A single branch of candles lit the small old-fashioned room, the golden light flickering over the pale face of the woman who lay motionless in the bed, her eyes closed.
Hero Devlin sat beside her, a bowl of water on a nearby chest, a bloodstained cloth in her hand, her gaze on the even features of her husband’s infamous mother. Until today, Hero had never met—had never even seen—this woman. This woman who had caused her son the kind of damage that was difficult to forgive.
Hero had seen portraits of the Countess in her youth. She’d been so beautiful, her smile wide and infectious, her eyes thickly lashed and sultry. She was still beautiful even in her sixties, with classical bone structure, smooth skin, and an aura of gentle vulnerability that might or might not be deceptive. But Hero was having a hard time tamping down the anger she’d long nourished toward the notorious Countess, for she knew only too well what the discovery of his mother’s betrayal had done to Devlin. How does any man recover from the knowledge that his mother played her husband false, then staged her own death to run off with her latest lover, never to return?
Since learning the truth, Devlin had been quietly searching for her across Europe. As long as the war between France and Britain raged, it hadn’t been easy. But the coming of peace brought reports that the Countess lived here, in Paris, although she traveled frequently—sometimes to Vienna, sometimes to other destinations that proved surprisingly difficult to uncover. In the end they’d decided simply to join the horde of British aristocrats flocking to Paris and wait there for her to return. She had been expected back sometime in the coming week, but not today. Not yet.
“I don’t understand what she’s doing here,” said Hero, leaning forward to gently wipe away a trickle of blood that rolled down the side of Sophia’s temple. She kept her voice low, although she was afraid Sophie Hendon was beyond hearing anything. “She wasn’t supposed to be in Paris.”
Devlin stood with his back pressed against the nearest wall, his gaze on the pale woman in the bed, his face a mask of control that carefully hid every emotion, every thought, every betraying trace of pain. A streak of his mother’s blood showed on one lean cheek; more of her blood stained his waistcoat and the cuffs of his shirt. Uncertain of the extent of her injuries and afraid to move her himself, he’d found a couple of street porters with a board to carry her up the stairs and across the bridge to the house on the Place Dauphine. They’d sent for a physician, but the man hadn’t arrived yet and Hero was afraid there wasn’t much he’d be able to do anyway.
“I don’t know,” said Devlin, his voice carrying a strange inflection that Hero had never heard in their nearly three years of marriage. Then he swung his head away to stare at the blackness beyond the window, his nostrils flaring as he sucked in a deep breath. “Where is that damned doctor?”
Hero set aside the bloodstained cloth and reached to take one of the Countess’s limp hands in her own. It was a strong hand, aged and fine boned but not delicate. Beneath her fingertips Hero could feel the woman’s pulse, erratic and faint. So faint. She lifted her gaze to study again that pale still face, tracing there the ways Sophie was like her son and the ways in which they differed. “Do you think she fell from the bridge?”
Sebastian shook his head. “How do you fall from a bridge with a high stone parapet?”
“Was thrown, then. If she fell from that height, there could be other injuries. Internal injuries we can’t see . . .”
Hero’s voice trailed off, for the wounds they could see on the Countess’s head were bad enough. Her breathing was becoming as erratic as her pulse. Please, thought Hero, her throat so tight it hurt. Please don’t die. He’s fought so hard to find you. Please, please, please . . .
But the pulse beneath Hero’s fingers grew ever fainter, then skipped, skipped, and was no more. The Countess’s shallow, ragged breath stilled.
Hero leaned forward. Breathe! she was silently screaming, her fist tightening around that limp hand. Please breathe!
Then she heard Devlin say, his voice sounding as if it came from a long way off, “She’s gone.”