Caroline sprinted toward the back door to the stable, which was only a few yards away. He seized her shoulder and turned her to face him, pressing the big knife to her throat as he backed her against the wall.
“When Rexton returns in the morning,” Dunhurst said, “he'll find you gone. He'll search for you, but you won't turn up. He'll assume you had enough and ran away—they all will. They'll all go home, never suspecting they'd actually left you here, buried deep in the woods where no one will ever—”
She kneed him in the groin, sharp and hard, as Aubrey had taught her. He doubled over, but as she turned to flee, he shoved the knife into her.
Caroline staggered away, looking down in dull shock at the blade sticking out of the left side of her belly. She turned toward the door, only to feel him clutch at her hair. Summoning all the strength at her disposal, she grabbed the knife handle with both hands and yanked it out, blood spilling onto the stone floor.
Dunhurst spun her around. She lashed out with the blade.He stumbled back, howling as he covered his bloodied face with his hands.
Caroline ran from the stable, one hand pressed to the agonizing wound in her side, the other gripping the knife. By the lamplight from the stable, she could see a dirt path disappearing into dense, black woods.
“You little bitch!” Dunhurst screamed as he came after her. “Fucking little cunt!”
She darted into the woods, making her way as quickly as she could through the tangled underbrush. She stumbled along frantically for quite some time, but just as she'd concluded that he wasn't tracking her anymore, she heard him behind her, closing in. She veered off toward the sound of a gurgling stream and waded through it, reasoning that Dunhurst would hesitate to cross it in his shoes. She found a huge tree and crouched down behind it, grimacing in pain. He lumbered through the woods in the opposite direction, cursing and threatening her.
After a period of silence, he yelled from a distance, “You won't get far,with that hole in your gut. You'll never even make it out of these woods. And in a few hours, when the sun's up, I'll come back and find you and bury you good and deep.”
Caroline waited a while longer, and then she hauled herself unsteadily to her feet. She knew she had to get back to the château before she bled to death, but she was so woozy and disoriented that she just ended up wandering aimlessly. Time and again, she tripped over rocks and fallen limbs, but clambered back to her feet and carried on. As dawn broke, she headed in the direction of the rising sun, thinking the château must be to the east, but the woods only grew thicker and more difficult to navigate.
She leaned against a tree to catch her breath. The knife wasn't in her hand anymore; she must have dropped it somewhere. She looked around; the trees swayed. Her head hit the ground.
Get up, she thought blearily. Get up. But her body was so heavy, and the ground felt oddly soft beneath her, like a feather mattress. Her heart thrummed in her chest, and she felt strangely cold. She was soaking wet—that was why.
Caroline looked down at her shift, dark with blood.
Not like this, she thought. Please, God, not like this.
Darius wove his way along the forest floor as the sky lightened, occasionally pausing to pull back his lips and taste the air as he homed in on the scent of blood—human blood. As the smell became overpowering, he saw a patch of something white amid a feathery sea of ferns.
It was a woman, the one called Rose who had been tied to the Great Oak in the Nemeton the day before, lying curled up on her side with her eyes closed and her arms wrapped around herself. Her skin was as pale as her linen shift, or the top half of it, the bottom being, to his feline eyes, nearly black. The source of the blood appeared to be a still-seeping wound on her left side. Livid bruising mottled her left forearm and shoulder. Her legs, and to a lesser extent her arms, were covered with scratches. Darius could see her chest moving with every rapid, shallow breath. Given how much blood she'd lost, it was a wonder she was still alive.
She wouldn't be for long. If the bleeding could be stopped, she might have a chance, but it would not stop on its own.
