Page 10 of Escape of the Bridegroom (Escape #2)

W ith the aid of torch and lanterns, Aidan found only two places from which the burglars had entered and decamped: under the drawing room window where he had seen the stranger, and under his bedchamber window, both being on the darker side of the house, away from the ballroom, the front door, and the kitchens. It had, he thought grimly, been a well-timed and well-planned burglary.

Only, why had they taken Eve? Either she or one of the burglars had clearly been injured, but either way, taking her with them made no sense.

Until he heard the whispers.

Several of the guests had spilled outside to see what was going on, or to beg Aidan to leave pursuit to the constables, while others had fled to their rooms to see what they had lost. Pushing through the outdoor crowd toward the stable, he heard someone murmur. “Someone clearly told the miscreants all about the house and the party. What if she was one of them?”

Aidan stopped dead. Every instinct was to find the man who’d said such a vile thing and knock him to the ground where he belonged.

“Well, she’s not one of us,” came the response. “No one knows anything about her.”

“I do,” Aidan said savagely. He had no time for such nonsense. He had to find her. If she was still alive...

Atlas was happy enough to receive him, even in the dark, and with the lantern’s help, Aidan found it easy to follow the footsteps of the retreating burglars to the muddy track that ran parallel to the main drive to the gates, half-hidden by tall, gracious beech trees from the drive itself. But once he was through the gates and onto the road, things grew more difficult.

Someone had taken the trouble to wipe out the prints. Aidan rode several yards in each direction and eventually found the clear print of one solitary man, and then one horse heading west. As though one of the burglars had departed later than the others and forgot to disguise the direction of his horse. The man he had seen in the drawing room perhaps.

Or just a passing horseman who had nothing to do with Grand Court. After all, it was impossible to tell when these hoof prints had been made, though they were surely later than the afternoon’s rain. Aidan pursued them anyway, since he had no other clue, and was rewarded a hundred yards or so down the road by a larger cluster of hoof prints, as though his man had caught up with the main party and they all travelled onward together.

He was on the right track, but felt no triumph, only grim relief that he was not losing Eve’s direction. Probably. All his focus had to be on the tracks and every so often he found them obliterated, whether by accident or design, and had to try both forks in the road and several paths at the crossroads before he picked them up again. They always took lesser roads that avoided villages—and that added to his hope that he was on the right track.

Until they followed a sign to the village of Cresswell. The back of his neck began to prickle with unease. He could not even see the village ahead, although he saw one solitary light on his right. A few yards on, a track led toward it. He paused a moment to listen and peer around him. He could do Eve no good if he was shot or injured in an ambush. Perhaps they knew he was following by now...

His lantern showed him no obvious attackers. But it did show him a sign, half-hidden by a straggly hedge, to the Black Bull. An inn...

He hesitated, for he could see many hoofprints carrying on toward Cresswell, along with wheel tracks and footprints. The path to the inn showed similar chaotic traffic, impossible to differentiate. Eventually, he turned Atlas toward the inn, dismounted in the empty yard, and told Atlas to wait. He generally did.

His heart beating with possibilities, both good and bad, he marched through the door into the light.

A sleepy innkeeper in his night cap with a coat over his night gown sprang to his feet. “Doctor...” He scowled. “Oh. You’re not Dr. Ells. Sorry, sir, what can we be doing for you?”

A quick glance had shown Aidan no threatening shadows. There was a light on the stairs leading to the upper floor, and one in the passage leading no doubt to the kitchen. He could hear no voices, but someone moved above the ceiling.

“I’m not sure,” Aidan said slowly, gazing at the nightcap. “Have I arrived in the middle of an emergency?”

“Somewhat,” said the man. “Got a poor young lady upstairs and the doc—Here! You can’t just barge up there!”

Aidan could and did, though it was no doubt unwise. With the innkeeper pounding after him, he took the stairs three at a time and followed the light on the right, spilling under a door.

This door flew open and a large woman in a mobcap exclaimed, “Thank God! Are you the new doctor?”

“No. Is your sick young lady my wife?”

Even in the dim light, the woman’s plump cheeks blanched. “Lord love you, I hope not, sir, for she ain’t opened her eyes since she was brought here. Come in and see for yourself.”

