As Richard came up, Bayard lifted his head and nickered.
“It’s all right, old friend,” Richard said, running his hand down his horse’s neck. “We’ll get you out of here.”
“You have a remarkably generous spirit,” Helena said. “He just did his damnedest to kill you.”
“Did he? Then he’s paying for it. He’s lame in the stifle and may have pulled a tendon in front.” He smiled as the horse pushed at his shoulder with its sensitive nose. “It’ll be a little while before he gets the chance to try again.”
Richard’s nonchalance infuriated her. “But why did Bayard do such a thing? Are you mad to ride such an unpredictable horse?”
She thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then his voice came back to her as casually as if they were in the drawing room.
“As for the first, I can’t tell you. And the second? I don’t know.”
For the first time since the disaster began, she felt like weeping—in distress, in rage?
“For God’s sake, your father was right. You are entirely too irresponsible for the duties of the eldest son.”
Richard threw off his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “And how do you know that the noble and blue-blooded Earl of Acton has such a sad lack of paternal feeling?”
“Because I overheard him say so at King’s Acton, if you must know. Since his voice rang like church bells, I could hardly help but hear it.”
“I can imagine,” he said dryly.
Helena knew she was scarlet. She picked up Richard’s jacket.
“Eavesdropping is not actually an everyday pastime, just one I allow when extremely provoked.”
“And no doubt you learned plenty for your edification. You may have married into my family, Helena, but I advise you not to indulge yourself in too close an acquaintance with them.”
“What about Harry?”
Richard was washing Bayard’s wounds with his handkerchief made wet in the stream. The water ran pink off the animal’s flanks.
“I would particularly recommend that you don’t try to interfere with Harry.”
“How can I avoid it when he breaks into the house in the night? And what was he doing so conveniently on the scene today? It has not escaped my notice that he had just left you when you were shot in the arm. Is Harry always around when your life is endangered?”
“No, as a matter of fact, he is not. What are you trying to say, Helena?”
“That it seems to me that it would have been very convenient for Harry if you had gone over the cliff with Bayard today.”
“But I didn’t, did I? For God’s sake, Helena! I don’t remember seeing any Gothic romances in the library at Trethaerin that would account for such an overactive imagination. Harry is my brother.”
“Yes, exactly,” Helena said.
Chapter Nine
Several men followed Harry up from Acton Mead. The procession was led by the estate manager riding a sensible white cob, and brought up in the rear by a stout wagon drawn by two massive Suffolk draft horses. Various ropes and pulleys and bundles of canvas were piled on the wagon, and Bob was tied on behind with another great Suffolk Punch. Some of the men were walking, but most were perched among the rescue equipment like birds in a nest.
Harry, mounted on a hack, was entertaining himself by cantering in circles around the cavalcade, while still inexorably leading them to the right spot.
Helena had followed Richard back out from the wood, leaving Bayard standing quietly by the stream. She hung Richard’s jacket from a nearby branch and watched as he issued orders. The men leaped to obey as if Napoleon’s troops lay hidden among the oaks, instead of the innocent creatures of an English wood. The wagon was left at the bottom of the hill, while some of the men were sent into the gorge and others followed Richard back up the narrow trail, bringing the single Suffolk Punch with them.
Harry rode up to Helena and swung down from his horse.
“Please, don’t worry, Lady Lenwood,” he said quietly. “Brother Richard is superb in any emergency, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t watch the rescue. Here, let me give you my arm and we’ll march up Marrow Hill together.”
Helena looked up into his guileless blue eyes, her heart thudding.
“Thank you, but I can manage,” she said.
Harry frowned as if she had just broken his heart. Biting her lip, Helena wrapped her hand into his elbow, and they followed Richard and the other men up the hill.
Richard looked around as he saw them approach.
“Ah,” he said. “Just what I need: my brother being useful. Are you in the mood to climb trees, Harry? Take this!”
