“Breathe, Emily,” he pleaded between his own coughs, his voice a raw rasp from the smoke as his hands squeezed her arms.
But she couldn’t catch her breath. Her mouth gaped open and closed futilely like a fish out of water.
He grabbed her shoulders and shook her hard. “Breathe, damn it!” He wouldn’t lose her—he wouldn’t! “Breathe!”
With a violent, shuddering gasp, she inhaled sharply, her lungs finally finding air. She took rapid breaths now and gulped frantically at the cold air between pain-filled coughs. But she was breathing again, and relief fell through him.
Grey pulled her against his chest to press her close. As she continued to gasp, shaking with an occasional cough yet unable to speak, he rubbed his trembling hands over her back. The emotion that flooded over him with each of her deep breaths overwhelmed him, and his smoke-stung eyes blurred as he buried his face in her hair as she clung to him. A black streak dirtied her face, the hem of her robe was singed, her bare feet most likely burned—but she was alive. Thank God.
He rocked her gently in his arms long after her breathing steadied and her shaking calmed, long after her arms rose up weakly to encircle his neck. After coming so close to losing her, he now didn’t want to let her go.
“Dear God, brat,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with emotion. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“Grey,” she mumbled against the bare skin of his neck, her voice scratchy and rough, “are you hurt—”
“Major!” The small carriage and two-horse team drove toward them from the stable, with Hedley mounted on the driver’s seat and the reins twisted around his hands, expertly controlling the skittish horses.
When the carriage stopped on the lawn beside them, Grey lifted Emily into his arms and carried her to it. He flung open the door and placed her inside, then he leaned out the door and ordered, “Drive!”
As the carriage lurched to a start, Grey swung back inside and slammed the door closed. He didn’t care where they were headed as long as they left. Sitting on the edge of the bench across from her, facing backward as the carriage swayed and rocked down the lane toward the road, he reached for her hands and held them tightly. She breathed more easily now as her skin warmed and the color returned to her cheeks.
Her fingers curled gratefully around his. “Yardley,” she whispered. “I can’t leave her behind. We have to go back for her.”
The hell they would. “I’ll send for her once we’re safe.”
Her eyes turned pleading. “Please—”
“We are not turning around,” he forced out through clenched teeth.
At the strong resolve in his voice, she wisely stopped pressing for her maid and nodded. She blinked hard, tears gathering at her lashes. “What you did back there—”
“It stops,” he hissed furiously as he leaned across the compartment toward her. His fingers clamped down hard around her wrists so she couldn’t pull away. “The lying, the deceit—you will tell me the truth, Emily. Now.”
“I can’t!” she cried.
He jerked her toward him until she nearly fell into the space between the benches at his feet. Fury blazed through him. “For Christ’s sake! Someone just tried to burn you alive!”
Instead of bursting into sobs, an inscrutable mask came down over her face. She didn’t look away, her eyes unwavering from his in the dark shadows as she bravely but silently held his gaze and refused to give up her secrets.
He stared at her, stunned. Good God. What must she have been through in her life if she could react so calmly, so stoically, after everything that had happened tonight? He would have given her credit for that if he didn’t want to throttle her so badly. If it didn’t seem to him that she had…expected it.
A sickening dread rose in his gut. She had been expecting it.
“What are you keeping from me?” he demanded, his teeth clenching so hard in his frustration with her that the muscles in his neck worked. “Why is someone trying to kill you?”
She inhaled sharply. In that heartbeat’s hesitation, he saw indecision flash in her eyes.
“Emily,” he pleaded as he leaned toward her, his anger replaced by core-wrenching concern as he desperately tried to get her to trust him. “Tell me, please, so I can protect you.”
A soft, anguished sound tore from her throat, and she shuddered, her eyes squeezing shut. “Andrew.”
“What about him?” he demanded. He didn’t give a damn about her husband.
“His death wasn’t an accident,” she admitted in a whisper so low he barely heard it.
“What do you mean?” Confusion pulsed through him.
She opened her eyes and stared at him. The raw fear he saw in her was so intense, so monstrous that it ripped his breath away—
“He was murdered.”
Christ. He remained perfectly still, not letting his expression register his shock. He stared at her closely, gauging the emotions on her face, remembering the fear he’d seen in her eyes and the loaded pistols she apparently kept in every room of the house.
For once, she wasn’t lying.
“How?” he asked as gently as possible.
“He went out riding, and when he didn’t come back, the grooms went after him. They found him in a field. His skull…” She shook her head, unable to offer more.
His heart tore for her, knowing the pain she suffered but also knowing he had to uncover more in order to help her. “Riding accidents are common.” He loosened his hold on her hands, just enough that she could sit back, but he didn’t let go. If he gave in now to those soft pleadings of hers, he might never learn the truth. “What makes you think it anything more?”
“Andrew was a solid rider,” she explained. “Not as good as you and Thomas, but he never would have fallen off like that. If the horse rolled over on him or broke its leg…but to just fall off an unharmed horse in the middle of a flat field—never.”
