Catherine Coulter the Sherbrooke Series Novels 6-10 (9781101562123)

by Coulter, Catherine

  She saw something, it was black, a figure, and then something struck her hard on the side of her head. She slid down into the pile of covers that she’d pulled off the bed.

  “Meggie!”

  She thought she heard a man’s voice, but she wasn’t all that sure and what’s more, she didn’t really care. She felt warm and safe and there was nothing to touch her, nothing at all.

  “Meggie! Damnation, wake up! What the hell’s wrong? Wake up!”

  The man slapped her face, and not light taps either, he really smacked her good, and it made her so mad that she reared right up and said in his face, “Don’t hit me again or I’ll clout you back.”

  Thomas said, “Good, that’s better. Please don’t clout me. Are you all right?”

  “I must think about that.”

  “Jesus, Meggie, I heard you scream, thought the thunder and lightning frightened you. I’m sorry I slapped you so hard, but I was scared, you wouldn’t wake up.” He grabbed her against him. She felt his pounding heart beneath her cheek.

  She said against his shoulder, “You really heard me scream? I didn’t know if I managed to get it out before whoever it was hit me on the side of the head with something hard.”

  His breath caught in his throat and he coughed, and continued to cough until Meggie got herself together enough to hit him on the back.

  “What did you say?” he finally got out, his voice a croak. “Oh God, you’re bleeding.” He stared at her blood, wetting two of his fingers. He was up in a flash, hauling her in his arms and gently laying her out on the bed, as if for burial. She expected him to fold her hands over her breast, but he didn’t. “Don’t move.” And off he went, lit a candle, then searched every inch of the White Room. He closed the window, as rain was blowing into the room. A huge strike of lightning filled the room with light. He still saw nothing. He pulled the draperies closed over the battering rain. Then he opened the bedchamber door and went into the corridor. It was some minutes before he was back.

  “No sign of anyone.” He placed the candle on the small table just beside the bed, and leaned over to gently ease her hair away from the wound.

  He cursed, fluently, with great variety, she thought, and she asked, “Did you make those things up?”

  “Make what up? Are you all right, Meggie?”

  “The curses, all those incredible uses of animal body parts, did you make them up?”

  He grinned, just couldn’t help himself. “No. All of those words have been around for a very very long time. Does this hurt?”

  Meggie bit her bottom lip and yelped. “I’m sorry, just a bit, not bad—”

  “All right. Be quiet, I’m going to get you cleaned up. Don’t move, Meggie.”

  She didn’t. Her head was starting to pound and truth be told, she felt light-headed. The wispy candlelight was wavering, the white walls were shimmying a bit, now leaning to the right.

  “Oh dear,” she said, and held up her hand in front of her face.

  “Meggie, what are you doing?”

  “I want to see if I can count my fingers.”

  “Damn,” he said, then pulled the covers over her. “Whoever hit you, knocked you out, and that can be dangerous. Now, count my fingers. How many am I holding up?”

  “I believe there are three fingers there. Do you know, Thomas, all of those fingers you’re waving about have touched me very intimately?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose that’s true.”

  “Particularly that middle finger of yours—it’s rather long—goodness, I remember just a couple of hours ago when you—”

  “Yes, yes, Meggie, I remember everything about that finger. Now, do you hurt?”

  She nodded, and that small movement nearly sent her into oblivion. She managed to hold really still until the pain let up. She said then, “You shouldn’t have left me. I was kissing you all over your face, and you told me you wanted to sleep in your own bed. Why did you do that, Thomas?”

  “You want the truth? No, don’t frown like that, you’ll just scramble your brains. Lie still and relax. All right, I’ll spit it out. I left because I’m afraid of storms, have been since I was a little boy. I didn’t want you to see your strong manly husband cowering when lightning filled the sky and thunder sounded like cannon fire, in fear for his life.”

  “It’s not all that bad. Whatever happened when you were a boy, I’ll make you forget it. I’ll hold you close. You can cower all you want.”

