The Tempting of Thomas Carrick (27 page)

Serenely assured, and in exceedingly fine fettle, she swept down the stairs and on toward the dining room. She and Thomas had slept until dawn, then they’d woken and indulged in another bout of lovemaking, one much slower and gentler, yet regardless, the moments had left her feeling as if sensation had been lavishly burnished over every inch of her skin.

When she’d woken again, not long ago, he’d been gone. While she’d been washing, she’d heard his door open and close. His footsteps had paused outside her door, but then he’d walked on.

Now, seated at his usual place at the table, he’d heard her footsteps; he was looking at the doorway when she walked through. His gaze locked on her face, searched her features.

She smiled—for one instant, let all the effervescent joy and delight bubbling inside her show—and saw his gaze—indeed, all of him—still, then he blinked. Then, eyes widening a fraction in warning, he glanced at Niniver and Norris, who were seated at the table with their backs to the door.

By the time Niniver turned and smiled a shy welcome, Lucilla had muted her smile to one of mere contentedness.

“Good morning,” Niniver said. “Did you sleep well?”

Lucilla turned to the sideboard to mask her grin. “Excellently well, thank you.” She laid two pieces of toast on a plate. “And you?” Turning, she glanced at Niniver—then raised her eyes and met Thomas’s gaze.

Niniver shrugged. “I always sleep well, but it is my own bed. I thought you might have been more unsettled.” Niniver moved the teapot to within reach of Lucilla’s chosen place as, circling the table, she took the chair Thomas rose and held for her—the one beside his.

She settled her skirts, intrigued to discover that her awareness of him, of his nearness as he resumed his seat, although still strong, seemed to have a softer edge, a more gentle impact.

Niniver stirred her tea. “I wanted to ask…have you seen Papa yet? Was he improved by your tonic?”

“I haven’t yet seen him.” Lucilla glanced at Norris, but other than a vague nod in her direction as she’d sat, he seemed thoroughly absorbed with the food before him. If he had any interest in his father’s health, she could see no sign of it. Transferring her gaze to Niniver, who was much more transparently concerned, she went on, “The Burns sisters’ funeral is to be held this morning—I expect I’ll examine him before we leave for that. I’m sure he’ll want to attend, and indeed, I hope my tonic will have done enough overnight to make the occasion easier for him.”

Thomas relaxed beside Lucilla and listened with one ear as she and Niniver discussed the details of the joint funeral. Niniver knew the clan’s habits as well as all those involved…Thomas knew, too. He didn’t really need to refresh his memory. That left him free to continue puzzling over all that had happened since he’d retired to his bed the night before.

So much had changed between then, and when, this morning, he’d returned to his room, albeit not to his bed. Lucilla and he…he still couldn’t quite understand why he’d acquiesced to her necessity, acceded to her demands and stepped so far from the path he’d been so determined to tread.

What he understood even less was why, even now, even recognizing what had happened, he still did not feel the least perturbed.

What he felt was…a curious hiatus. As if he were living in a different world, on a different plane, in some other, alternate reality to that of his life in Glasgow.

As if this life with her and that one did not connect, did not touch, did not impinge on each other.

Stay and be my protector until dawn.

Here. With me. In this bed.

That isn’t a request.

This—you and me like this—is as things should be. Life for us as it needs to be.

It is what it is, and I’m content with that.

All words she’d said, and every one had held the ring of truth. For all her inexperience, she seemed to see this—whatever it was that had grown and then flared so powerfully between them—more clearly than he did.

Given that, given the unwavering self-assurance he could feel radiating from her with respect to him, her, and them together, he was fast coming to the conclusion that, for however long their liaison lasted, his best way forward might well be to follow her lead.

The thought brought him up short, made him mentally blink.

For the last twenty years, ever since his parents had been taken from him, he hadn’t followed anyone else’s lead, had allowed no one to arrange his life for him. He’d followed his guardians’ advice not because they were his guardians but because that advice had furthered his own self-determined ambitions.

Yet now, even though he stood at a pivotal point in his wider life, he was contemplating—more, advocating—following Lucilla’s lead.