Harry caught the large pulley Richard tossed to him and flung a coil of rope over one shoulder. Undeterred by his burden, he scrambled up a nearby oak and fixed the pulley to a stout branch.
Meanwhile, some of the men fashioned a sling out of canvas. A long rope soon ran from the sling through the pulley, with the other end attached to the harness of the big Suffolk horse. Richard tossed the canvas sling over the edge of the cliff to those waiting below.
The chestnut coat rippled over powerful muscles as Richard gave the signal for the draft horse to be led forward. The horse strained. The rope pulled taught and groaned in the pulley.
Sitting above them in the tree, Harry began to chant gently.
“An earl’s son rode perfectly well / But was languishing under a spell / It was cast by his wife / And near cost him his life / When his horse tried to send him to hell.”
“Are you trying to suggest, dear brother,” Richard said. “That this accident was my wife’s fault?”
“I’ve no idea how it happened.” Harry laughed and dropped to the ground. “I wasn’t here, worse luck! Either old age is softening your faculties, or it’s the disturbing presence of Helena. But it does seem the oddest thing for you to let your horse fall off Marrow Hill.”
“Senility, obviously,” Richard said calmly.
Minutes later, Bayard was hauled up over the rim.
The horse was blindfolded and his legs were caught in a cat’s cradle of rope. He couldn’t struggle against the canvas under his belly, yet he could still gain some purchase on the rock as he was dragged up the cliff. His body was bundled in more canvas and padding, and each leg had been wrapped in cotton and bandages. The Acton Mead grooms had no doubts as to quite how precious this horse was to their master.
With the help of Harry and one of the men, Richard managed to position the charger so that his hooves would land on the path. Bayard scrambled a little as he felt solid ground once again, then stood quietly under the soothing hand of his master as the sling and the ropes were removed.
With infinite care and patience, Richard gentled Bayard down the path. Limping seriously, the horse followed as faithfully as a puppy. At last they reached the wagon, which had been backed against a shallow bank. Richard led his charger aboard and stood at the horse’s head. Bayard was to be carried home.
Helena retrieved Richard’s coat, still hanging where she had left it. She hugged the jacket to her breast, as if by shielding his clothing she somehow could protect him. The most absurd emotion! She had been completely superfluous throughout the entire rescue, while he had been—as Harry had predicted—magnificent.
She walked up to the wagon and held up the jacket. Richard smiled down at her, seeming only confident and carefree now that Bayard was safe. Thank God! Thank God!
Something pricked her finger and brought up a bead of blood. Helena changed her grip, then gasped as her hand was punctured again.
“Careful!” Richard said quietly so that no one else could hear.
“What is it?” she asked.
“If you look in the pocket, you’ll find something smooth and hard with a vicious point. However, I pray you will not take it out and cause too much of a frisson of excitement among the tenants. There were two of them, but the other must have come out and been lost on the cliff.”
Helena felt the pocket carefully. �
��It’s some kind of dart?”
“Exactly! But don’t, my dear, set up the hue and cry, will you? Harry will take you home.”
She looked down, biting her lip, and without another word gave him the coat, but she could have screamed aloud. Bayard hadn’t tried to kill his master. Someone else had. Someone who had hidden in the woods with a blowpipe or bow of some kind, or maybe just a strong throwing arm and a deadly aim, and had felt no compunction in wounding an innocent beast if it might hurt his rider.
Someone had just tried to kill Richard.
And Richard was going to cover it up.
The team of Suffolk horses leaned into their harness. Richard soothed Bayard as the charger shifted nervously at the movement beneath his hooves. The estate manager rounded up the men and equipment, and they moved off after the wagon.
Harry turned to Helena. “It’s left to me, sister-in-law, at Richard’s imperious request, to escort you back to Acton Mead, scene of all our boyhood rivalries.”