“Seeing being all you’ll do,” the innkeeper growled behind him, barging into the room almost beside him.

Aidan saw at once that it was Eve.

For one thing, her beautiful, sparkling ballgown, spattered with mud, had been spread over a hard chair. For another, her still, pale face on the white pillow, even without the vitality that was familiar to him, could belong to no one else.

The world tilted and he had to grasp the door to steady himself.

“Is she...?” His voice was hoarse, alien, and he didn’t know how long it would last.

“She’s breathing, sir. Garrick’s sent for Dr. Ells. No need to hang around, Garrick, he’s her husband all right. You go and wait for the doctor.”

Obediently, the innkeeper departed, and Aidan sank helplessly down on the edge of the bed, taking Eve’s cold, lifeless hand in his.

“Poor young lady,” Mrs. Garrick said. “What on earth was she doing out in her finery in the middle of the night?”

“I think she was abducted,” Aidan said. With sinking stomach, he saw the matted blood in her hair, and the rough, stained dressing upon it.

“I’ve cleaned it sir, but she must have taken a hard knock. It’ll need stitching, I think, but the doctor will know.”

“How...how did she get here?”

“Young fellow brought her in and bolted again. Wearing a mask too that made Garrick and me—”

“A mask?” Aidan interrupted, distracted. The man he had seen in the drawing hadn’t been masked—had he? “What sort of a mask? Like a loo mask? Or—”

She scowled. “Like a highwayman’s mask, and we know they’ve had a couple of highway robberies over by Beldon, so Garrick was just going to fetch his shotgun, when the young fellow just puts her down on the settle—gentle-like—growls, Look after her and get her a doctor. Leaves a gold coin on the table and bolts again! We was outraged, thought she was some thieves’ bit of muslin, but not with those hands and certainly not with those diamonds!” She nodded toward the dress on the chair.

How odd they didn’t take the diamonds . The thought flitted vaguely through his mind, even as Mrs. Garrick said the words.

“Strange him paying for the doctor too,” she added. “Expect they don’t want to hang for murder. Mind, they’d hang for highway robbery, too.”

Aidan was hardly listening. He had his ear close to Eve’s pale lips. He felt her breath on his skin, though it was terrifyingly weak.

“That sounds like the doctor now,” Mrs. Garrick said, bustling out.

And indeed she came back a moment or two later with a brisk, middle-aged man clutching his medical bag. Reluctantly, peculiarly terrified, Aidan made way for him.

He supposed it was guilt, but the sharp, intense pain constricting his throat and stomach felt like fear. And grief. Could this really be the end of their acquaintance? So short and full of such surprises...

“A nasty wound,” the doctor said, glaring at him. “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I just followed her.”

“Another young man brought her in,” Mrs. Garrick confirmed, “highwayman by the look of him, though to be fair he was careful enough of her in our sight. Left a guinea for you too.”

The doctor sniffed and reached for his bag. “Needs to be stitched, so perhaps it’s best the poor thing’s unconscious. How long has she been like this?”

“Must be an hour,” said Mrs. Garrick.

“Maybe twice that,” Aidan put in. “If she was unconscious when they took her from Grand Court.”

“Grand Court?” the doctor said in sharp disbelief, though he didn’t look up from his task. At least he burned the needle in the nearest candle flame before using it.

“There was a burglary,” Aidan said. “She must have got in their way.”

“What’s the world coming to?” Mrs. Garrick wondered.

Aidan, numb, let the doctor work in silence. Only after he’d rebandaged the wound did he speak. “Will she live, doctor?”

“I don’t know,” the doctor replied. “The blow she took could easily have affected her brain. To be frank, I don’t like that she has been unconscious so long, but sometimes it’s the brain’s way of repairing itself. Blows to the head are notoriously unpredictable.” He took a small bottle from his bag. “If and when she wakes, give her a couple of drops of this in water —only a couple of drops, mind! And no more than twice in a day. It should help with the pain. I’ll call back in the morning to see how she does. What’s your name, young man?”

“Wolf,” Aidan said, his attention all on his wife.

“Try not to worry, Mr. Wolf. It will not help her. Keep talking to her. It might rouse her. Goodnight, sir.”

