Michael takes Angel away after she is badly injured and marries her

Michael takes Angel away after she is badly injured and marries her, turning his return to the Palace into a decisive break with the life that has confined her. He finds her gravely hurt, refuses the Duchess’s efforts to bar him, and takes her from the establishment; while Angel is still disoriented, he places his mother’s ring on her finger and makes their departure a marriage as well as a rescue.

Discovery and Decision

The Palace is nearly empty when Michael arrives, and the usual guard is absent. In the quiet upstairs hall, he encounters the Duchess and a doctor leaving Angel’s room. The Duchess tries to send him away, claiming Angel is resting, but Michael recognizes that something is wrong and enters despite her attempt to block him.

He sees Angel in bed and learns from the doctor that Bret Magowan was responsible for her condition. The doctor also says the Duchess intervened before Magowan could kill her. Michael does not accept the Duchess’s demand that he leave Angel alone: he tells her he is leaving with Angel. The moment shifts the immediate question from whether Angel can be reached to whether Michael can get her out of the Palace.

Marriage and Departure

Angel rouses enough to hear Michael say that he will take her home. When the Duchess insists that he cannot have Angel for nothing, Michael answers that she can keep the gold but must leave before he does something he regrets. He then tells Angel that he wants to marry her before they go together.

Angel is in too much pain and confusion to recognize Michael’s familiar voice. She says yes because she wants to leave the Palace, not because she understands the proposal as a freely considered commitment. Lucky, the doctor, and others are present as a ring is put on Angel’s finger and she is given laudanum. Lucky later tells her that Michael used his mother’s wedding ring, which he had worn on a chain, and that the wagon is being prepared to take her home while she sleeps.

Meaning and Aftermath

The rescue gives Angel a way out of the Palace, but the circumstances complicate the marriage’s meaning: she accepts it while injured, heavily medicated, and focused on escape. Michael acts decisively to remove her from the Duchess’s control, yet Angel initially experiences the wedding less as a new shared life than as a means of leaving.

That response reflects the transactional world in which Angel has learned to interpret intimacy. She has been taught that men pay for access to her, and she suspects Michael may regard marriage as another way to purchase what he wants. The ring therefore carries two meanings at once: for Michael it is a family wedding ring offered as a pledge, while Angel’s immediate understanding of marriage remains shadowed by the exchanges that shaped her past.