Page 31

E mma had not fallen asleep as easily as she thought she might. An image of the kiss she had shared with Lord Orson consistently played over and over again in her mind.

“ What did the kiss mean to his lordship ?” she asked herself.

“ Lust? Perhaps, though a man of Lord Orson’s countenance and place in society could claim any number of women who would be willing to marry him, have a liaison, or become his mistress.

Yet, Lady Theodora said Orson had often spoken of me, often enough that she declared the man set on me . ”

She rose from the bed to claim her robe and to slip it over her nightgown.

“ What exactly would ‘set on me’ mean to Lord Orson ?” she asked herself as she drifted to the window to look out upon the night sky.

“ How I wish my mother was in England so I could ask her opinion on how I should proceed. It would be easier to decide if I could recall something of my life before my attacker scrambled my brain .”

Emma held no doubt Orson was attracted to her, for he had said as much in his words and in the manner he had kissed her. “ I should say a prayer of thanksgiving that it was Lord Orson who found me that night rather than someone of no scruples. I would not have been able to defend myself .”

She rested her forehead on the cool glass pane, attempting to will her thoughts of Lord Orson away long enough for her to claim some sleep.

“The man is quite irresistible,” she said with a heavy sigh, and thought to turn back to her bed when a movement along the shrubbery caught her attention.

She dropped back behind the drape, but she kept her eyes on the line of the shrubbery.

Then the shadow moved and on two feet, not four.

For a moment, she could not breathe. Could not move. Then, she broke away, knowing she must reach Lord Orson. Fumbling with the door to her room, she was soon pounding on his door with the palm of her hand. “Richard! Richard! Please wake up!”

He had been asleep for perhaps an hour when he heard her pleas, jarring him awake.

His dream of proposing and being accepted had been interrupted before she could respond.

Richard threw the blankets to the side and grabbed his robe before he reached the door.

“What is...?” he managed to say before Lady Emma launched herself into his arms. “Shush, love,” he coaxed her. “A nightmare?”

“No!” she insisted as she fisted the lapels of his robe. “Someone is outside!”

Richard edged her further from him, where he could look upon her countenance and know the truth. “Surely it was a dream!”

“I have not yet been asleep,” she hissed. “I know what I saw from my window.”

“Go wake Beaufort and Graham,” he told her. Whether he believed her or not, Richard would have a look around the property.

As she skirted away, he turned to remove his robe and to drop a shirt over his head. Next, he sat to tug on his trousers and his boots, without his stockings. Finally, half-dressed, he claimed first one gun from the nightstand and then another from his bag.

Quietly as possible, he crossed to her room to have a look around before he moved to the window to peer out, first this way and then that. He was about to declare her having a dream again, when he noticed someone running bent over in the direction of the well.

Beaufort stumbled into Emma’s room, obviously still half asleep. “Anything?” he asked.

“Unless a fox walks on two legs and hunches over,” Richard declared, “my lady is correct. We have company.”

Beaufort nodded his understanding. “I will go out the front. Graham will cover the door off the gun room, in case they attempt to come in that way. You, my friend, have the servants’ entrance.”

Richard nodded his acceptance of how they would split up. Shoving his extra gun in Lady Emma’s hands, he ordered, “Use it only if someone manages to make it past us and into the house.”

“Do I know how to shoot a gun?” she asked.

“Point it, cock the hammer, and squeeze the trigger,” he explained quickly. “I am counting on you to remain strong, my lady.” With that, he and his friends scrambled away. All the while, Richard prayed the woman who held his heart would not know harm.

It was cool outside, cooler than Richard had expected.

The air’s chilliness skimmed across his anxiousness and steadied his grip on the gun he carried.

He pulled in several deep breaths and expelled them slowly, delaying his fears from taking control of this encounter.

As his eyes searched for any movement in the darkness, a bewildering parade of events that had begun when he had instinctively followed a man in a black cape with the blood-red lining rushed through his mind.

“ Neither Emma nor I can continue to go on like this for much longer ,” he mouthed his thoughts, but made no sound to relay his presence.

“ If evil means to find us, I pray it happens now so we may begin again .”

