Amanda Scott (16 page)

“Melanie?”

“Yes, it’s me.” The little girl moved around to squat down where Emily could see her. There were tearstains on her cheeks.

“You came back,” Emily said dully.

“I was afraid she would kill you,” Melanie said, her voice shaking now. “I could not just walk home without knowing.”

“You saw me?” Emily tried to sit up, got as far as propping her elbow beneath her, then stopped, too dizzy to do more.

Melanie was nodding. “In the village and again on the moor. You fell behind, though, and so she didn’t see you. I never thought you would follow her. When I heard you cry out …” She stopped, her voice catching in her throat.

“Who was she?”

Melanie looked away. “Just an old woman.”

“Oh, Melanie, did you give her the money you got in the village? Have you been trying to help her for some reason?”

“Can you get up?” Melanie asked.

Emily managed to sit up, holding her head in a vain attempt to stop the pounding. “I think I will be steady enough to stand in a minute or two,” she said, “but tell me about that old woman, Melanie. Did you give her the money? It will not do to prevaricate, you know. You must have got some in the village, for you have no other reason to visit the apothecary. Moreover, I saw you give her something.”

“I bought some pennyroyal for Mama’s tea,” the child said, holding out a small brown paper packet. “She has been complaining of feeling bilious after she dines. I thought the tea would soothe her.”

“I have no doubt that it will,” Emily said, trying to look stern, “but you gave that woman something. What was it?”

“Will you tell Cousin Jack?” Melanie asked.

Emily hesitated, wondering if fear of punishment would induce Melanie to confide in her. “I certainly ought to do so,” she said slowly.

Melanie stood up, squaring her thin shoulders. “I expect it is your duty to tell him.”

Trying not to jar her aching head, Emily moved back a little so that she could lean against a tree trunk. Looking up even so short a distance was painful, and she knew she dared not attempt to stand just yet. “Look here, Melanie,” she said quietly, “I am no tale bearer, but neither am I a fool. I won’t have to tell Cousin Jack a thing if you mean to go on getting money in the village. He will find out for himself soon enough, and it won’t take him months to do so this time, either. You know what will happen then, do you not?”

Melanie nodded, biting her lip.

“You cannot want him to punish you.”

This time Melanie shook her head, but though tension showed clearly in her face, still she said nothing.

Repressing a sudden urge to shake the child until her teeth rattled in her head, Emily said, “The very best thing you can do now is to tell him yourself what you have done. He will be angry, but if you will tell him why you did it, I am persuaded he will not punish you severely.”

Looking down at the ground, Melanie shook her head again.

“Are you afraid to tell him?”

She nodded.

Emily sighed. “He only wants to help you, darling. I promise you, it will be much better to explain the whole to him before he discovers for himself that you have done it again. I will go with you if you like. Cousin Jack will help that old woman if she needs help. Indeed, I am sure that he can fix whatever is wrong if you will but place your trust in him.”

Melanie shook her head again, her lips pressed tightly together. Then she said, “Can you get up now, Aunt Emily? I don’t like it here.”

Emily gave up. Her head was hurting too much to allow her to think clearly, and all she wanted to do was to find a soft pillow upon which to rest it. Discovering that she could get to her feet, she still had all she could do to make it back to the house. She felt dizzy and nauseated, and when Melanie said in a small voice as they were making their way up the drive, “You won’t tell him, then?” Emily would have liked very much to snap at her, but she didn’t have the strength to do so. Instead, with an effort she managed to utter just one word:

“No.”

Melanie gave an audible sigh of relief, only to gasp a moment later when the front doors flew wide and a tall, muscular figure ran down the steps and across the drive to meet them.

“Emily!” Jack put a strong arm around her shoulders. “I saw you from the library window. Good God, what happened?”

She managed to smile. “Do I look as though I’ve been dragged through a bush backward? I promise you, I feel worse than that.”

“You look as though it hurts you to walk,” he said grimly, drawing her to a halt and making her look up at him.

The effort was too much. No sooner did she tilt her head back than the dizziness overcame her. She didn’t swoon, but neither did she protest when he scooped her up into his arms. Settling her head against his shoulder, she was just thinking about how much more comfortable she was when she heard him demand that Melanie tell him what had happened to her.