For Darius, cursed as he was with the power to wrest life from imminent death, there was never any right thing to do in a situation like this. To heal this woman would be to circumvent the natural course of things, which could have unforeseen consequences. Of more immediate and personal concern, however, was the possibility that his “gift” would be discovered, putting him at the mercy of anyone with an ailing loved one. It had happened before, turning him into a virtual slave trapped in a nightmare of pain and infirmity, for every healing took its toll on him; the worse the malady, the more depleted it would leave him. It was to escape such a hellish existence that he'd left his homeland and journeyed halfway around the world, where the djinn were unknown and he could live in peace and solitude. Even his fellow Follets here at Grotte Cachée had no idea that Darius could cure illnesses and mend injuries. He had learned the hard way that there was no one, human or Follet, in whom he could safely confide.
Were he to stop this woman's bleeding, he would be risking much. On the other hand, experience had taught him that if he did nothing—if he walked away and let her die—it would leave him in a torment of guilt.
Darius turned his head this way and that, focusing his hearing for any hint of a distant footfall or voice. He sampled the air for the scent of a human other than this one. Nothing.
He mewed. Rose didn't stir. He moved close to her face and let out a strident yowl. Her eyelids fluttered, then stilled.
He sat down, held his breath, and willed himself into human form. The transformation was instantaneous, and as jolting as always. He kept his eyes closed, his hands braced on solid earth, until the vertigo let up, which only took a few seconds. Filling his lungs with air, he opened his eyes, blinking at the sharp, jewel-like colors all around him.
He turned Rose gently onto her back and stroked her cool, waxen face, sensing an emptiness that told him she was, indeed, entirely unaware of his presence. Holding his hands just above her body, he trailed them downward, noting the two broken ribs he would have to deal with when he was done with the other—if he had the strength left.
The wound in her side, which had been made by a large knife, had nicked her spleen—hence the incessant bleeding. Closing his eyes, Darius concentrated all his vital energy on the ruptured vessels in the little organ, sealing them as if by cauterization, his hands growing hot and quivery as he worked. That done, he joined the incised tissues,working upward from the spleen to the skin, which sealed together quite nicely. She would be left with a scar about three inches long, but over the next week or so, it would fade away to nothing. Of course, the blood loss would leave her in a weakened state for some time, but she would survive.
He took a moment to knit those ribs, then fell back onto the ground, shaking and depleted.
Rexton stood in the stable, staring in bewilderment at the spot where he'd left Caroline tied up. She was gone, with no sign that she'd ever been there except that the pile of straw he'd left her sitting in had been spread out, for some reason, over that section of the floor.
He grabbed a rake and pushed back the straw, some of which stuck to the volcanic stone blocks with which the aisle was paved. Crouching down, he touched the stone; it was wet. In a corner, he found a wooden bucket with a damp wash rag slung over it.
Where the devil was she? Why had she washed the floor? If only he hadn't gotten so bloody foxed last night. His head felt as if it were being squeezed by a pair of giant hands, making it impossible to think.
He stood up to find a gray cat watching him from just outside the open rear doorway. He'd seen it before; Inigo called it Darius. It sniffed at a leaf, one of many scattered over the dirt path that led away from the stable.
“I don't suppose you know what became of her,” Rexton muttered as he turned to leave. He'd taken three steps, when he nearly tripped over the animal as it darted in front of him. Bloody cats. Always underfoot.
&nb
sp; There was something in its mouth—the leaf. Darius dropped it on the floor and mewed.
Rexton had seen cats bring a freshly killed mouse or bird to a favored human as presumed tribute, but this was the first time he'd seen one make a presentation of flora rather than fauna. The leaf looked to be from either a plane tree or a maple, bright green save for a little spot of red near the stem. Rather early, Rexton thought, for the leaves to start changing, even in a mountainous region like Auvergne.
Darius sniffed at the leaf again. And then he looked up at Rexton.
Rexton knelt and lifted the leaf. He rubbed his thumb over the little red spot.
It smeared. “Jesus Christ.”
The cat returned to the back door, looked at Rexton, and mewed.
Rexton stared at it in puzzlement and alarm.
It padded to the edge of the woods, turned, and mewed again.
He followed it.
Twelve
OH, MY GOD. Oh, Jesus.”
Caroline struggled up from the darkness, straining to move, to open her eyes.
