by Sophia James
‘A carriage hit us and it did not stop.’ Already she could see the back of it turning a corner further off, nothing from this distance to distinguish it from the others that plied the road. She felt sick and shaking and, recognising shock, placed her hand at her neck to count her pulse. Fast and thready. Swallowing, she tried to take stock of her fright, but the tunnel about her was darkening and then the world was simply falling away.
She woke a few moments later propped up against a brick door well with many people about her. There was something tight around her head and she put her hand up to see what it was.
‘Leave it there, Miss Smith, it’s a bandage.’ The man who brought them coal was kneeling before her, his brow furrowed. ‘Your head was bleeding badly and the flow needed to be stopped.’
Rose was beside her now, her face white. ‘You fainted, Belle. How do you feel?’
‘Better. I am sure I will be fine.’ She tried to come to her haunches, but the world swam dizzily and so she sat back. ‘Give me ten minutes and we will start for home. Did you see the carriage who hit us, Mr Curtis?’
‘Not really. It were a fine one, though, and the driver were in livery.’
That was new. And worrying.
Mrs Roberts from a few streets away had also come forward. ‘Gracious me, Miss Smith, you were lucky you were not both killed. My son Harold is here with me as he is home for a few hours to see us. I will get him to help you.’
Belle wanted to say no because Mrs Roberts’s son was a kitchen worker in a fine house in Portman Square. The woman had told her of it only last week in a voice filled with pride. Not the Thornton town house, for she had asked after the name of the man who employed him, but not far away either and surely folk of that ilk banded together socially.
However, when Harold came and lifted her, his strength was gratifying. Testing her legs, she found everything to be in working order and noticed Rose to be doing the same.
‘I’ll see you both home, miss. You still look a bit wobbly.’
The bandage about her head throbbed and Annabelle tried to loosen it a little. She hoped it was clean and that the pressure from it would stem the blood loss until she could get back to White Street and deal with it herself. With thanks, she took Harold Roberts’s offered arm, spots of colour dancing in her vision.
* * *
‘The healer, Miss Smith, was in an accident today in Whitechapel, my lord. I thought you should know of it.’
‘An accident?’ Lytton stood very still as he waited for the answer.
‘A carriage hit her. It came out of nowhere and threw her on to the road, according to Roberts. He works next door in the kitchens of Lord Stephens.’
Each of his valet’s words came through a beating horror.
‘Was she killed?’ He could barely ask this question.
‘Not killed, my lord, but hurt badly.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘At home with her aunt, Roberts said, my lord.’
Lytton looked at the time. Three o’clock in the afternoon. ‘Tell the driver to have the carriage brought around and make sure it is ready to leave in fifteen minutes.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ Lytton could see questions in the eyes of his valet as he turned to find his coat. What the hell would happen now?
He had deliberately stayed away from his town house yesterday morning when Miss Annabelle Smith had come to see his sister. He hadn’t wanted to meet her again, here, bounded by protocol. He had wanted a clean break and a certain ending and Lucy’s improving state of health had been conducive to such a plan. She was recovering. The baby was no more. She had also stated an intention to retire to Balmain Hall and Lytton was all in favour of it. He knew his servants would not gossip, but he wanted to make sure that the man who had done this to his sister would not brag either. When Lucy could speak to him without looking as if she might shatter, he would pursue it further. But meanwhile he would make his own enquiries quietly so as not to incite question.
Right at this moment there was also the further problem of an accident. What did ‘hurt badly’ constitute? His mind raced across many possibilities but he batted them all away. He would go and see for himself. He would visit Miss Annabelle Smith openly. He would bestow a good sum upon her clinic for discreetness and for confidentiality and to help her through this dark time and then...then he would forget her, consign her to a mistake just as he had done with all the other women he had once admired.
It would be an end to the nonsense. Lady Catherine Dromorne and he would marry and produce heirs to take the Thornton name marching into the future. A continued line of Earls.
He swallowed away fury. It was ordained. He was only a vessel for such perpetuity, a slight figure in the descent of lords who had come before him and would come after him. The tapestry of history.
* * *
His first look at Miss Annabelle Smith drove each and every thought he had had in coming here away.
She looked beaten and scared and injured. One eye was black, her head was bandaged and her wrist sported a sort of splint from the elbow to the tip of her fingers.
‘What the hell happened?’ He could not help the anger, roiling in without end.
‘A carriage hit me. Rose was there, but she is recovered. We did not see it for it came on the end of Whitechapel Road where the street turns. Then it kept going.’
A tight corner by the sounds of it, Lytton thought. Had someone deliberately tried to hit them?
He sat when she gestured to a chair on the opposite side of the small room, three feet between them. He wanted to touch her, hold her tight in his arms against his chest to banish the demons so plain in her face. He wanted to tell her, too, that she should leave here and come to somewhere safe and beautiful. To rooms similar to those he had procured for Susan Castleton.
