Angel In My Bed (13 page)

“Go after her,” David said, as Rockwell looked in his direction and shrugged with that now-what look of exasperation that seemed to plague everyone when dealing with Meg. “It's a long walk back to the cottage.”

Still standing in the doorway, he was ready to turn, when a flock of blackbirds startled and rose from the fields, swirling like a black funnel cloud against the stark blue sky. His sixth sense kicked into alert just as a rifle report sounded from a distance, like a hunter's shot. An innocent enough sound, but not on his property. He looked toward the church steeple visible above the other buildings.

Rockwell's shout drew David's focus back around. Ian had leaped from the cart and was moving at a dead run to where Meg should have been standing.

V
ictoria struggled to push herself up on her hands, raising her head as Ian knelt beside her. “Jaysus, my lady.”

“I'm all right.” Her heart thumping wildly, she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, tasting blood. “I…bit my tongue.”

“Meg—” David was suddenly kneeling beside her, his breath misting the air. He put his hand on her waist to support her effort to stand, then pulled it back. Blood covered his palm. She felt a stream of warmth soaking her clothes.

She smiled weakly. “You wouldn't by chance have a lump of alum on you to stem the bleeding?”

Two servants came running toward them on the drive. David yelled for them to go back for the cart. “Bring the horses around,” he told Rockwell, easing his shoulder beneath hers and helping her to her feet, lifting her. “And get my coat. Now!” he said when the younger man hesitated a heartbeat too long.

“I can walk, David. Find the man who shot that rifle.”

“Whoever fired that shot is gone.” David carried her to a spot beneath the cover of a tree and lowered her feet. “Or he'd have taken another shot.”

“This makes no sense,” she said, too angry to feel anything but numbing shock, and shook off his help. “My father wouldn't shoot me…”

David opened her shirt at the waist. “The bastard would cut your heart out if you let him, Meg.” He gripped the fabric, rending it easily with his bare hands. “I bloody should have killed him years ago.”

She watched his hands work to stem the tide of blood. “Vengeance, David?”

Another length of fabric gave way in his hands. “Whoever did this just made the biggest mistake of his life.”

Closing her eyes, she schooled her pain into a calm façade.

“You're hit just below the rib.” He tied the cloth at her waist, then rose to his feet when he'd finished. “The stays will help with the pain. The bullet didn't pass through the cloak. The wound isn't deep.”

She listened to the rhythmic rattle of approaching hooves. “Is the blood dark?”

The ice had thawed from his eyes. “No,” he said quietly.

That was good news at least. She started shivering and looked away. The pain helped bludgeon her emotions into an impression of calm. “This must be an accident,” she said in a weakened voice. “Someone poaching.”
But what if it wasn't?
another part of her questioned. “Someone needs to get to the cottage.”

David's arms came around her. “Come here,” he whispered, fitting her cheek easily against his shoulder, and just when she thought she would not be affected by his actions, he sundered all her carefully tended illusions in half.

“The cart is almost here,” he breathed against her temple.

“I've ruined your warm cloak,” she said, shivering. “It's the only wrap I've ever worn that fit my height perfectly.”

“I'll buy you a fur-lined one,” he said against her hair.

She smiled into his collar. As she spoke the words against his shoulder, she could hear the crunch of gravel as the cart came to a stop. “I thought priests were supposed to give up all their worldly possessions?”

“They are. And I did. But it seems my family kept some of my worldly shares of certain family enterprises locked away in a trust.”

“Are you wealthy?”

“Not by any means.” His voice rasped in amusement. “But I like expensive soap.”

She inhaled the scent of his hair. He was warmth and security, and a hundred memories all wrapped into one. She'd felt this way long ago when he'd taken her into his arms and danced her across the breadth of a glittering ballroom floor. “Do you believe in fate? Everything happens for a reason and all that?”

“Meg…”

“I'm glad we had our little…discussion today.”

David heaved an exaggerated sigh of surrender. “There was nothing little about it.”

The comment made her laugh. She flinched against the pain that the movement caused. A few minutes later, David had her loaded into the back of the cart with orders to take her to the house. Ian galloped up on a fine bay mare, holding the reins of David's horse and a greatcoat in his other hand.

