And then, before Jeremy could get in another punch, the figure in black had scuttled away, like a spider retreating after losing a leg, leaving the duke and his valet panting and incredulous at the bottom of the steps.
“Good God, sir,” Peters cried, the first to recover his voice. “Are you all right?”
Jeremy, having leaned forward in order to keep from falling down, his hands on his knees, nodded. “I believe so,” he said. “Did he get your purse, Peters?”
“No, sir. Yours?”
“No.” Jeremy felt wonderingly at his waistcoat pocket. “He didn’t even reach for it.”
“Curious be’avior,” Peters observed, “fer a footpad, sir.”
“Yes,” Jeremy agreed. “If that’s what he was … .”
“What else could ’e ’ave wanted, sir, if not our money?”
Jeremy strained his eyes looking after his assailant. “I couldn’t begin to guess. London’s gotten quite out of hand since I saw it last, Peters.”
“Yes, sir. You want I should fetch someone, sir? One of the footmen? We could send ‘im for the Bow Street runners—” Peters broke off, choking. “Sir! Why, you’re bleedin’, sir!”
“What?” Jeremy looked up at his valet from where he leaned. “What are you talking about? I’m not hurt … .”
And then he saw the snow beneath him, and the red drops, like rose petals, that were spreading out across it. They seemed to be coming from his chest.
“Damn,” Jeremy said crossly.
Chapter 21
“Would you stop fussing at me? I’m all right, I tell you.”
Those were the first words Maggie heard upon crossing the threshold into the duke’s bedroom. Uttered as they were in the most irritable of tones, she felt instantly relieved. If Jeremy could complain so, he was surely not seriously injured.
He did look a fright, however. Lying shirtless—and for all Maggie could tell, pantless as well, though a sheet covered him from the waist down—against a wall of pillows, his skin looked as sallow as candle wax … except for where a glaring white bandage had been applied to his right shoulder.
“I just want to see whether the bleedin’ ’as stopped,” a man Maggie had never seen before was saying truculently. Apparently Jeremy’s manservant, the fellow had climbed the ladder attached to the side of Jeremy’s enormous bed, and was trying to peer beneath the bandage. But he was having a hard time of it, hampered both by the duke’s resistance and what appeared to be a wooden peg that was strapped to his right leg, just below the knee. It was hard, Maggie supposed, to stay balanced on a ladder rung with just one leg.
Unfortunately for the manservant, it became even harder to remain upright a moment later, when Jeremy looked up and happened to notice Maggie in the doorway. The shock was apparently so great that Jeremy sat bolt upright—even though the movement made him wince—causing the one-legged man to lose his balance completely. Only a well-timed lunge for the curtains hanging from one of the four bedposts caught his fall.
“You!” Jeremy bellowed. He shifted a glass of what appeared to be whisky from one hand to another, then pointed at Evers, who’d meekly followed Maggie into the room. “You’re dismissed. Pack your bags and be out by tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, dear,” Evers quavered.
Maggie glared at the figure in the bed. “Oh, Jerry, do shut up. You can’t dismiss Evers. He only fetched me because he said you’d been stabbed, and wouldn’t allow anyone to send for a doctor.”
“Or Scotland Yard,” Evers put in querulously.
“I also forbade him to wake you,” Jeremy said with a glower. “A direct order that he disobeyed. Evers, you can pick up your pay next week. Now get out.”
“No, Evers,” Maggie said to the hastily departing butler’s back. “Stay where you are.”
Evers froze mid-step, but looked back over his shoulder. “I believe I had better do as His Grace suggests,” he said miserably to Maggie.
“Nonsense,” was Maggie’s terse reply. She turned back toward the bed. “How bad is it?” she asked the manservant, who’d been staring at her, openmouthed, since she’d entered the room.
“Er …” The young man glanced down at his employer.
“The truth, please,” Maggie said, folding her arms across her chest.
“‘E’ll be right enough. Knife blade glanced off ’is collarbone. Just worried the flesh a little, is all. ‘Course, woulda killed a lesser man. But the colonel ’ere, ’e’s strong as an ox, for all ’e’s got—”
“Peters,” Jeremy hissed, angrily.