That thought had him flushing. He could not offer Miss Annabelle Smith that and she would never accept it.
They were caught here, in limbo, Whitechapel throbbing outside her door and her aunt in the very next room. Caught by circumstance.
‘Did you see who was driving, who was inside?’
‘The driver wore livery.’
‘Hell.’ He saw her grimace. ‘I promise it was not mine.’
For the first time a smile threatened. ‘I did not ever think that.’
A new silence lay in the room as they both sought direction. Lytton could see that she was worried, he could see her lip quiver and that her wide blue eyes were bruised.
‘I think...’ She stopped.
‘What?’
‘I think someone has been following me. I have never really seen him, but I feel it. Someone dangerous. Someone who wants me gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Dead, perhaps. Dealt with. Banished.’
At that he stood, being careful not to trespass upon their distance. Once breached, he was unsure exactly what might happen next.
‘I will employ someone to walk with you. Someone large.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to be a prisoner.’
‘You also do not want to be dead.’
‘Everyone will talk.’
‘About what?’
‘About you paying for a protector. There are woman here who have such men...’
‘Annabelle.’ It was the first time he had ever used her name.
‘Yes.’
‘There are two things that you can now do. Listen to gossip or feel safe. Which is it to be?’
‘I want to be safe.’
‘Good. There will be someone here for you in the morning. He will stay close until I have caught whoever it was who ran you down.’
‘How could you do that? How could you find them?’
‘Easily.’
* * *
She believed him for his troth was not lightly given. He looked
tired today, the gold in his eyes clouded. He looked big, too, his strength easily seen and the power that sat on his shoulders well in evidence. She needed this strength even though she could not understand his promise.
‘I would not be able to pay you for such a guard.’
‘I would not expect you to.’
‘And I won’t use blackmail to get what I want. Ever.’
‘I know that, too.’
This conversation was going everywhere, running across the threads of what bound them together. Lucy. Medicine. Respect. Desire.
That last realisation made Belle blush and she sought for pragmatism and logic. Why was Thornton here? She could not ask. She could only sit and wait until he left.
‘I am sorry.’ His words held echoes and it was as if he had read her mind. Again.
Then he was gone.
Chapter Eight
Lytton drove directly from Whitechapel to the home of Aurelian de la Tomber. His friend was more than interested in the story he told.
‘So the driver wore livery?’
‘Of gold and blue. And the horses were a grey pair. Roberts, a kitchen hand on the scene, had noticed them go past a few seconds before the accident. His mother, who was with him, said the curtains in the carriage were drawn.’
‘The clues mount. We’ll have this bastard in no time. What will you do with him.’
‘Kill him with my bare hands the way I am feeling at the moment.’
‘Is Miss Smith hurt badly?’
‘She has a cut on the head, a black eye, two torn-off nails and a badly broken wrist. The skin across her cheek has been grazed and she is damned frightened.’
Lian whistled. ‘This from a Boadicea who by public gossip is scared of nothing?’
‘You have been asking after her?’
‘Shay thought it wise. He said you were staring at her that morning as if she were the Holy Grail. He wondered at her story.’
‘With friends like that who needs enemies?’
‘Rumour also has it you will be marrying Lady Catherine Dromorne very soon.’
‘I am.’
‘While riding all over London in the hope of saving a woman who means nothing to you?’
Breathing out at that, Lytton laid one hand across the solidness of a mantel. ‘Nothing is ever simple.’
‘Try to explain it, then. I am here to listen.’
He took a breath and started. ‘Annabelle Smith is brave and beautiful. She is also in need of a saviour.’
‘Which is you?’
Nodding, he wondered at such honesty. ‘There is something about her that is remarkable. Some sense of honesty and purpose and truth...’
‘Shay says the opposite. He says all he could see in your healer was secrets.’
‘She has those, too, but I think they are not hers. I think someone else has forced them upon her.’
‘Merde,’ Aurelian swore. ‘I thought Violet and Celeste were mysterious and complex, but this woman...’
‘I think someone from her past is now trying to kill her.’
‘Why?’ Lian suddenly focused.
‘Because she is not as she seems. Because she is visible. Because she has escaped from the safe boundaries of Whitechapel and stumbled into my world.’
‘So now you feel you are responsible?’
‘Perhaps, for the one who wants her harmed is here, close.’ Through the wide windows of Aurelian’s study Lytton could see London town, the rooftops varied and the trees of summer green. It was raining again. Lately, he thought, it had scarcely stopped.
‘Maybe you are right. They make sense, your deductions, the change of circumstance, the flighty darts of fate. Who are your enemies, Lytton?’
‘There are many. Business fosters losers who hate a winner. Gambling is the same and jealousy is a hard task master. The list is as long as your arm and as varied.’
