Surely, this had once been a cellar beneath the old kitchens, but most of it was caved in now. A few old rotten shelves, surrounded by broken shards of crockery, lay haphazardly on the floor. The stone she had stood on to lift Beatrice out was indeed an old, broken step.
Emma shivered in the cold damp and closed her eyes. She thought of Arabella and her lost lover, sheltering in just such a place. And she thought of David, holding her in his arms, keeping her so warm...
‘Emma! Emma, are you there?’ she heard someone shout, pulling her out of her half-dazed dream.
She sat straight up. ‘Yes, I’m here!’
David’s face appeared above her, peering down into her prison. He was surely the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I twisted my ankle. I can barely move, I fear.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll have you out in only a moment.’ He disappeared again and a rope fell down through the opening. As Emma watched in astonishment, David nimbly climbed down the rope until he dropped lightly to the dirt floor. He wore no coat and the white linen of his shirt gleamed in the darkness. He seemed like an angel of rescue to her.
He hurried over to kneel beside her and Emma bit back a sob as he took her gently into his arms. She clung to him, knowing she was safe at last.
‘Where are you hurt?’ he asked roughly.
‘My—my ankle. That’s all, I think,’ Emma answered.
He carefully eased up the hem of her skirt and slid her boot from her swollen foot. Her stocking was torn and spotted with blood, and she gasped as his strong fingers slid over it carefully.
‘Not broken, I think, but badly sprained. The doctor should be waiting at Rose Hill, he can examine you there.’ David yanked his cravat from around his neck and wrapped it tightly around her ankle. ‘Bea said you fell helping her out of here.’
‘Yes,’ Emma said. She wiggled her toes; the pain was eased a bit by the tight bandage. ‘I’m glad I happened by. I promise I don’t usually trespass on Rose Hill property. Something just told me to come here today, I think.’
David shook his head, his face drawn in stark, serious lines. ‘Come, we have to get you out of here. I will try not to jostle you too much.’
Emma nodded and braced herself as he lifted her high in his arms. The pain washed over her again, but she knew she could bear it in his embrace. He pushed her up and out of the opening, much as she had with Beatrice, and footmen waited there to catch her. The sunlight blinded her for a moment after the dank darkness of the cellar, but she heard Beatrice cry out her name.
‘Mrs Carrington, I am so, so sorry,’ Beatrice sobbed and Emma felt her little arms slide tight around her neck. ‘I will never be naughty again.’
‘Adventures are quite all right sometimes, Beatrice,’ Emma said, laughing despite the pain. ‘Just not alone, promise me.’
‘Never again, Mrs Carrington. I will only go on adventures with you.’
‘I think Mrs Carrington is done with your adventures, Bea,’ David said. ‘Come, we must go back to Rose Hill. The doctor will be waiting.’
David lifted her gently into his arms and helped her into a blanket litter the footmen had fashioned. She closed her eyes, safe but scared. Was he angry with her for what happened? What could ever happen next?
* * *
‘You are very lucky, Mrs Carrington, to be in no worse shape after such a tumble.’ The doctor snapped his bag shut and gave Emma a stern glance. ‘Only a sprained ankle, I would say. Nothing broken. But you must be very careful for a few days. No dancing.’
Emma grimaced as she sat up against the cushions of the chaise in one of the guest chambers at Rose Hill. The mild sedative she had been given was starting to take hold of her senses, but the ankle still throbbed. ‘I think I can safely promise you I won’t be dancing, doctor. I will stay safely by my own fireside for a long time.’
‘I am most glad to hear it.’
‘How is Miss Beatrice?’
‘Only scared and a bit muddied. Not hurt, thankfully. I will stop by Barton on my way back to the village and leave word for your servants there.’
Emma nodded, most relieved. As the doctor left, she could hear him talking with David in the corridor, quiet mutters she couldn’t quite understand. She propped her freshly bandaged ankle on a pillow and studied the room around her, with its comfortable chintz draperies and overstuffed chairs scattered around the flowered carpet. It was a pretty, comfortable, inviting room, one where she wished she could stay for days and days, wrapped in the warmth of Rose Hill. But she feared she would be gone from there all too quickly.
She had to be gone. Obviously her impulsive ways hurt the people she cared about most and she wouldn’t hurt them any more. She had to leave them for their own good.
‘I owe you a great deal of thanks, Emma,’ David said as he entered the chamber. He softly closed the door behind him.
Emma laughed, the warmth of the room and the medicine, and David’s presence, wrapped around her. She would enjoy them while she could, for those fleeting moments were precious. ‘You were the one who climbed down a rope to rescue me, David.’
‘You injured yourself rescuing my daughter.’ He sat down next to her on the chaise and gently put his arm around her.
Emma rested her head on his shoulder with a sigh and suddenly the pain and fear vanished into a sweet, soft weariness. She remembered how it felt after they made love and he held her against him in the firelight. How all the turmoil and worry of life quieted in his arms. If only it could always be like that.
She ran a gentle touch over his shoulder, tracing a streak of dirt on his coat and smoothing the silk lapel. ‘I am just glad I happened to be there to find her. Poor Beatrice.’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly, his heartbeat steady under her hand. ‘Why were you there, Emma?’
