Read Rapture Becomes Her Online
Authors: Shirlee Busbee
Rapture Becomes Her (34 page)
It had become Barnaby’s routine, after breakfast and a meeting with Tilden, his house steward, who also acted as his secretary and his bailiff, to ride over to The Birches. A few weeks ago, Jamieson, his head stableman, had shown him a shortcut between Windmere and The Birches and Barnaby no longer bothered taking the public road when he went to call upon Emily and Cornelia. With Lucien’s arrival, he was later than usual getting away this morning, but finally just before noon, he was able to head for the stables and his horse—the spirited black stallion, aptly named Satan.
The day was gray and drizzly as a few dark-bottomed clouds, left over from last night’s storm, scudded across the sky, but eager to see Emily, Barnaby wasn’t about to allow a light shower to stop him. His thoughts were turned inward as Satan, eager to run, galloped over the by-now-familiar route to The Birches.
Barnaby reflected on his visit with Lucien this morning. Lucien looked better this morning, although he knew it would be weeks, perhaps months, before his half brother was fully recovered, not only from his time in prison, but the wound and infection that had nearly killed him. Peckham’s odd activities last night nagged at the back of his mind. Where had the butler disappeared to and why? And then there was the Nolles gang....
Deep in thought, by the time he crossed onto the lands owned by Emily’s cousin, Barnaby wasn’t paying attention to the rolling countryside. One second he was riding along, lost in his thoughts, and the next Satan screamed and went down.
Barnaby catapulted over the horse’s head and slammed into the ground. He hit hard, his head taking the brunt of the fall. Dazed and dizzy he lay there, the breath knocked from his body. His vision swam when he raised his head to look around. Blurry-eyed, he saw Satan struggle to his feet and limp to the side of the trail. The world went black but a second later he was back lying on the road, staring up at the gray sky. Aware he was fading in and out of consciousness, he tried to concentrate, tried to make sense of what had happened to him. The bleating of sheep in the distance filtered through his foggy brain and, groaning, he lifted his head once more. Fighting the dizziness, he looked around, but saw nothing beyond the stallion, his head hanging low, standing nearby.
Noticing a taut thin cord stretched across the lane behind Satan, he frowned. He stared stupidly at the cord, his befuddled thoughts trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Distracted and barely conscious, he didn’t hear the rustling in the bushes next to the road and was unaware of the shadowy figure slipping onto the pathway.
A voice, familiar and not yet familiar, floated in the air somewhere above him. “Damn you! Why the hell won’t you die?” snarled the voice. “You should have broken your bloody neck, but since you didn’t, isn’t it a good thing I stayed to make certain this time?”
Barnaby’s gaze jerked upward just as excruciating pain exploded in his head and this time the blackness stayed.
Chapter 18
W
hen Barnaby regained consciousness a wrinkled male face that he vaguely recognized was staring down at him, the pale blue eyes anxious. The smell and bleating of sheep surrounded him and he risked turning his head and stared into the brown faces of half a dozen placidly chewing ewes. A shepherd, he decided. A shepherd had found him. Loren? Yes. It was, Loren, Emily’s head shepherd.
hen Barnaby regained consciousness a wrinkled male face that he vaguely recognized was staring down at him, the pale blue eyes anxious. The smell and bleating of sheep surrounded him and he risked turning his head and stared into the brown faces of half a dozen placidly chewing ewes. A shepherd, he decided. A shepherd had found him. Loren? Yes. It was, Loren, Emily’s head shepherd.
At the first sign of returning life from Barnaby, Loren cried, “Milord! Thank God, you’re alive! Gave me a fright, you did, when I topped the rise and saw you lying here, like one dead.” And when Barnaby tried to sit up, Loren pushed him gently back down. “No. No. Lay there—you’ll most likely be sick if you try to get up. You’ve an ugly gash across your forehead where you hit your head when you fell.”