The young man—Peters—grinned down at the duke. “What?” he said, sounding amused. “You goin’ to sack me, too, Colonel?”
“Nobody,” Maggie said, imperiously, “is getting sacked this evening. What has the colonel got, Peters?”
“Why, malaria, o’ course,” Peters said with a shrug.
This was just too much. To have been told first that Jeremy had been stabbed, then that he had malaria, was simply more than Maggie could be expected to bear. Fortunately, there was a trunk on the floor quite near her. She slumped down onto it, her knees seeming to have given way completely beneath her.
“Malaria,” she murmured. “Why didn’t you tell me? Jeremy, why didn’t you say anything?”
“Maggie,” Jeremy said, waving the glass of whisky. “It’s not what you think.”
“No,” Maggie said mournfully, shaking her head. “It never is with you, is it?”
Jeremy was staring at her, his gray eyes hooded by shadow. The only light in the room came from the lamp beside his bed, and the fire in the hearth. Maggie could not read his expression, but she could hear the concern in his voice. “Peters,” he said to his valet, “pour Miss Maggie a drink. She looks as if she could use one.”
“No, no,” Maggie said, raising a hand limply. “I’m all right.”
But she wasn’t all right. Stabbed? Malaria? Stabbed?
Before she could ask another question, however, Peters appeared at her side, a small glass of amber liquid in his hands. “‘Ere you go, miss,” he said kindly, as he slipped the glass into her hand. “Drink this down, now. And don’t you worry about the colonel. Why, ’e’s the strongest man I ever met! I seen ’im keep swingin’ ‘is sword arm, even though his elbow was broke. When the doctors in New Delhi told ’im the voyage back ‘ere would kill ’im, ’e only laughed.”
Blinking, Maggie looked back at Jeremy. All of her earlier, murderous intentions toward him faded in a wave of adoration. Stubborn, stupid man! What could he have been thinking, returning to England while still in the throes of a life-threatening illness? Why, the voyage alone might have killed him, let alone the sudden change in climate. No wonder he had spent all day in bed! He hadn’t, as Maggie had thought, been dozing lackadaisically. He’d been fighting off fever.
But stabbed?
She lifted the glass to her lips. Even though the whisky burned her eyes, she deliberately closed them, and tipped the glass back until every drop was gone. When she swallowed, she felt the fiery liquid course down her throat … .
She gagged, and began to cough. Peters very sweetly banged her a few times between the shoulder blades, thinking she was choking.
“No, no,” she finally managed to say. “I’m all right.” And she did feel better. The whisky warmed her, sending strength flowing back down to her knees. Maybe things weren’t quite as bad as she’d thought … .
“Stabbed?” she echoed incredulously.
“Now, Maggie,” Jeremy said from the bed. “It was nothing. Peters and I just ran into a little trouble—”
Maggie snorted. “I shouldn’t wonder. Where were you, out so late? The Vauxhall? You know it isn’t safe—”
“Oh, we weren’t at the Vauxhall,” Peters informed her cheerfully. “The bloke what jumped the colonel got ’im just outside the door downstairs—”
“Peters,” Jeremy barked warningly, but it was too late. Maggie was up and striding toward the bed, the whisky glass left ab
andoned on top of the trunk.
“What?” she cried hoarsely. “Someone stabbed you right here on Park Lane?”
“You see, miss?” Evers still stood, all but forgotten, in the doorway. “I told you. I said we ought to send for Scotland Yard, but His Grace—”
“Evers,” Maggie said, controlling herself with an effort. “Please. Do go on, Jerry.”
Jeremy, however, was squinting at her dressing gown. “Why is it,” he wondered, “that women spend so much money on the clothes they wear outside the house, and a mere pittance on the things they wear inside, when it’s the clothes they wear inside that a man sees most often?”
Maggie, standing at the foot of his bed, looked down at herself. True, the plaid robe was a bit on the plain side, but …
“Don’t try to change the subject,” Maggie said furiously. “I want to know how you got stabbed.”
