Tiger's Eye (6 page)

Besides being crude, the sound was too rawly masculine to be coming from Bernard. Wincing, Isabella lifted her head from the pillow and looked carefully around. The room was large and lavishly appointed, the walls all hung with blue silk. The furniture, including the enormous canopied four-poster in which she lay, appeared to be made of gilded wood. A white chaise covered in what looked like satin stretched before the dying fire that was the room’s single source of illumination. Isabella realized from the deep shadows that crept about the corners of the chamber that it must be night.

But there was nothing on that side of the room to account for the snores, so Isabella carefully turned her head to the right, wincing at the stiffness of her neck and back. On that side of the room stood a gilded washstand which held a dainty porcelain bowl and pitcher. Beside the wash-stand was a partially open door. It was on this door that Isabella’s eyes fastened, widening.

Just visible beyond the door was an enormous pair of men’s boots. From the angle at which they stretched across the opening, it was obvious that they were attached to a man. An enormous man, if the size of the boots was anything to judge by.

Fascinated, Isabella stared at the boots. Wherever she was, it was no place she had ever been before. Except for her wedding night and a few isolated nights thereafter when Bernard, either too bored or too far into dun territory to abide London for a while, had visited the country and subjected her to his husbandly demands, she had never had a man in her room. Now here she was, in a strange and overly ornate bedchamber, lying in an enormous bed that seemed to be scented with lavender and was dressed with silk and lace-trimmed sheets, with a man snoring in the antechamber next door.

What on earth had happened to her? And what did she do now?

Resting her cheek back on the silk-and-lace pillow, careful to keep her eyes on the motionless boots, Isabella frowned as she tried to make sense of her surroundings. She remembered being kidnapped, remembered the horror of learning that they meant to kill her, remembered escaping, being recaptured, running and being shot. Of course, that accounted for the pain in her back.

She also remembered two men, a relatively gentle giant named Paddy and a golden-eyed, wickedly handsome villain named Alec.

The question now was, where was she? Was she in danger? And to whom did those enormous boots belong?

She was not bound in any way, Isabella discovered as she experimentally moved her feet beneath the bedclothes. Surely, if she was being held for some sinister purpose, she would be bound.

Or maybe not. Not if they thought she was unconscious and thus unable to attempt escape.

Escape. That’s what she must do. Wherever she was, it was no place she had been before and thus no place she wished to be. Safety lay in making her way back to Blakely Park, back to the faithful servants who would protect her with their lives, and sending word to her father and Bernard of all that she had endured. Despite their mutual lack of abiding affection for her, they would protect her from whatever ruffians had her in hand now.

The man beyond the door was asleep, no one was watching her and she was not bound. Now was the time to attempt escape, before they discovered her return to consciousness and restrained her. Whoever they were, which really didn’t matter at the moment, it was a certain bet that they meant her no good.

She wanted to go home. Her throat tightened at the thought of Pressy, her former governess and present companion who had been like a mother to her since her own mother died. Pressy would be wild with anxiety about her, as to a lesser degree would be all of the servants who took care of her at Blakely Park. With no real family of her own, she had come to think of them as family, and they had the same regard for her. Will Coachman, if he still lived, would be hounded by guilt at having let her be taken. Jonas, the young footman, would wonder if there wasn’t more he could have done to save her. Jessup would be having endless days of hysterics because she had failed her mistress when she was most needed. All, all, would be glad to see her home again.

Even Russell, the enormous black hound she had taken in as a starving puppy and raised to galloping adulthood, would be missing her. And oh, how she missed all of them!

She had to get home. She just had to!

Moving carefully, the care motivated as much by pain as by fear of discovery, Isabella very gingerly managed to maneuver herself into a sitting position. Her head swam, but by means of sheer determination she forced her mind to function. This might be her only chance to escape. She could not allow bodily weakness to cheat her of it. Not if she ever wanted to get home again.

By clinging to the bedpost nearest her head, she managed to get to her feet. She stood still for a moment, leaning against the wall, waiting for her head to clear. The room was cool enough to make her shiver, despite the fire that burned steadily in the hearth. Her bare feet curled in protest against the cold boards of the floor. But the room’s chill had one benefit: it helped to clear her head a little mote.