***

I T WAS RIDICULOUSLY hard to contemplate life without her. Which was bizarre considering he had not known of her existence a fortnight ago and he could count their conversations on the fingers of one hand. He resented her and all she stood for, found her mad starts like following him to Grand Court annoying. She had a gift for doing and saying the wrong thing and riling him. If he had been granted the barest chance of twelve thousand pounds without her, he would have grabbed it with both hands and run.

And yet he didn’t. If she died now, it would, in fact, be the answer to his prayers. So why did the prospect churn him up with fear and guilt and some profound, unrecognizable ache?

Just because they had reached a better understanding during the ball? A hope that perhaps, if they could be friends, all was not lost? Besides which, it was a tragedy that anyone should die so young, and in such a way...

He knew a brief urge to jump back on his horse and go after the bastards who had hurt her, taken her, and abandoned her here. Rather than sitting still at the inn with this unbearable weight upon him, he would be better employed doing something useful...

And yet he could not bring himself to leave her alone. Not for more than a minute or two at any rate. He rose and went to find Garrick the innkeeper, asked him to send a message to Grand Court to say that his wife was injured and that he would stay with her at the Black Bull.

Then he returned to the bedchamber, sat down on the bed, once more taking Eve’s hand in his, and rubbing it gently. He imagined she stirred, but her eyes did not open.

“Won’t you wake up, Eve?” he said softly. “Please?”

He bent and kissed her fingers and when he raised his head, her eyelids fluttered open. For a moment, pain intensified, for his father had opened his eyes in the moment of his death. But though Eve’s eyes were cloudy and a little unfocused, there was surely expression, life.

Gradually, her gaze fixed on his.

He smiled, his relief overwhelming. “There you are.”

A frown flickered on her smooth brow, and she winced as if even that tiny movement caused her pain.

“Who are you?” she asked hoarsely.

***

P AIN HAMMERED IN HER head. As the strange room and the strange man holding her hand emerged through the mists of her vision into the candlelight, she felt more surprised than afraid. Mostly, she wanted her head to stop hurting.

“There you are,” he said, as if he knew her.

He had a good face—knee-meltingly handsome. Moreover, his anxious grey eyes were kind and when he smiled, the skin at the corners crinkled. He must smile a lot because those laughter lines were pleasingly deep...

“Who are you?” she asked, not yet worried by his unfamiliarity, just curious.

His eyes widened. “I’m your husband.”

The hammer in her head gave an extra-hard blow and instinctively she drew her hand free of his, to reach up and touch the source of the pain. She found a bandage.

“What happened to me?” she asked in surprise.

“I was hoping you could tell me that. You seem to have been abducted during a burglary. At Grand Court.”

What is Grand Court?

Why don’t I remember something as important as a husband?

“Your name,” she said, struggling, trying to force herself to remember, “is...”

“Aidan,” he said after the appalled silence. “Aidan Wolf.”

“Then I am—” She broke off as panic surged like a tide. She stared at him, scrabbling in her mind for any familiarity. “ Who am I ?”

“Eve,” he said low.

“Eve. Mrs. Wolf.” It didn’t sound right. Didn’t feel right.

“Lady Wolf,” he corrected.

It felt no more familiar and no less wrong.

“We are not long married,” he said. “Less than a fortnight. Your maiden name is Romilly.”

Was it? It meant no more than Wolf.

“Why don’t I remember?” she asked hoarsely. “What is wrong with me?”

“You got a nasty bump on the head. The doctor has been and stitched it. He left you this for the pain.” He picked up a bottle from the night table. “Let me give you a couple of drops.”

“Yes, please,” she croaked. Anything to take away the grinding, throbbing pain. Even thinking hurt. She watched him splash a little water from a jug into a cup and add a couple of drops from the bottle.

Propped up on pillows, it was easy to take the cup from him, though she felt weak enough to drop it. She held it in both hands and drank it, eager for it to make everything right again.

He rose from the bed and she panicked that he was about to leave her. Stupid when she didn’t even know him. Her husband, dear God...

“I’ll send Mrs. Garrick to make you comfortable. She’s the innkeeper’s wife.”