  “You’ll pat my back?”

  “Oh yes. I could even sing you to sleep. Just don’t leave me again, Thomas.”

  “I won’t. Now that you know about my weakness, there’s no reason to go hide.” He stood. “I’m going to get the physician.”

  “Will I have to walk on his back?”

  “Dr. Pilchart? Why no, his back is in grand shape.”

  “Will I have to lose flesh?”

  For a moment, he didn’t know what she was talking about, then he remembered Aunt Libby saying that to Lord Kipper.

  “Actually, you need to gain a bit of flesh, not much, mind you, I’ve always liked skinny girls. Meggie, when you’re struck on the head you don’t usually remember anything leading up to it. Do you remember more than you told me?”

  “I’ll tell you if you don’t get Dr. Pilchart.”

  “But you might be seriously hurt.”

  “But what could he do? Would he break open my head and look inside? Even if he did, would he know what he was looking at?”

  “I guess not. All right, for the moment, I’ll stay right here with you. Now, do you remember anything more?”

  “Oh yes,” Meggie said, “I remember everything.” She stopped every few moments, closing her eyes against those slashes of pain in her head. Finally she said, “It was the lightning, the thunder, I heard him draw in his breath, really sharp. It scared him. When I turned about, then he struck me.”

  “You know it was a man?”

  “No. But whoever it was wasn’t small. All in black, Thomas, he was all in black, his head, everything, covered.” She cocked an eye open. “Please don’t fetch Squire Billings to assist you in finding the culprit.”

  He smiled. “I won’t. Actually, I’m the magistrate around here.”

  “I made you smile,” she said, and brought up her fingertips to lightly touch his mouth, “but I didn’t really mean to.”

  “Meggie, I want you to stay awake a bit longer. Head injuries are unpredictable.”

  “I’m really tired, Thomas.”

  “I know, but hold on.” He took her hand and said, “I’ll help you stay awake. Listen to me now. Let me tell you about my first ship, mostly financed by the earl of Clare, which went all the way to India. It was due back the first week of October. It didn’t come. I tell you, I was down at the harbor in Genoa at dawn every single morning, scanning the horizon until I was cross-eyed, but no Star of Genoa. Every night I was there, until it was so dark I couldn’t even see the water. Adam Welles—the earl of Clare—found me one night on my own private hill overlooking the Mediterranean, drinking brandy. I was so drunk, so despairing, I was ready to go down to the wharf in Genoa and bust heads together, a very stupid thing to consider because there are more miscreants down at the dock than you can imagine.

  “Adam stood over me, hands on hips, and said, ‘All right, you young fool, enough is enough. If the bloody ship has sunk, you will simply raise money to finance another. Get up or I’ll knock you in the head.’ ”

  “What happened?”

  “I got up and jumped on him.”

  “You hit him?”

  “I surely tried. I wanted to kill him, at least maim him. It was a very good fight, until he got me in the stomach and all that brandy—I thought I was going to die there for a while.”

  “What happened?”

  “The Star of Genoa arrived in Genoa the following Tuesday afternoon. As I recall, I think I kissed her hull. There’d been a vicious storm just outside of Gibraltar, but she’d managed to survive it. I
immediately financed another ship. I’ve lost only one ship in the past three years. I have three ships out right now and, thank God, excellent men in Genoa I trust to oversee things.”

  “What did the earl of Clare have to say about the one lost ship?”

  “He bought me a case of brandy, said he didn’t want to see a single bottle drunk for at least six months or he’d hit me in the belly again.”

  Meggie laughed, she just couldn’t help it even though it made her sure her brains would rattle right out of her head.

  “Did you wait six months?”

  “Actually, the entire case is still intact. I haven’t had any brandy since that night.”

  “Oh Thomas, that’s a wonderful tale. Our children will enjoy it. Did you sail one of your ships here to England when you came back to Glenclose-on-Rowan?”

  “Yes, she’s in between trips right now. We decided some English goods bound for the West Indies would be an excellent thing. She’s being fitted and goods bought as we speak.”

