Page 86 of Ella’s Desire

Concern darkened the brightness of Ella’s gaze. “Aye, we did.” She straightened. “Isla, I think something is amiss.”

The healer’s puckered face loomed over him. She touched his cheeks where Ella’s hands had been only moments before, her fingers dry and warm. Her amber eyes bored into his. “He’s fine.”

“But he doesn’t remember,” Ella protested.

Bronson wanted to argue that he did remember. But he didn’t. At least not all of it. Nothing more than snatches of images fluttering through his brain like birds taking flight on a hunt.

Isla lifted her shoulder in a shrug and withdrew from his line of sight. “The lad has bled heavily. It can leave them addled.”

Bronson scoffed. “I assure you, I am not addled.”

“Where are ye then? Do ye remember?” Isla asked.

More images flitted in his mind. A reiver lying dead on a floor among the hooves of cows, a blue ribbon on the earth beside him. A drunk man propped against the stone wall of a tower. The stars overhead, bright and blinking down at him. He had known where he was but couldn’t remember.

“Aye,” Isla confirmed. “Ye’re addled.”

“For how long?” Ella put her hand to his chest.

The healer peered down at him, her mouth grim. “May be a day or two. He’ll be weak for several months is my guess, with how near he was to death.”

Several months? Bronson tried to sit up, but his body would not cooperate. Not when he was so damn tired.

“But he’ll live?” Ella asked, her voice pitched.

Isla did not immediately answer. Her prolonged silence jabbed a blade of fear into his heart and shoved aside his exhaustion for one sharp moment. Was it truly so bad that he might die? That he might never get to hold Ella in his arms again? Or tell her…or tell her…

“I love you, Ella,” he said raggedly.

She shifted her gaze back to him. Tears swam in her eyes and the muscles of her neck strained against her flushed skin. “Bronson.” His name was a soft whisper on her lips.

“He may yet make it,” Isla said quietly. “Hope isna lost yet, aye?”

There was a hesitation to the woman’s words. The tiredness was back, tugging at him like a strong current, threatening to drag him below into the darkness of oblivion.

“Bronson, please, stay awake.” Ella grasped his hand in hers and held onto him firmly.

Mayhap that grip could keep him from the desire to sleep. He squeezed her hand as much as was possible, holding on to her as though his life depended on it.

“You said you would wed me.” His words were a tired groan. “Did I imagine that?”

“Nay,” she replied. “I promised to marry you. Because I want to. Because you have always been the true hero of my story. I thought you were pretending to be someone you weren’t for so long, but I’ve learned the truth about you. You’re brave and loving and you’ll sacrifice everything for those you care about. I want to marry you for the man you are, and I want to marry you because I love you.”

A knot lodged itself in the back of his throat and warmth filled his eyes. She loved him. Truly loved him.

“Ella.” The warmth spilled over the corners of his eyes. He clung onto her hand, determined to ward off the pull of death.

No matter how long he had to resist the temptation to close his eyes and give in to the pull of oblivion. He would fight, he would win, he would live.

30

One month later

Bronson stood in front of the crowded castle chapel. Bernard, the twitchy little chaplain, was behind him, a bible splayed open in his palm. Not that Bronson paid him much mind.

Nay, his gaze was fixed on the door Ella would come through.

His heart pounded in his chest and the lightheadedness left him feeling dizzy. It was not an uncommon feeling these days as he still recovered from his injury—or rather, from the blood lost during his injury. He could swear he’d consumed every animal in all of England with the amount of red meat and bone broth shoved in his face in the last month while he recovered.