“Why the devil would he be so foolish as to come here if half the country is looking for him?”
“This Ramsey fellow is convinced there will be another attempt made to rescue Bonaparte. He is further convinced that Emory will be involved.”
The vicar paused and looked down at the still form. “This is my first glimpse of him in nearly three years,” he said softly. “I have not even known where he was or how to reach him so there was no need to lie to the authorities when they questioned me.”
Florence’s eyebrow crept a little higher and seeing it, the vicar flushed.
“I have always stood in staunch defence of both my brothers, even when it seemed the pair of them were determined to take flights of fancy. But if what this Ramsey chap says is true, if Emory has been working for the Bonapartists, then this was no minor act of familial rebellion. The charges are real, the warrant is real and I am a minister of God as well as a loyal citizen of the crown. It would be my bounden duty, in both capacities,” he added hoarsely, “to send for the constables and turn him into their care. If he is innocent, the courts will clear him.”
“And when they find him guilty?”
“If he is guilty, I....”
“I did not say if he is found guilty,” Florence pointed out, thumping her cane on the floor for emphasis. “I said when he is found guilty, which he surely will be when all of those licentious fat fools who sit in Parliament decide they need someone to hang in Bonaparte’s place.”
Annaleah stared at her great aunt in surprise. Old and withered and eccentric though she might be, there was a hard light in her eyes that betrayed a keener intelligence than she obviously cared to show the world.
“Because of their misguided sense of noblesse oblige,” Florence continued, “ the vaunted House of Lords will undoubtedly decide they cannot justify taking the axe to Bonaparte’s throat. All the same, they will be desperate to spill someone else’s blood in his stead, and the man accused of unleashing the plague upon the world a second time will suit their needs perfectly. Regardless of Emory’s guilt or innocence, therefore, he will be condemned, executed in a public place, and his remains left there to rot for months afterward so the people can spit and jeer and throw spoiled fruit at the rotting corpse. It will not be a fair trial. It will not be a trial at all, but a monkey court with that carrion-eater Ramsey leading the parade.”
The vicar blanched and a visible tremor brought his hands together in a tight clench. “Wh-what else can I do? If I take him back to the vicarage, they will find him the next time they come to search. If I take him to Windsea Hall and they find him there, Arthur will suffer for it.”
“We could keep him here, could we not?” Anna heard herself say. “Widdicombe House is probably the last place the soldiers would search for dangerous criminals.”
The vicar and her aunt both turned and stared at her in surprise.
“At least until he is able to defend himself,” she added in a self-conscious murmur.
Florence pursed her lips and agreed with another thump of her cane. “My niece is absolutely right. This is the safest place to keep him for the time being. Few of the villagers have reason to come here, and none of my people have ever been accused of having loose tongues. Mister Broom will see he behaves and Willerkins will shoot him if he does not.”
The vicar shook his head. “I cannot ask you to put yourselves at such risk.”
“You are not asking, dear boy. I am insisting. I am all for justice and loyalty, and I would kiss the king’s feet if they let him out of Bedlam long enough. At the same time, I will not condemn a good man on rumor and speculation. I would be curious to know what this proof is that they claim to have against him; I should think you would be too.”
The vicar drew a large white square of linen out of his pocket and dabbed it across his brow. “I suppose it would only seem natural for me to make inquiries. I shall have to do so with the utmost discretion, however, for I would not want Lucille to become more alarmed than she already is by all this fuss. She has been pleading with me to let her go to London; perhaps this would be a good time.”
“I trust she was not at the vicarage when Throckmorton fetched you away?”
“No. No, she was taking lunch with the ladies of the Foundlings Society. She has become quite involved with charitable works of late. I believe the time she has spent with Poor Arthur has opened her eyes to the need for compassion and kindness in the world today.”
“I am sure it has,” Florence murmured dryly. “Which is why you are probably right, Vicar. It might be best to send her on a little holiday until this matter is resolved. ‘T would be a pity to involve the poor child in a moral dilemma of such magnitude.”
CHAPTER 4
Exactly sixty-two hours passed without so much as a twitch or flicker from the still form on the bed and Annaleah began to wonder if she had just imagined seeing his eyes open on the beach. She had tried not to show too much interest in the patient’s progress; after all, it was hardly proper to linger in a bedroom with a naked man, regardless if he was awake or not. But her aunt, who had taken the precaution of removing Emory Althorpe to an attic chamber under the eaves, was not able to maneuver the steep and narrow stairs. Anna was dispatched in her stead and after the first dozen or so trips, when his condition remained unchanged, she began to grow resentful as well as impatient.
By the end of the second day, her travels up and down the stairs had become so tiresome, Annaleah offered to relieve Harold Broom while he caught up on some of his household chores. It was midway through the third day, while he was away refilling all the large water kettles in the kitchen and fetching his noon meal, that she looked over at the bed and found Emory Althorpe looking calmly back at her.
