Emily lifted her candle to cast a faint glow around the tiny room. It was a bedchamber by only the barest description. A narrow, uncomfortable bed was in one corner, with a small bed stand beside it. A chair was across the room, in front of a little writing table that was also apparently used for dining, judging by the empty plates stacked on the corner.
The room would have been entirely average…if not for the papers. Thousands of papers, scattered everywhere. Stacked by the bedside, piled beside the soiled cutlery on the table, even beneath the chair.
Grant let out a curse that Emily couldn’t help but agree with. “We’ll never find a bloody thing in this mess,” he growled.
She stepped toward the desk and set the candle down gingerly so not to set the entire mess of correspondence ablaze. “Nonsense. If Leary is working on something presently, it makes sense that he would review it here. Possibly while eating.” She motioned to the empty plates. “I say we begin searching the piles here.”
In the dim light, she saw Grant arch a brow. “You are probably correct. Let us begin, then.”
He reached for a pile and Emily took another. They flipped through the sheets, each scanning over the words. Emily was disappointed by the contents. Bills from creditors were mixed with letters from Leary’s sister in Ireland. And alongside those items were bawdy stories printed on cheap paper with runny ink. Nothing out of the ordinary caught her attention.
They stood side by side, close together so that they could share the light. Emily felt the warmth coming from Grant’s body. Somehow it made her feel…safer. More secure. Like the fear that had been haunting her was dulled.
She frowned. That would not do.
“Here,” Grant’s low voice, laced with excitement, interrupted her musings. He held out a letter written on thick paper. “This might be something.”
Emily leaned toward the candle, letting the light filter over the heavy script. All she could make out were seemingly random letters. Not in any words she understood, certainly.
“Do you think it’s code?” Grant asked quietly.
She scanned the sheet, but couldn’t detect a pattern in the text. “Hard to say. Ana has always been the talent when it came to encryption. But I can say that the hand is very neat, thorough. It isn’t like these other missives Leary has written.” She held up a half-finished letter to his family. It was almost illegible, both in handwriting and content.
“You’re right,” Grant mused. “This is the hand of an educated man.”
He pondered the paper for a moment, then motioned to the pocket of Emily’s pelisse. “Take it.”
Emily hesitated. “Leary might notice it’s missing.”
Grant look around the room with an incredulous frown. “I don’t know how he’d notice anything out of place in this mess. But even if he does, he won’t know who took it. And this is the only potential lead we’ve uncovered. Take it.”
Emily folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket. She lifted the candle and was about to take a pile of paperwork from beneath it when the door rattled. Emily froze, her gaze skirting to Grant.
“Blow it out,” he growled as he shifted himself in front of her. “And move toward the window.”
She didn’t argue. Though her chest was tightening and it was hard to draw breath, she managed to puff the candle out. With trembling limbs, she crossed the room and opened the window. A blast of icy air poured in, chilling her skin, but she hardly noticed the cold. The rattle of the door became louder and suddenly a harsh, echoing voice rumbled from outside.
“Damn key!”
Cullen Leary. Emily reached for Grant’s arm, her fingers digging into his coat.
“P-Please,” she stammered, hating the terror that was so clear in her voice. “We must go.”
Grant shook his head and his expression was so blank and angry and distant that it frightened her. The collected spy was gone, replaced by the raging, out-of-control warrior she’d seen the night at The Blue Pony.
“I want him.”
“No,” she murmured, pulling at him. “We can’t fight him. Not here. Not like this. Please, please, Grant, just come with me.”
He hesitated a fraction, but then allowed her to drag him toward the window. She looked down. The street wasn’t very far below and the wide awning about six feet down could easily be used as a first landing spot before a drop to the sidewalk. She had one foot out on the window ledge when the door flew open, filling the room with sickly, yellow light from the hall.
Leary stumbled in, weaving from what was obviously a long night of drink. He reached back to shut the door, but then the glint of his stare focused in their direction.
