The Bad Baron's Daughter (17 page)

Lord Linden had no wish to let Chilworthy dump Guy on one of those saddles and escape into the night, but there was no hesitation in his step as he turned from Guy and strode through the lodge’s open door into the shadowed interior. “Katie?” he called.

“In here, my lord. The dining parlor,” came Katie’s voice.

Linden followed the voice and found himself inside the overlit, muggy room where Katie was standing alone beside a small table. Her body was completely covered by the cloak. He could see only her face which bore a rather startled expression.

“My lord,” she said, not moving, “the pistol went off.”

“I heard.”

“Yes. I drew it from the drawer. And I held it under my cape.” She seemed confused. “Then… then I tripped on the edge of my cape and the pistol went off. Where are they?”

“Your attractive cousin and his
âme damnée
are on their way back to town presumably. Can’t you hear their horses? Gone, Katie, don’t worry about them. Katie, where was the barrel of the pistol facing when it fired?”

“Toward…my shoulder.” Katie heard Linden draw in his breath sharply. “You see, at first it felt like a punch and I thought, well, I thought that the pistol had jumped as it fired and hit against my shoulder. B-but I feel hot now, hot inside my chest. Lord Linden,” she said, at once sheepish and stunned, “I’m sorry, but I’m very much afraid that I’ve shot myself.” She drew her hands from her cloak, still clutching the short-barreled pistol, and stared at them. Her small fists were blotched with blood.

She didn’t look up as she heard Linden cross the room and felt herself lifted and then laid on a homely couch. The harsh bonds fell from her wrists as he produced a small knife and parted the cords with one hurried slash.

“Lay still,” he commanded, and then was gone.

Katie peered glassily at the far-off ceiling and began to sing a low, atonal melody, trying to concentrate on each note in sequence.

“O, Glor-i-ous Home-land just o-ver the line, Pre-pared for the wea-ry by Christ the di-vine… Oh, Lord Linden, are you back? Where did you find all those towels? Oh, no, please don’t open my dress!”

“Struggle,” he said harshly, “and I’ll knock you out. Christsake, child, you haven’t got anything I’ve never seen before. About a thousand times.”

“A thousand times? Really? Why is my dress blackened?”

“Powder burns. Point blank range. This will hurt you but I can’t help it. Take a deep breath, sweetheart, and close your eyes.”

Katie’s universe spun and pitched for a moment, then dipped back to dully painful comprehension. She opened her eyes again to find the strained face above her.

“What happens when you press like that?” she asked, her voice a thread.

“Slows the bleeding.”

“Oh. Isn’t it funny?”

“Hmm? What’s funny?”

“My cousin wanted to kill me but… oh, that feels so… my lord?”

Katie felt his hand cool against her cheek. “I’m here, Katie.”

“Yes. Yes. Well, my cousin wanted to kill me but I saved him the trouble by shooting myself. Don’t you think that’s funny? Why did you come? I didn’t think that there was any help for me.”

She felt the steady, efficient hands change position. “Because I knew I wouldn’t sleep tonight unless I was sure you were all right. No, be still, child. Lay quietly.”

“Am I going to die?”

“No. God, no.” It was as though he made her a promise. “You aimed well, little innocence, missed all the arteries. But the bullet didn’t travel through so it must be lodged against bone. You’ll have to have it out, Katie, but not until I get you to a doctor. First, though, the bleeding must slow down. Tell me about your cousin Ivo.” Linden changed towels over the wound, this time applying pressure with one hand while the other tucked the cape firmly around Katie’s shivering limbs. Gently, he stroked the hair from her pale forehead, and then touched her dry, bluish lips.

“Ivo?” she said hazily. “Ivo would inherit my mother’s father’s estate if I died. Mother’s father’s, does that make sense? But then he said that he would as soon marry me, because then he’d have control of the money, anyway, wouldn’t he? I didn’t handle things well and I made him angry. Oh, and he said he was skilled in the manly arts.”

“A gentleman of rare finesse,” said Linden. “Your knees must have grown weak from such an excess of gallantry.”

Katie gave him a quick feeble smile that went straight to his heart. “Weak knees and weak stomach. I told him if he tried to make love to me, I’d be sick.”