“Oh, Maggie,” Jeremy said, throwing himself back against the pillows—but carefully, so as not to jar his shoulder. “I don’t know. Do we have to discuss it now? I’m certain there are more important things—”
“If you ask me,” Peters chimed in, “it was the Frenchman.”
Maggie’s jaw dropped. “What?”
Jeremy, in the bed, sent his valet an aggrieved look. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, Peters. That will be all.”
“Well,” Peters said. “You said it yourself, not ten minutes ago … .”
Maggie, horrified, exclaimed, “Augustin would never—”
“Yes, yes, Maggie,” Jeremy said soothingly. “We know. It was probably just a bungled attempt to pick my pocket, that’s all.”
Unconvinced, Maggie clutched one of the bedposts, looking down at him wide-eyed. The bandage was not a large one, but it had already soaked through with blood. Not a lot of blood, but enough. Someone had certainly tried to injure Jeremy, injure him seriously. Just a few inches lower, and the knife would have plunged into his heart. Could Augustin be capable of inflicting such a wound? Maggie wondered. He had certainly been angry enough, she supposed. Angry enough to want to hit Jeremy back …
But Augustin wasn’t the type to sneak about in the dark, wielding a knife. Far from it! He was too decent, too even-tempered … too, she had to admit, dull. The thought was ludicrous.
But who else had a grudge against Jeremy—besides herself, that is?
Jeremy couldn’t help squirming a little uncomfortably beneath Maggie’s troubled gaze. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but he didn’t like it. Didn’t like it one bit. She could protest all she wanted, but he’d see to it Evers got the sack, and Peters, too. Imagine, the two of them, teaming up like this to humiliate him in front of her. He’d see them both in the workhouse, that he would. It was getting so that a man couldn’t find decent help these days … .
Well, he’d better, he decided, try to make the best out of a bad situation. Accordingly, he closed his eyes, and groaned.
“Jerry?”
He cracked an eyelid and saw that Maggie was staring down at him, worriedly chewing her lower lip. Perfect. He closed his eye again, and moaned, this time thrashing his head a little upon the pillows.
“Colonel?” Peters’s voice was tinged with suspicion, not concern. “Are you all right?”
Jeremy pretended both of his eyelids were too heavy to lift. He blinked a few times, groggily. “Yes,” he sighed. “I just want to be left alone.”
Peters, damn his eyes, couldn’t seem to control a grin. “Oh, I see,” he said. “Yes. Well, then I guess I’ll see you in the morning, sir.” And he turned to retire to the billet he’d made up in the adjoining dressing room.
“What?” Maggie cried, flabbergasted. “You’re just … going to bed?”
Peters looked at her in surprise. “Well, yes, miss. The colonel wants to be left alone. So I’m goin’ to bed.”
“But he’s … he’s ill!”
Peters ran a critical gaze over the figure in the bed. “Yes, miss. But ‘e don’t want no coddlin’ from me.”
“But … but somebody’s got to look after him!” Maggie exclaimed.
“Right,” Peters said with a sharp nod. “But it won’t be me. ‘E may not mind gettin’ the sack”—the valet jerked his head toward the nightcapped butler—“but I ain’t takin’ no chances. G’night.”
Peters limped off, leaving Maggie and the butler staring at one another. Evers cleared his throat. “For as long as I can remember,” the butler said, with some dignity, “there has been an Evers in service to the house of Rawlings—”
“Of course there has,” Maggie said encouragingly. “That’s why the idea of Jeremy dismissing you is so ludicrous—”
Jeremy, alarmed at hearing this, lifted his head and shot the butler a look so full of venom that Evers staggered backward. Maggie, whose back was turned toward the duke, had no idea what had transpired, and so could only watch in confusion as Evers fumbled for the doorknob.
“Far be it for me,” Evers stammered, “to break with family tradition. If you need me, Your Grace, you may simply ring for me.”
With a hasty bow, he tore open the door, and just as quickly scuttled through it. It was only when the portal had clicked shut, and Maggie and Jeremy were alone at last, that she looked down and noticed that his eyes were only half-lidded.
