Scrambling down to the rather deep ditch, Heath grimaced when he saw how she was gripping her left shoulder and feared it was broken.
“Penelope,” he said while reaching out to her, “Please open your eyes. I’m here.”
Her eyes fluttered open and the pain he saw there made his insides curl. “M-mr…Moore?”
“Call me Heath,” he said as he strangled the anxiety almost breaking his chest in half. “I am going to help you, but you must give me permission. May I touch you?”
“Yes, of course, yes,” she gasped while attentively releasing her shoulder and reaching out to him. “But my shoulder…it—I think it’s broken.”
“I think we can fix that,” Heath said as he slipped his hand under her back and had to maneuver himself to get his arms under her breech-clad knees. “I’m going to lift you now.”
She pressed her face into the crook of his neck as he stood. Her weight was gossamer to him, or it could be that the rush in his veins made her feel insubstantial. Cradling her in his arms he began to walk toward the stables, feeling her soft breaths on his skin and her nose sniffling whimpers as she held back her pain.
He tried to pace his steps even as everything was prodding him to run, but he did not want to aggravate her injury. He had to get his precious burden somewhere safe.
Bessie was plodding beside him obediently and they finally got to the stables from the long walk. Over half a mile, Heath judged. The moon was disappearing behind a cloud, and Heath loathed having to put Penelope down, but he had to get Bessie inside to cover Penelope’s actions from her brother. A horse out of the stable was sign enough, but for it to be her horse, that would invoke a hail of trouble.
“I am going to have to set you down, Penelope,” he said, unaware of how he was using her given name. “Can you manage to lean against the wall while I get Bessie inside?”
“I...should,” her words were barely heard as he slowly put her legs down first and then helped to the side of the barn, grimacing at how cold it was. He managed to get the door open and Bessie inside. As quickly as he could, with one eye on the door and the other with Bessie, he unsaddled the mare in record time and brushed her hair down to hide any telltale marks.
With her back in her stall, he stopped and said, “Thank you. You saved her life.”
“No,” Penelope said weakly from the inside door, “you did.”
Her voice warmed him as he closed the stall and then went to her. “Will you let me see your shoulder?”
Silently, she shifted on her place and offered her shoulder to him. With trained fingers, Heath skimmed over the joint on her shoulder and arm and sighed in relief that the limb was not dislocated. Her arm was probably banged up instead of broken. He felt her eyes on him while he searched lightly but did not dare look.
“It’s not broken,” he said softly. “If you were thrown and you fell on it, it might feel that way.”
“You called me by my name,” she said quietly.
Heath’s pressed his lips and swallowed, “I apologize. I did not mean to overstep my—”
“No,” she stopped him with a shake of her head and tiny tendrils slipped over her temples to her cheeks. “Please, no. I—it feels right that y—I mean…I don’t mind.”
Her eyes darted away from him and he suddenly yearned to reach up and cup her cheek, kiss her perhaps. She looked so soft and vulnerable that his protective instincts flared, and he came closer. Her eyes were glimmering and soft so he added, “And you can call me Heath.”
By magnetism, his hand drifted up to finger a loose curl of her hair. It felt a bit dry, but he had seen it in its silky waves before and wondered what touching it in that state would feel like before catching himself and dropping his hand. “Let us get you back inside.”
With an arm around her waist, Heath led her up to the stairs and inside. They took the stairs, one by one until he got her to her rooms. “Should I get Miss Bell to—”
He needn’t ask as the lady maid in question was dozing across a chaise lounge in the dark anterooms. She startled awake when their footsteps neared. “My Lady…” she began but her voice lowered to a strangled whisper, “what happened?”
Setting her down beside the other woman, Heath immediately felt the loss of her warmth beside him but stepped back appropriately. No one could know about their new-founded closeness.
“I fell,” Penelope sighed then, looked up at him, and even though dim, he could see the gratefulness in her eyes, “Mr. Moore found me—and yes Martha, how he did it unbeknownst to me too—but I’m gratefully he did.”
He felt urged to clarify, “I couldn’t sleep…I have been known to go to Duke when I can’t. When I got there, I found Bessie coming to the stables in only her saddle. It was very easy to deduce what happened.”
