Love Inspired Historical December 2013 Bundle: Mail-Order Mistletoe Brides\The Wife Campaign\A Hero for Christmas\Return of the Cowboy Doctor (63 page)

“Roland? Roland Utting?” Pain flashed in his eyes.

“How do you know about Roland?”

“Your cousin told me that you were involved with him before the war.” He glanced out at the snow. “And I heard people talking about him in the village. How heroic he was.”

“He was a hero, and he was the only man, other than my father, who shared my love of art.” She put her hand against Jonathan's cheek and turned his face toward her. “I loved him, and he loved me, but he felt a village boy must prove himself capable of extraordinary feats, if he were to ask the baron for his younger daughter's hand. He went to war, and he did not come back as he had promised.”

“He could not have known what would happen.”

“No?” Pain bubbled out of her heart as she spoke the words she had kept encased behind an icy wall, since she had heard that Roland was dead. “It was war, Jonathan. You cannot tell me that you did not know the risks.”

“I knew them, but any soldier will tell you that death is something he believes will come for others on the battlefield, not for him.”

“I know he wanted to keep his promise, which is why I am determined to keep the promise I made to him. We planned to see the Elgin Marbles in London together, once he was home from the war. Going to the British Museum is the only reason I am willing to travel to London. Please don't tell Cousin Edmund. He has been generous arranging for me to have a Season, but once I have seen the Greek sculptures, I plan to return to Meriweather Hall.” A smile tugged at her lips. “So you don't need to worry about me being changed by the
ton
.” She laughed. “Or the
ton
being changed by me.”

“I am glad to hear that.”

“What part?”

“All of it, and I won't divulge your secret to Meriweather.” He looked down at her sketchbook but did not open the cover. He raised his eyes to meet hers. “Are you sure?” he asked quietly. “If you would rather I didn't—”

She slid his hand to the edge of the cover. “I'm sure.”

Shivering as she wrapped her arms around herself, Cat watched as Jonathan opened the sketchbook, her most precious and personal possession. He turned the pages, pausing to look at each one. Some he went past quickly. Others held his attention much longer.

She yearned to ask why those drawings appealed to him but said nothing. Roland had chastised her more than once that she needed to let him look at her work without subjecting him to an interrogation of what he liked and what he did not and why.

“These are lovely,” Jonathan said as he turned the last page of her work. “I see so much of you in them, Cat. Unlike Sir Nigel, who never reveals anything about himself in his art, you are there on the page. Knowing you, I would never doubt that this is your work. It is very good, Cat.”

“You sound surprised.”

He looked up at her. Was her nose as red with the cold as his? “Why wouldn't I be? You've kept this so well hidden that I never guessed you could do such amazing sketches.” He went back several pages and tipped the book so, in the thin light, he could see the drawing of a grouping of sea glass in front of waves. “You have captured the power of the sea with a few lines. There's simplicity but so much depth. It is as well done as works I have seen at the Royal Academy of Arts.”

“Really?”

He grinned. “Really.”

“Thank you. I never expected such praise.”

“I do have a question.”

“What?”

He became serious. “Why are you showing them to me now?”

She opened her mouth to reply, but his hand covered it before she could make a sound. He held a finger to his lips. She nodded as she strained her ears to hear what he had.

Beneath the rumble of the wind, she heard voices. Male voices. Many of them.

Then a woman's voice called her name.

She tore Jonathan's hand away from her mouth and shouted, “Sophia!”

Chapter Sixteen

J
umping out of the carriage, Cat waded through the snow that rose above her knees. She ignored the men as she threw her arms around her sister. As the wind whirled their skirts through the snow, she repeated her sister's name over and over. She stepped back and touched Sophia's arm, her cheek, her other arm, her nose. She needed to make sure her sister was truly there, truly unharmed. That this was not another dream.

“Cat!” Sophia cried at the same time Jonathan shouted her name from behind her. “What happened to you?”

In amazement, Cat realized her sister was in better condition than she was. Sophia's dress was not torn, and the single bruise on her cheek was hardly noticeable in the light from the smugglers' lanterns. Her hair was still pinned in place, and her eyes were not puffy from crying.

“Praise God that you are here and safe,” Cat said instead of answering her sister's question. She did not want to explain while they were surrounded by criminals.

Sophia looked past her, and Cat turned. Jonathan approached the smugglers with an easy confidence that spoke of his courage. He had no idea what the smugglers planned for them.

Quietly Jonathan said, “It would be for the best if the ladies returned to the carriage.” His eyes were like twin pistols aimed at the smugglers. He was not asking their permission.