He squeezed her fingers. Sorrow swelled inside him that she’d lost her husband, that she was so desperate to find a reason for her loss that she clung to the possibility of murder. “It happens sometimes, even to the best riders.”
She gave a faint shake of her head, as if she’d pondered that very thing every day since he died. “How does a man fall from a horse hard enough to crush his skull but not get a smudge of dirt on his clothes?”
His heart skipped. He didn’t have an answer for that.
“Whoever killed him didn’t chase him down, didn’t attack him,” she continued, her fingers tightening around his. “Whoever it was talked him down from the horse, I’m certain of it. Andrew knew and trusted him. Which means I most likely know and trust him.” Then she whispered, so softly he could barely hear her, “Which means I can’t trust anyone.”
When she raised her eyes to his, the fear was gone, replaced by a deep fatigue and firm resolve, an expression that was almost emotionless now that she’d confessed this secret to him. She was completely drained yet forced herself to endure. He’d seen that same expression on the faces of the war wounded, of civilians forced to flee from their homes, of old soldiers who had served too long in the heat of battle—it was the look of survival.
“I know you must think me an utter bedlamite,” she continued, “shooting guns at you, claiming my husband was murdered when I have no real proof…but I’m not mad, Grey.” She jutted her chin into the air with grim determination. “I know my husband was murdered.”
“But why?” He shook his head gently with disbelief. “Emily, what you’re saying—”
“Because Andrew became the heir apparent to Alistair Crenshaw, Marquess of Dunwich,” she poured out in a rush, yet so softly whispered that he barely heard her over the rolling wheels beneath them. “That’s why he was killed.”
She pulled away. This time, stunned by that news, he let her go.
He stared across the dimly lit compartment at her. Impossible. Of course, stories littered English history of men who committed fratricide and patricide in order to inherit titles
and of women who killed to become heiresses. But to murder Andrew Crenshaw, a man few people in London knew existed and even fewer cared about…no. Her grief over losing her husband had made her irrational, that was all.
“At the time your husband died, no one knew who was in line to inherit,” he explained gently. “Even the Committee for Privileges didn’t know.” Or the gossip of that would have poured through London like a spring rain.
“Someone knew,” she assured him. “They’ve known for six months.”
“Tell me.”
She drew a deep breath. “It started right before Andrew was killed, strange happenings around the estate…a stray bullet from a hunter hit the carriage, a footman who fell down the stairs swore he’d been pushed, food was poisoned…” She held her arms wrapped against her lower stomach, as if trying to hold and comfort herself. “At the time no one thought they were anything more than just accidents.”
“Then your husband died,” he murmured, “and you began to suspect they were more than coincidental.”
She nodded. “A month later I received a letter from Dunwich’s attorney, stating that Andrew was the new heir—they hadn’t heard that he’d died. He was a distant cousin, you see, so I never thought to send word to that branch of the Crenshaws. But I knew when I saw that letter what happened to him and why.”
“And the accidents?”
“They stopped when he was killed.” Her blue eyes glowed bright even in the darkness. “Until tonight.”
His blood turned cold. He understood now why she’d pleaded with him so fiercely to leave, why there had been such fear in her eyes when he’d refused. Whoever had caused the accidents and murdered her husband was still there, still watching her, and whoever it was thought Grey was a threat. Enough of a potential risk that he’d set the house on fire to try to kill them both.
“That’s why I wanted you to leave,” she whispered and looked down at her trembling hands in her lap. “I couldn’t bear it if—” The words choked her. Turning her face toward the shadows, she breathed out softly, “I could never forgive myself if anything happened to you because of me.”
His chest tightened with wrenching regret. He’d been wrong about her, so very wrong…He’d thought she was simply a coldhearted harridan who couldn’t be bothered with her brother when she’d actually been going through hell. Alone and isolated in the countryside, she’d been dealing not only with the grief of her husband’s murder but also the terror of knowing that whoever did it might come after her.
No wonder she needed brandy to help her sleep and kept a loaded pistol in her sitting room. No wonder she’d shot at them when they arrived. Good God. For the past five months, she must have felt as if she were being hunted.
But now she had him. And he would protect her the same way he’d always protected her brother. With his life.
He held open his arms. “Come here, brat.”
* * *
Emily stared at him as he waited for her, his arms wide in invitation, and the emotions churned inside her.
For so long, she’d been alone. First during those long years at school when she’d never fit in and made no friends, then even after her marriage, when she’d lost both her husband and her brother. All alone and isolated…until today, when Thomas sent Grey to her.
Nathaniel Grey. More than loneliness drew her to him. It was all of him—the way his grin warmed her insides, how she could talk to him so easily, how he made her laugh even when she was so furious with him that she wanted to throttle him. She admired most of all the fight he possessed, the determination to carve out a better life than fate had given him. She was even attracted to the vulnerability she glimpsed in him, that vulnerability he tried so hard to hide from the world beneath his devil-may-care veneer.
She nearly laughed that the same man who inadvertently caused her loneliness was now the same man offering to rescue her from it by taking her into his arms. And oh, how badly she wanted to let him! Yet she was still keeping secrets, and how furious would he be when he learned the truth? She’d told him about Andrew, but nothing else had changed. And every minute she spent with him only continued to put his life in danger.
