Elizabeth Thornton (15 page)

“I slipped on the ice,” he said irritably, when Abbie and Harper each grabbed an arm to prevent him from falling on his face, then he sucked in a breath when they tried to raise him. “Not that arm, Abbie. My shoulder aches like the dickens. But I’m perfectly capable of walking unaided.”

“Aye,” retorted Harper, “and I’m the king of England. Tom, get our rig out of sight, and be quick about it. We’re not in the clear yet.”

Abbie looked nervously over her shoulder, but the snow was falling so thick and fast that she could not see much beyond the stone pillars at the entrance to the drive.

Harper hoisted Hugh to his feet, then drew his good arm tightly around his neck. “Now perhaps Your Honor will tell us how we’re supposed to break in to that there house,” he said.

“This is the country.” Hugh gritted his teeth as he and Harper slowly ascended the front steps. “No one locks their doors in the country.”

Hugh was right, and within moments they were inside.

“Where is the kitchen?” asked Abbie.

“Through that door,” answered Hugh.

Harper said, “He should be in his bed.”

“Not,” replied Abbie, “until I’ve had a chance to look at him.”

The house was cold and damp, and Abbie guessed that its mistress had been absent for several days. She
went ahead of the others and passed through a small dining room, but there was not much to see in the fading light. The kitchen was reached through a flagstone corridor. Abbie used the flint box on the mantel to light the candles. There was a fire set in the grate, requiring only a flame to light it. She opened the damper and set her candle to the papers and tinder beneath the coal. When the papers caught and flared, she turned to survey the room.

There were two stone sinks and a pump in front of one of the windows. A plain wooden worktable sat in the center of the room, and hanging from pegs on all the walls was an array of pots and pans. Everything was as clean and tidy as a doctor’s surgery.

“I can manage!” This was from Hugh as Harper carefully lowered him into one of the shabby stuffed armchairs that flanked the grate.

“Now,” said Harper, “tell us what happened back at the inn.”

“I was talking to one of the ostlers,” Hugh said, “when I was approached by a gentleman, a stranger, who invited me to go for a walk.” He paused for a moment. “I couldn’t refuse because he had shoved a pistol in my ribs. We went through the exit into the lane. I saw another man, and behind him a carriage and coachmen. I resisted and they beat me with their pistols. That’s all I remember until you pulled me from the carriage.”

“What did they want?”

“I haven’t a clue. They didn’t ask me for money or my valuables, so they weren’t thieves. Now it’s your turn. What happened next? I have only the vaguest recollection after you pulled me from the carriage until we were on the open road.”

“What happened next,” said Harper, “is all hell broke
loose. We got rid of one lot of scoundrels only to come under fire from another lot.”

Hugh said, “I wondered about that. I thought I heard—”

“Two lots of scoundrels!” exclaimed Abbie suddenly, and both men turned their heads to look at her. She shrugged helplessly. “That’s not how it seemed to me. I thought they were all part of the same gang.”

“Not likely,” said Harper. “Why do you think those villains ran away? Not because you fired a shot. Your pistol was spent. They could have rushed you. No. They ran away because they saw the man on the gallery. Why
did
you fire that shot, Miss Vayle?”

“One of them made a move toward me,” she said weakly, “and I panicked.”

Hugh said, “I would have panicked too. You did very well, Abbie. Go on, Harper. What happened next?”

Harper looked at Hugh, caught something in his expression, then went on, “Well, as I was saying, they wasn’t waiting for no explanations, so I decided to leave the party. So here we are.” He looked at Hugh again. “We’ll talk later,” he said, “after you’re rested. I’ll take a look outside, just in case them blighters followed us.”

Abbie said, “Surely they can’t have followed us in that storm.”

Hugh looked out the window. The snow was driving against the glass in a wild dervish. “Abbie’s right. We were lucky to get through ourselves, and they wouldn’t be expecting us to leave the main road.”

Another look passed between Hugh and Harper, then Harper said, “I’ll go help Tom with the horses, then. I’ll talk to you later.”

“You do that,” said Hugh. “There’s a stable at the back of the house. You’ll find everything you need there.”

