Lorelie Brown (7 page)

“Aren’t you so very amusing,” she grumbled, but most of her mind was already preoccupied. “Not my mother, and not when she has a handsome man waiting.”

“You think me handsome, do you?” He liked that.

Worse was that she liked him liking it, and around they went in a terrible, wonderful, mesmerizing circle. She had no time for such nonsense, and if anything, this moment was proof of why. She was split. Divided between the tempting flirtation she could begin and a steadily growing sense of worry for her mother.

She broke the spell Sir Ian wove and stalked to the door. A passing maid stopped. “Milly, run upstairs and see what’s taking Lady Vale so long.”

“Is that necessary?” Sir Ian asked. “She’s a grown woman in her own house. She can’t have gotten far.”

“How little you know.”

Indeed, it didn’t take long before Milly all but tripped over her own feet as she tumbled into the room. “Your pardon, miss.”

“It’s all right.” Really, her fingernails dug into the soft meat of her palms, sending pain swirling up her wrists, though it was nothing compared to the prickling worry stealing her breath away.

The maid gasped for breath as if she’d hustled upstairs and down. “Lady Vale has gone out, miss.”

“Blast. Does anyone know where?”

The girl nodded. She didn’t want to say it, that much was in the way her eyes flicked and her mouth worked. “Mrs. Lafevre says, that is… She went to the park across the way.”

“Alone?” Lottie clarified.

Milly nodded. Lottie could feel the weight of Sir Ian’s presence. She was trying to keep herself grounded, keep her mien calm. But she was rapidly losing control. She should have shoved him back in that damned carriage.

Without a word, she swept through the foyer. The butler scrambled toward the door in time to open it for her. Carts and carriages rolled past the house. Lottie bounced on her toes, looking for an opportunity to skip through.

Sir Ian arrived at her side, throwing around manly arrogance. He held a hand toward traffic. A black brougham stopped quickly enough that horses neighed and whinnied in their traces. Lottie darted forward. Across the street. Over the Albert Bridge.

“Where do we start?” asked Ian.

Her breath spiked. She panted fast. The oxygen wasn’t enough to keep away the dizzy, spinning feeling threatening to overtake her. Worry converged and split and spun into fear. “This way.”

The park was lush. Large. If Lottie didn’t already know where she was going, there would be entirely too much ground to cover. Mama’s favorite spot had a large oak that overlooked the boating lake. She moved fast, hiking her skirts up to her knees and cursing her corset for disallowing running.

Because it was as bad as she feared.

Mama had actually climbed the goddamned tree, like she was a monkey or a child. Exactly so. At least she’d changed out of the yellow dressing gown. Instead the pale pink skirts of a gown best worn by a woman ten years younger draped from her perch on the gnarled branch.

Lottie’s hand fluttered toward her throat. “Mama, come down.”

“There’s a bird’s nest up here, Lottie love. You should see it. The fragments are so pretty and intricate. How do you think they know to put all those pieces together?”

Her back was a spike, her arms rigid. Her every muscle colluded to contain her. If she tried hard enough, she could ignore the fact that Sir Ian was witnessing this embarrassment. “Mama, I thought we were going to have tea?”

“Then I decided you should keep your gentleman all to yourself.” Lady Vale, the very same one who was up a damned blasted tree, smiled with the pure conviction of a mother leading her child to bliss.

Lottie smiled. Because she was helpless and there seemed nothing else she could do.

Until the branch cracked.

Then she and her mother both screamed.

Ian had learned to swim so young that he had no memory of actually learning. His parents had been quite an unusual sort compared to most of the other gentlemen and ladies of the area. They’d taken Ian and Etta for picnics on a regular basis to the lake at the far end of the property, and Ian’s father personally took on the task of familiarizing Ian with water.

It had led to happy, sunny afternoons in the high months of July and August. Now it led to instinctual action.

Lady Vale became a tumbling flip of ribbons and cloth and streaming red hair. The branch went with her, a dark slash. The pond cleaved in a splash, but the worst part was when half the screaming stopped.