Something settled lightly upon her chest. She felt the tickle of hair, an ear pressing against her. “Thank God,” he breathed.
There came a ripping sound, tentative fingertips touching the knife wound on her side.
He cupped her head, stroked her face. “Caroline.”
She'd thought it was Rexton, but it couldn't have been; he wouldn't call her Caroline. Forcing her eyes open, she squinted at a dark form backlit by spangles of sunlight.
“What happened? Who did this to . . . ?”
Her eyelids drifted shut.
“Caroline,” he said in a hoarse, strained voice. “Stay with me. Was it Dunhurst? He has a cut. He said he fell holding his razor. Was it him?”
She tried to answer. Her mouth wouldn't work, but she found she could move her head enough to nod.
He muttered something she couldn't hear, and then he gathered her to him, and told her she was going to be all right, that everything was going to be all right, his voice fading away as she sank back into oblivion.
She whimpered as she was lifted. Everything hurt.
“I know,” he said. “I know. Soon you'll be in a nice soft bed . . .”
“She should be dead.”
Caroline opened her eyes and looked around. She was in la Chambre Romain, lying in the middle of the big, scarlet-and-gold draped bed.
“I don't understand, Dr. Coates.” It was Rexton's voice. “How is it possible for the wound to have started healing so quickly?”
Caroline turned her head toward his voice, her neck feeling strangely thin and weak. She lifted a hand from beneath the covers to touch it. The collar was gone. So were her wrist and ankle cuffs.
“It's a mystery, I'll grant you that,” replied the doctor, who was standing with Rexton and Mr. Riddell on the balcony, all three men leaning on the balustrade with their backs to Caroline. “But it's hardly the first . . . miracle, if you will, that I've encountered as a physician. Once, I delivered a baby boy who was born with a tumor on his spine. Such cancers are always fatal—there's nothing to be done. I told his mother this, but she prayed for his recovery anyway. One morning, the little boy woke up, and the tumor was gone, just as if it had never been there. He's fifteen years old now, a healthy and robust young man.”
“I don't believe in miracles,” Rexton said.
“Luckily for Miss Keating,” the doctor replied, “God doesn't let that stop him. She is very fortunate to have endured what she did and survived—albeit with a massive loss of blood. She will be too weak to travel for some time. And, er, I've no idea how long you intend on remaining here, my lord, but I feel compelled to advise you that the young lady is in no condition at present to participate in relations of an intimate—”
“What do you take me for?” Rexton asked.
Both men looked away.
Mr. Riddell punctured the awkward silence. “Archer tells me that Miss Keating is welcome to remain here until she is fully recovered. As to her contractual obligations, although her servitude has terminated prior to the official conclusion of Slave Week at midnight tonight, it was through no fault of her own. You do understand, Rexton, that you are still obligated to pay the entire purchase price of one hundred thousand guineas.”
“Of course.”
“If I may ask,” Riddell continued, “was there some . . . particular reason you left her in the stable last night? Did she do something to displease you?”
Rexton sighed. “I was in my cups.”
Liar, thought Caroline. Yes, he'd been drunk, but that wasn't why he did it. He did it for the same reason he tied her up in the Nemeton yesterday afternoon and ravished her in the guise of the stableman. He did it to push her away so that he could deal with her as a thing, not as a person. It was why he was always covering her face with that hood, or a blindfold. It was why he'd made her perform acts he knew appalled her, so that she wouldn't complicate things by harboring any but negative feelings toward him.
It was a lesson she'd been slow to learn, but now, at last, she had taken it to heart. Mindful though she was of the unhappy circumstances that had driven Rexton to isolate himself from others, the fact remained that he had become a genuinely distant and unfeeling man. Every gesture of warmth or caring on her part, without exception, had been cruelly punished. He was no longer capable of forming a real attachment to another human being.
“You see?” he'd said after he'd proven, in the Nemeton, what a monster he truly was.
She hadn't seen then, not really. She did now.