She was sitting on the window seat, her legs curled beneath her, idly tracing a pattern in the grime on the glass pane. The shutters were opened wide and where the sunlight poured around her shoulders in a thick haze, it turned the flown wisps of her dark hair into a fiery coppery halo. Her gown was white muslin and the combined effect of the bright sunlight and the streamer of sparkling dust motes caused her to body and skin to glow with an almost unearthly, blurred luminance.
Annaleah was blithely unaware of this. She was only conscious, suddenly, of eyes as deep and dark as the blackest of sins staring at her.
For a very, very long moment, that was all they did: stare at one another.
Anna could actually feel the blood draining out of her face, and the strength melting out of her shoulders, her arms, her legs. She turned instantly cold, was completely paralysed to the point where she forgot she had to breathe.
“Am I dead, then?” he asked in a rough whisper. “Is this the end of it?”
Anna’s lungs emptied on a gust and she tore her gaze away from the bed long enough to glance at the door. Broom had been gone over an hour and should have been back by now but he was not, and she was entirely alone with a dangerous criminal, three long flights of stairs away from a smattering of old servants who were too deaf to hear her scream and too old to wobble to her rescue anyway.
“No.” Her voice sounded equally cracked and ragged and she had to swallow to make her throat work properly. “No, you are not dead, sir.”
The long black lashes closed and opened slowly again. He blinked a second time, then a third as if he still did not believe the soft, glowing vision before him was real. In the next instant, when he tried to turn his head to identify the rest of his surroundings, any lingering doubts were removed as his lips parted around a grunt of pain so pure and involuntary it brought Anna jumping to her feet.
“You should not try to move, sir. Not until you are fully apprised of your injuries.”
“Injuries?” His left hand moved with the ease of a hundred pound weight, inching up off the bed to grope clumsily at the lump on back of his neck. The swelling had gone down considerably over the past two days, but it was obvious by the look on his face that the pain was excruciating.
�
�Wh-what happened?”
“You were found half-drowned on the beach. My great-aunt, Dame Florence Widdicombe, had you carried up here to the house, where you have lain for the past two...nearly three days without moving. We were beginning to wonder if you were ever going to waken. Your brother has stopped by at least twice each day and is quite beside himself with worry.”
“My brother?”
“The vicar. Reverend Althorpe. S-Stanley,” she stammered finally, not knowing exactly how much familiarity was permitted under the circumstances.
He frowned again. “How long did you say--?”
“We found you early Monday morning, and today is Wednesday, not quite noon. Of course, we have no idea how long you lay on the beach, or floated in the water, or...” she started to ramble desperately as the bottomless black eyes searched her face again “...or if you fell off a ship in the Channel, or if you took a tumble off the docks, or the cliffs...”
Her voice trailed off as, thankfully, he looked away. This time he seemed to brace himself for the pain, meeting it with a clenched jaw. He scanned the bare walls, the high peaked roof, the lamp that hung from a long chain off a wooden beam. His inspection halted briefly at the open door then went on to locate the rail-backed chair, the washstand and painted china pitcher, the cluster of towels hanging on a wall peg. There was more, including a bottle of tincture and one of laudanum that drew forth another frown, but his gaze skimmed them quickly before flickering back to Annaleah.
“When you said I was brought here, may I ask...where, exactly, is ‘here’?”
“Widdicombe House.” It was Anna’s turn to frown. “My aunt tells me she knows you very well; you used to visit here a great deal when you were younger. She has been almost as anxious as the vicar to speak with you. In fact--” She took a nervous step toward the door. “She wanted to be told the minute you came to your senses.”
“Wait...please!”
The genuine note of panic in his voice stopped her.
“Please, Miss...Widdicombe?”
“Fairchilde,” she corrected him in a whisper. “Annaleah Fairchilde.”
“Please, Miss Fairchilde--”
“My father is the Earl of Witham, my mother is a Compton, by way of the Somerset Comptons, and niece to Lady Widdicombe.” It was an awkward and pretentious introduction at best, but for some reason she felt compelled to establish her position and stature quite clearly. At the very least, she had no intentions of being mistaken for a poor relation relegated to the position of companion to an old woman. At best, she would not be ordered about by a treasonous rogue, regardless if his head was broken or not.
“Miss Fairchilde,” he said, licking dry lips, “if you would be so kind as to bear with my ignorance a moment longer? Since you appear to be well enough informed, I would be grateful if you could tell me who the blazes I am.”
Anna started, shocked again. “Who you are? You do not know?”
“My head is...” he stopped and appeared to look inside himself with no happy result, “utterly and completely blank. A void. Entirely empty except for the bastard who is pounding the inside of my skull with an iron pike.”
A shudder rippled the length of his body as he fought to cope with both the pain and the sudden anxiety. “Please,” he said through clenched teeth, “if you can tell me something...anything that might help jar a thought or memory loose? I don’t mean to frighten you, and can only hope it is just a temporary impediment, but--”
“You remember nothing at all? Not how you came here, or how you ended up on the beach?”
“Nothing. I remember nothing. Water, perhaps. A great deal of water and hot sun, but other than that...I have no recollections at all.” His arms, his legs, his entire body began to tremble beneath the blankets and the look in his eyes was frantic enough for Anna to abandon her caution and hasten to the side of the bed. There, she had to place her hands on his bare shoulders to restrain him from struggling to sit up.