Miss Vale clapped both hands over her mouth. Her wide eyes went wider as she ran across the rest of the grassy clearing. Ian ran beside her, pushing his pace faster. Harder. To get there first.

His coat came off and dropped to the ground. He yanked his braces and jerked his white shirt over his head, but then he was at the water’s edge. His shoes were kicked off in the air.

Arms above his head, he dove in and aimed for the last place he’d seen Lady Vale. The water was cold, bracingly so. He blew air threw his nose against the hard shock. He kicked, pushed along under the dark, brackish water.

She wasn’t there. Somehow, he’d missed.

Strands of watercress and lilies brushed over his face. Tangled in his fingers. With his eyes open, he couldn’t see a damn thing. The pond was surprisingly deep. He flipped and pushed off the bottom.

His head broke the surface of the water. Until he had to gasp he didn’t realize how badly his lungs burned. Water coursed over his face, and he shoved it back. Looked at the bank.

Miss Vale had caught up. She stood at the edge, one hand holding her skirts. Her toes were likely wet, she was so damn close. “That way.” She pointed to Ian’s right.

“How far?”

Despite the panic drawing her features and turning her into a living doll, she spoke calm though fast. “Five feet? Maybe six. She came up.”

“Get back from the bloody bank. If you fall in, I’ll have to pick between the both of you.”

She did it, stepping back, but her expression promised retribution. “Save her.”

He kicked out the way she’d pointed. It took only a few strokes, then he was diving again. Down and farther and his hands stretching out until he felt it. Silk. Cloth.

A ribbon that snapped.

He swam again. On one deep stroke, his arm hooked widely.

He got her by the neck. Didn’t matter. Better him to suffocate her than her to drag in a wheezing lungful of water.

She fought him. Goddamned fought him. Nails flew out with slow drag under the water and scratched the length of his arm. He had to readjust his grip. Eventually he had her in one arm, across the shoulders, and somehow they’d sunk to the blasted bottom again.

His toes squished through muck before he found purchase enough to propel them both toward air. He kicked and stroked with his one free arm. Their heads broke the surface at the same time.

Gasping, clinging weight made the swim to shore take entirely too long. His kicks tangled in her skirts. She weighed as much as three grown men. Once he’d gotten far enough in, he walked them the rest of the way.

He collapsed to the grassy bank, all but dropping Lady Vale beside him. He was fairly sure she was weeping. Through his own whooping breath, he could barely tell.

Now that the immediate danger was over, he was lost. Looking up at the gray-blue sky through the canopy of the very tree which had abandoned its post so badly.

Miss Vale dropped to her knees beside them. Her attention went to her mother first, clutching at her shoulders. “Are you well?”

Lady Vale cracked a sob, her tears rising with her volume. She leaned up on one elbow. A series of coughs wracked her. “I…I think so.”

Miss Vale’s fingers dug into her mother’s shoulders hard enough to leave dents. She shook. Her mother’s head bounced in the air. “How could you?” she cried. “Reckless and awful and—”

Ian scrambled to his knees. The arm he wrapped around her shoulders protested abuse against the already vicious scrapes over his forearms. He yanked her back anyhow. “Miss Vale! Stop this.”

Nothing got through to her. “Horrible woman, how could you? How could you scare me like that?”

Lady Vale started crying again. Her eyes were pale spring versions of her daughter’s verdant green.

“Miss Vale,” Ian repeated, but she was still trying to grab her mother. “Lottie!” he said sharply.

She jerked, her entire body flinching. Her gaze flew to his. “She shouldn’t have!”

She hardly made any sense herself, but he wasn’t about to point that out. He framed her jaw in one hand. If anything, he was making her look at him. Making her focus. “It’s over. She’s safe. It’s all well.”

“It’s not well.
She
isn’t well.” When she shook her head, tendrils of reddish hair curled around her neck, dipping down into the shallow opening of her bodice.

