Leslie LaFoy (37 page)

She'd barely begun to struggle when Devon scooped her up from the debris and cradled her in his arms. She clung to the solid, certain strength of him, burrowing her face into the warm white linen of his shirt and the hard muscled planes beneath. He held her tightly to him and, in the haven of his embrace, the grip of fear began to relax.

“Hang on,” he said softly as he turned and kicked his way through the wreckage.

The movement brought her awareness back to the larger reality. They were outside the storehouse before she could make the words in her head tumble off her tongue. “Devon, this isn't necessary,” she protested.

“I'm a bit battered and bruised, but I'm perfectly able to stand on my own two feet.”

He paused, but instead of setting her down, he shifted his hold so that she rested even closer to his chest. She looked up to see his jaw tighten, a storm gathering in his eyes. Her heart began to race again and she tightened her arms around his neck.

“Meg, will you see to cleaning up?”

“Aye, sir. An' not to worry, Lady Claire, I'll be sal-vagin' everythin' that I can.”

“The compress mixture,” Claire whispered, remembering and trying to turn so that she could see past Devon's shoulder into the rubble of the storehouse. “Is it still there?”

Devon stared down at the bundle in his arms, incredulous. She'd damn near been killed and she was worried about the compress she'd been making for Wyndom? “Hannah,” he said simply, pulling Claire close again and starting for the house.

“I'll see to it, Lady Claire,” the woman called after them. “And that it gets to Mr. Wyndom.”

“There,” he said gruffly as he carried Claire up the back steps. “It's been taken care of. You needn't give it another thought.”

“Devon,” she said softly as they emerged from the dining room and entered the foyer. “I'm embarrassed enough at having to be hauled out of the rubble. But to be carried away like a child… Please put me down.”

“No.” He wasn't sure when he'd be able to let go of her. As long as he was holding her, he could feel her heart beating, feel the warmth of her life pressed against him. It was all he'd wanted, all he'd hoped for in those first seconds after reaching the storehouse. Knowing that she was pinned, imagining the shredded flesh and mangled, crushed bones… He hugged her as he started up the stairs, feeling again the relief that had washed
over him as he'd cleared the last of the debris away and she'd moved her legs. And as it had in the immediate aftermath, rage came again on the heels of gratitude and renewed his strength.

“Why are you angry?” she asked quietly as he carried her down the hall.

“Because at the moment, I could kill,” he answered honestly.

“Who do you want to kill? Me?”

He stopped in his tracks and gazed down into wary, troubled eyes. “God, no. Never.”

She smiled and relaxed against him. “Then who?”

“Darice comes to mind,” he admitted, resuming his course.

“You're not making any sense at all.”

He opened the door to her room with one hand and, using his foot to kick it closed behind them, carried her to the bed while explaining, “That shelf weighs a good twenty-five stone, Claire. There are only two ways it could have come over. The first is if someone were to climb up on the shelves to reach for something and his or her weight pulled it over.”

“I wasn't climbing on them. I was simply standing there.”

“You don't weigh enough to offset the balance, anyway,” he declared, settling her into the center of the feather bed. Bracing himself with a hand on either side of her hips, he met her gaze squarely and said quietly, “Which leaves the second alternative as the only reasonable explanation. Someone pushed it over on you.”

She considered him briefly and then slowly shook her head. “I was standing in the light of the doorway the entire time I was in there, Devon. No one came in.”

“Then someone was in there, waiting for you to arrive,” he said. “Waiting for the chance to kill you.”

“As much as I dislike Darice, I wish I could say that it was her. But it wasn't, Devon. She and your mother
and Elsbeth were walking along the flower beds as I went out. I left them at the back door.”

“Wyndom.”

She shook her head again and gently brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. “He went to his room while we were all still at the table. And as injured as he is, he doesn't have the strength it would have taken to push over the shelves. Neither does he have the speed and agility it would have required to have escaped the storehouse and be out of sight in the time it took for Meg and Hannah to hear the crash and get there from the kitchen.”

