“Henriet—oh!”

She stopped on the last stair, mouth agape, face-to-face with the man who had stepped from the black shadows to meet her.

Candlelight flickered over his black-avised face; his lips curled in a snarl.

Pain exploded in the back of her skull. She dropped the candle, pitched forward as all light extinguished and everything went black.

For an instant, she thought it was simply the candle going out, then from a great distance she heard Henrietta start to howl. To bay. The most horrible, bloodcurdling sound in the world.

She tried to open her eyes and couldn’t.

Pain knifed through her head. The black intensified and dragged her down.

Returning to consciousness wasn’t pleasant. For some considerable time, she hung back, hovered in that land that was neither here nor there, while voices washed over her, concerned, some sharp with anger, others with fear.

Henrietta was there, at her side. The hound whined and licked her fingers. The rough caress drew her inexorably back, through the mists, into the real world.

She tried to open her eyes. Her lids were inordinately heavy; her lashes fluttered. Weakly, she raised a hand, and realized there was a wide bandage circling her head.

All talk abruptly ceased.

“She’s awake!”

That came from Harriet. Her maid rushed to her side, took her hand, patted it. “Don’t you fret. The doctor’s been, and he says you’ll be good as new in no time.”

Leaving her hand limp in Harriet’s clasp, she digested that.

“Are you all right, sis?”

Jeremy sounded strangely shaken; he seemed to be hovering close by. She was lying stretched out, her feet elevated higher than her head, on a chaise…she must be in the parlor.

A heavy hand awkwardly patted her knee. “Just rest, my dear,” Humphrey advised. “Heaven knows what the world is coming to, but…” His voice quavered and trailed away.

An instant later came a rough growl, “She’ll do better if you don’t crowd her.”

Tristan.

She opened her eyes, looked straight at him, standing beyond the end of the chaise.

His face was more rigidly set than she’d ever seen it; the cast of his patrician features screamed a warning to any who knew him.

His blazing eyes were warning enough to anyone at all.

She blinked. Didn’t shift her gaze. “What happened?”

“You were hit on the head.”

“That much I’d gathered.” She glanced at Henrietta;the hound pushed closer. “I went down to look for Henrietta. She’d gone downstairs but hadn’t come back. She usually does.”

“So you went after her.”

She looked back at Tristan. “I thought something might have happened. And it had.” She looked back at Henrietta, frowned. “She was by the back door, but she didn’t move…”

“She was drugged. Laudanum in port, trickled under the back door.”

She reached for Henrietta, palmed the shaggy face, looked into the bright brown eyes.

Tristan shifted. “She’s fully recovered—lucky for you, whoever it was didn’t use enough to do more than make her snooze.”

She dragged in a breath, winced when her head ached sharply. Looked again at Tristan. “It was Mountford. I came face-to-face with him at the bottom of the stairs.”

For one instant, she thought he would actually snarl; the violence she glimpsed in him, that flowed across his features was frightening. Even more so because part of that aggression was directed, quite definitely, at her.

Her revelation had shocked the others; they were all looking at her, not Tristan.

“Who’s Mountford?” Jeremy demanded. He looked from Leonora to Tristan. “What is this about?”

Leonora sighed. “It’s about the burglar—he’s the man I saw at the bottom of our garden.”

That piece of information had Jeremy’s and Humphrey’s jaws dropping. They were horrified—doubly so because not even they could any longer close their eyes, pretend the man was a figment of her imagination. Imagination hadn’t drugged Henrietta nor cracked Leonora’s skull. Forced to acknowledge reality, they exclaimed, they declared.

The noise was all too much. She closed her eyes and slipped gratefully away.

Tristan felt like a violin string stretched to snapping point, but when he saw Leonora’s eyes close, saw her brow and features smooth into the blankness of unconsciousness, he dragged in a breath, swallowed his demons, and got the others out of the room without roaring at them.

They went, but reluctantly. Yet after all he’d heard, all he’d learned, to his mind they’d forfeited any right they might have had to watch over her. Even her maid, devoted though she seemed.

He sent her to prepare a tisane, then returned to stand looking down at Leonora. She was still pale, but her skin was no longer deathly white as it had been when he’d first reached her side.

