His lips moved. “Of course, I’m not going to die,” he growled. Then his eyes opened and one of his most dazzling smiles lit his whole face. “Willa.” He reached up his left hand and pulled her face the rest of the way down to his, kissing her lips with a strength and thoroughness that certainly lent credence to his statement that he wasn’t going to die.
“Careful there, Dax,” Tamar said sardonically. “You’ll get blood on Lady Dax.”
Dax released her with flattering reluctance to peer at his wound instead. “Where’s the damned quack?”
“Here,” Dr. Lampton intoned dryly from behind Willa. “Stand back, if you please, so that the damned quack might at least see his other patient.”
Willa stumbled to her feet to let him in.
“How is Shelby?” Mr. Grant asked.
“He’ll live,” Dr. Lampton said. “No thanks to you. I had to dig a ball out of his side. I suppose we should be grateful it didn’t hit anything too vital. As for you, you’ve lost a lot more blood this time. Sit him up there, will you?”
Whether he needed the help or not, Tamar heaved Dax to a sitting position while the doctor examined the even bloodier back of the wound. “The ball went straight through him,” he said slowly.
“From the back?” Mr. Grant asked.
“The back?” Sir Jeremy repeated at the same time as Tamar. “How can it be from the back?”
“I don’t know, but it can’t have been Shelby who shot him.” Mr. Grant passed a pistol somewhat gingerly to Sir Jeremy, “This is Shelby’s pistol and it hasn’t been fired.”
Sir Jeremy stared. “Hasn’t been…?” He took it, examining it with care.
“Then who the devil shot me?” Dax demanded.
“Someone behind you,” Dr. Lampton said. “Grant is correct. The ball entered your shoulder from the back. And it will need a stitch or two. Here.” Unexpectedly, the doctor handed Daxton a flask which Dax sniffed before a quick smile flitted across his lips and he drank.
“Good brandy,” he observed. “There’s a lot of good brandy in Blackhaven. Very well, Doctor, do your worst.”
Thoughtfully, Sir Jeremy walked back up the sand, pocketing the pistol. The coach with Ralph in it appeared to have left without him.
With tight lips, Willa watched the doctor work. Dax seemed quite stoic about the whole procedure, although his skin was alarmingly pale and he had recourse to the brandy a couple of times. Mostly his eyes remained fixed on Willa’s face.
“How did you track us down?” he asked.
“Clara heard you mention sand. And I knew, I knew you were up to some mischief or other. How on earth did this happen?”
“He accused me of cheating, remember? You were there.”
“That was more than a week ago!” she protested.
“I just recalled it,” Dax said firmly.
With neat efficiency, the doctor bound his wound. Tamar and Grant had walked up to the road and were investigating the rough tree and brush-covered ground on either side.
“Someone who was not Ralph tried to kill you,” Willa said shakily.
“You do make a lot of enemies, do you not?” the doctor observed. “Everyone and his brother seems ready to shoot you. In fact, if I’m called out to you again, I might do it myself, properly this time.”
“What a comfort you must be to your many patients.”
“My many patients need me,” Dr. Lampton retorted. “Frivolous shootings are not my priority.”
Dax blinked. “Frivolous?”
“Frivolous,” Dr. Lampton repeated, and Dax actually laughed with what seemed to be genuine amusement. “Can you walk, or shall we summon your friends back?”
“I can walk.” Leaning on the doctor more than on Willa, Dax rose to his feet and they walked slowly up to join the others.
Dr. Lampton addressed Willa. “This time, he should stay in bed. Today and tomorrow at the very least. Here is some laudanum for the pain. I’ll come back and change his dressings tonight. He must not use the arm and give that wound an excuse to open again, which is why I’ve placed his arm in the sling. It has to stay there, as still as possible. Are you hearing this, my lord?”
“He shot my shoulder, not my ears,” Dax retorted.
“He’ll be fine,” the doctor said dryly. “Send for me if there are any signs of fever.”
“I will. Thank you, Dr. Lampton.”
