Authors: Elizabeth Hoyt
“
My
house,
my
men,” he breathed into the other man’s face. “Help me or get out of my way, I care not, but never question my authority again—and
don’t
ever
lay a hand on me.” There was no question in his tone.
St. Aubyn swallowed and nodded his head.
“Good.” Reynaud let him go and glanced at the sergeant. “Look out the door—quickly—and check that Miss Corning and the others
are still by the carriage.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Reynaud knelt by the wounded man. The boy’s face was greasy with sweat, his eyes narrowed in pain. The wound was on his left
hip. Reynaud took off his coat and found the small thin knife he kept in a pocket. Then he bundled the coat and placed it
beneath the boy’s head.
“Am I dying, my lord?” the lad whispered.
“No, not at all.” Reynaud sliced open the boy’s breeches from waist to knee and spread the bloody fabric. “What’s your name?”
“Henry, my lord.” The lad swallowed. “Henry Carter.”
“I don’t like my men dying, Henry,” Reynaud said. There was no exit wound. The bullet would need to be dug out of the boy’s
hip—a tricky operation, as sometimes the hip bled badly. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, my lord.” The boy’s eyebrows rose questioningly.
“So you’re not to die,” Reynaud stated with finality.
The boy nodded, his face smoothing. “Yes, my lord.”
“The pistols, sir.” The older soldier was back, panting, with a flat box in his hands.
Reynaud rose. “Good man.”
The women had returned as well with the linens, and one immediately knelt and began bandaging Henry. “I had Cook send for
a doctor, my lord. I hope that was right.”
Cook?
That feeling that something wasn’t right made his head spin again, but Reynaud kept his face calm. An officer never showed
fear in battle.
“Very smart.” Reynaud nodded at the woman, and a flush of pleasure spread over her plain face. He turned to the sergeant.
“What’s happening outside?”
The sergeant straightened from the door crack. “Miss Corning is still by the carriage, my lord, along with the coachman and
two footmen. A small crowd has gathered across the street, but other than that, it seems just as usual.”
“Good. And your name?”
The sergeant threw back his shoulders. “Hurley, my lord.”
Reynaud nodded. He placed the dueling-pistols box on a side table and opened it. The pistols within looked like they might
be from his grandfather’s time, but they had been properly oiled and maintained. Reynaud took them out, checked to see if
they were loaded, and stepped to the door.
“Keep away from the doorway,” he instructed the sergeant. “The Indians might still be out there.”
“Dear God, he’s insane,” St. Aubyn muttered.
Reynaud ignored him and ducked out the door.
The street was strangely quiet—or perhaps it just seemed so after the chaos of the shooting. Reynaud didn’t pause but ran
swiftly down the steps and dropped to the ground by Miss Corning, who was nearly underneath the carriage.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes. Quite.” She frowned and touched a finger to his cheek. “You’re bleeding.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He took her hand and licked his blood from her fingertip, making her gray eyes widen. “You still have my
knife?”
“Yes.” She showed him his knife, hidden among her skirts.
“Good girl.” He looked at the soldiers… except now they were a coachman and two footmen. Reynaud blinked fiercely.
Concentrate.
“Did you see where the shots were coming from?”
The coachman shook his head, but one of the footmen, a tall fellow with a missing front tooth, said, “A black carriage pulled
away very fast just after you dragged Henry into the house, my lord. I think the shots may’ve come from inside the carriage.”
Reynaud nodded. “That makes sense. But we’ll take Miss Corning in with all precaution just in case. Mr. Coachman, please go
first. I’ll follow with Miss Corning while the footmen come behind.” He handed one of the pistols to the footman who had spoken.
“Don’t shoot, but make sure anyone watching can see that you’re armed.”
The men nodded, and Reynaud rose with his little company. He wrapped one arm about Miss Corning, covering as much of her body
with his as he could. “Go.”
The coachman ran to the steps, and Reynaud followed with Miss Corning, damnably aware of how exposed they were. Her form was
warm next to his, small and delicate. It seemed to take minutes, but they were within the house again in seconds. No more
shots rang out, and Reynaud slammed the door behind him.
“Dear God.” Miss Corning was looking at Henry, the wounded soldier.