Helena glared at Harry as he saddled her horse and met a glance of pure astonishment in return. Did Harry think it was a prank to shoot a man in the arm, or send vicious darts into his horse on the edge of a cliff? If only she were a man, she would call him out!
Nevertheless, she allowed Harry to toss her up onto Bob’s kindly saddle.
Yet none of Harry’s nonsense or teasing on their way home would make her do other than ignore him.
* * *
Richard spent the afternoon with his horse in the stable. Harry assisted him. Bayard was stitched up here and there, and his injured legs packed in precious ice. A bran mash was received with elegant condescension and the charger deigned to accept a carrot or two, but he turned up his velvet nose at his hay.
“Not surprising he’s off his feed, after what he went through,” Harry said.
“I imagine I would be justified if I went off mine as well,” Richard answered with a dry grin. “Look at this.”
He held out his hand. Lying in the palm was the thin metal dart that had pierced Helena’s finger.
“What a nasty thing,” Harry said quietly.
“I don’t know that I mind for myself.” Richard turned the weapon in his hand. Sunlight ran up and down the slender shaft and struck bright colors in the feathering at the end. “Though I can think of ways in which I would prefer my enemies to make their point. But I mind a great deal for Bayard. Why the hell can’t you either be more efficient or stay out of my affairs altogether?”
He spun and threw the dart with deadly accuracy across the barn so that it pierced through the string holding up a bundle of haynets and hung quivering in the wall.
Harry was busy packing ice into a leather boot around Bayard’s inflamed tendon. His face was impossible to see. Richard had lost his temper for only a moment, but it was sufficient to prevent Harry from telling him something that he very much needed to hear.
* * *
It was not enough to prevent Harry from resuming his irrepressible good humor at dinner. Helena had spent the afternoon in considerable distress. So she was not to be allowed to interfere between the brothers, even when Richard’s life was at stake? Yet surely her position in the house as Richard’s wife brought her some rights?
Acton Mead, for better or for worse, was her home, and Richard had made it clear that he was giving her full rein over the running of the household. In which case, if people broke in during the night and scattered suits of armor about the hallway, it was her business. And if her husband was wounded by a bullet and then almost thrown to his death by his horse?
She would not mention the dart that had caused Bayard to panic, even if it had created a painful puncture in her own finger, but she was damned if she wasn’t going to let Harry know what she thought of him.
So as the soup plates were removed and the rack of lamb with mint sauce was set on the table, Helena primed her guns and delivered the first broadside.
“I have been in an agony of indecision, Harry, over whether you were trying to convince me of your venality by breaking up Sir Lionel in such a rude way last night, or if you just don’t know any better?”
Richard’s black eyes darkened into velvet. “We shared the same upbringing, Helena,” he said. “So if you find Harry’s manners wanting, you had better watch out for mine.”
He should not protect his brother! “In that case, since, as everybody knows, your manners are a model of perfection, Harry must just have been intent on turpitude.”
“Baseness, vileness, or an excess of wickedness?” Harry laughed. “Dear sister, I seem to have been basely, vilely, and excessively drunk. I plead guilty.”
“Do you?” Helena said, calmly watching as the maid served them with cauliflower. “In which case, I suppose you had no nefarious purpose in entering the house at midnight through a window instead of presenting yourself at the front door like a normal human being.”
Richard had leaned back in his chair and was casually studying his wineglass. There was the faintest quirk at the corner of his mouth.
“Well, I don’t suppose I am a normal human being,” Harry said thoughtfully. “I’m an Acton, after all. We’re an odd breed, you know. Anyway, the front door is locked at night.”
“So your attack on poor Sir Lionel was innocent?”
“Oh, no! Of course I had a nefarious purpose.”
“Which was?”
“This,” Harry said dramatically, producing from his pocket a sheet of paper and waving it across the table. Richard laughed aloud.
“For God’s sake, Harry!” he said. “Helena will think you belong in Bedlam.”
“Well, if you would allow me to see that object,” Helena said quickly. “Perhaps I could judge for myself?”