“Nevertheless…” Penelope eased herself up and came to him, “Thank you…Martha…” she said while not moving her eyes from his said, “Please get a tub of water ready.”
Heath automatically stepped away as they were alone once more, but Penelope boldly followed him. Her gaze was too knowing for his comfort. “You are not like the rest…are you?”
I wish I could tell you…
Again, her question was not asked to be answered, and even if he did try to answer it, he was at a loss of what to say. Her hand lifted to hover in uncertainty between then and Heath felt himself slowly leaning forward before sensibility struck him like a blow to his face but he continued to bend, forming a bow instead of letting her touch him. “Goodnight, My Lady.”
With that, he left her doorway and went back to his spartan quarters, wishing he could have stayed, but not envying the questions Penelope was going to be forced to answer.
Laying in the camouflage of night, he allowed himself to consciously say her name. “Penelope.”
It sounded right to his ears, just as the feeling in the middle of his chest felt when he pictured her golden eyes. It felt like heaven. But then…thinking of who and what he was and what he had come to do…would she feel the same?
* * *
Whites Gentleman’s Club, London
“We need your answer,” a hard voice said above him. Shadowed eyes looked up to meet the hard, demanding look and tense jaw.
“We?” the younger man asked a bit facetiously while looking around, “I only see you and me here.”
“Do not push your luck,” hissed the older. “This is serious business for you, or would you rather forfeit all you have worked for nearly a year to make on account for your sudden hesitation?”
A deeply-insulted frown made a crevasse in the younger man’s brow, and his hand tightened around the glass of scotch so very imperceivably. “I am not hesitating, why would you get that idea?”
“There were two other incidents that you were supposed to enact after the first one—which though you pulled off perfectly—and made our third party that much more culpable. But you…” and here a finger was jabbed into his face, “have not acted on either which makes me believe you are hesitant.”
“A follow-up so soon would have looked too suspicious,” the younger man defended. “Or do you not know the art of subtlety? Anyone with a grain of common sense would see that rapid incidents are indicative of a frame-up. Surely, you with your many years behind scrupulous acts should know that.”
“Do not lecture me, ingenue, on the matters of strategy,” he was warned strictly, “You have not earned that right yet.”
Being likened to a young innocent girl rankled, but the younger man heeded the warning. It would not profit him to alienate this man when he was on the brink of achieving all he wanted.
“Very well, it will not happen again,” his assurance was given with reluctance.
“You will need to act this month,” he was ordered, “or you will forfeit it all. Do you have a plan?”
Rooting through his memory, the younger man lit upon a conversation he and the person he was planning to be his scapegoat had only a day ago. There was a certain event comin
g up soon and it was the prime place and time to heap more suspicion on his scapegoat. “Not only do I have a plan, but I also have the perfect person to use it on.”
“And who might that be?”
“I would prefer to not divulge that information yet,” was the reply.
“And you are sure this will work?”
Sitting back in his chair, the younger man lifted his glass, “Without a doubt.”
Chapter 20
Huffing a breath out, Penelope laid in her bed with a stack of twice-read books beside her. Her shoulder was throbbing dully under the cover of her cotton nightgown and was tender when she prodded at it. When she dared to twist, she had to look at it, the skin was battered black and blue. Angry dark purple splotches dotted her skin, advertising where she had taken the brunt of her fall. Thankfully, just like Mr. Moore—Heath—had said, nothing was broken, she was just sore.
Edward had visited her that morning, a cursory visit, after Martha had told him that she was not feeling well. He had not bothered to ask her deeper questions about her illness, a habit of his disinterested nature that she had become familiar with.
He just asked how she felt, and if there was anything he could get the cook to send her, and that was it. With a look to his watch, he left stating that he had to put in some work for his dratted hunt.
Dropping the last book beside her, Penelope slumped. She was bored out of her mind. Having thrice-read these books, they did not offer the same comfort they used to as her mind had already extracted all they had to offer.
Last night, especially the part where Bessie’s hoof had connected with the rock and she had lost her grip on the reins, was a recurring memory. She had felt unmeasurable terror those fleeting seconds when she had been hoisted from the saddle and flung sideways unto the ground. It was only God’s mercies why she had not landed on stony ground or some bone would have snapped in half.