He turned his head and looked at her. Studied her face as she spoke to Niniver, and wondered what spell she’d worked on him.

Sensing his gaze, she glanced at him. She searched his eyes, then faintly arched a brow.

Suppressing a frown—he could detect no sign that she was intent on bending him to her will, nor could he see any reason why she should be—he shook his head slightly.

“So…” Niniver was frowning down at her hands and had missed their exchange. “When will you start the next stage of Papa’s treatment?”

Looking across the table, Lucilla replied, “Assuming I examine him before we leave for the church, then when we return after the funeral, Alice and I will make up a restorative—something he can continue to take that will build on the improvement I hope he’ll have experienced overnight.”

She placed her napkin beside her plate and glanced at Thomas as she pushed back from the table. “Which reminds me that I should check with Alice in the still room.”

Thomas rose and drew back her chair. She met his eyes and smiled—a private smile between them.

He held her gaze. He hesitated, but then nodded. “Have them fetch me when Manachan calls for you. I’m sure he will before getting ready for the funeral.” His lips twisted wryly. “Either he will, or Edgar will remind him.”

She smiled and inclined her head. “Indeed.”

Entirely satisfied with how matters were progressing on all counts, with a nod to Niniver, she left the room.

* * *

Thomas quit the dining room shortly after Lucilla. He resisted the urge to reassure himself that she was safe in the still room; at his suggestion, Ferguson had stationed a footman in the lower passageway within sight of the still room door, with orders to go in and sit inside once Lucilla arrived.

While she remained on Carrick lands, until they solved the mystery of whatever was going on, and until he understood who had come to her room last night and why, she would be watched over.

Going out of the front door, he circled the house to the side terrace, where he could be assured of privacy while he paced.

Lucilla seemed to have shrugged off last night’s attack—if it had been an attack. He’d got the impression that, as in the end nothing had happened—and indeed, the incident had given her the opportunity to indulge in an activity she’d clearly wished to embrace—in her view all was… How had she put it?
It is what it is, and I’m content with that.
Although she’d been speaking of what lay between them, the same words seemed an accurate reflection of her attitude to the man who had crept up on her while she’d slept, a cushion clutched in his hands.

Thomas felt his face harden. It had to be comforting to have such faith and belief in fate, for want of a better term, but he was much less sanguine. He remained deeply unsettled by the incident. And, even more, by how it might connect with all the other odd things that had been, and apparently still were, going on.

Yet as he’d told her, the man could have been any clansman; everyone knew the manor doors were never locked, and most knew the layout of the house well enough to look for her in that particular wing.

But had the man actually intended to harm her —or had he come hoping to speak with her, perhaps to warn her, but he hadn’t wanted her to wake and scream?

That notion might seem far-fetched, yet Thomas knew of several men in the clan who were…unsophisticated enough to have thought that way.

Halting, he sighed. Turning, he looked out unseeing over the stretch of coarse lawn. The incidents were accumulating. While they yet lacked the evidence necessary to prove it, all the previous incidents up to last night had clearly been acts of malicious intent. The odds favored last night being another.

Which, in turn, suggested his inner conviction that Lucilla herself was in danger, that she, specifically, might now be in the perpetrator’s—a murderer’s—sights, could very well be true.

He remained staring, unseeing, out over the lawn as the minutes ticked by, then, his face feeling more like stone than flesh, he turned, walked back to the front door, and re-entered the house.

CHAPTER 11

Lucilla returned from the Burns sisters’ funeral, which had been held at the small local church in the village of Carsphairn, in a carriage with Thomas, Niniver, and Norris.

She spent the short journey finalizing the composition of the restorative she planned to make for Manachan. He’d summoned her to his room a bare half hour before they’d been due to leave the house, but five minutes had more than sufficed to convince them all that his vigor had been almost magically improved, courtesy of her boosting tonic.

He was a long way from full strength yet, but he’d been able to come down the stairs merely leaning on Edgar’s arm. He’d been slow, but he hadn’t needed any real help in moving his large frame. His legs were still weak, and his balance wasn’t certain, but he’d been able to stand by the graveside alongside the vicar with nothing more than a cane to prop him up.