But for now, they were safe, and finally, he was hers.
Slowly, she reached out her hand, and he took it to help her across the bouncing carriage to sit beside him. When his strong arms folded around her to draw her close, she melted against his chest and closed her eyes.
So warm and strong, his arms encircling protectively around her—for a moment, she did nothing but let herself feel. And sweet heavens, how good he felt! The strong heartbeat beneath her fingertips as her hand rested on his chest and the steady rise and fall of his deep breaths soothed her more than she could ever have imagined, and when he placed a tender kiss at her temple, she trembled.
“Are you chilled?” he murmured against her hair, misreading her reaction.
He released her and moved across the swaying compartment to pull up the other bench seat and reach inside the box for a lap rug. He found one and tucked it around her like a blanket. She couldn’t help but smile at that. They were fleeing through the dark night for their lives, but he was worried she might be chilled.
He knelt on the floor and looked up at her, his eyes solemn with concern. “How are your feet?” he asked gently. “Did you burn them?”
She shook her head. “They’re just a bit tender, that’s all.”
Dubious of her assessment, he reached down to her bare foot where it peeked out from beneath the singed hem of her dressing robe, and she caught her breath as his large hand folded warmly around her ankle so he could examine it in the dim light of the carriage lamps. When his fingertips stroked carefully over her sole, soothingly drawing curving circles against her skin, she closed her eyes with a sigh. Having his hands on her, even in such an innocent touch, felt so good that she could barely sit still.
He released her left foot and reached for the right, to again trace his fingers over her. But this time, she would have sworn that his hand reached further up her calf, that his fingers lingered longer against her skin. And this time, the feeling that warmed up her leg was anything but soothing.
He slipped his fingers between her toes.
She caught her breath in a trembling gasp. Oh, sweet Lord! He was slowly gliding his fingers between her toes in the most delicate caresses she’d ever felt in her life, and every inch of her tingled, electric. How was it possible that a simple foot rub could be so erotic? Or if his hands were all the way down on her toes, how she could feel each slow, slippery slide of his fingers ache all the way up between her thighs?
She swallowed, afraid he might feel her trembling again and wrongly think she was in pain. Or worse, to think that she was some shameless wanton, so easily titillated…even if she was. Because no matter how much she wanted him—and heaven help her, she wanted him desperately—some lines could not be crossed now. Not even with Grey.
“No burns, then?” she forced out, as lightly as she could, yet her voice still sounded husky to her own ears.
“Nothing serious.” He caressed his fingertips along the bottom of her foot in soft, slow circles. “But I’ll examine them again in the morning to be certain.”
If this was how it felt to be examined, she didn’t think she could endure it a second time. Not without insisting that he examine all of her with those wonderful fingers of his, just as slowly, just as tantalizingly…She nodded tightly. “If you insist.”
He sat next to her and took her back into his arms, angling his long legs across the compartment to give her as much room as possible. Even this small gesture made her eyes sting with gratitude at his thoughtfulness.
He tucked a curl behind her ear. “Close your eyes, brat,” he urged, “and try to rest. I’ll watch over you.”
I’ll watch over you…If only it were that simple, she thought sadly. But at least for this night, she could let someone else take care of her.
With a sigh, she laid her head against
his chest and closed her eyes. Rocked by the swaying carriage and lulled by his heartbeat in the darkness, she fell asleep in his arms.
Chapter Five
The next afternoon, Emily lay curled up like a cat on the bench next to Grey, her head resting against his shoulder and his arm lying lazily across her back. Since leaving Snowden, she’d spent the night and most of the next day sleeping. She hadn’t realized how exhausted she’d truly been until she had this opportunity to sleep, safe and protected. Yet she’d rested more peacefully than she’d ever imagined possible in such a cramped position in a cold, bouncing carriage while the dark day grew more and more chilly and wet around them.
All thanks to Grey. Whenever he brushed his hand over her back or shoulder, or took the liberty of tucking a stray curl behind her ear, the gentle touches comforted her and nearly lulled her back to sleep. Oh, she could easily grow used to this.
A sigh of contented relaxation escaped her, the soft sound earning her another stroke of his hand down her back. Very easily.
The day hadn’t been all silence, though. Between naps, they talked comfortably like old friends. He was fascinating, even more so than she remembered because the years had tempered his brash personality and given him a maturity she found intriguing. He told her stories about Spain and the War Office, but she noticed that he never shared anything from his childhood or the days before he joined the army. While that hadn’t surprised her, it hurt her more than she wanted to admit that he didn’t trust her with that part of his life.
In her turn, she described childhood adventures with Thomas, the two of them often ganging up on helpless tutors and nannies, and how he taught her how to ride and shoot as well as the boys. She shared her old dream of being an artist and even described her school days, although hiding most of the bad incidents and injecting far more happiness into the telling than she’d ever felt as a pupil. Whenever Grey asked about her life since she’d married, though, she answered in such a vague manner that he wouldn’t be able to draw any definite conclusions. She wasn’t yet ready to talk about her marriage. Not even with him.
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