She took a step, and then another. Her knees threatened to buckle at any minute, but will power leavened with a healthy dollop of fright kept her going.

Isabella managed to make it to the door, only to discover, as she tried the knob, that it was securely locked.

She tried it a second and a third time before she was convinced: there would be no escaping through this particular portal. There were two windows in the room, one on either side of the bed, shrouded with heavy silk draperies in the same celestial blue as the walls and bed hangings. If she could not leave by the door, perhaps she could get out through a window.

Casting a quick look at the booted feet still clearly visible through the half-open door to the antechamber, Isabella was relieved to find them unmoving. The snores continued unabated. Leaning against the wall, battling the weakness that tried to claim her, Isabella made her way to the nearest window. Thrusting aside the heavy draperies, she made a chilling discovery: on the outside of the frosted glass the window was fitted with iron bars. There would be no escape this way.

Fighting down panic, Isabella stumbled to the other window. It, too, was barred.

What did she do now?

The snoring remained loud and rhythmic. Whoever the man was beyond the door, he was certainly deeply asleep. It was very likely that the key to the door was somewhere on his person, or perhaps lying nearby. She had knocked a man unconscious once before. And that man had not been asleep.

Looking wildly around, fighting the twin demons of panic and weakness that threatened to overwhelm her, Isabella spied an intricately wrought triple candelabra on the floor by the bed. It was only a matter of moments before she had it in her hand. The thing was satisfyingly heavy.

Now all she had to do was step inside that doorway and bash the sleeping man over the head.

Panic cramped her stomach. Clutching the candelabra like a talisman, she told herself to be calm and sensible. She had only to be quiet, and careful, and from somewhere summon the strength of an ox.…

Gritting her teeth, fighting against the weakness that clouded her mind and threatened to send her to her knees, she got to the half-open door. She could see only a little bit of the room beyond, enough to notice that it was a dressing room, perhaps, and every bit as elaborately decorated as the bedroom it served.

In order to view any more of the sleeping man besides his boots, much less knock him unconscious, she was going to have to push the door farther open and slip inside the room.

Isabella pushed at the door. It opened soundlessly, leaving her staring at a squashed-face giant of a man sprawled out in an uncomfortable-looking chair. His head was thrown back against the striped silk of the chair’s top, and from his yawning mouth issued the ear-splitting snores.

He was the biggest man she had ever seen, and there was no mistaking his identity: Paddy.

He had let her go, and she was going to repay him by hitting him over the head with a candlestick. But he had only let her go because a gun battle had erupted; if it hadn’t, sooner or later he probably would have wrung her neck, whether he’d wanted to or not.

That hardened her heart quite effectively. Isabella only prayed that she had the strength to do the job properly. She shuddered to think of his wrath at being clubbed over the head should she not succeed in rendering him unconscious.

Isabella crept almost to the big man’s shoulder. She took a deep breath, raised the candlestick high …

“Don’t make another move!” commanded a harsh voice from the end of the narrow room. Isabella was so shocked that she jumped, her eyes flying to discover a single bed shrouded in shadows against the far wall. In her concentration on the giant, who’d been illuminated by the small pool of light coming through the door from her own room, she had completely failed to see anything else.

A light flared in the charged darkness, was touched by long male fingers to a candle by the bed. Isabella blinked at the sudden spreading light, her eyes fastened to the bed and its occupant.

The man in it was bare-chested except for a white bandage wrapped around his middle, with tousled tawny hair, and several days growth of beard darkening his jaw. He had struggled up on one elbow, and looked as if he would have trouble staying in that position for long.

She recognized him at once despite the shadows that hung over the bed. There was no mistaking those cameo-perfect features—or the gleam of golden eyes.

He held a pistol in his hand, and despite his obvious weakness, it was pointed straight at her wildly beating heart.

IX

H
is eyes moved over her, widened. Looking down at herself, Isabella saw why. She was clad in the most indecent nightdress she had ever beheld in her life. It was pure virginal white, but its color was the only virginal thing about it. Made of diaphanous gauze, it constituted the sheerest of veils over her body. Its neckline was demure, its sleeves long. Its hem reached her ankles. And yet she might as well have been naked.