When Harper left, Hugh relaxed into his chair. Abbie slowly removed her coat and hung it on a hook on the back of the door. Her brain was still reeling. Two lots of villains! It made perfect sense when she thought about it. She was remembering something the man who had attacked her in Bath had said, something about not trying to sell the book to his competitors. So now she had two lots of villains after her, two lots of villains to terrorize her. Far from frightening her, the thought infuriated her. They all seemed to think she was as easily cowed as a timid little rabbit.

Hugh watched her as she picked up the black kettle on the stone hearth and went to fill it from the pump. He was well aware that there was a lot more to what had happened at the Black Boar than appeared on the surface. This wasn’t a random attack, and he suspected that it had far more to do with Abbie than with him.

She used two hands to carry the kettle back to the hearth, then she stooped down to hang it on its hook before swinging it over the open fire. Hugh gazed appreciatively at the rounded curve of her bottom. That was one of the things he liked about Abbie. She had generous curves.

“Now let’s see what the damage is,” she said.

Hugh didn’t usually like people fussing over him, but this was different. He liked Abbie’s hands on him, liked the way her cool fingers felt his pulse then his brow to test for fever. Her skirts were brushing his trousers, and if he leaned forward, he could plant a kiss right between her breasts.

“So far so good,” she said, “now open your eyes wide.”

Hugh obediently opened his eyes and stared up at Abbie.

“Well, that’s a relief,” she said. “Your pupils are not dilated.”

“Mmm,” said Hugh, inhaling the scent of her, part flowery and part something that was uniquely Abbie. He liked everything about her, from …

He suddenly realized where his thoughts were taking him and he was appalled. Marriage was definitely not in his stars, and that was the only way he could have Abbie.

Well, maybe he could have her if he was the unscrupulous libertine she’d called him. He had only to touch her and she melted for him. He could seduce her easily if he went about it the right way. Then she’d feel guilty, and he’d feel like hell, and in spite of what Abbie thought, he wasn’t dishonorable. So, he’d feel obliged to marry her.

Better to burn than be caught in that trap again.

“Ouch,” he said irritably. “That hurt.”

“Mmm,” said Abbie. “Well, now we know. You don’t have a concussion, and you don’t have a fever. You haven’t broken any bones, or you wouldn’t have managed to walk in here. It’s your shoulder I’m worried about. These injuries to joints can be serious if they’re not treated properly.”

“Oh?” he said. “And how did you come to be such an authority?”

“George was forever—”

He waited, then prompted, “Your brother George?”

“Yes.” She paused then went on, “When we were children, George was forever falling out of trees or from walls, and I would help Nurse look after him. So you see, I came to know all about concussions and how to set broken bones very early in life,”

She’d moved behind him to examine the gash on his head. He couldn’t see her face, but he’d heard the odd huskiness in her voice.
George?
He thought. What scrape had George got himself into?

“What is that young cub up to now?” he asked casually.

“Who?” Her fingers stilled.

“George. Isn’t that who we were talking about?”

When she stood in front of him again, her expression was blank. “Oh, you know George,” she said. “He comes and goes as he pleases.” Then on the next breath, “There must be a medicine chest here somewhere. I’ll need a plaster for that nasty cut on your head, and something to put on your cuts and abrasions. Do you know where Mrs. Deane keeps these things?”

“In the pantry,” he said. “That door there.”

“You seem to know the house very well.”

“Dr. Deane was my tutor. I lived with him for a number of years.”

“I see.”

She took a candle from the mantel and went through the door he’d indicated.

Hugh watched her go with a puzzled frown. She’d adroitly changed the subject, but what was there about George that made her nervous? Could George be mixed up in this insane misadventure? What had these two innocents got themselves in to? And maybe not so innocent if British intelligence was involved. That thought was still revolving in his mind when Abbie returned. She put down the tray she was carrying and set to work with all the competence of a surgeon. When she was ready, she came to stand over him with a cloth wrung out in hot water in one hand, and a small black bottle in the other. He sniffed the bottle. “Extract of Yarrow and
Betony to clean my wounds. One of Mrs. Deane’s homemade remedies. I remember it well, and yes, I know this is going to hurt.”

