The Grace of a Duke by Linda Rae Sande

front door of the estate house. He hadn’t even noticed his burning clothes, his left side engulfed in flames as he descended the front steps. Before he passed out, from pain or from lack of oxygen, he knew not, he was aware of someone taking his lifeless sister from his arms and of someone else throwing him to the ground and covering him before intense pain and blackness surrounded him.
    For four weeks, he was in and out of consciousness, only occasionally aware of someone in a room with him, and usually because severe pain or a fever or chills would awaken him.
    “You were a very quiet patient.”
    His thoughts suddenly pulled from the past, Joshua held his breath. He considered the words he’d just heard. “What did you say?” he asked, his hoarse whisper cracking a bit as a silent sob took his breath. My sister died in my arms that night, he remembered, wondering how long it had been since he’d thought of his futile attempt to save her. Despite the daily reminder of the fire that destroyed the estate house, every time I look in a mirror, he thought with derision, he tried not to think of what else had been lost besides half his face and the skin on his left side down to the top of his hip. Of who else had been lost. Because to think of the loss of his sister and mother filled him with a sense of despair and hopelessness that took days to overcome, and he could not afford the time to mourn their loss. Not now.
    He didn’t know at the time that his sister had died in his arms that night. In fact, it was weeks before he discovered she had died and been buried in the family plot on the east end of the estate lands under a large evergreen oak tree.
    And that a plot had been dug for him, as well.
    “I said you were a very quiet patient,” Charlotte repeated, her voice still sounding far away.
    The words finally penetrated his addled brain and he moved to lift his head from the pillow. “When ... when was this?” he replied, his voice sounding loud to his ears.
    Charlotte tilted her head on his shoulder so he could more easily hear her. “When you were in hospital, recovering from your burns,” she replied sleepily. “They couldn’t care for you in Petworth. The doctor there had no experience with burns, so I arranged to have you moved to the one I worked at in Westminister.” She didn’t mention the doctor in Kirdford who had managed to keep him alive those first few days. The man had obviously had experience with burn patients, but his clinic’s medicine cabinet was woefully understocked; the morphine was gone after the second day.
    Joshua considered what her words meant. He remembered the travel in the back of a wagon, remembered how a woman pleaded with the driver to be more careful in how he negotiated the rough road, for with every sudden movement, his body screamed in pain, and he would blackout for some amount of time. Blissful time, he thought, remembering that he felt no pain when he was out like that. But he was strung up in some kind of hammock that allowed for the worst of the bumps to simply sway him as the wagon made the agonizing trip to London.
    “You did?” he replied, not remembering seeing her during his stay in the London hospital. Perhaps she was the woman who sat with him, gave him sips of water when he was somewhat conscious, spoke to him in quiet reassuring tones, read to him. He sniffed her hair again, the scent a gentle reminder.
    “I wanted you to have the best chance to live,” she explained, knowing her reasons were as selfish as they were humanitarian. With his older brother dead, she could be his duchess; if he died before they wed, her father would simply arrange another marriage, only the next man would be an old decrepit earl still lacking an heir, like the Earl of Gisborn. She shuddered, so relieved her father was not this very minute pursuing her to force that marriage on her. Her mother had seen to that, she thought, somewhat thankful for what her mother had done but so