Her small breasts pressed wantonly against the fabric. Either the chill of the room or the sudden heat of his eyes caused her nipples to thrust against the sheer cloth like hard little buds. Their rosy color, and the darkness of the circles surrounding them, were perfectly visible to her eyes—and, she had no doubt at all, to his.

The lithe line of her rib cage, the narrowness of her waist, the gentle flare of her hips, all were revealed to him. She followed his eyes down over the very slight convexity of her stomach, down the length of her slender legs, to her bare white toes, and up again.

When she saw that he was staring at the sable triangle between her legs, she thought her body would catch fire from embarrassment.

Drawing a quick breath, she sidestepped so that Paddy and his chair were between them. Her hair was tumbling in a wild tangle down her back to her waist. Shaking it forward, she used the fawn-colored mass to shield her body still further from his view. Still clutching the candlestick, her face a flaming red, Isabella at last dared to meet those golden eyes over the top of Paddy’s sleeping head.

What she saw in them made her remember, with heart-stopping immediacy, the scalding heat of his hand cupping her breast.

Then, as suddenly as they had blazed, his eyes cooled, hardened. It was as if he were mentally drawing rein on whatever thoughts had caused that sudden hot flare.

“Put the candlestick down!” he ordered, his voice grim. Then, in a sharper voice, he called, “Paddy!”

Isabella meekly set the candlestick on a table beside the chair, her eyes never leaving the man in the bed. He seemed very weak, almost as weak as she suddenly felt. She clung to the chairback, watching him wide-eyed as he cursed his sleeping friend. His language was enough to singe her ears, but she scarcely heard any of it.

It occurred to Isabella suddenly that she had never before seen a man’s bare chest. Bernard had always come to her bed in the dark, and even then he had not fully undressed. This man—Alec—had wide shoulders, wide enough to block more than half of the simple iron rungs of the headboard from her view. They were heavy with muscle, powerful-looking. His arms were as muscled as his shoulders, corded with them as he leaned on one elbow. His chest tapered down from his shoulders in a wide, deep vee, narrowing until the pale blue satin duvet which covered the bed abruptly cut off her view at his waist. A wedge of curling hair several shades darker than his tawny head covered his chest. It was bisected by the pristine white of a bandage. The bandage had been wrapped around his body several times, and was positioned just below his nipples. His nipples. Isabella stared at the brown circles peeking through the nest of hair, and felt herself go even hotter than before.

Her eyes flew back to his, ashamed of where they had been, to find that he was watching her. His eyes were still cool, still guarded and faintly hostile, but there was an awareness of her in them that made her suddenly catch her breath.

The pistol he pointed at her wavered suddenly before being snapped to attention again. Alec frowned at her over its gleaming barrel. Luxuriously thick, tawny eyebrows nearly met over the bridge of his nose.

“Paddy!” The call was louder this time, then was repeated at almost a shout. The giant stopped snoring, snorted and blinked.

“Damn it, Paddy, wake up, will you? Fine bloody bodyguard you turn out to be!” This last was said under his breath, in a disgusted murmur.

“What?” Paddy sat up, shaking his head to clear it. “Did you say something, Alec?”

“I said wake up, lummox, and look about you. The lady there was on the verge of making mincemeat out of your brains!”

Paddy turned to see Isabella standing behind him, staring down at him with an expression of utter terror on her face. He swore, and jumped to his feet, facing her.

Isabella shrank back against the wall, dragging the chair with her both as a shield from his eyes and as protection from any forthcoming violence. He was huge, at least six and a half feet tall, hulking with muscle for all the semi-civilization of a crumpled frock coat and breeches. His hair was a brown so dark it was almost black, grizzled in places with gray, and cropped close against his skull. His features were nothing short of homely: a broad low forehead set like a shelf over small, deepset eyes; a short nose that might once have been pug but now merely looked squashed, as if it had been on the receiving end of too many blows; a wide mouth and an even wider jaw that jutted out into a square, prominent chin with, absurdly, an off-center dimple. A frown on such a face was unnecessary, but he was wearing one. Her back flattened against the smooth, cool plaster of the wall.