“Jeremy,” Maggie began suspiciously, but it was too late. Jeremy snaked an arm out from beneath the sheet, seized her by the wrist, and pulled her bodily forward, until she was sprawled, in a very undignified manner, across his lap.
It was then that she discovered, in no uncertain terms, that he wore nothing beneath the bedsheet.
Chapter 22
“Jeremy,” Maggie cried indignantly, although it was difficult to speak clearly with her face to the mattress. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Jeremy had lifted the hem of her dressing gown up over her hips, and was noting with interest that he could observe the heart shape of her bottom quite clearly through the cotton of her nightdress. “Me?” he queried innocently. “Just continuing where we left off earlier … .”
“My God!” She tried to roll over, but Jeremy held quite firmly onto her hips. “Jeremy, really!” Maggie chastised him over her shoulder. “Somebody just tried to kill you! How can you think about making love at a time like this?”
“My dear Mags,” he said dryly. “If I can think about making love with you with hundreds of Bengalese bullets flying over my head, I can certainly think about making love with you at a time like this.” Leaning over to place a kiss on her backside, he added, when she opened her mouth to speak again, “And don’t ask me about my shoulder. It doesn’t hurt, and I don’t foresee our lovemaking reopening the wound … .”
Maggie sucked in her breath. “You conceited pig,” she cried, this time managing to wriggle out of his arms. “As if I would even consider making love with you, after what you did!”
“What’d I do?” Jeremy asked, raising a black eyebrow.
Maggie was dismayed by the fact that she couldn’t help but notice that his bare chest, besides being scarred, was also quite thickly haired. The dark curls formed a rich mat that fanned out over his flat nipples, narrowing as it trailed down his lean, muscular stomach, and then disappeared beneath the sheet in a provocative arrow. Maggie, however, wasn’t about to investigate what lay in the direction that arrow pointed.
Or so she told herself.
“You know very well what you did,” she said, tossing her long hair loftily. “You—”
And the next thing she knew, Jeremy was upon her. Though she hastily flung out a pair of hands to brace her body from the impact of his, she found them immediately seized in grips of iron, and pinned to the mattress, as if Jeremy suspected she might try to strike at him again, as she had in the Althorpes’ library—not to mention that day in the Rawlings Manor stables, five years earlier. With the full weight of his body pressing down upon her, however, she could barely move, let alone launch any sort of counterattack. Blinking up at
his face, which hovered mere inches from hers, she grunted, “Get off me, you fool.”
Jeremy, delighting in the feel of her luscious body beneath his, felt a little short of breath. He was more than aware that Maggie felt the same, since her breasts, crushed beneath him, were rising and falling rapidly. He could even see her heart rattle hard against her chest, making the soft flesh above it quiver with each pulsation. Was she as impassioned as he, or merely frightened? There was only one way to be sure.
Lifting a single eyebrow, he inquired casually, “Scared, Mags?”
Her lips parted indignantly. “Not on your life, you—”
His mouth, colliding with hers, didn’t allow her to finish that sentence.
For a moment, she panicked, her fingers balling into fists against the pillows as she murmured an unintelligible protest against his mouth. It wasn’t that she didn’t like it. It was just that this …
This was serious.
Jeremy didn’t hear her protest, or if he did, he didn’t understand it. All he knew was that finally, after five long years, he had Maggie exactly where he’d always wanted her—beneath him. And this time, there’d be no interruptions. He’d made damned sure of that. No menacing uncles, no prying butlers, no self-righteous fiances. Just Jeremy and Maggie, as it always should have been, would have been, were it not for five years of stubbornness on both their parts. Well, that would never happen again, not while he had breath in his body. She was his, at last … .
And what a prize she was, already well worth all of the trouble and misery he’d gone through on her behalf. Jeremy had been with scores of women in the past, but never before had he held one that felt so completely right in his arms, whose body offered such a perfect complement to his own. With her generous bosom and slender waist and limbs, Maggie was everything that was feminine, while he, broad shouldered and narrow hipped, with muscles hardened to stone from long hours of riding and fencing, was the epitome of masculinity. Of course they belonged together.
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