Ian realized suddenly, terribly, how close they were. They pressed together from knee to shoulder. He curled over her, his strength absorbing her. Her shoulders were slender, but she wasn’t insubstantial. Beneath her lean curves there was potency. The bottom he had his arm wrapped around was firm. Pliable.

He folded his fingers over her shoulders and carefully set her back enough so that he could breathe.

His lungs would never recover from this day.

Lady Vale collapsed into a wet, sopping pile. Though she buried her face in her arms, broken sobs could be heard. Her weeping was the likes of which he’d never known before. He wanted to scramble away, find the nearest way out because he thought his own heart might break. Lottie seemed versed in what to do.

Her arms curled around her mother’s back, and she pulled the older woman up enough to tuck into her lap. “Come, Mama. I’m sorry.”

Lady Vale shook her head, face pressed against the poof and pile of Lottie’s skirts. “You were right.”

“I can be both right and sorry.” Over her mother’s head, her eyes met Ian’s. She dug up a wan, lost smile, but it wasn’t like her normal ones. This one he wanted to frame with his own lips and make it go away.

He didn’t have time for this. Such dramatics were beyond his experience. Hell, he shouldn’t be calling her Lottie, not when considering matters of propriety, and here he was, forever with Lottie in his mind. Her name and those pleading, lying, smiling eyes would forever be bound together.

He rubbed a hand over his temple. Etta. His sister was his bigger concern. There wasn’t a stone he was unwilling to turn in the entire city of London if it meant easing her heart and mind.

That didn’t leave much time for rescuing kittens or puppies or ladies who were more than a little bit insane.

He pushed to his feet, unwilling to admit how unsteady he felt. His head swam and his vision blurred. Taking a moment to breathe, one hand on the rough bark of the oak that had caused all this trouble, he looked out over the small clearing. “Is this area often frequented?”

“No.” Lottie petted and patted her mother’s hair. “It’s quiet. Most people stick to the paths and the boat launches.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

She cast an apologetic smile at him. “I’m afraid you’ll have to venture out to find someone.”

Indeed he did once he managed to corral his rubbery legs. At the path, he caught the first waif he saw by the shoulder. “Aye, guv,” it squawked. “I was just on the way to me lushery, mind yer own.”

From the child’s dirty face and bedraggled hair, Ian couldn’t tell if he’d caught a boy or a girl. The trousers meant probably male. “I need an errand run.”

The urchin’s entire demeanor changed. He gave a quick nod, tugging on his filthy shirtfront. “Two pence and I’m your boy.”

“Here’s one,” Ian said, digging in his pocket. But he’d apparently lost every bit of change at the bottom of that damned pond. “That is, you’ll get both once you run across the way to number nineteen Cheyne. Tell them there’s been an accident and we need a cart.”

“Promise you’ll pay?” the boy questioned.

Ian couldn’t help his laugh, though he probably seemed more than a little crazy himself. He was soaking wet in the middle of a public park. His mind was twenty feet behind him on a redheaded girl who seemed so unbearably lost in her own laughter. “I’ll pay. Oh God, I’ll pay. One way or the other.”

Chapter Six

By the time a handful of servants came from the house and got Mama bundled in a blanket, then tucked into a cart, Lottie almost felt like she had a hold of herself. Almost.

Mostly she was a hysterical mess trying to keep her bits and pieces from flying away at the edges.

She walked behind the cart, a shawl folded around her shoulders and elbows. Though she kept her head down, she wasn’t sure if it was to avoid the censure she might see from neighbors—or to avoid Ian’s gaze.

Sir Ian, she reminded herself. She had no claim to call him by his Christian name. Yet she couldn’t rid herself of the chant in her head.
Ian saved my mama. Ian saved my mama.

Ian had done what she’d failed to do so many times.

Her discipline failed, and she couldn’t help but look at him out of the corner of her eyes. She glimpsed enough to see the carved lines down his cheeks and the solemn downturn of his lips. That active mouth of his was completely stilled.