“No one will ever be able to accuse you of coquetry. Having failed at claiming French pox with me, no doubt you dared not try it again?” His attentive fingers had been softly massaging Katie’s finely drawn cheeks but now they slid down to rest briefly over her heart, feeling its too rapid, fluttering pulse. “And then?”

Katie laid her tongue tiredly over her upper lip. “Then, I think that’s when he said that I was your, well, your woman. But he used another word for it.”

“Oh? Then I’m doubly glad that you didn’t tell him you had the French pox. Only conceive the reflection that would have been on me.” He watched her face closely. “Did he make you bed him, my dear?”

“No. Only kissed me, and that was distasteful enough, not at all like when you do it. I don’t think that he could have been speaking the truth when he claimed to know about the manly arts, do you?”

Linden shifted the cloth and was relieved to see the bleeding had diminished. “Oh, a
blanc-bec
of the first water. Now, Katie, I’m going to bandage your shoulder and then well go for a short ride on Ciaffa.” Katie watched the practiced hands as they packed and bound her shoulder. She could tell he was taking great care not to hurt her but still she had to take her lips between her teeth to keep from crying out. His sober brown eyes scanned her blanched countenance. “Here, stay a moment, Katie. I’ll be right back. Sing again.” He left her side and she tried to sing, though it was harder now to concentrate on the words.

“A-sleep in Je-sus! Bless-ed sleep! From which none… none ev-er wake to weep.” How thin her voice had become. “A calm and un-dis-turbed re-pose, Un-broken by the last of foes.”

“Cheerful,” observed Lord Linden, as he re-entered the room carrying a silver flask. He sat beside her on the couch. “Katie, I’m going to lift you some. No, don’t try to help me, let your body relax. That’s right. So. I think you’ll stand the ride better if I make you a little drunk first. Can you sip from this if I hold it for you? Try now. Dieu, what a face, child. And this my best cognac! A palate that can tolerate sour milk has no business rejecting vintage brandy. Come, Katie, again.”

“Very well, my lord… but it tasted like you filled your flask from the ditch.”

Perhaps imbibing a liberal amount of Linden’s brandy had something to do with it, but Katie found no extraordinary discomfort attended the transition from the couch to Ciaffa’s well-muscled back. Lord Linden had arranged her before him on the saddle to give her the greatest support. There could be no joy in holding her thus; in feeling the vital child reduced to this pathetically limp creature whose head fell so heavily against his chest. Katie unconsciously clasped and unclasped her cold, benumbed hands, and on her wrists he could see the flayed skin where Guy had bound her. The flesh had contracted over her cheekbones until they stood out in drawn and rigid bas-relief. There was no key in Linden’s hard young face to the emotions that moved him, nor did he permit any uncertainty to flaw the rocklike steadiness of his hold on the wounded girl.

Ciaffa’s slow, musical canter flew across the earth like the free wingbeats of a blue heron in flight. Katie could see the sparkling milky paradise of the night sky; it seemed as though she were floating through the stars, a lonely, wandering comet. But not alone.

“Still with me, little one?” said Linden.

Katie stirred in his arms. “Yes… my lord? I don’t remember—did I thank you for coming? Have I thanked you for all the times you’ve saved me? I would have been killed many times if you hadn’t saved me.” She giggled weakly. “Although you’ll probably tell me that it is an anatomical impossibility, for a person to be killed more than once. Anyway, I wanted to say thank you.”

“Forget it, child. How’s the pain? Do you think you could sleep?”

“The pain is better than it was, but I don’t want to sleep. I want to enjoy being awake and safe.”

The moonlight lent a silvery cap to a nearby stand of European larches rising in narrow pewter towers from the corner of a hop field. She was lying very still, and he had begun to wonder if she had fainted when she spoke again.

“There is something—I wish I could stop thinking about.”

“What?”

She looked up at him with dazed misery. “Ivo Guy said that he was going to—going to take me beneath him, and he would give me to Chilworthy too. It makes me afraid when I think of it.”

“Don’t think of it.”

“I can’t help it. What would have become of me if that had happened? My cousin said it would be better if I died. Do you think so?”

He was shocked by his own reaction to the horror in her voice. “No. No matter how they had hurt you, Katie, I would have found you and taken care of you.” He stopped, silenced by an awareness of the inadequacy of his comfort. To his amazement, though, some of the tension seemed to leave her body, and she said with something close to contentment, “Oh, yes.”