Ignoring Loren’s advice, Barnaby sat up and was instantly, violently sick. When he stopped retching, Loren handed him a rag. After Barnaby had wiped away all signs of his bout with nausea, from one of the voluminous pockets of his old jacket Loren brought forth a leather-covered flask that he thrust into Barnaby’s hand. “Drink this,” Loren said.
Gratefully Barnaby did, not surprised that the flask contained some of the finest French brandy he’d ever tasted. Probably from one of Jeb’s runs, he thought ruefully. When the brandy stayed down and the world no longer tilted, he cautiously looked around. To his relief Satan hadn’t wandered off, but when the big stallion attempted to walk, Barnaby’s heart sank: there was blood on the horse’s front legs and the stallion clearly didn’t want to put any weight on his right leg.
With Loren’s help Barnaby struggled to his feet, swaying as the world spun around him. Hanging on to Loren he managed to stay upright and after a minute, things stopped spinning. Loren helped him to the side of the road and leaning against a sapling, Barnaby said, “I’m fine for the moment. See to the horse. Tell me, if you can, if the leg is broken.”
Satan wasn’t fond of strangers and snorting, the big stallion, favoring that front leg, awkwardly tried to turn and run when Loren approached, but Loren snatched up one of the fallen reins and the horse halted. A tense few minutes later, Loren said over his shoulder, “He’s got cuts on both legs, the worst is the right knee—that leg appears to be badly sprained but I don’t think it’s broken.”
Relieved, Barnaby watched as Loren tied Satin to a low-growing brush. Walking back, Loren said, “Took a spill, did you, milord?”
Barnaby’s gaze slid to where he’d seen the cord stretched across the road. The cord was gone, but then he hadn’t expected it to still be there. Unless he’d dreamed that voice in his head, whoever had spoken to him, had taken the cord with him. He touched his forehead, wincing at the stab of pain. His mouth tightened. Whoever it was, must have given him a good whack, hoping to kill him before removing all signs of the cord that had been used to trip Satan. There was one good thing about this latest attempt on his life, he thought grimly: he no longer had any doubt that someone
was
trying to murder him.
was
trying to murder him.
He asked Loren, “Was there anyone else around when you found me?”
Loren started to shake his head, then paused. Fingering the side of his jaw, he said slowly, “Well, now that I think of it, there was a rider cutting across that field behind you.” Loren’s blue eyes sharpened. “Strange the fellow didn’t offer help.”
“Perhaps he didn’t see the accident,” Barnaby muttered.
Loren nodded and said, “Could be. Now how do we get you to Miss Emily?”
Confident his attacker wouldn’t return and with Satan unable to be ridden, and not precisely certain of his equilibrium, Barnaby said, “I’ll remain here while you get help. Leave that flask of brandy with me and take your sheep and go to the house. Tell Walker what happened and have him send the gig for me.”
Left alone at the side of the road with the flask and Satan, Barnaby sank to the ground. Sprawled at the side of the pathway, a few nips of brandy warming his stomach, he replayed the events in his head. Someone had definitely tried to kill him. Someone had stretched a rope across the shortcut between Windmere and The Birches—a route he was known to ride nearly every morning. And someone had remained hidden amongst the shrubby brush and straggly trees that edged the road in this section, watching to see if success had been achieved this time. When he hadn’t been killed by the fall, someone had left the hiding place and struck him a vicious blow to the head, hoping to finish him off.
He touched the gash again, his fingers coming away stained with blood. Gingerly resting his head back against the sapling and swallowing another slug of brandy, he decided that he was getting dashed tired of these attempts. More importantly, his luck was bound to run out sooner or later—which meant he’d better identify his would-be murderer and prevent another, perhaps, successful attack.
It helped to know that there was no longer any question about his series of misfortunes being “accidents.” Someone was trying to kill him.
The sound of a fast-approaching vehicle made him smile. He’d lay odds that Emily was the whip and that she was coming to rescue him posthaste.
