He grabbed at the ice where it had frozen into raised rivulets and pushed hard with his boots and pulled his charge with all his might. He practically threw her up onto the bank as his trailing feet sank beneath the water and all sensation in his legs ended.
“Emmeline! Em! Oh, wake up Em! Wake up!”
John blinked vaguely up at the person on the bank now kneeling over the unconscious lady. “A hand, madam,” he wheezed, “if you do not mind?”
The person crawled toward him, grabbed two fistfuls of his coat and leaned back from the river. This was surprisingly helpful, enabling John to drag himself free of the deadly cold water tugging forcefully at his feet. Clearly the lady was a sturdy sort.
They both turned at a great splashing and snorting to see the fallen carriage horse clambering ashore not far from them. John stared in astonishment, for he’d assumed the beast was doomed by its fall.
Next to him, a voice snarled. “Of course, the idiot creature survived, it being all his fault! Poor Emmeline!”
John turned to examine his helper for the first time. She was very pale, with ruddy blotches of worry and distress upon her cheeks as she gazed down at her unconscious companion. Round-faced and freckled with pale brows and lashes, the worried lady wore a gray woolen cloak over a dark-colored dress.
John looked down at the woman he still held close and the breath left his body at her still pale beauty. The white he’d seen was the ivory of her perfect complexion. The black was her shining hair tumbling over the snow. The startling red was the blood that traced rivulets over her brow and cheek. She was clad in purple silk and her matching cloak was lined in fur.
His pounding heart skipped a beat. She looked like misplaced royalty. As if she’d heard that stuttering pulse, the woman stirred slightly and opened eyes of such a rich and stunning blue that John’s mind could only come up with the word “violet”.
She blinked up at him, her gaze unfocused and vague. “My…angel,” she whispered before her lids fell shut once more.
She was the most beautiful woman John had ever seen.
“You’ll both die of chill shortly, so kindly stop mooning over Lady Emmeline before you’re so cold that you’ll be of no use whatsoever!”
The annoyed tone shook John free from his gobsmacked state. The sharp-tongued woman was entirely correct. He had already lost sensation in his wet feet and the injured lady needed to be seen to immediately.
However, John was not accustomed to being spoken to as if he were nothing more than a foolish servant. Deciding that any reply he might make now would only be something to regret later, he held back his retort and clambered awkwardly to his numb feet.
Getting the unconscious beauty up the slick, snow-covered bank required cooperation, which brought about more caustic commentary from the gray-cloaked woman. Repressing his irritation in favor of saving lives, as any gentleman would do, John followed the woman’s snarled orders until they reach the high point of the bank and were able to follow the snowy lane. The woman then ran ahead to where the carriage still canted dangerously over the low stone wall of the bridge.
“Mr. Higgins? Mr. Higgins!” The woman flung herself forward, skidding to her knees on the packed, trampled snow and crawling beneath the carriage.
Foolish female! With his arms full of his own rescue, John could do little to stop the lady’s companion from endangering herself. Then he saw that she scooted backward out of the space beneath the spinning wheels with her fists full of someone’s burly arm. The missing driver!
She glared at John over her shoulder as she tugged. “Oh for pity’s sake! Just go lead the horse onward for a few yards, so I can get to Mr. Higgins properly!”
John moved to do just that. The second horse, still mostly in its harness, was somewhat the worse for wear than its companion who now clopped wearily along the bridge toward them, having followed John. The still-harnessed horse stood bracing its own weight against the pull of the tilting carriage, its hide covered in sweat, with foam forming around its bit. The creature was clearly in great distress.
With his arm full of woman, John could just about free one hand to grab the trailing rein. “Come along, lad. Shh. All is well. Quiet.”
The horse rolled him a disbelieving eye, but responded with a small reluctant step when John let him onward. The carriage shuddered. Another step, and another. The carriage teetered.