“Then you'll do it?” asked Lili, sitting on the edge of Caroline's bed later that afternoon.
The door opened. Lord Rexton, unshaven, uncombed, and still wearing the clothes he'd slept in, entered bearing a heavily laden tea tray.
“Yes,”Caroline said quietly.
“Good,” Lili whispered. “You won't be sorry.”
Rexton greeted Lili and set the tray on Caroline's nightstand. It held a pot of tea and a platter of biscuits and finger sandwiches. “I filched these from le Salon Bleu.”
“May I speak to you for a moment,my lord?” Lili asked.
He looked back and forth between the two women, his eyes wary. “Of course.”
Lili kissed Caroline on the cheek and promised to return later, and then she and Rexton retreated to the corridor. She closed the bedchamber door for privacy, but they stood so close to it that their voices were audible, if muffled.
“Perhaps,” Lili said, “it would be best, considering Caroline's condition and her need for rest, if you were to sleep elsewhere.”
“Did she ask for this? Caroline?”
After a moment's hesitation, Lili said, “Yes,my lord.”
It took him a while to answer. “Very well,” he said.
There came such a long period of silence after Lili said good-bye that Caroline assumed Rexton had left as well, until the door reopened.
He crossed to her bedside without looking directly at her. Filling a little plate, he said, “You must eat if you are to regain your strength.”
“I'm not hungry,” she said, “but I'll have some tea.”
“Just cream, right?” he asked as he poured.
“That's right,” she said, surprised that he knew.
He handed her the cup and saucer and lowered himself into the red leather chair. Scraping a hand over his beard-darkened jaw, he said, “Dunhurst is dead.”
She lowered the cup and looked at him.
“I didn't do it.”
Not for want of trying, though. During Lili's visit, she'd recounted how Rexton had confronted the breakfasting Lord Dunhurst after bringing Caroline back to the château this morning. He had hauled the marquess out of his chair and pummeled him savagely. “If Inigo and Cutbridge hadn't held him back,” Lili had said, “he'd have killed the blackguard.” Given how the two men reviled each other,Rexton had no doubt been grateful for the excuse to bloody his knuckles on Dunhurst's face.
&
nbsp; Rexton said, “Seigneur des Ombres' Swiss Guards chained him up in the cellar with the intent of handing him over to the local authorities to be prosecuted for attempted murder. Archer told him they probably wouldn't hang him, but they might very well lock him up for the rest of his life, or most of it. He said he had no intention of rotting away in some obscure French prison, and apparently he meant it. They put him in leg irons chained to a big stone column. He demanded a chair to sit on, so they brought him one. When the guards left, he tore up his cravat to make a noose, put it around his neck, and climbed onto the chair to tie it to an iron ring embedded high in the column. Then he kicked the chair away.”
Caroline nodded dazedly. She took a sip of her tea, then replaced the cup on the tray and said, “I'm tired. I'd like to sleep.”
He said, “I was thinking perhaps . . .”He rubbed his hands on his trousers in a nervous gesture she wouldn't have expected from a man like him. “You and I became acquainted under rather singular circumstances, to be sure, but I thought perhaps . . .”He took a deep breath and said, “I would be very honored if you would consent to be my wife.”
She stared at him, trying to fathom his reason for doing this.
He said, “You could still teach, if you'd like. I . . . I could build you a school. I do realize things have been . . . Well, I mean, we've hardly had what one would call a normal . . .courtship, or anything like it. You were sold to me as a slave. It can't get much more abnormal than that. But over the course of the past—”
“Oh, my God,” she murmured. “Of course. Of course. If you were to marry me, it would save you having to pay the hundred thousand guineas. Well, I suppose you would still owe the ten thousand in commissions, but it would save you the rest.”
He stared at her.
“I know what marriage means to your class,” she told him. “It's a contractual arrangement. It has nothing to do with love, or even affection. You'll get your heir and your aura of respectability, without having to give up anything—the gin, the opium, the whores, the mistresses . . .”
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