Stephanie Laurens - A Lady of His Own

“He got away?”

“The shrubbery is too damned close to the house-it’s the perfect escape route.” Charles studied Nicholas’s face. “I need you to tell me all you can remember about your attacker.”

Nicholas nodded; gingerly, he eased up in the bed.

Charles rose and went to help him, stacking the pillows behind his back. “You’ve lost a fair amount of blood-you’ll be weak for a day or so, and those wounds will pull like the devil as they heal, but you were lucky-he didn’t have time to be as professionally vicious as he’d have liked.”

Penny rose and poured the tisane; when Nicholas was settled again, she handed him the cup. “It’s Em’s special recipe. It’ll help.”

Nicholas accepted the cup, sipped gratefully. Slipped back into his thoughts.

“So?” Charles prompted, returning to sit on the arm of Penny’s chair.

Nicholas grimaced. “I couldn’t see anything of his face-he had a scarf tied over his nose and mouth. In the dark, I couldn’t get any idea of his eyes, and he wore a hat jammed low-it didn’t come off.”

“Don’t think of features-you wrestled with him. How did he feel to you-old, young, supple, strong?”

Nicholas blinked; his expression grew distant. “Youngish, but not that much younger than I. Quite strong-leanish.”

“How tall?”

Nicholas looked at Charles. “Not as tall as you. More my height, maybe an inch or so taller.” He paused, then asked, “Did you see anything-anything to identify him?”

“Not specifically, but I believe we can cross Yarrow and Swaley off our lists. From what we both observed, Swaley’s too short, and there’s no way a man of Yarrow’s weight could have moved as your attacker did. I agree with your youngish-younger than you or me-and leanish, too, although on that I’m less clear.” Charles leveled his gaze on Nicholas’s face. “Now think back-you said he swore when you entered the library. What did he sound like?”

“He was swearing even before he saw me-he seemed enraged about the pillboxes.”

“Well, then?”

Nicholas’s grimace was self-deprecatory. “It was all in French-fluent, and…well, if you work with people who speak multiple languages, you realize they sound different in one tongue versus another.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t even hazard a guess as to how he would sound in English.”

Charles humphed, but nodded. “Carmichael, Fothergill, or Gerond, then.”

“But from what you said before, Fothergill and Carmichael are unlikely.” Nicholas handed his empty cup back to Penny. “And it was very fluent French.”

Charles shook his head. “Don’t build too much on that. I swear in very fluent French, too. As for the rest, ‘unlikely’ isn’t definite. Those three are all still suspects.”

Nicholas fell silent.

Penny studied him, then looked at Charles. He was thinking, furiously, not about what they’d learned, but about how to learn more. He was weighing his options; she knew the look.

After a long moment, he refocused on Nicholas, who met his gaze.

“When are you going to tell me-us-what’s going on?”

When Nicholas’s lips merely tightened, Charles went on, “If I hadn’t decided to come down and check the doors and windows, I would never have been in time to stop his next blow, one that would very likely have ended your life. And no, I’m not telling you that so you’ll feel grateful. I want you to understand how serious this is. This man has killed, not once but twice that we know of, and he will kill again. He has no compunction whatever. Who knows who it might be next time? Figgs, perhaps-she tended your wounds. Or Em, who made the tisane. Or Norris. Or Penny.”

His voice had grown progessively colder. When he said her name, even though she’d guessed it was coming, Penny had to fight to quell a shiver.

When Nicholas glanced down at his hands, lying atop the covers, and said nothing, Charles continued in the same, coldly judgmental tone, “You said you’d reasoned he’d make for the library, and that he was swearing over the pillboxes. Am I right in guessing that you believed the pillboxes would be part of his target?” He stopped, waited.

“Yes,” Nicholas eventually said. Closing his eyes, he rested his head back on the piled pillows.

“I assume you thought that because he’d gone after Mary-she was the downstairs tweeny, so she was responsible for dusting in the library.”

Eyes still closed, Nicholas nodded.

Charles studied him, then looked at Penny. Mouthed what he wanted her to say. She nodded and sat forward.

“Nicholas, we know of the pillboxes in the priest hole.”

His eyes jerked open; he stared at her. “You know…?”

He looked at Charles, who nodded.

“Not easy to explain, not at all.”

Nicholas sighed, and dropped his head back once more. He stared at the canopy over the bed.