“I brought it for that very purpose.”
Harry dropped the sheet into Helena’s hand. Garish colors and swirling print stared up at her.
“It’s an announcement,” she said.
“Indeed, sister! For a grand fair.”
“With jugglers, and acrobats, and—elephants?”
“I had to inform you both right away. The darn thing will be in Reading tomorrow. Elephants, indeed!”
“What on earth makes you think that I care to see elephants, Harry?” Richard said.
“Oh, you’re so damn jaded, even if Leviathan were to raise his ugly snout from the deep, or the Chimera to fly at this moment across the dining room, you would only raise an eyebrow and possibly sneeze in an elegant way.”
“I’m not sure a sneeze can be elegant,” Helena objected.
She was entirely out of her depth. If Harry had tried to murder his brother only this morning and Richard knew it, how on earth could they sit together at table and talk arrant nonsense to each other?
“Then you don’t know your own husband, sweet Helena,” Harry said instantly, which since it was true, left her with no possible response. “Nothing he does is without elegance.”
“There is also to be a lion.” Richard had picked up the bill where Helena had dropped it on the table. “ ‘Most Magnificent King of Beasts from Barbary,’ ” he read aloud. “ ‘Trained to Leap through Hoops. Amazing Feats of Acrobatic Prowess’ I’m not sure if that’s referring to the lion or the jugglers—”
“Or the elephants?” Harry interrupted. “Helena, I am sure, has never seen an elephant.”
“Have you?” Richard asked, turning to her.
“I grew up in Cornwall,” Helena said. “Where even though we have unicorns behind each sand dune, and the giants Corineus and Goemot are reliably reported to have fought on Plymouth Hoe, we don’t grow elephants.”
“Then we shall go to Reading tomorrow and admire the menagerie,” Richard said.
“And the jugglers and the acrobats,” Harry added. “And the Learned Pig, and the dairymaids all in a row.”
“We don’t need to hire any dairymaids,” Richard said. “But no doubt there will be any number of stalls bearing entrancing merchandise. Helena, you must be waiting with wild im
patience.”
“So that I may pursue the female pastime of spending money?” Helena asked.
“So that you may be entertained with the absurdity of human ingenuity, my dear.” Richard’s long fingers took up the wine and he refilled his brother’s glass. “And no doubt Harry will take part in the shooting competition.”
“I’ll do my best to bring away all the prizes for the sake of family honor, Dickon. Never fear!”
“I do not waste my time on fear,” Richard said. “I thought you would know that about me by now.”
Helena knew exactly the opposite feeling. She was very afraid and she picked instantly on the piece of the conversation that mattered.
“Don’t tell me you’re a good shot, Harry?” she asked innocently. “Can you do better than wing your bird and ruffle its feathers?”
Harry’s blue eyes narrowed in indignation. Richard threw back his bright head and laughed.
“Wherever did you get that idea, Helena?” he said. “My little brother is a crack shot. I’m sure he’ll be only too pleased to demonstrate his precision and his excellent eye for a target tomorrow.”
Which was exactly what Helena was afraid he would say.
The other thing she was afraid of happened that night.
Chapter Ten
Richard did not come to her bed. Was it only last night that she had awoken to the sound of his moan and he had let down the impenetrability of his defenses for a moment? She could still feel the sensation of his long fingers brushing through her hair and the caress of his lips on hers.
Helena buried her face in her hands. It was too short a time to have moved from the fear of a man’s desire to a longing for it. Yet she hungered for the feel of his strength and warmth beside her, and the rush of answering heat in her own limbs.
She looked up and caught sight of herself in the mirror.
“For heaven’s sake, dear girl,” she said aloud, and laughed at herself. “You are pining like a ninny.”
The footman had come in after dinner to announce that Richard’s presence was desired in the stable. Bayard had taken a turn for the worse and his lordship’s opinion was wanted.
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