“Beware!” John called back over his shoulder, his voice muffled by the folds of the lady’s cloak piled against his neck. He ought to put her down, but where? She was so cold already it hardly seemed a good notion to lie her down on the snow.
“Come along,” he urged the horse. “Just a step, lad. Just another step.”
The carriage creaked mightily, then noisily scraped forward, one side still angled out over the wall. Another step and another, until John heard the gray-cloaked woman cry out.
“We are clear!”
Which was a good thing, for the carriage suddenly fell back upon its four wheels with a crash. The impact collapsed it like a house of cards, turning it to naught but a pile of lacquered firewood.
Oh damn. John released the horse and staggered back to check on the lady’s companion and the driver.
Rounding the wreckage, he was stunned to see the woman crouching over the injured man, clearly shielding his body from the debris still falling from the tilted top of the carriage. John gasped to see a large wooden trunk begin to slide directly toward the two on the snowy ground.
There was no time to put the lady down, even had there been a place to put her. With his hands full, all John could do was to thrust his body into the path of the sliding trunk and take the impact on his back and shoulders.
Ouch.
Such a day he’d had.
Deflected by mere flesh and bone, the trunk slithered safely away to fall a few feet past the driver and the lady’s companion. Grudging admiration filled him. Annoying as the woman might be, John had to admit she took little care for herself when someone else was in need.
More things rained down upon John’s back, baskets and bundles and lightweight hat boxes. He took the small bumps without complaint, but when something burst open and showered him with dainty underthings, John’s long-suffering silence shattered.
“Bloody damned hell!” He bellowed. He shook his head violently to dislodge something lacy and smelling of lavender water. It only fell down to encircle his neck like a clerical collar.
The driver and the lady’s companion were staring up at him in openmouthed shock. Well, that was regrettable. He shook his head. So sorry.
John heard voices and looked to see damned Matthias and—oh, but of course!—Bernadette running up the lane to their aid. The manor was just up the rise. Someone must have heard the ruckus.
John resigned himself to helplessly standing there with an unconscious woman in his arms and a set of lacy drawers around his neck.
A snicker erupted at his side. He cast a glance of loathing at the lady’s companion. Rude creature, after all he’d done.
It didn’t help that once the two injured people had been sorted into the hands of his lordship’s excellent staff, Bernie had looked at John with a twist to her lips that told him she repressed a snicker of her own.
With the entire staff rushing to aid them, John was forced to give up his lovely burden. John would have liked to stride into Havensbeck Manor still carrying his rescued lady, making quite the heroic picture. However, there was no denying that during the evening’s adventure he’d done something rather awful to his back muscles. He staggered into the great house like a bent old man, bracing himself on door jambs and furniture until he could collapse onto a sofa. It was all he could do not to whimper out loud.
The house’s greater concern was for the lady and the driver. Lady Emmeline had a head injury and was unconscious. Mr. Higgins, who had been trapped between the stone side wall of the bridge and the carriage, had suffered a dislocated shoulder and s
everal cracked ribs.
All this John found out when the physician had finished with the injured two and someone—probably Bernie, since John was fairly certain that Matthias thought of him as little as possible—sent the man in John’s direction.
“You’ve pulled a few muscles in your back, lad. Got off lightly, you did. Best to go on home and rest yourself.”
Since he could manufacture no excuse to stay, John rubbed his stiffening back and prepared to leave Havensbeck for his vicarage. He would have liked to check in on Lady Emmeline with the otherworldly violet eyes. He even thought to search out the horses, the silly falling one and the brave stalwart one, but it grew very late and it was a long cold walk home.
At the unattended front door, John stopped short. What of his mule? Was the poor thing still standing on the riverbank harnessed to the cart full of stones?
“John?”
Bernadette. John steeled himself to turn toward the woman he’d waited six years to marry.
She looked every inch the lady of the manor she floated toward him with a swish of expensive skirts. She smiled up at him. “You’re not leaving now. It’s half-past ten and you’re exhausted. You’re staying here tonight.”
