The Lady Chosen (30 page)

Holding the candle high, she walked down the corridor. The walls leapt out at her as the candlelight touched them, but all seemed familiar, normal. Her slippers slapping
on the cold tile, she passed the butler’s pantry and the housekeeper’s room, then came to the short flight of stairs leading down to the kitchens.

She paused and looked down. All below was inky black, except for patches of faint moonlight slanting in through the kitchen windows and through the small fanlight above the back door. In the diffuse light from the latter, she could just make out the shaggy outline of Henrietta; the hound was curled up against the corridor wall, her head on her paws.

“Henrietta?” Straining her eyes, Leonora peered down.

Henrietta didn’t move, didn’t twitch.

Something was wrong. Henrietta wasn’t that young. Greatly fearing the hound had suffered a seizure, Leonora grabbed up her trailing night rail and rushed down the stairs.

“Henriet—
oh!
”

She stopped on the last stair, mouth agape, face-to-face with the man who had stepped from the black shadows to meet her.

Candlelight flickered over his black-avised face; his lips curled in a snarl.

Pain exploded in the back of her skull. She dropped the candle, pitched forward as all light extinguished and everything went black.

For an instant, she thought it was simply the candle going out, then from a great distance she heard Henrietta start to howl. To bay. The most horrible, bloodcurdling sound in the world.

She tried to open her eyes and couldn’t.

Pain knifed through her head. The black intensified and dragged her down.

Returning to consciousness wasn’t pleasant. For some considerable time, she hung back, hovered in that land that was neither here nor there, while voices washed over
her, concerned, some sharp with anger, others with fear.

Henrietta was there, at her side. The hound whined and licked her fingers. The rough caress drew her inexorably back, through the mists, into the real world.

She tried to open her eyes. Her lids were inordinately heavy; her lashes fluttered. Weakly, she raised a hand, and realized there was a wide bandage circling her head.

All talk abruptly ceased.

“She’s awake!”

That came from Harriet. Her maid rushed to her side, took her hand, patted it. “Don’t you fret. The doctor’s been, and he says you’ll be good as new in no time.”

Leaving her hand limp in Harriet’s clasp, she digested that.

“Are you all right, sis?”

Jeremy sounded strangely shaken; he seemed to be hovering close by. She was lying stretched out, her feet elevated higher than her head, on a chaise…she must be in the parlor.

A heavy hand awkwardly patted her knee. “Just rest, my dear,” Humphrey advised. “Heaven knows what the world is coming to, but…” His voice quavered and trailed away.

An instant later came a rough growl, “She’ll do better if you don’t crowd her.”

Tristan.

She opened her eyes, looked straight at him, standing beyond the end of the chaise.

His face was more rigidly set than she’d ever seen it; the cast of his patrician features screamed a warning to any who knew him.

His blazing eyes were warning enough to anyone at all.

She blinked. Didn’t shift her gaze. “What happened?”

“You were hit on the head.”

“That much I’d gathered.” She glanced at Henrietta;the hound pushed closer. “I went down to look for Henrietta.
She’d gone downstairs but hadn’t come back. She usually does.”

“So you went after her.”

She looked back at Tristan. “I thought something might have happened. And it had.” She looked back at Henrietta, frowned. “She was by the back door, but she didn’t move…”

“She was drugged. Laudanum in port, trickled under the back door.”

She reached for Henrietta, palmed the shaggy face, looked into the bright brown eyes.

Tristan shifted. “She’s fully recovered—lucky for you, whoever it was didn’t use enough to do more than make her snooze.”

She dragged in a breath, winced when her head ached sharply. Looked again at Tristan. “It was Mountford. I came face-to-face with him at the bottom of the stairs.”

For one instant, she thought he would actually snarl; the violence she glimpsed in him, that flowed across his features was frightening. Even more so because part of that aggression was directed, quite definitely, at her.

Her revelation had shocked the others; they were all looking at her, not Tristan.

“Who’s Mountford?” Jeremy demanded. He looked from Leonora to Tristan. “What is this about?”

Leonora sighed. “It’s about the burglar—he’s the man I saw at the bottom of our garden.”