Involuntarily, his arms tightened their hold. They rode on in silence, Katie lying quietly against him. The houses were becoming closer together, and the traffic was increasing to a regular rush, until the passing of a vehicle was no longer as remarkable as a clear space in the road. They were coming into Mayfair now; passing to their left a palatial mansion lined with glimmering windows and crowned by an array of improbable pinnacles. Linden kept Ciaffa to a steady pace, riding through pools of amber streetlight, finally turning onto a beautiful square. Katie saw across the square a giant abode, fourteen windows wide, with a gray stone front and unadorned portico and pediment, set within a graveled courtyard.

“My lord, that house…” said Katie, struggling to sit up.

“Carefully!” said Linden sharply. “Katie, you mustn’t move, or the bleeding will increase.”

“But, my lord, this is your grandmother’s house, isn’t it? Lady Brixton? I thought you were going to take me to a doctor.” He heard real fear in her voice.

“S’death, child, will you be still? There’s a doctor only down the street; he will be fetched.”

Katie turned her head to stare at the crenelated outline of the mighty house. “Take me to him at his home. Please.”

“So haughty, My Lady Disdain? You lived above
The Merry Maidenhead
, you lived with Laurel,” he said quizzically. “Won’t you try living with a duchess? It’s uphill all the way.”

“I didn’t
want
to live with Laurel,” pointed out Katie. “You made me. That was one thing, but this,” she faltered, “is quite another.”

“I’ve never heard it so well put,” he said with mock admiration. “Stop squirming.”

“Well,” said Katie, “I’m not very articulate but I do know that duchesses don’t entertain nobodies. And I’m worse than nobody. I’m… I’m an ivory-turner’s daughter! And your grandmother is, oh, the elite of the elite! And that kind of people despise me, my lord. Please, you can’t know. The squire near my home in Essex had three daughters, all respectable, and once when they were out riding they found me playing with one of their father’s lambs and they said…”

“Hell and damnation, Katie, will you spare me any more of your pitiful scenarios? Bon Dieu, they’re enough to harrow Attila the Hun! I’m willing to believe you’ve been insulted and mercilessly mistreated on any number of occasions, but you have a bullet lodged in your shoulder that will kill you if it doesn’t come out and I’ll be damned if I’ll take you to a place where you won’t get proper care. If it’s any consolation to you, my grandmother was one of the town’s most notable fallen angels in her youth. Age may have lent her the cachet of moral rectitude, but believe me, fifty years ago no one would have called her respectable. Our family is noted for wild youth and pompous old age.”

They reached the stone steps of the portico and the tune of Ciaffa’s even pace faded.

“Even so,” said Katie, her frigid hands clutching at the neck of her cape in agitation, “she won’t like me to come into her house.”

“Of course she won’t like it. So what? She’ll calm down after I explain. Besides, when I think of it, this is a damn good time to take you into her house. She can’t throw out a wounded juvenile,” he said callously. He slid lightly from the saddle, leaving one sustaining arm around Katie. “Relax your body and fall toward me. Don’t worry, I won’t let you drop. There. Katie, what the… stop! Saints save you, you’ll kill yourself.”

“I don’t care,” said Katie, squirming desperately in his arms. “At least let me walk. That’s all I ask—not to be carried in like a hunk of mutton. Let me stand. Please!”

Linden bent one arm to set her feet on the top stair. “You’ll collapse before you go two steps, little tiger. And I’ll have to carry you anyway.” He saw the hysterical shock bright in her pained eyes. He didn’t dare try to collect her in his arms against her will. The Lord only knew what kind of damage she might do to herself with a struggle.

“I won’t faint,” she said shakily, “I never faint and I never cry and I never get sick. Except that I almost got sick when Ivo Guy kissed me.” She gave Linden a wavering smile. “I’m not off my head, really I’m not. Only I feel enough of a spectacle without being carried. Can you understand that?”

“No,” he said uncompromisingly. “You’re out of your mind. I think it would be in your best interest if I slapped you insensible, and I’d do it, too, if you weren’t staring at me like a lost dove. Come on, then. Step.” He urged her forward, keeping a firm hold of her shoulders. It amazed him that Katie could even stand in her condition. When they reached the door, Linden banged the knocker with his free hand.

The door was opened by an imposing white-haired butler whose salt-and-pepper eyebrows levitated at the sight of the surprise visitors.