“I'll be back as soon as I can.” Shoving his hands into his coat sleeves, David spoke to another man standing with the driver, one of his people that he'd brought from Ireland.
“Make a perimeter check. Keep everyone inside for now.”

“David?”

He looked down over the side of the cart at Meg. “Shh.” He placed a finger against her lips and walked beside the cart as it started to move. “We'll discuss anything you want when I get back.”

“I need you to make sure Nathanial is safe.”

“I'm sure he's safe, Meg.”

“You cannot know that for sure.”

“Sir—” Rockwell said from behind him, “someone needs to fetch Sir Henry.”

“We'll get her inside the house, sir,” the driver said.

Standing in the drive, David watched the cart move away.

He had promised he could protect her and her family. But he didn't have men to send to watch over Sir Henry's grandson, nor did he believe the boy was in any danger.

Stepping into the stirrup, David mounted his horse. He held the high-prancing stallion in check as he looked over his shoulder at Rockwell. “Go to the churchyard. That shot was fired from there.”

“Deer overrun these bluffs. Maybe it was an accident.”

“Think about it.” David's gaze went to the remote church steeple. “To hit anything at all from the distance that shot was fired, the shooter would have had to have been high off the ground. A tree? A belfry maybe?” The horse pranced sideways. “Blakely is staying at Doyle's cottage. Get over there and find out what he might have seen.”

Back at Sir Henry's cottage, David dismounted and, glancing around the empty yard, jogged up the back steps. He opened the door into the kitchen. Esma Shelby and Bethany were standing inside, and he saw them as he ducked out of the mudroom.

“My lord, 'tis you.” Esma's hands crushed the skirt of her apron. “Sir Henry heard a gunshot. He went to the fields with my husband. Sometimes there be poachers about. He was angry that someone would be shooting so near to people in their homes.” She dabbed her eyes with the corner of her apron. “But what if it be Tommy Stillings, my lord. That blackguard doesn't hold the same favor toward Sir Henry as he does Her Ladyship.”

“I'll find Sir Henry and send your husband back,” David assured her, knowing he had no time to smooth away her fears. He looked at Bethany. “But right now, I need you to go upstairs and pack a change of clothing for Lady Munro.”

The girl's eyes widened. “But why?”

“Just do it, Bethany,” he said. “I don't have time to explain.” As he returned his attention to Mrs. Shelby, his tone became softer. “Show me where Sir Henry keeps his medical bag.”

She led him to Sir Henry's chambers in the back of the cottage. A few minutes later, David uncovered the physician's bag beneath a quilt someone had thrown atop a chair.

“Everything else be back in the surgery, my lord.” She pushed aside the folding panels connecting to yet another room, then set a sulphur match to the lamp. “He sees his patients here. Since his illness, he has not traveled so much anymore.”

Medical books filled one entire cabinet, some penned by Sir Henry Munro himself, David realized as he looked in the case next to him. Bound by a thick ornate frame, Sir Henry's royal commission in the navy hung on the wall next to a medical degree. He'd taught at a medical university in London.

“Check on Bethany,” David said over his shoulder.

Vials and jars lined glass shelves stretching across one
wall; boxes, canisters, and bandages filled yet another. He walked to the cabinet and shoved accoutrements into the bag. Nearly three dozen miniature photographs and daguerreotypes lined the top of the cabinets and followed the shelves along the back wall to the heavy mantel over the fireplace. Too many faces to be family.

The rattle of a cart sounded from outside. David peered out the window. Esma's husband had ridden into the drive. He was alone. When David turned from the window, he knocked a pair of photographs from the desk. One shattered on the planked floor.

Caught by the image of Meg, he picked up the frame, shaking away the shards of broken glass and dropping them into the refuse can. He held the image in the sunlight. He recognized Bethany wearing a ruffled frock, no older than twelve, and Sir Henry standing beside her. A dark-haired boy dressed in black velveteen short trousers and black-buckle shoes sat on Meg's lap. He tilted the photograph, caught by something he could not explain.

“My lord.” Esma bustled into the room, flushed and breathless. “My husband has just returned. Sir Henry is at Rose Briar. He sent my husband back for his medical bag—”

“How long ago was this likeness taken?”

