Page 24 of The Sound of Seduction (Miracles on Harley Street #4)

Later that night at Cloverdale House…

T he war raged within him, burning hotter than the chaos waiting just beyond the carriage door.

And the heat was relentless, an iron weight pressing down on Stan’s chest and muddling his thoughts.

Around him, the chamber rocked like a horse galloping toward battle, dim shapes of furniture appearing and vanishing with each slow blink of his eyes.

Sweat slicked his skin, soaking the linen beneath him, and his left shoulder burned, a hot and furious ache radiating through his entire arm.

If he moved, even the slightest shift, the pain blazed brighter, sharp enough to twist his breath into shallow gasps.

Something white flickered at the edge of his vision—a sleeve, perhaps, or a gown. He couldn’t lift his head to confirm, the effort too great and the fever too cruel. A voice, calm but firm, sounded nearby.

“Keep the wound clean.” That was Andre, the unmistakable lilt of his Italian accent cutting through the heavy fog of Stan’s mind. “He won’t admit it, but the pain is worse than he lets on. The fever must break soon or else—”

Then a woman gasped.

The response came, quieter, but with an urgency that cut through the haze like a blade. “And the princess? Is she—”

Stan’s breath caught. Wendy. The soft twang of her vowels and her tone’s precise warmth—his Wendy. Andre had allowed her to be his private nurse then?

He tried to turn his head to see her, to make certain it wasn’t a fever dream conjured by weeks of longing and misery. Instead, his vision splintered into watery lights, and the swish of her movement blurred into the shadows.

“She’s safe,” Andre replied, though Stan barely caught the word before the thrum of blood in his ears swallowed it.

Wendy. She was here. Despite her work at Harley Street and the risks involved, she’d come.

He wanted to reach out as he had earlier at the practice, to tell her something, anything, but his limbs wouldn’t obey him. Heat roared through his body, and the world tilted sideways. A sharp pang flared in his chest, and then there was nothing but darkness.

When the light returned, it wasn’t the dim glow of his bedroom but the pale, soft radiance of summer in Transylvania.

Stan’s childhood home unfolded before him; each detail impossibly vivid despite the swirls of mist clouding his thoughts.

The pine-clad hills stretched endlessly toward the horizon, rugged and proud, and in the valley below lay the estates he’d sworn to protect since he was a boy.

His home, Bran Castle, loomed with its great stone walls stark against the lush greenery surrounding it.

But the edges of the image wavered, and he couldn’t taste the crisp mountain air or feel the sun warming his face.

Instead, a cold dread curled in his stomach.

He couldn’t move forward—his feet seemed rooted to the earth—but through the fog, he saw the doors to the castle thrown open.

Inside lay responsibilities he had neglected during his time away. His people needed him.

Thea, his sister, was in danger. The affairs of state escalated and could force his father to declare war. His family, his everything, needed him.

Someone called his name—it sounded like a whisper carried on a distant breeze.

“Stan,” the voice said again, sharper now, pulling him back, yanking him away from home to a body stretched on a bed too soft and too foreign, with linens damp from sweat and the ravages of fever burning him alive.

He fluttered awake, if opening fevered eyes could be called waking.

The light hurt, low though it was. He tried again to find her—a glimpse, a hand, anything.

Instead, he felt the crushing helplessness.

The fever pressed him down, pinned him, stripped him of himself.

But she was here, wasn’t she? Wendy was here, her voice curling around him like a lifeline he couldn’t yet reach.

The agony in his shoulder pulsed again, tethering him to the now. The ache of infection threaded with her name, glowing faint and enduring in his mind. And though everything else swam in confusion, one thought burned bright through the fever’s relentless haze—she had come for him.

The shivering started in waves, only half-registered at first, until cold wracked his body with such force it seemed to shake his very bones.

Stan groaned, the sound low and ragged, as if torn from his throat.

He rolled his head weakly to the side, his lips parting to draw in air that felt both too shallow and too sharp.

He struggled to hold onto something, onto anything, but he was slipping again—slipping into the shadowy folds of his fevered mind.

This time, the ballroom unfolded before him with cruel familiarity, like a premonition about List. It shimmered, impossibly bright, chandeliers dripping with endless crystal light that spun and danced in time with the violins.