“The thing I can’t fathom,” Charles went on, “is how the pillboxes fit with our theory of revenge. No one could have known…”

He paused. He’d been speaking his thoughts as they occurred, as he followed the train, yet hearing it aloud…suddenly he saw the light. “Not quite true, of course. The one group who most definitely would have known about the pillboxes is those who handed them over-the French.”

Fixing his gaze on Nicholas, he felt the jigsaw shift, saw the difficult pieces slide smoothly into place. But he was still missing one major piece.

Nicholas had a stubborn look on his face-one Charles actually recognized; it was very like Penny’s intransigent mask.

“Very well.” Settling back, he watched Nicholas. “This is what I know so far. Your father and Penny’s set up some scheme decades ago passing secrets to the French. The French paid in pillboxes. The secrets were delivered mostly verbally to a contact from a French lugger who met one of the Selbornes out in the Channel. The Smollets arranged the meetings using their yacht and the appropriate signal flags, then Penny’s father and later Granville would go out with one of the smuggling gangs, meet the French, effect the transfer, and come away with a pillbox.

“A very neat exchange for everyone concerned, except the soliders who died in the wars.” He was unable to keep the icy contempt from his voice.

Nicholas heard it; he paled, but otherwise didn’t react. He continued to stare at the canopy. But he was listening.

“Now, however,” Charles continued, reining in his feelings, “for some reason we have a French agent sent to recover some or all of the exchanged pillboxes, and”-watching Nicholas’s face he guessed-“to punish the Selbornes, indeed, to kill any of those involved, or even their relatives.”

Nicholas didn’t react. Charles’s blood ran cold as Nicholas’s lack of shock or surprise confirmed he’d guessed right. He glanced at Penny; the stunned look on her face as she stared at Nicholas showed she’d followed the exchange and read it as he had.

Drawing a deep breath, he looked again at Nicholas. “Nicholas, you have to tell me what you know. This man is a killer-he’ll continue until he succeeds in what he’s been sent here to do, or he’s stopped. He can be stopped.”

He paused, then added, “Regardless of the past, the current situation is that you have a French agent about who wants to kill you. That puts you and me on the same side.”

Nicholas’s lips curved fractionally. “An enemy of my enemy must be my friend?”

“War makes strange bedfellows all the time.” Charles waited, then quietly said, “You have to tell me. If you don’t, and he kills again, that death will be on your head.”

His final card, but he suspected, from all he’d seen of Nicholas, perhaps a telling one. He certainly hoped so.

“Nicholas.” Penny leaned forward and laid her hand on Nicholas’s. “Please, tell us what’s going on. I know the family’s reputation weighs with you.” Nicholas lifted his head enough to meet her eyes; she grimaced. “No matter how bad the past has been, the family might not have a future at all if you don’t speak now. You must see that.”

Nicholas held Penny’s gaze.

Charles held his breath.

A long moment passed, then Nicholas sighed and let his head fall back. He stared at the canopy unseeing. “I have to think.”

Charles fought to keep impatience from his voice. “This killer’s on the doorstep. We don’t have much time.”

Nicholas lifted his head and met his gaze squarely. “It’s not my story. I can’t just”-he gestured-“make you free of it. I have to think what I can reveal, should reveal, and what isn’t mine to tell at all.”

“You just have to tell me enough.”

Nicholas searched his eyes. “Twenty-four hours. You can give me until after dinner tomorrow”-he glanced at the clock-“no, that’s now today.” He drew in a shaky breath, and met Charles’s eyes. “Give me until then, and I promise I’ll tell you all I can.”

CHARLES HAD TO BE CONTENT WITH THAT. ASIDE FROM ANYthing else, Nicholas was exhausted and needed to rest.

Returning with Penny to her room, he checked that no villain was lurking, then locked her in and went to check on his patrols. All was quiet, yet the silence was rife with anxiety. After chatting to the four men presently on watch, he slipped back into Penny’s room, stripped, and slid under the covers.

She turned to him and tugged him close. He went, found her lips with his, kissed. Grumbled, “What is the matter with your family? It’s never your story, and you all want twenty-four damned hours…”

Penny looked into his dark eyes, softly smiled. “It’s not us-it’s you. It’s obvious that once we tell you, all control will be out of our hands.”

He humphed, and kissed her again.

She let him, met him, then encouraged him. Not just invited but dared him to take her, to give himself, let her give back to him and so reassure them both. To touch again and share the comfort they now found in each other, through the physical to reach further once again, onto that other plane.