Mrs. Shelby glanced down at the image in David's hand, too shaken to enlighten David about dates. “I don't know, my lord.” She twisted her hands in her apron. “Some years ago. Please, my lord. Sir Henry is waiting for his bag.”

David shoved the photograph into his coat pocket.

 

“Swallow the medicine, Victoria.”

Warm licorice passed between her lips. She drank.

She didn't remember much after Sir Henry cauterized the
wound. Only the voices. She drifted away again and became lost in a fog of pain and frightful dreams. Dreams that involved Nathanial. She searched for her son and, with a mother's instinct, knew he was in danger. She called David's name.

Someone came to her side, but it wasn't David.

Later, she remembered a young girl helping her with her private ablutions and eating soup. She awoke again at daybreak with streamers of sunlight squeezing through the cracks in the curtains. Sir Henry was sitting beside the bed, an unlit pipe between his lips, his blue eyes bereft of his usual good humor. Confused by his presence, she faced him with a thudding ache in her head.

“He's been up here twice asking about you,” Sir Henry said.

In the firelight, her sight touched the familiar bed frame, the tiered yellow and lavender fabric draping in swathes from the canopy. She was wearing a clean nightgown. Her entire body felt as if she'd been shoved through a meat grinder. She found the simplest movement brought pain and with it a renewed sense of urgency as she realized she had not been having some awful nightmare.

Someone had shot her. Why?

“How long have I been asleep?” Her words came out sluggish as she tried to coordinate her mind and her tongue.

“Most of two days.” The crinkles around his eyes deepened.

He had kept her sedated; that was why she felt so sluggish and incapable of thought. She tried to prop herself on her elbow. Sir Henry was suddenly beside her, his black jacket rumpled, and his expression determined in the light. He held a syringe in his hand. Liquid spurted from the tip of the needle.

“Don't you dare give me that stuff again, Sir Henry—”

He showed not the least inclination to obey her. “I've cau
terized that wound and I'll not have you tear the flesh. Let the poultice work or you'll be facing sepsis.”

“You're a bully,” she whispered, knowing he was right.

“And you're a poor patient,” he countered, equally resolved to see her bedridden, and gave her the shot.

“No worse than you,” she argued. In a test of wills, Sir Henry would win. She lay back on her pillow. “Where is David?”

“Lord Chadwick went to pay a visit to Mr. Doyle yesterday.” He set the syringe on the night table next to a vial of carbolic powder and picked up his pipe. “He hasn't returned.” He folded his lanky form onto a chair beside the bed. “Do you want to tell me how you really know Chadwick? You asked for him in your sleep, Victoria.”

She tugged the down comforter to her neck. Unable to look Sir Henry in the eyes, she turned her head. “I knew him in Calcutta.”

“I thought so. If I were a gambling man, I'd wager you two know one another well.”

Sir Henry's voice became distant as she began to drift away again.
Of course I did,
a whispery voice answered in her head.

I was in love with him.

That revelation engendered nothing new to her battered heart. Indeed, she had always loved him. They had made a child, the one good thing they had done together. David could protect Nathanial. Even as she recognized David could never be hers, she needed him. He was capable of giving her son a future when she was not. She recognized that now.

In her drugged and veiled state, she felt Sir Henry gazing down at her, perplexed for reasons he could not name, and worried for reasons he could probably name well enough if
he set his mind to it. But someone had shot her, and she needed answers that only she could get. She had to get to the cemetery. She had to know the truth.

 

David returned to the churchyard well past the time he should have heeded the chill and found shelter. He had ridden the last few hours over a frozen landscape. Now, stomping the cold from his feet, he tied Old Boy's reins to the fence and followed the glow of lantern light. No moon rousted the shadows tonight, but lay well-hidden behind heavy clouds. Snow fluttered in the air as if the weather had suddenly grown timid.

Watching the disembodied glow of lamps move through the decaying skeletal structure, David could understand why Mr. Doyle believed in ghosts. He pulled himself up through an opening and stood transfixed by the destruction surrounding him.

Fire had gutted the church one long ago day. Wooden benches sat askew against the opposite wall. The room stank of rotten timbers and animal offal, a strange juxtaposition to the downy white snowflakes floating around him.

“…people don't bloody sprout wings and fly.” David heard the voices, and maneuvered through the debris toward the rectory.