Barnaby was right. A moment later, a galloping horse, pulling the gig, topped the rise and sped toward him.
Yanking the horse to a stop, Emily scrambled from the gig, the young footman, Tom, following her, a small valise in his hand. Gray eyes dark with worry, she sank to the ground beside him, the skirts of her blue gown fluttering around her. Tom stood behind her.
With gentle fingers she explored the broken skin across his forehead. “What happened?” she asked tightly. “All Loren would say was that you had fallen from your horse.”
Tom’s presence prevented Barnaby from telling the truth, but he wasn’t so certain he would have even told the whole story without the footman being present. He hadn’t had time to think things fully through, but he saw no reason to alarm Emily. Lamb and Luc could be told the truth, but he’d just as soon Emily remain in the dark—for now.
Smiling wryly, he said, “Loren’s correct and it’s my own fault. Satan is a handful and I’m afraid my thoughts were on you, not the stallion, and we came to a parting of the ways.” His smile fled. “Loren says that beside the cuts on Satan’s legs and knee that the stallion’s leg is only sprained, not broken. I’m sorry for that.”
Emily eyed him suspiciously and he suspected that she knew he was spinning her a Banbury story, but she only sniffed and examined him more closely. Deciding the cleaning of the gash could wait until they were at The Birches, she said, “Tom, we won’t need the things in the valise. Put it back in the gig and help me get his lordship into the gig.”
Barnaby was dizzy by the time he was in the gig, but he hadn’t passed out or thrown up again. His head ached, but it was nothing compared to what his head had felt like when he’d been shot—or nearly drowned. The next time Lamb called him a hardheaded jackass, he thought amused, he’d remind him that thanks to that hard head, he was still alive.
Seeing the flask he still gripped in his hand, Emily plucked it out of his fingers and said, “I think you’ve had enough of this for now.” Tossing the flask onto the floor of the gig, she glanced at Tom and said, “You might as well unsaddle the horse and let us take the saddle with us.” That task accomplished, leaving Tom to follow along on foot, leading the limping Satan at a pace the stallion could sustain, Emily and Barnaby drove away.
At The Birches, Barnaby was solicitously escorted upstairs into the room he had occupied when he had been “accidentally” shot hardly two weeks previously. That wound had barely healed and now he was sporting a hard-to-miss gash across his forehead. The gash wasn’t deep, more broken skin than anything else, but there was going to be a devil of a bruise—which was going to look wonderful, he admitted, when he and Emily married on Tuesday morning.
A note to Lamb at Windmere along with a request for a carriage was sent off with Alice, the scullery maid, and while he waited, having refused the services of a physician, Barnaby submitted to Emily’s doctoring. She was, he decided, every bit as competent as Lamb.
Once the cut had been cleaned to her satisfaction, Emily leaned back in her chair and stared hard at Barnaby. Cornelia sat nearby, frowning.
“You still insist that you fell,” Emily said for the sixth time.
“Yes,” Barnaby replied as he had the previous five times. He cocked a brow. “Haven’t you ever fallen from a horse? It happens to the best of riders.”
“You appear to be a bit accident-prone, wouldn’t you say?” Cornelia remarked, those sharp hazel eyes not moving from his face. “You’re found half-drowned in the Channel—a boating accident of some sort; then a poacher ‘accidentally’ shot you and now you’ve ‘accidentally’ taken a spill from your horse. Odd, don’t you think?”
Barnaby hunched a shoulder. “Unfortunate, a string of bad luck.”
Emily’s gaze never left his face. “Someone’s trying to kill you, aren’t they?”
Now why, he wondered bitterly, had he fallen in love with an intelligent woman? At the moment, what he wouldn’t give for Emily to be a biddable little thing with nothing in her head but frivolous yearnings for gowns and gewgaws. And Cornelia, he added, seeing the speculation in those brilliant eyes of hers. Of course, if they weren’t so smart, they’d have bored him to death . . . and he wouldn’t have fallen in love with Emily—and the formidable great-aunt.