“What the hell?” Leary roared.
Everything began to move in slow motion. Grant shifted to a fighting stance as Leary charged across the room like a bull. Emily stifled a scream as he threw back a fist and brought it toward Grant. Even as the strike connected, Grant caught Leary’s arms and the two men came careening backward, smashing against the table where she and Grant had been searching a moment before.
“Go!” Grant bellowed to her as he and Leary grappled. Leary threw a vicious knee into Grant’s stomach and this time Emily couldn’t hold back her scream.
The crippling fear that had clouded her mind when Leary first entered cleared at the sight of Grant, bent over, struggling for breath. She felt a renewed strength as she started back into the room, looking for something, anything to distract Leary and get Grant out. But before she was entirely into the room, both men flew toward her.
She felt them hit her body with enough jarring force that the wind left her lungs and she gasped into the night air.
And then she was falling.
Chapter 15
Grant lunged for the window, forgetting Leary as he watched in horror as Emily spiraled downward. He grabbed for her hand, but she slipped from his grasp.
“No!” He clutched the window ledge as he watched her slam into a wide partition below and then bounce onto the hard pavement, where she lay motionless.
Grant stared, completely numb for a brief moment, but then he felt like his heart had exploded. Nausea washed over him. Was she…was she dead? Had he lost her?
Leary’s chuckle drew his attention to the drunken goliath. He spun around just in time to see the other man’s fist coming toward him, but this time he had a knife clutched in his thick, dirty fingers. Grant dodged, deflecting the weapon away from his heart, but the blade still slid across his shoulder, cutting through his greatcoat and down to skin.
Oblivious to the pain, Grant threw a punch, catching Leary across the jaw. In the other man’s drunken state, he stumbled back and didn’t block when Grant smashed another blow across his chin.
Leary staggered before his eyes rolled into his head and he pitched back like a toppling tower. He slammed across the table beside his bed, sending papers and splintering wood scattering across the room. Then he lay still.
Grant moved toward him, blinded by rage and a desire to finish what he had begun. To destroy. Maim. Even kill. But a voice in the back of his mind, a voice of reason that had been lacking for the past year, screamed at him to go to Emily. And for once that voice was more powerful than his out-of-control anger. He ran for the open door, flying past the peering gazes of other men who rented rooms in the worn-down establishment.
It seemed to take forever to make it to the street, though in truth it was only seconds. What he saw as he flew from the front door brought a flood of unwanted emotion and pain rushing at him.
Emily lay on the cobblestone walkway in a crumpled heap. He rushed to her side and fell to his knees before her, sliding his hands over her body to ascertain if she had broken any bones. When he didn’t feel any obvious fractures, he gathered her up, visions of Davina’s dead eyes haunting him as he pulled Emily against his chest.
“Please, Emily,” he murmured into the soft, sweet scent of her tangled blond hair. “Please.”
“Grant,” she groaned as her fingers came up to clutch th
e lapel of his jacket. “Lady M. We must tell Lady M…”
Her voice went weak as she continued to mumble nonsensical ramblings, but Grant didn’t care. She was alive. He pulled her close and raced to the carriage that waited around the corner in a darkened alleyway. He had to get her to a safe place. Somewhere close by.
He thought of what she had said. Lady M. It gave him an idea. He called a few directions to his driver and climbed into the vehicle, holding Emily in his arms and praying they would arrive in time. Praying her injuries weren’t severe.
“Grant,” she murmured and it seemed her voice was clearer now. “Grant?”
He stroked her hair aside and felt the wet stickiness of blood coat his fingers. Pushing his horror down deep, he smiled and hoped she couldn’t see his terror in the dim carriage.
“It’s all right, love,” he soothed. “I’m here. You’re fine. You’ll be fine.”
“Where…are…we…going?” she asked and it was clear that each and every word was a struggle for her to form. “Leary—”
“Shhh. We’re going somewhere safe.” He looked into bright blue eyes, made even brighter by pain and the force of the blow to her head. “We’re going to my mother’s.”