That piece of information had Jeremy’s and Humphrey’s jaws dropping. They were horrified—doubly so because not even they could any longer close their eyes, pretend the man was a figment of her imagination. Imagination hadn’t drugged Henrietta nor cracked Leonora’s skull. Forced to acknowledge reality, they exclaimed, they declared.

The noise was all too much. She closed her eyes and slipped gratefully away.

Tristan felt like a violin string stretched to snapping point, but when he saw Leonora’s eyes close, saw her brow and features smooth into the blankness of unconsciousness, he dragged in a breath, swallowed his demons, and got the others out of the room without roaring at them.

They went, but reluctantly. Yet after all he’d heard, all he’d learned, to his mind they’d forfeited any right they might have had to watch over her. Even her maid, devoted though she seemed.

He sent her to prepare a tisane, then returned to stand looking down at Leonora. She was still pale, but her skin was no longer deathly white as it had been when he’d first reached her side.

Jeremy, no doubt prodded by incipient guilt, had had the sense to send a footman next door; Gasthorpe had taken charge, sending one footman flying to Green Street, and another for the doctor he’d been instructed was the one always to summon. Jonas Pringle was a veteran of the Peninsula campaigns; he could treat knife and gunshot wounds without turning a hair. A knock on the head was a minor affair, but his assurance, backed by experience, had been what Tristan had needed.

Only that had kept him marginally civilized.

Realizing Leonora might not wake for some time, he raised his head and looked through the windows. Dawn was just starting to streak the sky. The urgency that had propelled him through the last hours started to ebb.

Pulling one of the armchairs around to face the chaise, he dropped into it, stretched out his legs, fixed his gaze on Leonora’s face, and settled to wait.

She resurfaced an hour later, lids fluttering, then opening as she drew in a sharp, pain-filled breath.

Her gaze fell on him, and widened. She blinked, glanced around as well as she could without moving her head.

He lifted his jaw from his fist. “We’re alone.”

Her gaze returned to him; she studied his face. Frowned. “What’s wrong?”

He’d spent the last hour rehearsing how to tell her; now the time had come, he was too tired to play any games. Not with her. “Your maid. She was hysterical when I got here.”

She blinked; when her lids lifted, he saw in her eyes that she’d already jumped ahead, seen what must have happened, but when she met his gaze, he couldn’t interpret her expression. Surely she couldn’t have forgotten the earlier attacks. Equally, he couldn’t imagine why she’d be surprised at his reaction.

His voice was rougher than he intended when he said, “She told me about two early attacks on you. Specifically on you. One in the street, one in your front garden.”

Her eyes on his, she nodded, winced. “But it wasn’t Mountford.”

That was news. News that sent his temper soaring. He shot to his feet, unable any longer to pretend to a calmness that was far beyond him.

He swore, paced. Then swung to face her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She met his gaze, didn’t cower in the least, then quietly said, “I didn’t think it was important.”

“Not…important.” Fists clenched, he managed to keep his tone reasonably even. “You were threatened, and you didn’t think that was important.” He locked his eyes on hers. “You didn’t think
I
would think that important?”

“It wasn’t—”

“No!”
He cut off her words with a slicing motion. Felt compelled to pace again, glancing briefly at her, struggling to get his thoughts in order, in sufficient order to communicate to her.

Words burned his tongue, too heated, too violent to let loose.

Words he knew he would regret the instant he uttered them.

He had to focus; he brought all his considerable training to bear, forcing himself to cut to the heart of the matter. Ruthlessly to strip away every last veil and face the cold hard truth—the central solid reality that was the only thing that truly mattered.

Abruptly, he halted, drew in a tense breath. Swung to face her, locked his eyes on hers. “I’ve come to care for you.” He had to force the words out; low and gravelly, they grated. “Not just a little, but deeply. More deeply, more completely, than I’ve cared for anything or anyone in my life.”

He drew a tight breath, kept his gaze on her eyes. “Caring for someone means, however reluctantly, giving some part of yourself into their keeping. They—the one cared for—becomes the repository of that part of you”—his eyes held hers—“of that something you’ve given that’s so profoundly precious. That’s so profoundly important. They, therefore, become
important
—deeply, profoundly important.”