*
Fortunately, it was still early morning and the hotel was quiet. Dax in his torn and blood-stained clothes was able to enter and walk upstairs more or less surrounded by Willa, Tamar, and Grant without anyone seeing his state. Not that it mattered, for the news of the duel would no doubt be all over Blackhaven before luncheon.
Carson was discovered pacing the sitting room and he hastily took over the burden of his master. “My God, you’re injured!” he exclaimed.
“This never happened before?” Willa asked.
“A graze once or twice, but—”
“Help me get him into bed,” Willa instructed. The doctor says he is to stay there today and tomorrow.”
Carson groaned. “God help us all.”
“And if you hit me, I’ll dismiss you on the spot,” Dax warned.
“No, you won’t,” Carson said with confidence. “All the same, don’t make me hit you! You do exactly as her ladyship tells you.”
In the end, Willa left the men to it, and in no time, Dax was ready to hold court from his bed. He looked ridiculously young and rakish with his rumpled fair locks and his arm in a sling, a clean white shirt thrown around his wounded shoulder.
“Forgive me,” Grant said, “but I must leave you to it. I have duties to attend to. I’ll ask Kate to call later on, or send earlier if you need anything at all.”
“He’s a good fellow for a vicar,” Dax observed when the outer door had closed behind Mr. Grant.
“He was in the army,” Tamar volunteered. “Fought in India and the Peninsula before he took Holy Orders. And actually, it was he who first thought the gunshot came from behind us. It all sounded like one loud bang to me. But Grant had the gumption to check Shelby’s pistol. No wonder he kept calling for it.”
“Did he?” Daxton frowned.
“I heard him as they carted him off the beach to the coach, then he fainted.”
Willa gazed from Tamar to Dax. “Then…you think Ralph knew? You think he was responsible for the other shooter?”
Dax rested his head back against the pillows propping him up. “I think he didn’t want us to know his pistol hadn’t been fired. And not all doctors are as perceptive or as attentive as Dr. Lampton.”
“Also, you turned and shot pretty fast,” Tamar remarked. “Which might have taken him by surprise. He might have meant to shoot you in the conventional way, with his hidden man as reinforcements. Perhaps a signal was missed, and his man shot too late to save Shelby a ball in the side.”
“Whatever, it’s entirely dishonorable,” Dax pronounced, looking at Willa. “And you don’t seem terribly surprised, let alone indignant about the accusation.”
“I’m not,” Willa agreed. “It’s a long time since I’ve believed my cousin had any honor at all.”
Dax looked as if he would say more, but in the end, he closed his lips, apparently turning his mind back to the duel. “Do you know, Lampton’s right. Everyone and his brother does seem to shoot at me. Even the other day, driving back from my cousin’s house after seeing my mother there, someone shot from close enough to startle the horses. And then there are footpads leaping out of nowhere!”
Willa stared at him. “Someone is trying to kill you?”
“No, no, just thinking aloud,” Dax said quickly. “It’s a lot more likely Shelby hired someone just to save him from the duel. The other shot will merely have been some local shooting rabbits. And in truth, the footpad wasn’t much of a threat.”
“But this is Blackhaven,” Willa said. “Not the London underworld! Who on earth could Ralph have hired for such a purpose?”
<
br /> “You’d be surprised,” Tamar said. “There are some very unsavory characters that haunt the Blackhaven tavern. Villains in hiding, escaped prisoners, navy deserters, invalided and desperate soldiers and sailors. Most of them would pick your pocket, and a few wouldn’t mind slitting your throat while they were about it. I’ll ask around. Pretty sure Grant will already be doing the same. And he knows everyone in this town.”
Lord Tamar left a little later, promising to return tomorrow, if not before. “But send to me if he gets difficult,” he instructed Willa.
“Why, what are you going to do about it?” Dax challenged.
Tamar grinned. “Call you out, of course.
Willa pointed silently to the door.