She began by cleaning the dried blood from the abrasions on his face. “You said you lived in this house for a number of years?”

Hugh nodded. “I came here not long after my mother remarried, when I was six. And I lived here until I went away to school, when I was twelve. But I always came back here for holidays.”

“Six! Isn’t that very young? I mean, I know that boys sometimes go to live with their tutors, but not at that tender age.”

“My mother and stepfather were involved in their own lives. They thought this would be the best solution all round.”

“Best for whom?” she demanded indignantly.

He answered her with a smile. “Now don’t let your imagination lead you astray. Once I got used to the Deanes, I was happy here. And when my mother died, well, it didn’t seem such a catastrophe. This was my real home.”

“I see.” She said softly, “What were you like as a boy, Hugh?”

“I loved books. I was interested in history. I liked nothing better than to go out with Dr. Deane on scavenging expeditions, looking for fragments of pottery. Did you know that there are Roman ruins in this area, and stone circles similar to Stonehenge? So you see, I was in my element.”

Their eyes met. She smiled. He smiled. The silence that followed was pleasant, companionable. But as the silence lengthened, it changed subtly. Hugh’s chest began
to rise and fall. Abbie’s breathing became audible. Smiles faded.

They spoke at the same moment.

“Abbie, about last night.”

“I’ll need strips of linen to bind your shoulder. Don’t move. This will only take a moment.”

She left him in a rustle of skirts.

After Abbie had bound Hugh’s shoulder, she went upstairs to prepare a room for him. The fire was already set and flared to life when she put a flame to it. She found freshly laundered bedclothes in the linen cupboard in the hall, and made up the bed in five minutes flat. There was an empty water carafe on the table by the bed, and though she felt that she should go downstairs and fill it from the pump as well as heat bricks in the oven to take the chill off the sheets, she didn’t want to face Hugh right now.

They were becoming too cozy. She’d almost blurted out that in spite of his atrocious family, he’d turned out a fine, upstanding man. Then they’d get around to talking about last night, and she just wasn’t up to it.

It was all a colossal misunderstanding. That’s the approach she would take if the subject ever came up. And all things considered, maybe it was the truth.

She plumped herself down in front of the grate and used the tongs to add small lumps of coal to the crackling kindling, thinking all the while of Hugh as a boy in this very room.

Hugh had referred to his tutor many times, and always warmly, but she’d never understood that he’d actually lived with Dr. Deane, year in and year out. It wasn’t
unusual for boys to take up residence with their tutors, but not for years at a time, and only when there were no relatives to take them in.

She was appalled at the idea that Hugh had been abandoned. Despite his apparent indifference, she couldn’t believe that he’d come through it unscathed. No child could. This was a nice comfortable house. Mrs. Deane was obviously an excellent housekeeper. But it wasn’t the same as being raised in a loving family.

Not that her family was perfect, far from it. They bickered; they quarreled. Sometimes they liked each other. Often they did not. But, when one member was hurt or in trouble, they all rallied round. That was one thing that could be said of Vayles: they might dislike each other, but they never abandoned each other.

It was an unfortunate thought, for her mind immediately pictured George, in deep despair in some darkly lit, moldy cell, convinced that his family had abandoned him. She got to her feet and hugged herself with her arms. “No!” she said aloud. “No!” George would remember all the family rules they’d always lived by.
Vayles never forget to say please and thank you. Vayles never wash their dirty linen in public. Vayles stick together
.

The list was endless. And maybe they’d derided these sayings as they’d grown older, but the words had stuck in their minds all the same. They were practically the tenets of their faith—the Vayle dogma. No matter what, George would know that his family would never abandon him. They would move heaven and earth to get him home safe.

She swung away from the fire and went to look out the window. Snow. She used to love snow. Now she wanted
to torch it. This could only happen to her. She was marooned in the middle of nowhere, going nowhere, with two lots of villains after her, and George’s fate hanging in the balance. A fine rescuer she’d turned out to be! She didn’t even know how to load a pistol and fire it. Harper had had to remind her to pull back the hammer. And the force of the shot had practically broken her wrist.