Speaking quickly, Emily said, “Someone attacked me from behind as I passed through the woods on my way home from the village. If Melanie hadn’t heard me cry out and run to find me, I should no doubt be lying there yet.”

“In the woods? The home wood?”

Not wishing to nod, she murmured, “Yes, Jack, and I’ve got the very devil of a headache, so would you pray be so kind as to stop bellowing in my ear?”

She thought he growled, but he didn’t say anything more until he had laid her down upon the sofa in the library and shouted for a servant to bring him some cold cloths to lay upon her head.

“When you’re feeling more the thing,” he said, “I’ll carry you up to your own bed. Did you see who it was who struck you?”

“No,” she answered, glad she was telling the truth, since his gaze was singularly penetrating.

“Did Melanie see anyone?”

“Ask her,” Emily suggested, but the little girl had taken the first opportunity to slip away. When Jack turned as though to shout for her, Emily added casually, “I daresay she would have told me before if she had seen anyone.”

Miss Lavinia hurried in just then with a basin of cold water and some cloths. “Said you’d been hit on the head,” she said briskly, wringing out a cloth and placing it upon Emily’s brow. “Told Cook to prepare a tisane for you. My own recipe. Never failed me. We’ll have you feeling stout again in the twinkling of a bedpost. Be best if you was in your own bed though.”

“I’ll carry her up,” Jack said.

“I can walk,” Emily told him, smiling.

“I saw you walk. I’ll carry you.”

Understanding from his implacable tone that further argument would be useless, she suggested that the sooner he did so, the better it would be. “We shall have Sabrina down upon us if you don’t, and I’d as lief talk to her without having to move my head. My own bed and about a dozen pillows would suffice for heaven just now.”

“Blasphemy,” murmured Jack. “Don’t let the vicar hear you say such stuff. My bellowing is nothing compared to his, you know.” He scooped her up again, careful not to dislodge the cloth, and carried her upstairs.

Martha, having learned in the servants’ room of her mistress’s accident, was awaiting them. “What this world’s coming to, I don’t know,” she muttered. “Just you set her down in that armchair, m’lord. I’ve ordered a hot bath, and the lads will be bringing the water straightaway.”

“Martha,” Emily said, “I don’t want a bath. I just want to go to bed.”

“What you want and what you’ll get are two different things, missy,” said her abigail tartly. “You’ve torn your frock and scraped your face and your elbow, and you’ve dirt and whatnot all over you. And that’s just the part I can see. Get between clean sheets like that you will not. Not while I’ve breath in my body to prevent you. First we’ll have a look to see how bad you hurt yourself. What manner of villain strikes a lady down in broad daylight, I should like to know.”

Emily glared at Jack, daring him so much as to smile at seeing her thus reduced to nursery status.

He patted her hand. “Mrs. Cooling is right, my lass. You just sit quietly here while I hurry the lads with the water.”

Emily gritted her teeth. “I am perfectly capable of washing my face and hands at the basin. I do not need a bath. All I want to do is to get into bed.”

Jack smiled at Martha and said gently, “Perhaps I ought to remain here to assist you, ma’am. It appears that your charge is prepared to be recalcitrant.”

“You will do no such thing,” snapped Miss Lavinia from the doorway behind him before Emily could voice her outrage. “You just run along downstairs, young man, and leave poor Emily to her tirewoman. Here is the tisane I promised you, my dear,” she added, taking it from Molly, who entered just then. “You drink this up and have your bath, and you will feel much more the thing. Meriden, you still here?” she demanded. “Shoo!”

Jack fled, leaving Emily feeling somewhat bereft. For all his teasing and his concern for her injury, he didn’t seem compelled to fuss over her, and she enjoyed his banter. Not that she would tell him so, of course.

When he and Miss Lavinia had gone and the tub was full, she allowed Martha and Molly to help her out of her clothes, and she had to admit that the bath felt better than she had expected it to. She had a few scrapes and incipient bruises from her fall, but only her head gave her any pain to speak of.

Once Emily was out of the tub, Martha insisted upon brushing her hair and plaiting it as she normally did for bed.

“You’ll be more comfortable so,” she said, and Emily didn’t argue with her, knowing she would not be comfortable with her hair pinned up or with it hanging loose. Nevertheless, the brushing was an ordeal, and by the time she was tucked up in bed with the last drop of Miss Lavinia’s herbal tisane inside her, all she wanted to do was to sleep.