The man who had given orders before grumbled something, but nobody halted them as Cat took her sister by the hand and hurried her to the carriage. She looked back as she helped Sophia into the carriage which was in even worse condition than she had guessed.

Jonathan stood in the middle of the road. Arcing around him, the criminals carried weapons of all sorts. He crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze on the smuggler who had struck him over the head with a pistol. In astonishment, she realized Jonathan would not know that.

“Get in,” Sophia urged. “Quickly. Before they change their minds.”

“But if he hits Jonathan again...”

Sophia tugged her into the carriage. “He's a soldier. He knows how to deal with an enemy better than we do.”

“He isn't armed, and this isn't a battlefield on the Continent.” She peeked out the door and gasped.

With the smugglers behind him in a bizarre parade, Jonathan walked toward the carriage. Cat held her breath as she listened to the snarled orders from the lead smuggler. He wanted Jonathan to get into the carriage and to stay there with Cat and Sophia until sunrise. A guard would be left to watch the carriage. If any of them tried to leave before dawn, the guard's orders were to kill all of them.

Jonathan said nothing until he reached the carriage door. Looking in, he asked, “Miss Meriweather, were you injured in any way by these men?”

“No, Mr. Bradby,” Sophia answered, her voice as emotionless as his.

“Very well.” Jonathan faced the smugglers. His attitude suggested that he was in charge. “You have honored your side of the agreement,” he said to them. “As Miss Catherine and I have honored our side. Therefore, let us part now. We will take our lamp and walk away from here. You do the same.”

His words were met with jeers, but his expression did not change.

The man who gave orders repeated his command that they remain in the carriage until the sun rose over Sanctuary Bay. Jonathan did not relent, either. “The ladies must be allowed to find better shelter for the night.”

“Cat,” Sophia whispered. “Listen.”

“I am.”

Her sister tugged on her arm. “Not to Mr. Bradby.” She gestured carefully toward the front of the carriage. “You understand the local cant better than I do.”

Switching to the backward facing seat beside her sister, Cat leaned her head against the carriage wall. Through the broken wood, she heard a smuggler say, “Gerr ta 'is qualityship. Tell 'im everythin' is set, 'n t' bride saw nowt.”

She bit her lower lip to keep from gasping. She pressed her head against her sister's shoulder, so if one of the men glanced in, he would not guess she was listening to the hushed conversation.

Go to his qualityship. Tell him everything is set, and the bride saw nothing.

That was what the man had said. The men must believe that, by using the thickest possible Yorkshire brogue, they could speak without an outsider realizing what they were saying. But she was no outsider, and, even though the villagers spoke to her without the accent, she had been around it enough years to be able to puzzle out the words. That could be why they whispered, not paying attention to the fact that she sat close enough to hear their conversation.

“Theur norrz 'is qualityship doesn't li' ta be disturbed int' middle o' t' neet,” replied another man.

You know his qualityship doesn't like to be disturbed in the middle of the night,
she translated automatically.

His qualityship
. Both men had used that term.
Quality
could mean many things, but the tone they had used—both deferential and vexed—suggested they spoke of a landed gentleman. Was their leader a member of the peerage? That would explain why they had evaded capture and were bold enough to abduct a baron's daughter.

“Get in or die!”

At the smuggler's order, the carriage creaked as Jonathan climbed in and slammed the door closed. The frame had sprung so far out of shape that it would not stay shut. The men laughed as if they had never seen anything so funny.

Jonathan sat beside her. She put her hand on his arm to keep him from reacting to the insulting words fired in their direction. He patted her hand and gave her a taut smile. He would not risk them by responding to petty comments.

The laughter muted as the smugglers left them to the storm. She had no doubts that at least one guard was posted nearby.

“Jonathan,” she whispered. “I heard—”

“Say nothing,” he returned as quietly. “Not here. Not until we get behind the walls of Meriweather Hall.”

She nodded. His advice was excellent. As always.

He handed one blanket to Sophia and draped the other over his and Cat's shoulders. At a normal volume, he said, “I know you must be exhausted, Miss Meriweather—”

“I think in light of all that has happened,” Sophia said with a tired smile, “you should call me Sophia.”

“I would be honored if you called me Jonathan. You are well?”

“Yes. They took me a short distance, shut me in a barn with a pair of guards, and then came back for me and brought me here. They never even tied me up.”

“I am glad to hear that.” His face grew grim. “Of other things that happened tonight, I believe the retelling of everything else that has happened to us should wait until after sunrise.”

“I agree,” Cat said at the same time as her sister. “But we need to talk about something so we don't fall asleep.”

