m so proud of the man that you are, the leader that you are,” he placed a hand on Devyn’s shoulder. “You made a choice, it cost you. You didn’t take the easy route, you never have. There’s honor in that.”

“Honor,” Devyn said the word almost like a scoff, “Doesn’t help me walk.”

He crossed his arms and avoided Peregrine’s eyes. He was working to keep all of himself together, and letting Peregrine see might undo his efforts.

“Then it’s a good thing you have me. You’re stubborn, and I’m stubborn, we just won’t give up then.”

“And… Moria?” the word scraped out of his mouth. It hurt him to speak her name, yet he closed his eyes, savoring the sound.

“What about her?” Peregrine asked tentatively.

“She’s marrying him, isn’t she? The duke?”

Devyn looked at him now, unsure if he wanted the truth or if he desperately wanted him to lie.

“She is.”

“Then I’ll have to get back on my feet to spite her.”

The set of his jaw and the pain in his eyes, could Peregrine read the love there? Love and pain and loss and anger all stirred into one toxic brew that needed somewhere to go.

Peregrine stood, wrapping an arm around Devyn who, though his injury had taken a considerable amount of his bulk, was still so much larger than him.

It took all his strength, but Peregrine pulled him to the edge of the bed and bore his weight to help his younger brother to stand.

And he didn’t stop, didn’t let go, day in and day out, pushing his brother to move, pulling him up, and refusing to let Devyn fall.