God help him, his mind was wandering. He wanted so badly to lean just a little bit forward, to kiss her and gently ease her back into the feathery softness of the bed. “Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot were with me in the library,” he said tightly, pushing himself upright and taking a step back from the edge of temptation.

“We seem to be at a loss for a culprit,” she announced, laughing softly.

He took another step back. “Hannah, Meg, and Ephram have yet to be accounted for.”

“You can't be serious. Hannah and Meg? They're the only friends I have in this world. Besides, they were together in the kitchen. And Ephram? Why would Ephram want to do me any harm, Devon?”

“He wouldn't.” The fear that had gripped him when Meg had rushed into the library tightened around his heart again. Fear of something nameless, faceless, unknown. “But someone had to have pushed that shelf over on you. It didn't just topple all by itself.”

She shrugged. “I shifted a good many things around in searching for what I needed for the compress. It could be that I inadvertently upset the balance so that it tipped over on its own.”

“You're stretching plausibility.”

“And you're not?” she asked, exasperated. “Who, aside from my uncle, would want me dead? And I will remind you that George Seaton-Smythe is in England, no doubt frantically meeting with his barristers.”

An entirely new and far more frightening realm of possibilities opened up before his mind's eye. “We don't know that as a certainty.”

“So you think there's a possibility that Uncle George is skulking about in the woods of Rosewind, watching me, awaiting an opportunity to do me in?” She didn't give him a chance to answer. “George Seaton-Smythe's only familiarity with woods of any sort comes from having passed through one or two while riding to the hounds. He has neither the ability nor the inclination to play at being a poacher, Devon. Either here or in England.”

“He could have hired someone to do the deed for him,” Devon suggested, his mind racing. “He does know where you are, Claire.”

“True,” she admitted. “But that possibility is based on the assumption of several others. The first of which is that he would have had to arrange to have me killed at the same time that he was dispatching me to be your wife. Which presumes that he was aware of the court's investigation of him and that I would be summoned to testify against him.

“I doubt very much that the King's officers politely announced their intentions in advance so that he could set about plotting the demise of witnesses. Then, of course, we have to ask why he would bother to marry me off to you, Devon, when his larger intent is to have me killed. It's a most unnecessary scheme.”

“Not if he wanted to be able to tell his hireling precisely where to find you.”

She rolled her eyes and began scooting toward the edge of the mattress. The hems of her skirts hiked up as she moved, and despite her one-handed effort to keep
them down, Devon was afforded a delightful display of long, shapely legs. If this was God's idea of helping him resist temptation, God was a sadist, pure and simple.

“Would it make you feel better if I agreed with you, Devon?”

Hell, he couldn't remember what they were disagreeing about. And if he had to stand there and watch her fumble with her skirts for one more second, he was going to forget a lot more than that. Devon stepped forward, offering her his hands and saying, “You'll remain here, in this room, with the door bolted, until Darice leaves the house. Is that clear?”

She stood in front of him, the bed brushing against the backs of her legs, her hands gently enveloped in his and wishing he would lean down and kiss her until they tumbled mindlessly onto the bed. That he'd stay with her until Darice left. But it was a fool's hope, a wanton's desire, and so she drew her hands from his and stepped away, blithely saying, “My gown's shredded and I don't have another that's been altered to fit me. It will take me a good hour to make myself presentable.”

He seemed to find it hard to swallow and his voice was tight when he replied, “Perfect. You're safe here.”

“Someone could put a ladder up against the side of the house, crawl through the window, and attack me,” she teased. His gaze instantly went to the window and in the next heartbeat he was moving toward it with long, purposeful strides. “Oh, Devon, really. I was being facetious.”

“And I'm being cautious,” he shot back, checking the lock. “Humor me.”

“Thank you for being concerned.”

He slowly turned from the window, his gaze going to the door before it came back to her. Squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath, he finally said, “I need to go. The Lees are undoubtedly waiting for a report on your condition. It'd be unkind to make them worry unduly.”

He obviously didn't want to go, and it lightened her heart. She nodded in understanding and acceptance. “I'll be down as soon as I can.”