To her astonishment, she slept the whole night through, not waking until the following morning was well advanced. Her curtains had not been opened, and Martha was sitting in a chair drawn up by the bed, her hands folded serenely in her lap.

Emily smiled at her. “I hope you have not sat there the whole night long,” she said.

“That I have not,” said her abigail, rising and moving to open the curtains. “Molly and one of the other maids sat here, turn by turn, after I went to my bed. I came in this morning at my usual time. Seemed a pity to wake you, though, when you was sleeping so peacefully.”

“But why did anyone sit with me? My injury was not so bad as that. Indeed, barring some soreness where I was struck, I feel as fresh as a daisy this morning.”

“You was unconscious afterward,” Martha said, “so his lordship insisted on someone staying by you through the night.”

“His lordship? Good gracious, Martha, you do not take your orders from Meriden.”

“No, Miss Emily, that I don’t, but happened I agreed with him. And you needn’t take that high tone with me, or with him neither, for you owe him your thanks if for nothing more than keeping Miss Sabrina from wringing her hands over you all the whole night long. Wanted to come along up and waken you just to hear with her own ears that you wasn’t perched ready to go aloft with the angels. His lordship put a stop to that right quick.”

Emily chuckled. “Then, truly, I am grateful to him, and so I shall tell him. May I get up and go to breakfast with the family, or do you intend to keep me tied by the heels in my bed the whole day long?”

“I am sure that must be your own decision, Miss Emily. It is not my place to be telling you what to do.”

“No, it certainly is not, you wicked woman, and what you were about to be giving me orders yesterday like you did, and in front of Meriden, at that, I cannot think.” Emily grinned. “I will wear the pomona-green sprigged muslin and the green sandals. And I think,” she added with a small grimace, “that I shall wear my hair in a net.”

“It still has to be brushed if you’re meaning to show your face outside this room,” Martha said firmly, “but I can contrive to arrange it in a coil at the back of your neck without hurting you too much, I expect.”

Though the hour was more advanced than usual when she went downstairs, Emily found Sabrina and Miss Lavinia still seated at the table in the breakfast parlor. Oliver and Mr. Saint Just were likewise present, and the latter appeared to be attempting to conceal amusement.

Sabrina, who had been talking when Emily entered, broke off to demand to know how she fared. “For although Jack assured us that you would mend quickly, I could not help but think you had simply lost consciousness again, you know, and weren’t asleep at all, but he wouldn’t let anyone waken you. He said so long as your breathing was even, it was foolish to disturb you. Wouldn’t let me send for Dr. Prescott either.”

“I am perfectly stout, thank you,” Emily said, nodding to the two young gentlemen, who had got to their feet, then moving to peer beneath the lids of the dishes on the sideboard. “I’ll have some sliced beef,” she said to the maidservant, “also some bread and butter, and a dish of that fruit. Oh, and a fresh pot of tea, Anna.”

“Ordered raspberry tea for you already,” Miss Lavinia said. “Soothing. Body’s had a shock, don’t you know. Raspberry tea’s just the thing.”

“Very well, ma’am, I’ve no objection, certainly.” Emily took her seat, peering at her sister. “What’s amiss, Sabrina? I heard you chattering like a magpie as I came in. You sounded most distressed.”

Oliver chuckled, earning himself a glare from his mama. “If all you and Mr. Saint Just can do is to laugh, then I’ll thank you to take yourselves elsewhere,” Sabrina said severely. “You won’t think it so funny when our neighbors descend upon us in a fury, one after the other.”

“Good gracious!” Emily looked from one to another. Miss Lavinia’s thin lips were twisted wryly. “What is it?”

“The Runners,” Oliver said, carefully straight-faced, “have organized a horse patrol.”

“They couldn’t get a proper Bow Street horse patrol up from London on such short notice,” Mr. Saint Just added in an explanatory tone, “so they are using local lads.”

“But why—”

Sabrina wailed, “They are trampling the woods, the moors, and no doubt every farm and garden for miles around. I shan’t be able to show my face for weeks! Everyone will complain. Only think how angry Mr. Scopwick became when they did no more than question his housekeeper. His kitchen garden is his pride and joy! If he even thinks—”