But he wasn’t a soldier, Reynaud realized all at once. Henry was the footman who’d been guarding his bedroom door. His head
spun as burning bile backed up into his throat. The sergeant was the butler, the women the maids, and there were no soldiers,
only footmen staring at him warily. And the Indians? In
London
? Reynaud shook his head, feeling as if his brain would explode from the pain.
Dear God, maybe he
was
mad.
B
EATRICE BENT OVER
a small prayer book, picking apart the binding. She found it easier to think when her hands were busy. So after Henry had
been seen to, after Lord Hope had retired to his room, after she’d calmed the servants and sent them back to work, after all
had been restored to order in her home, she’d retreated here to her own rooms to contemplate the events of this afternoon.
Although, she’d not come to any firm conclusions when a knock sounded at her door. She sighed and looked up at a second tap.
“Beatrice?”
It was Uncle Reggie’s voice, which was odd, because he hardly ever visited her in her rooms, but then this had been a very
odd day. She set the book down on the little table she worked at and rose from her chair to let him in.
“I wanted to make sure that you were unharmed, m’dear,” he said once he’d entered. He glanced vaguely around the room.
Beatrice felt a pang of remorse. In all the excitement of the shooting, she’d not had a chance to talk to her uncle. “I’m
quite all right—not even a scratch. And you? How do you feel?”
“Oh, nothing can hurt an old man like me,” he blustered. “’Course, that impostor did knock me against the wall a bit.” He
peered at her from under his bushy eyebrows as if waiting for a reaction.
Beatrice frowned. “He did? But why?”
“Bloody arrogance, if you ask me,” her uncle replied heatedly. “He was raving about Indians in the woods. Started ordering
the servants about and told me to get out of the way. I think the man is mad.”
“He did save me.” Beatrice looked down at her slippers. Lord Hope’s sanity was the very subject she’d been grappling with
when Uncle Reggie had interrupted her. “Perhaps he was merely confused by the suddenness of the events. Perhaps he spoke in
haste when he talked of Indians.”
“Or perhaps he’s mad.” Uncle Reggie’s voice softened at her look. “I know he saved your life, and don’t think I’m not grateful
the bastard risked his life for you. But is it safe to have him in the house? What if he wakes one morning and decides
I’m
an Indian—or you?”
“He seems sane otherwise.”
“Does he, Bea?”
“Yes. Mostly anyway.” Beatrice sat in the chair before her worktable and bit her lip. “I don’t think he’d ever hurt me or
you, Uncle, truly, no matter his state of mind.”
“Humph. I don’t know if I share your optimism.” Uncle Reggie wandered over and peered at her work. “Ah, you’ve started a new
project. What is it?”
“Aunt Mary’s old prayer book.”
He gently touched a finger to the disassembled book. “I well remember how she used to carry it to church in the country. It
belonged to her great-great-grandmother, you know.”
“I remember her telling me,” Beatrice said softly. “The cover was quite worn through, the spine had cracked, and the pages
were coming loose from the stitching. I thought to restitch it and then rebind it in a blue calfskin. It’ll be good as new.”
He nodded. “She would’ve liked that. It’s good of you to take such care of her things.”
Beatrice looked at her hands, remembering Aunt Mary’s kind blue eyes, the softness of her cheeks, and the way she used to
laugh full-throatedly. Their household had never been the same without her. Since Aunt Mary’s death, Uncle Reggie had become
a less-humorous man, more prone to quick judgments, less able to understand or sympathize with other people’s intentions.
“I enjoy it,” she said. “I only wish she were here to see the result.”
“As do I, m’dear, as do I.” He patted the pages once more and then moved away from her table. “I think I must send him away,
Bea, for your safety.”
She sighed, knowing they’d returned to the subject of Lord Hope. “He doesn’t present any danger to me.”
“Bea,” Uncle Reggie said gently, “I know you like to put things to rights, but some things can’t be fixed, and I’m afraid
a man this wild is one of them.”
Beatrice set her lips stubbornly. “I think we must consider how it’ll appear if we toss him out of Blanchard House and he
regains the title. He won’t look favorably on us.”
Uncle Reggie stiffened. “He won’t get the title—I won’t let him.”