She didn’t know Mrs. Garrick either, but apparently they had never met before tonight so that didn’t matter so much as forgetting her husband. The woman helped her to the chamber pot, then back into bed, where she bathed her face and hands. By then she was very sleepy and the throbbing of her head had begun to ease.

“Is he...is my husband...” What strange words . She swallowed. “Has he gone?”

“Of course not. I’ll send him to you.”

Although he was a stranger, there was a desperate comfort in his return to the room. She felt able to close her eyes, to give in to the whirling dizziness. When she woke, it would all come back to her and the world would not be so terrifying.

***

S HE WOKE TO DAYLIGHT . Though her head still hurt, it didn’t feel as unbearable. The man from last night sat in a beam of sunlight shining through the bedchamber window. He was sitting at a desk, busily writing. The scratch of his pen across the paper was oddly comforting, considering she still couldn’t remember a thing about the man who wielded it. Or about herself.

She reached for the cup of water on the table, and he turned to her at once.

“Eve. How are you?”

“Better, I think.” She took a sip. “But I still don’t remember anything. How can I not know who I am?”

“It will come back,” he said reassuringly. “The doctor may be able to help. Are you hungry?”

“I don’t know.” Anxiety seemed to be getting in the way.

“Some eggs and toast, perhaps?” he suggested.

Since he had already risen and was halfway to the door, she did not object. And in fact, when a worried-looking maid brought it all in, her stomach rumbled in a most unladylike fashion. She thought he might have heard it, for he smiled.

Oddly, it was almost comfortable breakfasting with him in this way. He sprawled on the bed like a boy on a picnic and they ate scrambled eggs on toast and drank surprisingly good coffee. He amused her with tales of secret midnight feasts with his brother, inevitably discovered by the household adults because they never thought to sweep the crumbs off their beds.

They had almost finished when Dr. Ells arrived. He was no more familiar than anyone else, but at least he was no one she was supposed to know.

“Very glad to find you awake,” he said, taking her husband’s—Aidan’s—place beside her. “You gave us all a bit of a fright. Let me just change this dressing and have a look at the wound...”

“I can’t remember anything, doctor,” she blurted. “I don’t know my own name. I don’t even recognize my own husband.”

His brows lifted, though he seemed more interested in her wound. “Amnesia. Interesting. I have not come across many such cases where the memory loss lasts for more than a few minutes. But I’m sure everything will come back in time.”

“What if it doesn’t?” she whispered.

“And what if God strikes us all dead tomorrow? There is no point in worrying about either possibility. Nature will take its course. As God will His. The wound looks fine, considering. Do you have a thundering headache?”

“A nagging one. It thundered last night but Aidan gave me drops...”

“Take them again if it becomes too bad but no more than twice a day until I see you again.”

“Till you see her again?” Aidan repeated. “May she not be moved?”

“Where were you thinking of going?”

“My home. Wolverton Hall, some thirty miles from here.”

“I would not advise it at this stage. All the jolting would be most uncomfortable for your wife. Resign yourself to a couple more days here at least.” Dr. Ells placed a fresh dressing on her wound and bound it in place with quick, deft fingers. “One moment.”

He went out quite suddenly, leaving her and Aidan looking at each other in some bemusement, but he was not gone long. He came back with a hand mirror, which he held in front of her face.

She gazed at a stranger. Brown hair, brown eyes, decent, pale skin. She was glad for Aidan’s sake that she was not ill-looking, even with a bandage around her head. She was lucky to have him to care for her. And he clearly did.

“I don’t know her,” she said. “The woman in the glass. She could be anyone.”

“Perhaps you remember your mother? Or your father?”

She had not even thought of them. She tried to, then shook her head.

“Your mother is dead,” Aidan said, “but your father is very much alive.”

“Mr. Romilly,” she said, recalling the name Aidan had told her.

“You lived with him until recently. And with your sister, Miranda.”

She shook her head.

Dr. Ells lowered the mirror and laid it on the bedside table where she could easily reach it. “Don’t force it. The memories will return in their own time. In the meantime, plenty of rest and good food. No strong spirits. If your head does not hurt, you could try sitting in the chair for dinner. Tomorrow, you could go downstairs, with your husband’s help, try a little fresh air, but no long walks yet. I’ll come back the day after tomorrow. Mr. Wolf, perhaps you’d show me to the front door.”