It was not a request, or even a demand. Bernie declared it a fact and John, as ever, could refuse her nothing.
“But my mule—”
“Is in the stable, enjoying a hot mash along with Lady Emmeline’s carriage horses.” She smiled up at him warmly. “All is well and collected, even Lady Emmeline’s baggage.” Her lips twitched and John knew he was never going to hear the end of Lady Emmeline’s lacy drawers. John could only smile back hesitantly. Oh, Bernie.
“I must ask you, John,” came the deep voice of Lord Matthias from the shadows of the foyer, “whatever were you doing digging stones in the middle of winter?”
John very carefully did not draw back guiltily from Bernadette, for they were doing nothing more than having a conversation. Alone. In the darkened foyer. Bernadette was only being a good hostess, and a good friend. They were not standing particularly close. The moment of intimacy was entirely of John’s own imagining.
Or perhaps not, by the steely glint in Matthias’s eyes as the lord of the manor stepped into the candlelight.
You’ve won, John glared back. Let it go.
Matthias’s gaze narrowed. I will when you do.
Bernadette clapped her hands sharply. When both men turned startled expressions upon her, she scowled at them. “If you’re finished with your masculine posturing, my love, will you see to our guest? Since you seem somehow dissatisfied with my own actions?” She tilted her head at her glowering husband and smiled so sweetly that John, knowing Bernie well, rather feared for the poaching bastard.
Not a poacher. Not a bastard.
Bernie had a right to choose anyone she liked, and Bernie had chosen Matthias.
Let her go. Think of something else, for pity sake!
The acerbic tone in his own mind made John think of the lady’s companion. He didn’t know her name. “Ah, what is Lady Emmeline’s condition? “
Bernie’s expression saddened. “She is still unconscious, poor girl. It seems she struck her head on the stone wall as she was flung out the carriage door. If it had not been for Miss Grey’s quick thinking, she’d surely have fallen to her death on the ice!”
Miss Grey had saved the day, had she? All by herself?
THAT BUMBLING DOLT!
Miss Norah Grey gently bathed Emmeline’s forehead with a dampened cloth. Em didn’t have a fever, but her poor head had taken such a knock that Norah felt it couldn’t do any harm.
That idiot, flinging himself—and Emmeline!—into the path of that falling trunk! Norah flinched again, recalling how the solid wood had narrowly missed Emmeline’s skull as it glanced off the stupid fellow’s thick shoulder.
She knew her anger was irrational, but anger at a stranger seemed a safer direction for her thoughts than remembering the accident. Her memory skidded away from those appalling moments even then. It was easier to blame the man on the bridge than to acknowledge her own failure.
A faint tap at the bedchamber door preceded their hostess, Lady Bernadette, who entered with fresh candles and an efficiently bustling maid.
“I thought you might like to catch a bit of rest, Miss Grey. Higgins will be happy to care for Lady Emmeline for a while.”
“No, I—” Norah looked at the maid curiously. “Higgins? Like our driver?”
“My brother, miss,” the pretty maid answered. “His lordship himself hired him up from London. Factory work had done my brother ill and I asked milady if we couldn’t find something a bit more healthy for him up here in Staffordshire.”
Norah blinked. “Healthy? Oh dear.”
Lady Bernadette grinned, her smile wide and mischievous. “Oh, don’t fret. The physician said he’ll be fine in a month, though he’ll have a weather-ache in that shoulder. Right now he has half the maids in the house vying to rub a bit of liniment on his… ah… heroic vainglory.”
“That’s thanks to you, miss,” Miss Higgins added with a curtsy. “And he’s right besotted now, for it. Miss Grey this and Miss Grey that!” Miss Higgins sent a saucy wink at Norah, who bit her lip in amusement.
“I see. Well, I must give… oh, what is the name of the gentleman who assisted us?”
“The vicar? Oh, that would be John Barton.”