“Mr. Althorpe, please. You must not overtax yourself. I am certain you are right. I am certain it must be a temporary thing, a result of the blow you took to the head, but you will do yourself no good trying to force something that is not quite there yet.”
He slumped back, all but exhausted by such a feeble effort. “Althorpe?”
Anna pressed her hand over his forehead, but it was cool. “Emory Althorpe. That is your name, is it not?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
His teeth were beginning to chatter and his eyes, when she looked into them, had the terrified, uncertain look of a trapped animal.
“Your name is Emory Althorpe, sir. You have two brothers; one of them is the Reverend Mr. Stanley Althorpe who is, I believe, five years your junior. You also have an older brother--” she paused and reached for the stoppered bottle of laudanum on the bedside table, pouring what she hoped was a safe measure of the pale blue liquid into a glass before mixing it with equal parts of water. “His name is Arthur, and I think my aunt said he was thirty-one...or perhaps it was thirty-two, I am not sure. There was a third brother, William, but he has passed, as have your father and mother. Your father was Edgar Althorpe, and he was the Earl of Hatherleigh,” she added, trying to remember what her aunt had told her about the family. “Your mother’s name was Eugenia. You have no sisters, but you do have a sister-in-law, Lucille--the vicar’s wife. Your family home is called Windsea Hall and is located some five miles north and east of here, above Torquay.”
His eyes were squeezed tightly shut. “I do not recognize any of those names or places. I do not even recognize the name you tell me is my own.”
“Here,” she said, leaning over the bed. “Take a sip of water, you must be thirsty. I’ve put some laudanum in it which may help ease the pain.”
He reached eagerly for the glass but hand was still too shaky to hold it steady against his lips. Anna slid her arm under his shoulder to support him while he took several deep swallows, and when he finished, he fell back against the pillows, trapping her arm beneath. The motion brought her forward and she found herself practically sprawled across his chest, her nose a mere inch or two from his face.
His eyes were closed again and she watched as a trickle of water ran down his chin, leaving a shiny path of liquid between the taut cords of his neck. The hand he had placed over hers while she held the glass to his lips had slipped down until it was around her wrist, and although it was warm and dry, Anna felt a cool, prickling sensation skitter up her arm and down her spine. It was not nearly as fierce a grip as the one he had held her with on the beach, but even so, the size of his hand, the strength in his fingers made her wrist feel as fragile as a matchstick.
“I really should fetch my aunt,” she whispered. “She will know much better than I what to do.”
“Just one more question.”
“Truly, sir, my aunt knows far more about this than I. I have only been here a week myself, on a visit from London.”
“Please,” he said, the softness of the word sending another shiver through her body. “You said I was on the beach? Who found me?”
“As it happened...I did. I was the one who found you.”
He had not yet opened his eyes, for which Anna was partially thankful. She was wriggling her arm to free it, but it was a slow process, not helped any by the fact there was not an inch of her own flesh not burning with mortification. It was bad enough that she already had a more intimate knowledge of his body than any books on social etiquette allowed. Now, to feel all that hard, smooth muscle sliding against her hand...well, it was almost more than she could hope to survive without turning as red as a beetroot.
Making matters infinitely worse, she was close enough to count the individual stubbles of his beard if she were so inclined. The lashes she had admired earlier were so long and thick they would have been the envy of any woman. The eyebrows above were black and smooth, the left one marred by a tiny white scar that cut through the arch. The waves of hair that framed his face were blacker still, f
ar too long and undisciplined to comply with strict London fashion, but then she doubted if a rogue and adventured cared much for the dictates of Beau Brummell. His mouth was blatantly, shockingly sensuous as well, and if he ever smiled the effect would be, she imagined, quite heart-stopping.
“You have no idea how I came to be on the beach?”
“What?” She was still staring at his mouth when she realized his eyes were open again. She quickly pulled her arm the rest of the way free and straightened. “Oh. No, none at all. We were hoping you could tell us, for you were in a rather....unusual state of undress.”
“Unusual? How so?”
The color that had been riding high on her cheeks flamed even darker. Undergarments of any kind were most definitely never to be mentioned in polite conversation, especially not when the memories of the ill concealed shapes and shadows they were intended to protect were still shamefully clear in the mind. “You were not...completely without coverings, sir, but...what there was...suffice it to say, could not have been worn in any public place.”
He said, “I see,” though she doubted he did, then added, “I am truly sorry to be the cause of so much trouble.”
“You have been asleep most of the time and therefore no real trouble. My aunt, as I said before, is quite fond of you, despite--” her breath caught and held for as long as it took her to bite back the words she had been about to say-- “despite the fact that you leaked a great deal of salt water onto her carpets.”
He said nothing. If he realized she had been about to say one thing and substituted it at the last moment for another, there was no indication of it in his eyes. He was just studying her face, feature by feature, in the same fashion she had been studying his a few moments ago.
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