  “What is the name of your ship?”

  “The Hope.”

  “I can’t wait to see her. How much longer will she be here?”

  “Another week, in Portsmouth.”

  “I am so very proud of you.”

  He flushed, just couldn’t help it.

  “You will see, everything will be all right. Oh dear, please find the person who struck me on the head.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly, giving her some laudanum now in a glass of water, “I will.”

  25

  “WHY IS WILLIAM here?”

  Thomas said, “I asked him. He said he’d heard that I’d married and he wanted to meet you.”

  “What does he want to meet me for? Perhaps to seduce me?”

  “Meggie—”

  “He’s a rotter, Thomas.”

  “He’s young, Meggie, very young.”

  “So are you and so am I, and I know that neither of us would have done something as dishonorable as what he did. Just imagine, he let you shoulder all the blame for getting Melissa Winters with child. He probably fully expected you to shoulder all the blame. I’m afraid it will be difficult for me ever to come to accept him, Thomas.”

  He looked bemused, and said slowly, going to what was the most important thing to him, “You really believe I’m honorable?”

  “Well, of course. I wouldn’t have married you otherwise. Would you ever, Thomas, let someone else accept the consequences for something you did?”

  He said, his voice still deep and slow, “No, I don’t believe I would ever do that.”

  “He doesn’t know that I know what he did to you? To Melissa Winters?”

  Thomas shook his head.

  “Who hit me?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. Everyone claims to have been sleeping until the storm started last night. Everyone also claims to have woken up when the lightning and thunder struck and the rain started coming down in torrents. It was so heavy, a couple of windowpanes were blown in. No one heard anything at all. What would you expect, Meggie?”

  “Why would someone want to hurt me, Thomas?”

  There it was, stark and clear, in the open, heavy and frightening, deadening the air between them.

  Thomas rose from her bed and began pacing the White Room. He looked back to see his bride sitting up, white covers pulled to her waist, a white nightgown spilling lovely lace from her shoulders, and a white bandage around her head. And she was in the middle of a stark white room. He shook his head. “You look like a virgin who protesteth too much.”

  It took her an instant to understand him, and then she laughed, raising a hand to hold her head because laughing made it hurt. “Too much virginal white, I guess you mean. The good Lord knows I’m not a virgin anymore. Did I tell you that I’m pleased not being a virgin anymore, Thomas, in fact—” She paused a moment, and he knew, just knew all the way to his boots, that she was thinking about him kissing her, probably on top of her, going wild, and he shook with it.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Meggie. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Oh, you mean my head.”

  “Yes.” He was as hard as the heavy door latch, but he grinned, just couldn’t help himself. “Yes, I mean your head.” It seemed as every day passed, he had to simply think of her and he wanted her. It was unnerving, particularly now. And mixed with that lust he felt just thinking her name, just seeing that vivid hair of hers in his mind’s eye, mixed with that was the fact that someone in the dark of night had sneaked into the White Room and hit her on the head.

  And he had no idea who it was.

  He said, wanting it to be true, willing it to be true just by saying the words, “It has to be someone from outside, Meggie. Someone who doesn’t like me, someone who wants revenge, someone who’s lived here and knows Pendragon, how to get in and how to get out again.”

  “Do you have any ideas about who it could be?”

  “I’ve thought and thought about it, but no, I really can’t think of anyone. But that’s not saying much. Every old castle has shadows, mysteries, if you will, things hidden for a very long time, but—” He shrugged, then there was a fierce look in those dark eyes of his. “I won’t let anything else happen to you, Meggie, I swear it.”

  “If you had slept with me, Thomas, maybe you would have been the one hurt, maybe the person who did this believed we did sleep in here together. Maybe you were the one he was after. Oh dear, I want you safe, Thomas. All right, here it is. I’ve decided that I want you to continue to sleep in your bedchamber and I will lock the door between our rooms. That way no one can get to you.”