Wendy was there, a vision draped in white instead of the shimmering pink dress etched so vividly in his memory.

The apron clung to her figure, stark, plain, practical.

And he wanted to tug at the bow and take off her apron, bring the pink gown back and make her his princess.

Why was she wearing this plain apron here, in this place of finery and grace?

Didn’t she know she needed a gown to fit into his life? Oh how he wanted that more than his next breath.

He reached for her hand, his fingertips brushing against hers, warm and steady.

The violins changed—the tune he so vividly remembered giving way to a lilting waltz as he led her to the floor.

With him, she could dance. He’d taught her.

He’d given her her first dance and wanted to give her so many more. But for that, he had to live.

He smiled faintly, lips moving numbly as he heard himself whisper, “One, two, three. Follow me.” Their feet glided in perfect synchronicity, the world narrowing to the space they occupied together.

Her green eyes lifted to meet his, yet something lingered there, something unreadable.

When the violins stopped, her gaze slipped into shadow, her figure retreating. She was leaving. Again.

Stan’s fingers tightened in the dream as he tried to hold onto her, a low plea slipping past his lips, soft, desperate. “No, my sweet Wendy, stay with me…” But her form dissolved, as if caught in the frantic swell of the fever burning through his body. “Wendy, please!”

His eyelids fluttered, heavy as iron weights. He tried to lift them, but the effort was Herculean.

One, two, three. Follow me.

Heat poured through his muscles, every joint, every tendon, as if someone had flayed him leaving him raw and exposed.

His breaths scratched against his throat, coming too fast, too shallow.

Something cold pressed against him, shocking his senses and pulling him closer to wakefulness.

The touch hit his shins first, the chill spreading through his limbs.

Then it moved to his forehead, a cloth soaked with winter and mercy.

He stirred. His lips moved, dry and cracked, forming shapes that never quite became words.

Another chill surged, resetting the rhythm of his heart, anchoring him back into his body.

Somewhere beyond the fevered hum in his ears, he heard her voice.

Soft and insistent, a lifeline pulling him out of deep waters.

“One, two, three, Stan. Breathe with me.” Her tone was steady, commanding, yet threaded with a tenderness he thought lost to him.

“One, two, three, stay with me.” His lashes parted, slowly, painfully.

The dim light above shimmered more shadow than gold, but there she was.

Wendy. Her face was flushed, framed by flying strands of loose hair.

Her lips moved with precise care as she repeated the words, a mantra that bound him to the present. “Please, stay with me!”

For one crushing moment, his heart seemed to freeze—trapped, his chest swelling with a sensation foreign yet weighty.

He knew this feeling, at least its echo.

It was in the surrender. He had felt it before, on battlefields and in drills, the moment when you had no choice but to yield to the inevitable.

Now, he knew, this was no battlefield. This was something sweeter, dangerously so.

And if he let the fever take him, he’d lose her.

His voice rasped, barely there, breaking against the air.

“Wendy…” It wasn’t much, but it was everything.

Whatever battle he fought before, he could not fight this.

Not her. Not now. Not when all he wished to do was stay in the orbit of her presence, the only thing tethering him to life.

She had conquered him, and he submitted without struggle, his heartbeat catching in its new rhythm— one, two, three. Stay with me.

*

The hours dragged on and the oppressive heat radiating from Stan’s body twisted Wendy’s insides.

She sat at his bedside, wringing out another strip of linen into a bowl of tepid water.

Her hands, though steady, bore the stiffness of endless repetition.

Compresses off, saturate, wring, compresses on.

It was an endless, numbing rhythm, yet she never faltered.

His fever was too high, his pulse too erratic for even a moment’s hesitation.

A knock on the door gave her pause.

“May I come in?” a gentle voice asked.

Wendy couldn’t say anything. The woman was breathtakingly beautiful in an unassuming way, and yet she had a poise that demanded attention. “Are you Nurse Wendy? Is my brother waking up yet?”

Oh, her brother!

“Your Royal Highness,” Wendy set the cloth aside, dried her hands as she rose and curtsied at the same time, thinking how clumsy her manners were compared to the princess.