‘Then write the names down and I will cross each off as I look into their recent movements and the state of their stables. Surely a near miss would leave some sign upon the body of a chassis or in the paintwork and footmen and drivers can always do with an extra bob.’
‘I’ll ask at Tattersall’s. They might recognise the description of livestock.’
‘Do it carefully though, Thorn. If the bastard knows you are enquiring after him he will use the time to hide his trail and if the driver was indeed liveried he will have the means to do it.’
‘I appreciate this help, Lian. Could you keep all this confidential for now?’
‘When can I meet her? Miss Annabelle Smith?’
‘You never will. She is not for me.’
‘If you say so, Thorn. Have a drink then and tell me more about Lady Catherine Dromorne.’
Lytton lay in bed that night, wondering about Annabelle Smith’s safety. He had hired a man recommended to him by Lian under the instructions to be there at White Street in the early morning. He could not think after the near miss today that the perpetrator would be up to trying anything more tonight.
He needed to sleep because he had hardly had any rest since this whole thing with Lucy had begun weeks before. Yet he couldn’t seem to relax as images of Annabelle with her damaged face and head and hand came to mind.
God, he’d plighted to courting Catherine Dromorne in twelve weeks’ time and he had hardly given her a thought. That worried him, as did the fact that he could have somehow been the catalyst for the attack on Annabelle Smith.
Had someone seen him at her house or her at Portman Square and put two and two together to make five? Did they think there was more to their relationship than simply paying for her services as a herbalist? He frowned at this. He had found himself calculating the same possibility and yet she had hardly given him any sort of carte blanche on her affections.
Rather the opposite. Today she’d looked as though she had wanted him gone for all the minutes he was there, though the same sort of spark between them had ignited as it had each and every other time they had met, the warmth of it curling into his blood.
He would not let her be hurt. He would protect her to the very last farthing of his more-then-substantial fortune and even that thought was worrying. She was an enigma, sometimes this and sometimes that and then something else entirely. His reactions to her were topsy-turvy and disquieting.
He’d gone to Whitechapel to offer money in order to have her out of his life and instead? Now she was more inveigled in it than she had ever been before and he did not want that changed.
Lian had caught on to his ambiguity and had known that Annabelle Smith held more than his mere respect. If he carried on in this way, others soon would, too.
The moon was out tonight, almost full. He wondered if she saw it from her room in Whitechapel as it hung high above London, shining on all the various facets of it. Did she find sleep in her pain or was she lying there as he was, sleepless with thought?
Could he ever regain the sort of life he had had before he had met her? The life where he had barely glanced at another in terms of for ever.
God. That truth had him sitting and reaching for the brandy bottle by the side of his bed. Business was brisk and required all his attention. Lucy was in need of him with her loss of the child and in her bid for freedom. His brother had been sent down from school and was due at Balmain come the morrow and God knew where Prudence was, running from it all in the far-flung parts of southern Europe.
He could not be thinking of a healer from Whitechapel who should mean nothing to him and could only cause trouble. Yet he was and there wasn’t a thing he could do about changing it.
He slept fitfully and in small bursts and was glad when the dawn came and he could finally get up.
* * *
Belle looked at her face the next morning and grimaced.
Her left cheek was red raw from scraping the road and th
e eye that had blackened was now swollen and sporting other colours of purple, red and a dark crimson. Her hair was still matted from the blood she had lost and the bandage had left deep ridges in her forehead when she unwound it. At least it had stopped bleeding and the pounding headache of yesterday had subsided to a lesser ache.
She could not believe the Earl of Thornton had come again. She was astounded by his offer of a guard and his direct and honest manner with her. They had not touched. She was glad of that because in her shock and fright she knew if they had she might have simply clung on to him and held there, like a limpet to a rock in the face of a storm-filled sea that was sweeping her away.
Thornton made her less and more all at the same time. Less careful, more trusting, less certain, more aware. He stripped back the façade and found her core, trembling against circumstance and soft inside the hard shell she had wound about herself for all the years of her life.
Surviving.
Soon there would be nothing left to fight the foolish hopes that were rising each time she met him and then what might happen?
A guard was in place when she opened the curtains, a tall bulky man who stood still like a sentry, highly visible in the moving tableau all about him. People looked, of course they did, but they moved on as well because of the menacing and ominous stance. He meant business. He wanted violence. A man like that in Whitechapel was a known quantity. People stayed well away.
‘Have you seen him, Belle?’ Her aunt came through the doorway, her glance upon him through the glass. ‘He says he will remain at your side until he is told not to. He does not expect that to happen any time soon. His name is Mr McFaddyen. A Scot, I would guess, and a Highland one to boot. Milly says he could probably snap a man in two with his bare hands if he wanted and he has the look of one that does.’
‘Is this supposed to be reassuring, Tante?’
‘It depends if it is the man who went out of his way to make certain his carriage hit you and Rose yesterday. If it were he, I should be at Mr McFaddyen’s side, cheering him on.’