She froze, her hand in mid-stroke over his coat. Oh, yes—why she had been wandering around the bleak ruins all alone. She had almost forgotten, in the drama of her rescue and the doctor’s sedative, and now it all came rushing back to her. Philip and his crude blackmail scheme, and her fear and loneliness.
‘I cannot tell you,’ she whispered. ‘It is all too embarrassing. And anyway, it doesn’t matter now.’ Or she hoped it did not matter, that Philip had left and she had time to get her life organised again.
‘Emma, have you learned nothing about me? Your secrets are safe with me, as I hope mine are with you. I am no gossip like my sister. If you are in trouble...’
Emma shook her head. ‘No more than usual.’
David’s arm tightened around her and she felt him press a kiss to the tip of her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, afraid she would start to cry at his tenderness. Tenderness she did not deserve.
‘Who has hurt you, Emma?’ he said quietly. ‘Is it some trouble to do with your late husband? Is it that cousin of his?’
Somehow David’s very quietness, his still, gentle strength, broke something in her. She buried her face in his shoulder and held on to him as all the fear and pain of the past poured out of her. She trembled with the force of her emotion and wished she could wail with it all, as Beatrice had in the old cellar.
‘Shh,’ David whispered. He softly caressed her hair, holding her against him. ‘Don’t be afraid, Emma. I’m here. I’m your friend.’
Her friend. Somehow that word was so precious, yet so insignificant compared to what she felt for him.
But his closeness, his touch, the pain and the medicine the doctor had given her, all conspired against her. She found herself holding on to him and telling him about Philip. She explained that Philip had threatened to tell details about her life with Henry, that she had tried to pay him because she couldn’t hurt Jane any more.
She didn’t tell him about Herr Gottfried, or any of t
he other horrid people Henry knew, but she was sure what she had said was quite enough for David to refuse to have anything more to do with her. Her heart felt as if it cracked in two and crumbled away with the knowledge that David and Beatrice would be gone from her.
Yet she knew, deep in her soul, that it was right for him to know. After all they had done, all he had meant to her, at last she could give him her honesty. David had changed her life, made her believe that real goodness, real loyalty, was actually possible once more. That it could touch her life, however briefly, and leave it transformed for the better.
He had given her that. And surely now that he knew how great her past mistakes were, he would leave her. Yet she would always remember how his arms felt around her right now.
‘I am so sorry, David,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘So, so sorry. You have been kind to me and I have been...’
‘Shh,’ he said again. He gently urged her to lie back on the chaise and carefully tucked a fur-trimmed throw around her. ‘You honour me with your honesty, Emma. I will never betray it.’
‘You deserve so much more from me,’ Emma murmured. Her head felt cloudy, dizzy, and she closed her eyes against it.
‘Trust me to know what I deserve. What we both deserve,’ he said softly, in a neutral tone she couldn’t read. She wished now more than ever she could read his thoughts, but they were carefully hidden from her. ‘Just sleep now. I will send for the carriage and take you back to Barton when you have rested for a while.’
Emma nodded, the darkness of exhausted sleep closing around her. Yet it was so different from the hot, painful blackness of the cellar. ‘I wish I didn’t have to leave Rose Hill.’
‘You don’t yet. Just sleep.’
She felt his hand cover hers, warm and strong, like a lifeline holding her above the drowning waves. She held on to it and let herself sleep.
* * *
The bastard.
David braced his clenched fists on the desk, fighting down the urge to break the wood under his bare hands. It wasn’t the innocent desk’s fault that his temper was up. It was that blighter Philip Carrington’s.
How dare he threaten Emma? How dare he even come near her?
The force of his fury surprised David, since it had been so long since he felt anything even near to it. He kept his emotions so carefully at bay all the time; it was the only way for him to always see to his duties, the only way he could survive. But Emma had changed all that and he suddenly realised how very much. His feelings for her had changed everything. Only when he was afraid he would lose her, lose the vibrant light of her irrepressible spirit, had he known how much he needed Emma.
David pushed himself back from his desk and snatched up his riding gloves. Carrington had to know Emma was not alone now. There would be no more taking advantage of her gentle heart, her generous spirit. No more threatening her over the past. Philip Carrington was going to leave and he was going to do it now, even if David had to bodily toss him into the street in front of the whole village.
Even if he had to cause a scandal. After Maude, he had vowed never to cause talk about his family again. But now, when he thought of Emma’s tear-streaked face, he knew so clearly that some things were worth facing scandal.
Some things were worth any sacrifice at all.
He strode out of the library, calling for the butler. ‘Hughes,’ he shouted. ‘Have Zeus brought around at once. I have an urgent errand in the village.’
Hughes looked shocked as he emerged from the drawing room. ‘Right now, sir?’
‘Yes,’ David said firmly. If he was going to start being shocking, he might as well start at home. ‘Right now.’
‘But—but someone is here to see you, sir. I was just coming to announce him—’
‘No need,’ a brusque voice said and a man emerged from the drawing room behind the butler.
