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Lucy rolled free, scrabbled to her feet, and tottered toward the fresh air Quin sucked in one lungful and then pulled Olivia across the pallet, putting her mouth next to the bars She had not ht She was dead

"Co in a rasp "Breathe, daainst the bars He could see no signs of life

A tearing pain seized hiht there in the srabbed her shoulders and shook her, hard "Don’t leave me"

As his vision cleared, he could see that Olivia’s face was faintly blue He suddenly remembered to feel for a heartbeat, but when he pressed his hand to her chest he couldn’t feel anything Then he realized he was trying to find a heartbeat on the wrong side of her body

"My brain’s garbled," he ain, willing her to open her eyes, but her head fell back like a blossom on a broken stem Her face swa, his handsto find a heartbeat that wasn’t there

Lucy was there too, barking hoarsely at her mistress’s ear

But Olivia did not ain

He lowered his face to her neck, trying to smell that wonderful, elusive perfume that was Olivia, but all he could s twisted hard inside his chest, and all the grief he had never expressed ca so hard that his body jerked as if he were having a seizure There was no stopping these cries; the world turned into a black swirling hole of grief Alfie, Olivia, even Evangeline and Rupertthey were all dead

Howls tore through hi with them words that he had never spoken aloud, because a duke is always controlled, a duke never pleads

This duke pleaded

Please, God, help Help

Finally he realized that he could see Lucy licking Olivia’s cheek; the roo of suished Lucy uttered a bark that sounded like a low bell, like that of a Great Dane

The bark of Cerberus, the dog who guards the gates of Hades, perhaps

His last sob brought with it a strange clarity, a deep cal to the thin air "I cannot bear this again" He couldn’t go back to his sterile house, to the pages of mathematical equations, to his mother’s strictures Without Olivia and Alfie, there was no point in living

Lucy was still licking Olivia’s cheek He reached to push her away--and he thought he saw Olivia shudder He grabbed her shoulders and lifted her toward hi

He pulled her body against his and rocked back and forth, those dahed

Tarquin Brook-Chatfield, Duke of Sconce, ht in France He always ree of embarrassment

The man who never cried, not even at his own son’s funeral, wept

And when Olivia Mayfair Lytton ca, but otherwise fine, she--who never cried either--wept as well

Thirty-two

A Warrior and an Amazon