He paused, then more quietly stated, “As you are to me.”

The clock ticked; their gazes remained locked. Neither moved.

Then he stirred. “I’ve done all I can to explain, to make you understand.”

His expression closed; he turned to the door.

Leonora tried to rise. Couldn’t. “Where are you going?”

Hand on the knob, he looked back at her. “I’m leaving. I’ll send your maid to you.” His words were clipped, but emotion, suppressed, seethed beneath them. “When you can cope with being important to someone, you know where to find me.”

“Tristan…” With an effort, she swiveled, lifted her hand—

The door shut. Clicked with a finality that echoed through the room.

She stared at the door for a long moment, then sighed and sank back on the chaise. Closed her eyes. She comprehended perfectly what she’d done. Knew she would have to undo it.

But not now. Not today.

She was too weak even to think, and she would need to think, to plan, to work out exactly what to say to soothe her wounded wolf.

The next three days turned into a parade of apologies.

Forgiving Harriet was easy enough. The poor soul had been so overset on seeing Leonora lying senseless on the kitchen flags, she’d babbled hysterically about men attacking her; one minor comment had been enough to attract Tristan’s attention. He’d ruthlessly extracted all the details from Harriet, and left her in an even more emotionally wrought state.

When Leonora retired to her bed after consuming a bowl of soup for luncheon—all she could imagine keeping down—Harriet helped her up the stairs and into her room without a word, without once looking up or meeting her eye.

Inwardly sighing, Leonora sat on her bed, then encouraged Harriet to pour out her guilt, her worries and concerns, then made peace with her.

That proved the easiest fence to mend.

Drained, still physically shaken, she remained in her room for the rest of the day. Her aunts called, but after one look at her face, kept their visit brief. At her insistence, they agreed to avoid all mention of the attack; to all who asked after her, she would be simply indisposed.

The next morning, Harriet had just removed her breakfast tray and left her sitting in an armchair before the fire, when a tap sounded on her door. She called, “Come in.”

The door opened; Jeremy looked around it.

He spotted her. “Are you well enough to talk?”

“Yes, of course.” She waved him in.

He came slowly, carefully shutting the door behind him, then walking quietly across to stand by the mantelpiece and look down at her. His gaze fastened on the bandage still circling her head. A spasm contorted his features. “It’s my fault you got hurt. I should have listened—paid more attention. I knew it wasn’t your imagination, what you said about the burglars, but it was so much easier to simply ignore it all—”

He was twenty-four, but suddenly he was, once again, her little brother. She let him talk, let him say what he needed to. Let him, too, make his peace, not just with her but himself. The man he knew he should have been.

A draining twenty minutes later, he was sitting on the floor beside her chair, his head leaning against her knee.

She stroked his hair, so soft yet as ever ruffled and unruly.

Suddenly, he shivered. “If Trentham hadn’t come…”

“If he hadn’t, you would have coped.”

After a moment, he sighed, then rubbed his cheek against her knee. “I suppose.”

She remained in bed for the rest of that day, too. By the next morning, she was feeling considerably better. The doctor called again, tested her vision and her balance, probed the tender spot on her skull, then pronounced himself satisfied.

“But I would advise you to avoid any activity that might exhaust you, at least for the next few days.”

She was considering that—considering the apology
she
had to make and how exhausting, mentally and physically,
that was likely to be—as she slowly, carefully, went down the stairs.

Humphrey was sitting on a bench in the hall; using his cane, he slowly rose as she descended. He smiled, a little lopsidedly. “There you are, my dear. Feeling better?”

“Indeed. A great deal better, thank you.” She was tempted to launch into questions about the household, anything to avoid what she foresaw was to come. She put the urge from her as unworthy; Humphrey, like Harriet and Jeremy, needed to speak. Smiling easily, she accepted his arm when he offered it and steered him into the parlor.

The interview was worse—more emotionally involved—than she’d expected. They sat side by side on the chaise in the parlor, looking out over the gardens but seeing nothing of them. To her surprise, Humphrey’s guilt stretched back many more years than she’d realized.