It was Lord Ramsay, Emma’s brother-in-law.
‘Ramsay,’ David said slowly, pushing down his martial urges to face the one man Emma wouldn’t want to find her here. ‘I didn’t realise you had returned from London.’
Lord Ramsay slowly slapped his leather gloves against his palm. ‘Jane and I just arrived back at Barton to find a curious message you had sent to the housekeeper there. My sister-in-law is here? With you?’
‘She is here, yes, but she is resting,’ David said as he made his way toward the stone-faced man. He considered the Ramsays to be friends, but he knew he had to tread very carefully with them now. ‘She had a very trying experience today.’
Ramsay’s eyes narrowed. ‘I think you had best explain, Sir David, and quickly. My wife was frantic for word of her sister and it was all I could do to persuade her to stay at home while I fetched Emma back to Barton. Jane is tired after the journey and should not be wearied further.’
David led him back into the drawing room and shut the door. He quickly told Ramsay the whole sorry tale, as briefly and simply as possible. About how Emma rescued Beatrice and was injured herself. He said nothing of how Emma had come to be wandering around the old castle in the first place, of the growing...whatever it was between them. He couldn’t even find the words for it yet himself, though he knew that he was coming to rely on Emma’s presence in his life far too much.
Ramsay was quiet for a long moment; the only sound in the tense air between them the slow, thoughtful slap of the gloves.
‘You and Emma have become friends of late,’ Ramsay said.
‘I have tried to be a friend to her, yes,’ David replied carefully. ‘When she will let me.’
Ramsay laughed. ‘Yes, she can be a stubborn one, no denying that. Jane worried about her all the time we were in London, but I told her Emma was better off at Barton right now. I hope I was not wrong. Is she much injured?’
‘She needs rest.’
‘I have brought the carriage to take her home. I see that you are on your way to some errand, so we shan’t intrude on your hospitality any longer.’
His hospitality? Such a tepid word for what David was coming to fear he wanted to offer Emma. But for now Ramsay was right—Barton was the right place for Emma while he took care of business. She would be safe there. ‘I hope I may call on Mrs Carrington at Barton very soon. And Lady Ramsay, of course.’
Ramsay stared at David for a long moment before he finally nodded and David knew there was a silent understanding between them.
He would do right by Emma, the strangest, kindest, most spirited woman he had ever known. He just didn’t know yet what right might be. Every instinct told him to grab her in his arms and never let her go again, never let his life be the arid, lonely desert it was without her. But he had to make sure she was safe first. That he could make her happy.
Because when David held her there in the dank darkness of the cellar and felt the warm, vivid life of her against him, he knew with a terrible certainty that making her happy was the only thing he wanted to do.
* * *
He was leaving her?
Emma leaned against the window frame and watched as David rode away down the drive. He never even looked back. And she had never felt more desolately alone. She had no idea why that should be: he had rescued her from the cellar; he owed her nothing, especially not explanations for why he would leave her. But the pain was still there.
She closed her eyes tightly against it. She should have expected nothing else. She and David were truly nothing to each other beyond a couple of wild moments desperately seeking comfort in each other’s arms.
But he had given her more. He gave her hope. And now she felt foolishly, unaccountably bereft.
There was a knock at the chamber door and Emma hastily swiped at her damp eyes. She turned away from the window, from the sight of the empty lawn, and limped back to the chaise.
‘Come in,’ she called.
A maid peek
ed in with a quick curtsy. ‘Begging your pardon, ma’am, but Lord Ramsay is here to fetch you. He’s waiting in the drawing room and wishes to know if you require assistance.’
Emma gave a rueful laugh. So that was why David left—he had handed responsibility for her troublesome self over to her brother-in-law.
Surely she would no longer see him next to the fire in her cottage. Whatever was between them seemed ended, as suddenly and strangely as it had begun. And she had never felt quite so lost before.
She remembered her earlier resolve, to leave David and Beatrice behind for their own good, before her propensity for trouble affected them too. She knew now that was the only right thing. She sat down at the small desk in the corner and reached for a sheaf of paper to do what she had to do.
* * *
From the diary of Arabella Bancroft
I would not have thought such grief was possible. Such pain. Surely I will fall into pieces if I must breathe for another moment. William is dead, the treasure is still lost, and I am being sent back to London.
I hope those stinking streets will soon hold my doom.
Chapter Twenty-One
David took the rickety wooden steps at the back of the Rose and Crown two at a time. The inn was quiet at that time of day, the tavern room empty and no new guests arriving. But the proprietor said that villain Carrington was in his rooms, that he had come in hours before and locked himself away. And that Carrington also owed him money for the stay.
It was the perfect time for David to confront the blighter and tell him in no uncertain terms that Emma was no longer unprotected. She no longer had to fend for herself against predators like the Carrington cousins. She was at home now, where they took care of their own.
He was there to take care of her. She had done an admirable job of it on her own for far too long, but he would see to it she didn’t have to again.
As David stepped on to the second landing, he could hear Carrington moving behind his door. David pounded on the stout wood.
Running from Scandal Page 20