The rest of the day passed rather pleasantly, considering all that had gone before. Willa entertained her husband with a mixture of childhood games and chatter. She read to him, including a couple of poems from the book of his own works which Mr. Yoeville handed in, until Dax cried for mercy, possibly because his wound was paining him too much when he laughed. Kate Grant called in and sat on the edge of Dax’s bed as if he were her little brother.
Some of his drinking and cardplaying cronies also made a call, blatantly trying to learn the details of the duel.
“What duel?” Dax said aggressively, and they lapsed into silence.
To everyone who didn’t already know, they maintained the fiction that he’d slipped on the wet rocks at Blackhaven Cove and injured himself.
In the early evening, Willa and Dax enjoyed a companionable dinner together. The only friction between them came when he tried to take his right hand out of the sling to eat, and Willa insisted he use his left. But even this had childishly hilarious consequences as his left hand was awkward in the task.
A little after dinner, Dr. Lampton came to change Daxton’s dressings and pronounced the wound clean enough, although he didn’t like the redness forming around the stitched area. He slathered more of the muddy ointment upon it before he bandaged it up again. By then, Dax had a couple of reddish patches on his cheeks.
Dr. Lampton said abruptly that someone should check on him during the night and that if the fever didn’t abate, she should send for him before morning.
“Try and keep him calm,” he added as she walked with him to the outer door.
“I’m perfectly calm,” Dax insisted when she returned to his bedchamber. “You’re a very calming person, Willa Blake.” He frowned. “Though I suppose that is Willa Dacre now.”
She smiled. “I seem to be Lady Dax to most people.”
“Hope you don’t mind that. My friends are somewhat informal.”
“No, I like it,” she said, passing by the bed toward the window seat.
But he patted the bed beside him. “Come, sit by me here. I want to talk to you.”
“What about?” Obligingly, she changed course, and perched on the bed next to his good shoulder. She liked being so near him. It made her whole body tingle and her heart beat faster.
“About Shelby,” he replied, taking her by surprise.
She frowned slightly. “What about him?”
“What did he do to hurt you?”
The direct question threw her. He’d just fought a duel with Ralph. What more could he do?
Dax took her hand. It jumped and then lay still in his, letting his fingers close warmly about it. “Look, I know he’s a boor. And if he has any power or authority over anyone, he’d rather hurt their feelings than not. I’m sure you came into that category. But I think there’s something more.”
Willa thought of deflecting the question again. But he was her husband, and if she wanted honesty and openness from him, she had to return them. So, she opened her mouth to tell him, then closed it, overwhelmed by the difficulty of putting it into words. She swallowed and tried again.
“One day, in the spring, he cornered me in the breakfast room and wouldn’t let me go.”
Daxton’s fingers tightened on hers. “What did he do?”
“He pulled me against him, put his hands on me. All over me. He tried to kiss me but I had my head strained so far away that he just slobbered over my face. That wasn’t very nice either.”
But for once Dax wouldn’t be distracted by humor. “Did he hurt you?”
“He was rough,” Willa admitted. “I was a little bruised. But not as badly as he was.”
Daxton’s brow twitched. “You got away from him? How?”
“In a very unladylike manner. I rammed by knee between his legs and shoved,” she said candidly. “He made a great fuss about it, and in truth, I did not realize that could be quite so painful for gentlemen. It was luck on my part because my knee was one of the few parts of me that was free to move at the time.”
She hesitated, but she’d begun now and had to finish. “While he was doubled up and rolling on the carpet, I told him if he ever touched me again, I’d tell his mother about him and Haines—my aunt’s abigail.”
He put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her into his side. “You bested him. And he’s been punishing you ever since. That’s why he got you to bring him the money the night we played dice.”
“I’m sure he meant to humiliate as well as inconvenience me. And in front of you, too, because you punched him for pushing me into that wall.”
His arm tightened around her. “Well, I know it can’t have been very comfortable for you, walking into such a party, with all eyes upon you, too. But I find I can’t be sorry for it.”
She smiled. “Neither can I.”
