Royal Regard

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Bella slowly opened her eyes, blinking to bring the room into uncertain focus. Apart from the same sort of spinning and nausea she experienced after too much champagne, the room was innocuous. Moving only her eyes and fingers, she could tell she was resting on a soft mattress on a curtained, four-poster bed frame. Pomona-green brocade drapes hid any hint of the hour and muffled the quiet songbirds of a back garden. Muted light from beeswax candles glowed atop a secretary desk and an inlaid armoire, leaving the room dim. She let her eyes flutter closed again, but before she could drift off, she was startled by a voice right next to her ear.

"Bella, darling. You're awake." She shied away from an earsplitting whisper. "Oh, thank God, you are awake." Nick was nearly crying; she could hear it in his tone, but she wasn't sure why.

"Have I been sleeping?" She tried to bring her hands up to rub her eyes, but she found herself swaddled like a child. Nick loosened the blankets and took her hand once she had rubbed the sleep from her lashes.

"Ten days, my love. The worst ten days of my life."

She turned her head slowly, trying, with minimal success, to keep the room from whirling like a Sufi dancer. His face went in and out of focus, and he looked older, as though ten years had passed, not days. Perhaps, she thought, it was a trick of the light.

"You are fuzzy, Your Grace."

He held up two fingers to test her sight, but she giggled weakly and touched the scruff of his tenth-day beard.

"She's saying you need a shave, old man, and she's right. You look like a tap-hackled toss pot."

Nick used the same two fingers and showed John the back of his hand and Bella, with a frown, turned to take in the second visitor. John just tilted his head and gave Nick a sardonic smile.

"My brother is here," Bella mused. "Must be sleeping." She reached her hand out to touch his face, but grasped at the air a few inches away. She looked back at Nick. "Dreaming, I s'pose." Her forehead wrinkled. "Or the afterlife."

John smiled and took her hand, holding it to his stubbly cheek. "No, sweeting. Not the afterlife and not dreaming. I'm here. Chaperoning this hairy miscreant who claims you've decided to marry him."

She looked over at Nick, even more confused. "Marry? I'm already married."

As soon as Nick's eyes met John's, sheer horror filled her mind, clearing up her bleary confusion. "Oh, no. Myron." She struggled to sit up, but both men pushed her shoulders back.

"Myron died... is that right? Is he buried?" Her voice rose and speech quickened. Her agitated struggling against their hands shook the entire bed, rattling the frame. "Has my husband been buried and I don't remember? And where am I? Why am I not in my own bed? Oh, God," she moaned, searching Nick's face, but the room began to spin so quickly she thought she would fall, so she grabbed on to the mattress with both hands.

Nick loosened her fisted hands and wrapped his arm around her shoulders to help her lean up in the bed.

"Here, my love. Have a sip of water."

John pushed two pillows behind her back. With every movement, her head throbbed a bit more. When her hand moved to her temple to ease the aching, she found another surprise. "My hair..." She combed through the close crop, which likely looked like a hedgehog's quills if she had been in bed so long.

She drank deeply, then pushed the glass away with a weak hand. "Someone please tell me what's happened." Before they could answer, she again put a hand to her forehead. "My head hurts. And I'm feeling faint. I am never faint." She dropped her head back onto the pillows, but kept her eyes open and stared at the wall.