Emily tried to hold her head up, but the overwhelming nausea and dizziness that wracked her made it difficult to do anything but lie in Grant’s strong embrace and pray she wouldn’t cast up her accounts all over him. She hardly remembered her fall. One moment she was watching in horror as Grant and Cullen Leary fought. The next she’d been in Grant’s carriage, the world spinning around her.
“Did you tell me we’re going to your mother’s home?” she asked, focusing on Grant’s face in the hopes she could calm her woozy mind.
He nodded, his grim expression blurring before her eyes. “Yes, it is the closest safe place. We’ll be there in a few moments.”
Emily clung to his arms, struggling for purchase. “And Leary…what happened with Leary? Are you hurt? He…hit you.”
Forming words was so hard.
“Emily, please, calm yourself. I’m uninjured, unlike you.” Grant brushed her temple and she winced as a flash of brilliant pain cut through her body.
“But—”
He shook his head, his lips thinned into a firm line. “We shall talk about it once you’ve seen a doctor.”
The carriage lurched to a stop and Emily groaned. Damn, but head injuries hurt like a bugger. She hadn’t had one in a long time and had forgotten how painful they were.
Grant lifted her from the vehicle as if she weighed nothing. As he turned to face the enormous home, Emily settled her head against his shoulder with a sigh. She had no energy left to argue with Grant. He would take care of her. She could depend on him.
“Won’t someone see us?” she grumbled as she tried to take in her surroundings.
“We are at the back entrance,” he explained. “Now, please, no more questions for a while. Rest.”
She shut her mouth, mostly because it hurt too much to think of words, but kept her eyes open. From the corner of her vision, she caught motion as Grant opened the back gate and carried her inside. A carriage pulled around the corner.
Was that…? Her mind spun. No, she must have been imagining things. The carriage looked like Charlie’s rickety vehicle. She and Ana and Meredith had teased him mercilessly for the past few months about the broken door that rattled loudly. The one he claimed he was too busy to order fixed. And she was sure she’d seen the cockeyed door, heard the rattle.
But no. It was only her shaken brain playing tricks on her. Looking for Charlie because she was hurt and wanting comfort from the man she had looked to as a father for the past few years. She had to be wrong, for Charlie had no business at Lady Westfield’s home in the middle of the night. He probably didn’t even know the lady.
Grant shifted her weight in his arms in order to knock on the door. Emily was surprised that it almost immediately opened. And Grant seemed even more surprised when his mother was revealed on the other side.
“Did you forget—” Lady Westfield cut off her statement with a gasp. “Dear God, Grant! Who is…is that Lady Allington?”
“She’s been hurt,” Grant explained, as his mother stepped aside to allow them entry into the warm kitchen. “And she needs a doctor.”
Emily tried to lift her head, to give Lady Westfield a reassuring smile. But all the action served to do was make her aching head explode with further pain. The world grew black again and she rested her head against Grant’s warm chest and gave in to the darkness.
“Do hold still, darling. You’re making me dizzy.”
Grant stopped in his tracks and turned to face his mother. She was sitting on the settee, drinking her tea, as calm as if he brought bleeding, unconscious women into her home every night.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” he said as he put his hands behind his back and willed himself to stop pacing. “I realize this all must be very unsettling to you. I would never have brought this situation into your home if I had any other choice.”
His mother took another sip of tea before she set her cup aside and gave a little sniff. “What do you expect my reaction to be, Grant? Do you think I should be fainting on the parlor floor? We Westfield women, whether born of that name or married into it, are made of sterner stuff. You ought to know that by now.”
Grant shook his head as a little smile twitched his lips for the first time since he brought Emily into the house. Trust his mother to make this situation almost normal. Almost.
“Not that I don’t have questions,” his mother continued. “But perhaps you are not of a mind for those presently. Not while you are so worried about Lady Allington.”