For a time, they sat in companionable silence, Willa very aware of his closeness, the warmth of his arm and his shoulder. Then she said, “Ralph has hated you ever since you punched him when we were children. I don’t think you cared or even knew. Yet now, you hate him. Why? What happened?”
This time it was Daxton’s turn to hesitate. “It’s not a very edifying tale, particularly not for a lady and my wife to boot.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Ralph kept a mistress, an opera dancer called Julia. She was beautiful, graceful, and I became obsessed with her. I think I was all of nineteen years old. But she liked me, let me visit her, and before long I could tell she was unhappy with Ralph. More than that, he ill-treated her, beat her, indulged in…pleasures, shall we say, which were no pleasure to her. So, I took her away from him, gave her my protection instead. And there was nothing he could do about it without appearing sillier than he already looked for losing her to a nineteen-year-old boy in the first place.”
Willa’s heart welled with pity. “What became of your Julia? Do you still see her?”
He smiled. “Lord, no. After a few months, she went off with an American sea captain and I haven’t seen her since. To be honest, it was a relief, for my youthful infatuation was wearing off.”
Willa couldn’t help being glad of that.
They spoke desultorily of other things that were more comfortable and pleasant, and gradually, Willa’s eyes began to close. It had been a long, anxious day. She was warm and comfortable and contented. It wasn’t surprising that she fell asleep with her head on his good shoulder, and the heat of his body seeping through her flimsy clothes.
Chapter Thirteen
She woke to darkness and the gentle thrill of fingers caressing her arm and shoulder and coming to rest, finally on her hip. Something—someone—warm snuggled close into her back.
Dax. I fell asleep in his bed…
The realization brought a surge of delicious heat, especially as his hand began to move on her hip, stroking the curve as far as her thigh. His quickened breath stirred her hair, caressed her ear. His lips touched the delicate skin behind her lobe and slid down her neck. She could almost believe he was smiling. His hand began to roam toward that part of her which seemed to radiate all the heat and tingling that was melting her.
And then he stopped. For several moments he didn’t even seem to breathe.
He’s asleep, she thought, stricken. He doesn’t know it’s me
.
But it seemed he had wakened up. His breath came out in a rush, whispering her name. “Willa.”
Afraid to move, she lay perfectly still until gently but insistently, the hand on her hip began to pull her onto her back.
“Dax,” she said shakily, “I—” The rest was lost in his mouth as it sank on hers in a kiss that was slow and hot and utterly irresistible. His hand caressed her other hip now, roaming upward to her breast where it lay heavily before beginning to move, sweet and arousing.
“Willa,” he said against her lips. “Tell me it’s time. Let me love you.”
Through her deep, sensual haze, she knew what he meant. “You’re my husband,” she got out.
“I am, and if we do this, you’ll never get rid of me.”
Her laughter was half-sob. “Dax. I never wanted to be rid of you.”
She felt his smile as he kissed her mouth again. “But do you want me, now, like this?”
“You know I do,” she said shakily, throwing both arms around his neck.
With one tug, it seemed, her clothing all fell away from her upper body. He must have unlaced everything while she slept. While he still slept. Perhaps the implications of that should have appalled her, but she’d always known what he was, and in reality, it made her want to laugh. Except that his mouth on her naked skin, her throat, her breasts, flooded every other emotion with pleasure and need.
Only once did common sense intervene. “Your shoulder!” she exclaimed. “You mustn’t—”
“My shoulder is as desperate for you as the rest of me,” he growled. “And none of me will be denied.”
Clearly, to keep him calm as she’d been instructed by the doctor, she had to give in. Although there was nothing calm about his all but panting breath, or his feverish, turbulent eyes blazing in the darkness, and certainly not in his increasingly wild caresses. The only clothing he wore was the shirt dangling from his good arm, tangling around their bodies. His naked skin was hot and smooth under her hands, the hard muscle rippling beneath in instant response to her every caress.
When he entered her body, she stilled, gazing at him in shock. And yet the trust was still there. His fingertips glided over her lips. “It’s a dance of love,” he whispered. “Hold on and follow me.”
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