“I have just the dandy.” He slipped his arm around Cat's waist and drew her sketchbook out from beneath his coat. “Before you arrived, Sophia, we were discussing Cat's excellent work. Would you like to join us in that discussion?”

“You were?” Sophia's eyes got big, then she smiled at Cat who felt a blush climbing her face. “I think all of us have a lot to share about our adventures once we are home.”

* * *

The sunshine was painfully bright on the fresh snow the next morning, so Jonathan kept his head down as he trudged along the road. The storm had ended just before dawn. He looked at Cat and Miss Meriweather who walked beside him. He had taken the blankets that had kept them from freezing to death and torn them into strips to wrap around the women's feet. The wool offered more protection from the cold than their silk slippers.

While they tied the strips in place, he jumped into the drift that had blown up against the carriage almost up to the base of the door. He was so fadded out that he could barely move. In addition, his head throbbed from where he had been struck, first when the carriage had tipped and then by the smugglers. He had made every effort to keep his pain hidden from the ladies, but he had seen how Cat glanced time and again at the dried blood in his hair.

He looked in both directions and discovered the carriage had overturned closer to the village than to Meriweather Hall. Even so, when he had helped the Meriweather sisters from the ruined carriage, he turned his back on the village. Neither Cat nor Miss Meriweather had protested his decision. He guessed, like him, they wanted to avoid villagers who had been among the men who had treated them so heartlessly during the night.

Nobody spoke as he broke a path through the snow to allow the ladies an easier walk. When Cat offered to trade places with him, he pretended not to hear. His eyes had a tendency not to focus at times, but with the hedgerows on either side of the road, he could not wander too far off the straightest path to Meriweather Hall.

Then the hedgerows ended, and he had no idea where the road was. He could see the cliffs dropping to the sea on his left and a wood on the right higher along the ridge. The road was somewhere between them, but he had no idea where.

He stopped, breathing hard. He could not chance leading Cat and her sister into a low wall or onto a pond hidden by the snow.

The quiet morning erupted with loud barking. Shading his eyes with his hands as well as the brim of his hat, he peered across the snow. Something large and dark was coming toward them. Two large and dark things. Were those men following?

He needed to hide the women, in case the smugglers had changed their minds. As he turned to motion them into the shadows of the hedgerows, Cat shouted.

“'Tis Jobby!” She ran as best as she could to the large dog. A sledge bounced in the dog's wake.

Jonathan was too tired to move. He watched as a half-dozen men appeared out of the glare. Sophia threw herself in Northbridge's arms. They clung to each other as if they never intended to let go again.

Words swarmed around him but made little sense. The pain along his skull seemed to drill into his brain. He forced himself to heed what they were saying.

“None of the wagons or carriages could move in the snow.” Meriweather motioned for the other men to keep Jobby from jumping on them in his excitement.

“So you thought of putting a sledge behind the dog,” Sophia said. “Brilliant!”

Meriweather and Northbridge cut their eyes toward each other and burst into laughter.

“Michael came up with the idea. Something he had seen in a storybook that their nurse read to them.” Northbridge drew Sophia back into the arc of his arm. “Once he mentioned it, I had everyone in the stables looking for a sledge that might work.”

“And it did work.” She leaned her head against her fiancé's shoulder. “Thank the good Lord.”

“What happened?”

“We should wait until we get back to Meriweather Hall to say much,” Cat answered, glancing over her shoulder toward the hedgerows where one or more men could easily hide. “Suffice it to say, we encountered smugglers.”

“Smugglers?” demanded Northbridge and Meriweather at the same time.

“Charles,” Sophia said, “Cat is right. We should talk about this once we are inside and warm. As you can see, we survived the experience. Cat and Jonathan heeded the smugglers' request, and I was returned to them unscathed.”

Northbridge's face reddened, and his eyes narrowed. “You let them take Sophia? I would have thought a hero like you, Bradby—”

This was his chance to be honest. His friends were already angry. The truth could not make them more furious.

Before he could speak, Cat said quietly, “You should not judge before you hear the whole story. Jonathan saved all our lives with his choices.”

Meriweather winced at Cat's unfortunate choice of words. Jonathan knew she had not intended to remind her cousin of his inability to make the simplest decision as a way to deflect his anger.

“If he had gone after them,” she continued in the same low, taut voice, “Sophia would be dead. Can't you see that it took more courage to wait for them to return her than to risk her life?”

Jonathan swallowed the bile rising in his throat as he realized he had a greater problem than telling his friends the truth. He had to tell Cat. Once his greatest worry had been losing Northbridge and Meriweather as his friends. Now, if he spoke the truth, he risked losing Cat.