Jeremy, no doubt prodded by incipient guilt, had had the sense to send a footman next door; Gasthorpe had taken charge, sending one footman flying to Green Street, and another for the doctor he’d been instructed was the one always to summon. Jonas Pringle was a veteran of the Peninsula campaigns; he could treat knife and gunshot wounds without turning a hair. A knock on the head was a minor affair, but his assurance, backed by experience, had been what Tristan had needed.

Only that had kept him marginally civilized.

Realizing Leonora might not wake for some time, he raised his head and looked through the windows. Dawn was just starting to streak the sky. The urgency that had propelled him through the last hours started to ebb.

Pulling one of the armchairs around to face the chaise, he dropped into it, stretched out his legs, fixed his gaze on Leonora’s face, and settled to wait.

She resurfaced an hour later, lids fluttering, then opening as she drew in a sharp, pain-filled breath.

Her gaze fell on him, and widened. She blinked, glanced around as well as she could without moving her head.

He lifted his jaw from his fist. “We’re alone.”

Her gaze returned to him; she studied his face. Frowned. “What’s wrong?”

He’d spent the last hour rehearsing how to tell her; now the time had come, he was too tired to play any games. Not with her. “Your maid. She was hysterical when I got here.”

She blinked; when her lids lifted, he saw in her eyes that she’d already jumped ahead, seen what must have happened, but when she met his gaze, he couldn’t interpret her expression. Surely she couldn’t have forgotten the earlier attacks. Equally, he couldn’t imagine why she’d be surprised at his reaction.

His voice was rougher than he intended when he said, “She told me about two early attacks on you. Specifically on you. One in the street, one in your front garden.”

Her eyes on his, she nodded, winced. “But it wasn’t Mountford.”

That was news. News that sent his temper soaring. He shot to his feet, unable any longer to pretend to a calmness that was far beyond him.

He swore, paced. Then swung to face her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She met his gaze, didn’t cower in the least, then quietly said, “I didn’t think it was important.”

“Not…important.” Fists clenched, he managed to keep his tone reasonably even. “You were threatened, and you didn’t think that was important.” He locked his eyes on hers. “You didn’t think I would think that important?”

“It wasn’t—”

“No!” He cut off her words with a slicing motion. Felt compelled to pace again, glancing briefly at her, struggling to get his thoughts in order, in sufficient order to communicate to her.

Words burned his tongue, too heated, too violent to let loose.

Words he knew he would regret the instant he uttered them.

He had to focus; he brought all his considerable training to bear, forcing himself to cut to the heart of the matter. Ruthlessly to strip away every last veil and face the cold hard truth—the central solid reality that was the only thing that truly mattered.

Abruptly, he halted, drew in a tense breath. Swung to face her, locked his eyes on hers. “I’ve come to care for you.” He had to force the words out; low and gravelly, they grated. “Not just a little, but deeply. More deeply, more completely, than I’ve cared for anything or anyone in my life.”

He drew a tight breath, kept his gaze on her eyes. “Caring for someone means, however reluctantly, giving some part of yourself into their keeping. They—the one cared for—becomes the repository of that part of you”—his eyes held hers—“of that something you’ve given that’s so profoundly precious. That’s so profoundly important. They, therefore, become important—deeply, profoundly important.”

He paused, then more quietly stated, “As you are to me.”

The clock ticked; their gazes remained locked. Neither moved.

Then he stirred. “I’ve done all I can to explain, to make you understand.”

His expression closed; he turned to the door.

Leonora tried to rise. Couldn’t. “Where are you going?”

Hand on the knob, he looked back at her. “I’m leaving. I’ll send your maid to you.” His words were clipped, but emotion, suppressed, seethed beneath them. “When you can cope with being important to someone, you know where to find me.”

“Tristan…” With an effort, she swiveled, lifted her hand—

The door shut. Clicked with a finality that echoed through the room.

She stared at the door for a long moment, then sighed and sank back on the chaise. Closed her eyes. She comprehended perfectly what she’d done. Knew she would have to undo it.

But not now. Not today.

She was too weak even to think, and she would need to think, to plan, to work out exactly what to say to soothe her wounded wolf.