He moved cautiously away from the house, hardly aware of the dampness of the night air as it penetrated his shirt.

The initial pounding of his heart had subsided, and Richard made himself breathe evenly.

He had been in more than one situation where he had to master the unknown.

Duncan had trained each of them for this type of encounter and more.

He glanced up to the ink-black sky frosted with tiny points of stars.

It would be heaven to be holding Emma in his arms and enjoying the stars together; she had said she would love to view the night sky through his telescope.

An image of the two of them with legs entangled and naked on the Persian rug on the floor of the garret, where the telescope was stored, flashed before his eyes.

Not for the first time, Richard wished to be somewhere else.

In another place with Lady Emma Donoghue.

“And children all about,” his mind announced.

He stood perfectly still, listening for the sound of the men he sought. Meanwhile, a solitary bird called hopelessly for its mate, and Richard knew sympathy.

A noise off to his left had him listening more closely.

The house was shrouded in shadows, making it difficult to know what was what.

The area about the house was a maze of dark shapes and shadows, touched here and there by rays of moonlight.

Odd to say, for he had been trained to be more aware than most, but he was not cognizant of anyone near until a long shadow fell across his path.

Richard froze when he spied the knife in the man’s hand. It was a long, wicked-looking thing. “Looking for someone in particular?” he asked as he clicked the gun and pointed it at the stranger’s head.

The man permitted the knife to drop from his fingers to the ground and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “One down!” Richard called so his friends would know of his success.

“Make that two!” Beaufort called with a grunt, meaning Richard’s friend had exchanged more than one punch with his captive.

“Graham?” Richard shouted, but there was no response.

“Graham?” Beaufort called.

Still no answer.

Richard hoisted his captive’s arms behind the man’s back to move him along to where Richard might assist Graham, when gunfire inside the house had him shoving his prisoner towards Beaufort, who had come around the side of the house with a gun pointed at his captive’s head.

When Richard’s prisoner fell face-first into the gravel, Beaufort stepped on the man’s back, but Richard only caught a glimpse of his friend, for Orson was bounding up the stairs to the gun room from the outside door only to be brought up short.

Graham was standing over the third man while Lady Emma was tearing pieces of ruffles from the bottom on her robe to stop the blood flow.

Graham stood watching her while she fussed and admonished the man at the same time.

“I told you I would not permit you to hurt him,” she was saying while putting pressure on the man’s wound.

Graham smiled. “The ‘him’ is you, by the way, not me.” He glanced down to where Lady Emma still tended the man. “I will assist Beaufort. I fear her ladyship is your task this evening.”

Richard nodded his gratitude and moved to lift Lady Emma upward by the shoulders. “Beaufort, Graham, and I are perfectly well, sweetheart. Now, permit me to administer to this man. Why do you not return to your quarters, and I will come to you as quickly as we can secure them for the authorities.”

She nodded weakly. “You told me to point it and squeeze the trigger,” she said through several gasps, as her energy escaped her body.

“I saw him,” she gestured to the man on the floor, “cross the garden walkway. I knew Lord Graham...” she sighed heavily as her tears arrived.

“His lordship... has been... so kind... to me. And you... you are... and then I saw you coming towards this one,” she gestured to the man on the floor, “and not knowing he was there, and I thought...”

Richard slid his arm around her waist and kissed her temple. “It will all be well soon. I promise.”

“Will he die?” she asked with a hiccup of tears.

“He will not die. Such is another promise from me. Now return to your quarters. I will follow soon.”

Though they had questioned the three men repeatedly, none of their captives were willing to admit to being employed by Lord Davidson.

“We heard two toffs were staying at the lodge. Thought we might pick up a coin or two.”

Beaufort lit a cheroot and yawned. “I am tired of this charade. Graham and I will call in at Bletchley on our way to London to learn if Lord Davidson is desirous of your return. Whether his lordship is waiting there or not is yet to be seen. Either way, we will turn you over to the authorities and charge you with trespassing. Perhaps a bit of poaching. An attack upon a peer, or two or three.”

“Or four,” Richard added.