His color, too, had returned, his face more ruddy than pale, and his grip had firmed, too. But for her, his eyes had shown the greatest improvement—that, and the alertness and incisiveness of the mind behind them.

All in all, she was thrilled and deeply satisfied with what she’d achieved—a true reward for a healer.

And if the gratitude directed her way from virtually everyone at the funeral was any guide, the clan as a whole was delighted to see their laird on the road to recovery.

It had been important for them to see Manachan there. He’d sat in the front pew through what had been a short but moving service, and he himself had risen to go to the lectern to deliver the eulogy, a tribute that had brought tears to everyone’s eyes.

Subsequently, Lucilla had risen and gone to the lectern; she’d spoken words she’d said before, at other similar ceremonies, binding those who had lived, worked, and died on these lands with the spirit of the land itself—“dust to dust” meant something quite explicit in the Lady’s domains.

As one of the few non-clan present, she’d stood a little removed from the grave and had watched the members of the clan as they interacted with each other; sharing grief brought families—in this case, clan families—together. And so it had seemed, with one notable exception. Nigel did not appear to command the confidence, much less liking, of his clansmen. All had been polite and, to some degree, even respectful, but she had to wonder how much of that had been in deference to Manachan’s presence. The coolness directed Nigel’s way—the standoffishness of the men, let alone the women—had been, to her eyes, marked.

In contrast, Niniver had been embraced, and even Norris had been treated as “one of them.” Nolan had hovered, as ever, in Nigel’s shadow; Lucilla had got no clear indication of how the clan saw him.

The carriage slowed as it neared the house. She rapidly reviewed her planned composition and mentally nodded; her decisions and selections were sound.

She was, truth to tell, still somewhat puzzled over what, months ago, had brought Manachan low in the first place, but whatever it had been, she’d found the right counter to it. She would reinforce and build on that.

Thomas alighted first and turned to hand her down.

She placed her hand in his and felt the warmth of his clasp through the fine leather of her glove. The sensation was comforting, rather than discombobulating. Taking that as a sign that their relationship had, indeed, turned a corner, courtesy of their endeavors through the night—and feeling distinctly satisfied on that front, too—she walked beside him into the front hall.

Norris, followed by Niniver, made straight for the stairs.

Lucilla paused before the corridor leading to the steps down to the still room and swung to face Thomas. “I’m going to make up Manachan’s restorative.”

Hearing footsteps in the corridor, she turned to see Alice, who had come back from the church in one of the carts, hurrying up. Alice paused by the head of the steps.

Lucilla smiled and waved her on. “Open up—I’ll join you in a minute.”

Facing Thomas, she added, “I’ll teach Alice to make the composition, so she’ll be able to keep Manachan supplied after I’ve returned to the Vale.”

Thomas nodded; since before they’d left for the funeral, his expression had been severe, and it hadn’t yet lightened. He met her gaze. “Come and fetch me when you have it ready—I’ll go up with you.”

Assuming he wanted to ensure Manachan gave some undertaking to continue with the treatment, she nodded and turned for the steps. “I’ll ask Ferguson if I can’t find you.”

Making the restorative took less than twenty minutes, even repeating the process several times to ensure Alice had the order of additions—in this case, quite critical—correctly memorized.

With the tonic in a stoppered dark blue bottle in one hand, Lucilla climbed the steps to the ground floor, then walked into the front hall, intending to find Ferguson. Instead, she found Thomas sitting in a chair against one wall, long legs stretched before him and crossed at his ankles, his chin on his cravat as he stared broodingly at his booted toes; he looked up at the sound of her footsteps.

Seeing her, he uncrossed his legs and rose. His gaze locked on the bottle in her hand. “Ready?”

“Indeed.”

He fell in beside her, and they walked to the main stairs and started up.

She waited until they reached the landing before saying, “Choosing the right ingredients for a restorative is tricky. I’ve selected those herbs and tinctures I believe will work best, but I will need to check on him later, to ensure I have the balance correct.”