“But, Uncle—”
“No, I’m firm on this, Bea,” he said with the sternness he rarely showed her. “I’ll not let that madman take our home from
us. I vowed to your aunt Mary that I’d provide for you properly, and I intend to do so. I’ll agree to let him stay here, but
only so I can keep an eye on him and gather proof that he’s not fit for the title.”
And with that, he closed the door to her room firmly.
Beatrice looked down at Aunt Mary’s prayer book. If she didn’t do something, there soon would be bloodshed in her house. Uncle
Reggie was adamant, but perhaps she could make Lord Hope see that her uncle was only a stubborn old man.
“U
NCLE
R
EGGIE COULDN’T
possibly have sent someone to kill you,” Miss Corning said for the third or possibly fourth time. “I’m telling you that you
don’t know him. He’s really the sweetest thing imaginable.”
“Maybe to you,” Reynaud replied as he sharpened his long knife, “but you’re not the one displacing him from a title—and monies—he
thought were his.”
He examined her from under his eyebrows. Did she think him a madman? Was she afraid to be in his company? What had she thought
of his actions just hours before?
But despite his watchfulness, all he saw was irritation on Miss Corning’s face.
“You’re not listening to me.” She paced from the window of his bedroom to where he sat on the edge of the bed and stood before
him, arms akimbo like a cook scolding the butcher’s boy. “Even if Uncle Reggie
wanted
to kill you—which, as I keep telling you, he never would—he’d not be stupid enough to stage an assassination in front of
his own house.”
“
My
house,” Reynaud growled. She’d been haranguing him for the last half hour and showed no signs of stopping.
“You,” Miss Corning stated through gritted teeth, “are impossible.”
“No, I am correct,” he answered. “And you simply don’t want to acknowledge the fact that your uncle may not be nearly as sweet
as you think.”
“I—” she began again, her tone indicating she might very well continue the argument until doomsday.
But Reynaud had had enough. He threw aside the knife and whetstone and rose from the bed, nearly in her face. “Besides, if
you really did consider me impossible, you would never have kissed me.”
She skittered back, and he felt a spear of rage shoot through him. She should not fear him. It wasn’t right.
Then her lush mouth parted in what looked like outrage. For a moment she couldn’t speak, and then she burst out, “It was
you
who kissed
me
!”
He took a step toward her. She took a step back. He stalked her silently across the room, waiting for fear to turn her eyes
dark. Hadn’t she realized what he’d shouted, out there by the carriage?
Didn’t she know he was mad?
He bent over her, leaning down until the wisps of hair near her ear brushed his lips, inhaling the scent of sweet English
flowers. “You returned the kiss; don’t think I didn’t notice.”
And he had. Her soft lips had opened beneath his for just a fraction of a second before he’d turned and run toward the wounded
footman. That kiss would be burned in his memory forever. He angled his head and looked into her eyes.
Instead of going dark with fear, they were snapping with green sparks. “I thought you were about to die!”
Foolish girl.
“Tell yourself that if it assuages your delicate sensibilities,” he murmured, “but the fact remains that you. Kissed. Me.”
“What an arrogant thing to say,” she whispered.
“Granted.” He inhaled. Her skin smelled clean and womanly, with that hint of a flowery soap that Indian women never had. It
was a nostalgic scent for him, conjuring the memory of other civilized women he’d once known—his mother, his sister, forgotten
young girls he’d squired to balls long ago. She smelled of England itself, and for some reason he found the thought unbearably
arousing and at the same time utterly frightening. She had no defenses against him.
He no longer belonged in her world. “But did you enjoy the kiss?”
“And if I did?” she whispered.
He brushed his lips—softly, delicately—against her jaw. “Then I pity you. You should run screaming from me. Can’t you see
the monster I am?”
She looked up at him with brave clear gray eyes. “You’re not a monster.”
He closed his eyes, not wanting to see her face, not wanting to take advantage of that purity. “You don’t know me. You don’t
know what I’ve done.”
“Then tell me,” she said urgently. “What happened in the Colonies? Where have you been for seven years?”
“No.”
Brown eyes stared up through a mask of blood. He was too late.
He pushed away from her, afraid she’d see the demons laughing behind his eyes.