Forcing a laugh, he said, “Come, come now, don’t be ridiculous—I fell off my horse. Nothing else. No one wants me dead. No one is trying to kill me. Why would they?” He waggled his eyebrows at Emily. “You of all people know how charming I am.”
Emily could have hit him, and from between clenched teeth, she got out, “And how infuriating! This is no jesting matter. Someone has tried to kill you three times.”
“That many?” he teased. “If that’s true it’s certainly an inept would-be murderer, wouldn’t you say?”
So angry she could hardly see straight, Emily jumped up from her chair and, crossing to the marble-topped bureau that held the supplies she’d used to clean and patch Barnaby’s wound, she threw down the damp cloth. Perhaps his would-be killer was inept, she thought furiously, but the person was equally persistent and sooner or later . . .
Barnaby wasn’t, she decided slowly, a stupid man. He had to know that someone was trying to kill him. That his life was in danger. So why was he pretending otherwise? Her breath caught. Of course—the idiot was
protecting
her. A warm tide washed over her. It had been so long since anyone had tried to protect her from anything that she was touched . . . and furious. He probably, she thought acidly, wasn’t telling her the truth because he didn’t want her to worry. Her heart twisted. Didn’t he know that not knowing the truth was far worse?
protecting
her. A warm tide washed over her. It had been so long since anyone had tried to protect her from anything that she was touched . . . and furious. He probably, she thought acidly, wasn’t telling her the truth because he didn’t want her to worry. Her heart twisted. Didn’t he know that not knowing the truth was far worse?
A militant gleam in her eye, she swung around. Even with the gash on his forehead already turning an interesting shade of purple, he looked so dear, so beloved sitting there, that her anger ebbed and she was only aware that she loved him more than anything else in the world. He smiled sunnily at her and despite herself she smiled back at him. Damn him.
Barnaby knew he’d handled the situation badly. I should have told her, he thought, as he rode home in the carriage with Lamb an hour later. But what good would it have done? She’d only have worried . . . but I should have told her.
Seated across from him, Lamb said, “You know, I can’t remember the last time you were unhorsed.” He sent Barnaby a look. “May I assume that there is more to the tale than what you told Miss Townsend and that you’re about to tell me the truth?”
“Yes,” Barnaby said, and as the coach rolled homeward, proceeded to tell Lamb the exact sequence of events.
Lamb nodded several times and when Barnaby finished speaking he said, “Well, at least now we know that someone is definitely trying to kill you and that nothing has been an accident.”
His gaze on the passing countryside, Barnaby asked abruptly, “Do you think that Simon could be behind the attacks?”
Surprised, Lamb questioned, “Simon? Now why has your fancy hit upon him?”
“Because Mathew and Thomas are not in the area—they’re at Monks Abbey several hours away and not due to arrive at Windmere until Monday. Simon, I would remind you, is still at Windmere, roaming freely about.”
“Yes, but . . .” Lamb frowned. “It’s possible . . . he did go for a ride this morning. . . .”
His face grim, Barnaby said, “Find out, discreetly, what time my dear cousin Simon left for his ride this morning, the direction, if possible, and when he returned.”
They rode in silence a bit, then Lamb asked, “Are you going to tell Luc?”
“Yes. It’s only fair and it will be comforting to have another pair of eyes watching my back.” Barnaby grimaced, thinking of Emily. Why was it fair to tell Luc, but not Emily? Was he being fair to her, keeping the truth from her? I should have told her, he thought again, conscious of the hole he had dug for himself. Recalling the militant look in her eye, he sighed. She hadn’t believed him anyway, and unless he missed his guess, his prevarication had been for naught.
Peckham was horrified by Barnaby’s pink-and-lavender-hued forehead when he arrived back at Windmere, but Barnaby brushed aside the butler’s sympathy as he ascended the stairs to his rooms.
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