James woke up to a pounding headache and a hot pain in his lower back, but it was not the aches of his body that had him sitting up and gasping for breath.
“Isobel,” he called out as his eyes searched the servant’s chamber he must have been carried to after he’d stumbled away from Henry and his dagger and had clumsily covered Isobel’s body with his bloodied jacket.
He’d collapsed beside her, a coldness spreading through his body as blood flowed from his wound and mingled with Isobel’s blood in the dirt below them. James had wondered as his eyelids drooped shut if he and Isobel would die there on the ground together but he was quite alive— in pain but alive— as his eyes found only Charles, George, and Matthew.
“Careful,” Matthew said. “You’ll tear your stitches.”
“Where is she?” he