Grant snapped his gaze to his mother’s face. She arched a brow at him in challenge and he folded his arms.
“The woman was injured. Of course I am concerned for her welfare.” But it was so much more than that. He craned his neck toward the hallway and the stairs in the distance. “What is taking that blasted doctor so long?”
“You told me that Dr. Wexler is one of the best doctors in the Empire, Grant. Let the man do his work. He hasn’t been upstairs with her all that long.”
He stifled a curse as he flopped into a seat across from her. If only his mother knew the truth. Dr. Adam Wexler was the official doctor for His Majesty’s spies. And judging from the young man’s reaction when he saw it was Emily who he had been called to minister to, he had seen to her before. Likely when she was shot.
Grant winced as he thought of the tender way the doctor had taken her hand. The way Emily had sighed out his name before Wexler ordered Grant to stay out and slammed the door to the chamber where she had been placed. It made his very blood boil, as did the idea that Emily was upstairs hurting and he was helpless to stop it.
“Tell me, why were you and Emily out so very late together?” his mother asked, her pointed tone worming through his troubling thoughts.
He winced. Damn, he still didn’t have a good answer for that question. He’d been too preoccupied to think of one. Now she stared at him expectantly. He struggled with his thoughts for a long moment, but all he could think about was Emily’s pale face. Her pained expression. The image of her lying broken on the hard cobblestone sidewalk.
He flinched.
His mother pushed to her feet and took a step toward him. “Grant, is there a relationship between you and Lady Allington?”
He turned away. Now the images in his mind shifted to ones of his body covering Emily’s. Of her soft sighs of pleasure. Of the way she felt in his arms. And also of her laugh, her quick intelligence, her natural sensuality.
What if he never had the chance to experience those things again?
“If you do share some deeper connection with her, you know I would approve,” his mother said and he was startled to find her right at his elbow. He’d been so caught up he hadn’t noticed her movement. “I like Lady Allington, Grant. And judging from the concern that is so plain on your face, the anguish in yo
ur eyes, you care for her as well.”
He held his mother’s dark stare for a long moment. She was making him analyze his own feelings as carefully as he would evidence in a case. His reaction when he saw Emily fall, when he realized she was still alive…those things went beyond a mere friendly acquaintance. Was that a by-product of the powerful lust that coursed between them?
He opened his mouth to answer when Dr. Wexler entered the room, wiping his hands on a rag.
Grant forgot everything else to step forward. “How is she?”
The doctor’s eyes narrowed, the accusation in them mirroring Grant’s own guilt. Still, Grant’s hackles rose and it took everything in him not to grab the other man and shake him at his hesitation.
“Emily is resting comfortably now,” Wexler said as he cast a quick glance at Grant’s mother. He tempered his sharp tone for her benefit. If the two men had been alone…well, Grant could tell Wexler would forget his Hippocratic Oath for a chance to tear him apart. “She hit her head quite hard and is a bit bruised, but she’s uninjured aside from those facts.”
Relief washed over him. Uninjured. Thank God.
“I want to see her.” Grant wasn’t asking. In fact, he was already heading for the stairway when Wexler caught his arm in a surprisingly powerful grip.
“She needs rest,” he growled even as Grant yanked his arm free. “She needs to be left alone. And you need me to look at you. I see your coat was cut.”
Grant flinched as his mother made a soft sound of distress. He hadn’t wanted her to know about his injury. It was a mere scratch.
“I’ll see Emily before I do anything else,” he snapped back. Then he threw his mother a comforting smile. “I am well, I promise you. I will let the ‘good’ doctor examine me as soon as I see Emily.”
His mother hesitated and he could see protests forming on her lips. But she never voiced them. Instead, she stepped forward and took Adam’s arm to lead him to the settee.
“Come, Doctor. I’m sure my son won’t keep Lady Allington from her rest long. Please have some tea while we await his return.”
Jenna Petersen - [Lady Spies] Page 17