The vicar? Really? Norah hoped that God wielded a powerful bar of soap for cursing vicars. “Well, the… the vicar did his part. He caught Emmeline in his arms when she fell from the bridge height—”
“He what?” Lady Bernadette stared at Norah. “Christmas bells!”
Norah decided she liked Lady Bernadette a great deal. Quite frankly, she hadn’t expected to do so. When she’d learned of Lord Matthias’s invitation for Christmas, she’d worried that the new wife might not appreciate the reminders of the old wife.
Six months past, Lord Matthias’s man of business had simply walked up the stairs at Kewell Abbey and stoutly declared that after years of searching the branches of the family tree of Lady Marianna of Havensbeck Manor, the heiress had been found at last. Lady Emmeline Grey, poor daughter of a destitute baron, had received a lavish fortune and a standing invitation to visit Havensbeck Manor at her leisure.
Yet Lord Matthias had remarried. Having the family of your new husband’s beloved first wife arrive for an extended visit in the middle of winter? It sounded a bit of a cautionary tale!
Now she could see that Lady Bernadette was only warmly concerned for “Cousin Emmeline”.
Norah shrugged. “Well, when the harness broke and the horse fell nearly on top of them and the vicar managed to roll Emmeline out of the ice and onto firm ground—”
Both maid and milady now stared at Norah, agog.
Norah frowned. “Why? What did the vicar say happened?”
Lady Bernadette shook her head slightly. “He said you were very brave and saved both Cousin Emmeline and poor Higgins.”
It was Norah’s turn to go wide-eyed. “But I didn’t! Well, I suppose I—but Emmeline might be dead if not for him.”
Lady Bernadette sat back with her arms folded and a cross wrinkle between her brows. “Hang you, John Barton!”
Miss Higgins dusted her hands together. “Now, miss. Let’s get you into a nightdress and into bed. You had a ragged sorta day, I’ll wager.”
Norah opened her mouth to protest that she’d rather stay with Emmeline, but her weary thoughts were no match for Miss Higgins in a zealous bout of efficiency. She found herself tucked in, having been benevolently forced into a quick wash, a hair brushing and braiding, a very luxurious winter nightdress and a wide soft bed in the chamber down the hall from Emmeline’s.
Having submitted thus far, she hadn’t the mustard to resist the weight of her own drooping eyelids. With only a moment of imagining the tall, brawny vicar snatching Emmeline out of thin air, Norah fell asleep
as if she’d been bespelled.
JOHN, HAVING HAD his concerns addressed and knowing that pacing the floor all night over Lady Emmeline’s condition wouldn’t do a thing to alleviate her danger, forced himself to have a quick wash, accept and don a very luxurious nightshirt—probably belonging to Matthias for it was a good match in size—and lay down upon a bed too wide and soft by far.
Tomorrow he’d have a word with the conniving lady’s companion about her tendency to aggrandize herself. Not in a competitive manner, no. More that it was his duty to redirect the path of the selfish onto a way more honorable.
Her mistress, now—there was the very face of graciousness.
So beautiful, he mused sleepily. Really so very lovely, with those improbable violet eyes.
The way she gazed up at him, so wistfully. “My angel,” she had called him. Then she had been silent again, so silent and still.
Chapter 3
W
AKING UP IN a sumptuously appointed bedchamber in Havensbeck Manor was most disconcerting. Norah blinked at the unfamiliar fall of rose-colored jacquard curtains surrounding the vast bed in which she slept. This rather pleasant fog of extravagance only lasted until Norah recalled poor Emmeline.
With a gasp, she flung back the covers and sprang from the bed. Miss Higgins must have worked as quietly as a mouse, for all Norah’s gowns were hanging, cleaned and pressed, in the wardrobe, even the one she’d worn the day before.
It seemed a year since she and Emmeline had jotted off early from the inn, but it had been only yesterday morning!
It was just past sunrise, so Norah turned to close her bedchamber door quietly as she left. Thinking of Em, she whirled to rush down the hallway.
While You Were Dreaming Page 2