“I'll check the window locks in my room before I go downstairs. Are you sure you're all right?”

“Yes, Devon. I'm fine.”

He hesitated for a moment and then, with a crisp nod, moved to the door connecting their rooms. She watched it close behind him, wondering what would have happened if the Lees hadn't been there. Would he have stayed with her? If he had, would she have thrown caution to the wind and tried to seduce him?

Probably.

Claire sighed and sank down on the edge of the bed, her legs suddenly too weak to hold her. Why did being anywhere near Devon scatter her thinking? What had happened to her sense of purpose, to the dreams that had always sustained her? Casting them aside for an impoverished, slave-owning man willing to commit high treason was beyond irrational. And yet when she was with Devon, when he touched her, reason ceased to exist. Why?

A soft rapping on her door pulled her from her musings. She stared at it, remembering that Devon had wanted her to bolt it and that she hadn't. The knock came again, this time a bit more insistent than before.

“Lady Claire? It's Wyndom.”

Claire pushed herself off the bed and crossed to the door, feeling guilty for having been so absorbed in her own worries that she'd forgotten all about Wyndom's. She opened the door to find him leaning heavily on his cane and offering her a heart-wrenchingly painful smile.

“I hope I haven't disturbed you,” he said before she could apologize for her selfishness.

“Not at all. Hasn't Hannah brought you the compress yet?”

“Yes, a few minutes ago. And she told me about the
accident in the storeroom. She wanted to apply the compress for me, but I insisted on coming down to your room first, to tell you how terrible I feel that you were endangered while doing a kindness for me.”

“There's no need for you to feel anything of the sort, Wyndom,” she assured him, her guilt deepening another degree. “Accidents happen. Now please go back to your room, elevate your leg, and put the compress on your knee. I'll bring you a tray this evening so that you don't have to struggle down the stairs. Pushing yourself will only slow the healing process.”

He didn't make the slightest effort to move. “You're a very kind woman, Lady Claire. It's been for the benefit of all of us that Devon was forced to marry you.”

It was a backhanded compliment if she'd ever heard one. And it was somehow so very Wyndom. And endearing. “Thank you.”

“You will be careful around Darice, won't you? She's not the sort of woman who loses gracefully. Especially when it's something she wants so badly and has worked so hard to get. She set her cap for Devon a long time ago. The only reason she married Robert Lytton was to be within casual visiting distance of Rosewind.”

“I'll be careful,” she promised absently, feeling a deeper sense of pity for the late Robert Lytton than any fear of Darice. “Now, please, Wyndom, go back to your room and put the compress on your knee. If you'd like help with it, I'd be happy to oblige.”

“It's most kind of you to offer, but I can manage on my own,” he replied, turning away from the door. He winced and sucked a breath through his teeth. Claire cringed in sympathy and he gave her a strained smile, adding, “I'm much too young to be so affected by damp and chill, you know.”

Damp and chill? Her brows knitted in consternation, Claire focused her awareness on the air around her
and discovered that Wyndom was absolutely right. It was damp and considerably cooler than she recalled it being when she'd crossed the yard to the storehouse. “I'm sure that Meg and Ephram are lighting the downstairs fires already,” she said. “I'm equally sure that one of them will be up straightaway to see to the one in your room.”

“You're a rare gem, Lady Claire.”

Claire softly closed the door and then leaned her forehead against the cool wood. The weather had changed and she hadn't noticed. As the mistress of Rosewind, it was her responsibility to see that the fires were being lit, that the food being prepared for tonight was appropriate for the weather. And she hadn't done any of it because she'd been oblivious to what was happening in the world around her. Dear Lord. If that didn't say something about the depth of her preoccupation with Devon, nothing did. A rare gem, indeed. Her brain was filled with common rocks.

Claire glanced out the window to make sure Darice's carriage hadn't returned, and then checked her reflection in the cheval mirror one last time. Deciding that the hastily modified gown was good enough for the time being, she dashed out of her room, resolving yet again to keep her mind steadfastly focused on her duties. She'd barely reached the foyer when the Lee brothers and Devon emerged from the library, hats in hand.