  He felt intense pleasure flow through him as he said very matter-of-factly, “Don’t be an idiot, Meggie. The person hit you, not me. It was your bedchamber, not mine. I dare say that that person now knows that you were quite alone. No, Meggie, we will sleep together, but we will make certain the doors are locked.” He cocked his head to her, swallowed as he said, “I am considering sleeping on top of you to further protect you.”

  “Oh my.”

  He swallowed again, cleared his throat, mumbled under his breath, “Sorry, forget I said that. Now isn’t the time.”

  That was a pity. “Maybe,” Meggie said, wrapping her arms around her knees, unable to get that image out of her mind, “just maybe there are some secret passages in this wonderful old place. What do you think? Are there any you know about?”

  Thomas plowed his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end. For an instant she was sure he looked frightened. “No, no,” he said at last. “There have been rumors about passages, my uncle occasionally whispered about them, but I’ve never actually seen one.”

  “Your mother doesn’t particularly seem enthralled with me. You have my dowry and maybe she thinks I’m no longer necessary. Then there’s William. Maybe he’s found out that I know what he did to Melissa Winters, maybe—”

  “My mother is eccentric, that’s for certain, but to the best of my knowledge she wouldn’t even kill my father, and she hated him more than one can imagine. As for William, I can’t imagine he would care if all of Cork and Kinsale knew he was a little lecher. Why would he care if you knew or not?”

  Meggie sighed. “I wish to get up now, Thomas. I’m bored and my head hurts only a bit. Also, someone could simply open the bedchamber door, take one step inside, and shoot me. I’m rather helpless here, amidst all this virginal white.”

  His eyes nearly crossed. God, he wanted her, right now, and he didn’t want to leave her, he wanted to pump into her, deeper and deeper and yell his pleasure to the rafters of this drafty old castle and fill her with his seed. And lie on top of her, to protect her. He was in a bad way and he knew it. And she didn’t. It was amazing. He said, “No one is going to come in here and shoot you, all this white or no.” Then, because he just couldn’t help himself, he said, “By God, you look delicious.”

  This was interesting and she gave him what she believed to be a very warm smile, one filled with
the promise of wicked things.

  He didn’t move a muscle.

  He was being noble, bless him. Truth be told, her particular place in the world didn’t feel all that steady right now. She realized she was scared, but she wasn’t about to say that out loud. She said, “I’m getting up now.”

  He looked like he would protest, then shook his head, at himself, not at her. “I’ll send Alvy to you.” And he was gone. Guilt had driven him away, of that she was certain. He didn’t want to take a chance of hurting her head anymore. Yes, he wanted her and now that Meggie knew what this wanting was all about, she wished he would come back. He could leave her aching head to her. She smiled as she swung her legs over the side of that stark white bed. Yes, she was quite certain his eyes had become glazed, fixed on her face. She wondered if she were the first of all the cousins to make love, then frowned. All her dratted cousins were boys, and outrageous, just like their fathers, even her brothers, Max and Leo, seemed to know things, yes, even Max the Latin scholar. She’d seen him speaking to Leo just a couple of months ago, there had been this fixed smile on his face, really a rather stupid smile, and she hadn’t understood then. Now she did. She’d worn that stupid smile a couple of times now; she’d seen it in the mirror.

  Ah, marital sorts of things were all well and good, but when all was said and done, when everything was right there, ready to smack her in the face, what was important was that someone had hit her on her head. As he’d said, an old place like Pendragon was filled with secrets, with mysteries. It was up to her to discover if any of them had come out of hiding and didn’t like seeing her as the countess sleeping in the White Room.

  Meggie began pacing her bedchamber, her white nightgown disappearing amongst all the other white, the only thing keeping her set apart from the furnishings was the flapping gown at her ankles as she paced.

  His mother, Meggie thought. She had to be the keeper of Pendragon secrets. Madeleine, who didn’t like her and didn’t bother to hide it. Madeleine, who wrote journals in both French and English. Why not beard the lioness in her den?