I thought I was going to die…pain as I had never known was ricocheting through my body. I think at one time I actually prayed for death. Then he came along. Out of nowhere, Heath showed up. I swore he was an angel when everything around me was loopy.
A sigh left her, and her eyes fluttered, “There is more to him than we all think, I know it.”
“You know what?” Martha asked while entering with a tray of food and drink.
“Mr. Moore,” Penelope replied while straitening up to allow her maid to put the tray over her lap, “How he found me, I do not know.”
“I was going to go and look for you after your normal time passed by,” Martha said sorrowfully. “But then I fell asleep. I am so sorry for my negligence.”
“Don’t apologize,” Penelope said with a shake of her head. “If I had not gone riding, you would not have had to come looking for me. Thank God, Eddie does not know about it.”
Martha sat beside her and smoothed her skirt. “So, what is this about Mr. Moore?”
“I know what he said about going to speak with his horse but…exactly at the time I have been hurt? Everyone should have been in bed at that time. Why did he leave the house at all?” Penelope asked, her tone baffled.
Shaking her head, Martha snorted softly, “I suppose that God is creative enough to make two special people on the earth who speaks to horses.”
Glaring at her friend who had the audacity to mock her connection to horses, Penelope sniffed. “The insinuation meaning that the rest of the world is normal? I take umbrage to that. Tread carefully, Martha.”
Her warning was glibly ignored, if a roll of her maid's eyes was the respond Penelope got. “I suppose that could answer why he was up at that time, but it is still strange.”
Taking the glass of lemonade, Penelope sipped at it and began to wonder. Last night in the stables, when Mr. Moore had told her to call him Heath again, there had been a light in the man’s eyes that she just could not categorize.
It had felt magnetic, like the energy emitted from a lodestone, his gaze pulling them together. His green eyes were so compelling that they had momentarily taken her breath away. For a quick breath, she had wondered if he was going to kiss her, and then, thankfully, he had looked away and the link was broken. It was her expectation too, but she would never freely admit that.
Tracing the rim of the glass, Penelope mused over what she had not only seen when Heath had spoken to her, but what she had felt. When he had lifted and carried her, she had felt his care and concern. White and red sparks of agony had flashed across her vision in random bursts and black spots had peppered the edges in between.
In the midst of her crises, she had felt safe in his arms and the clean scent of his skin when she had pressed her face into his neck smelled soothing. A tiny comfort when sharp debilitating pain had been rerouting itself doubly throughout her body.
The soft rock of his body had almost lulled her sleep but the pain lingering in her body had kept her conscious. Leaning on the cold wall had rammed more sharp jabs into her already-painful body, but she knew he had to get Bessie in to cover her tracks.
“He told Bessie that she had saved my life,” Penelope said absently. “But I made sure to tell him that he had done that instead.”
Half the day had already gone and was crawling to the afternoon. Martha leaned in and asked softly. “Do you think you are recovered, even a bit?”
“I should be,” Penelope returned. “I don’t want to have you summon the physician. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful explanation to give to Eddie.” She ended with a shudder.
“That would not be good,” Martha added with a mirroring moue.
A knock came on the door, and though it was a room away and was short and curt, Penelope knew who it was before a voice had spoken, Heath.
“Martha?”
Her slender figure was up and out of the room before Penelope could even say her name fully. Straining her ear, Penelope heard a muted conversation, but Heath’s deep tones did not miss her recognition. She then heard the door close, and Martha came in holding a capped jar.
“That was Mr. Moore,” Martha said while handing her the jar. “He could not stay but says this is a good ointment for bruises.”
Blinking her surprise, Penelope opened the jar, feeling her shoulder twinging in tiny protest and smelled the creamy olive shaded contents. The muted smell of Goldenrod and perhaps Chamomile wafted up to her, and she smiled but then felt concern.
Goldenrod was harvested through July to the last of August. It was now October. Where could Mr. Moore have gotten this? She dipped her fingers into it and felt the cool smooth ointment rub over her fingers. She managed to ease the shoulder of her dress down and smear some over her shoulder and with every pass, felt the knots begun to ease. She sat there, staring at her shoulder in awe.
“My Lady?” Martha asked.
Where could he have gotten this?
Salves like those were hard to come by and were probably expensive too. Had he bought this? If so, when? It was just another question that she added to the growing mental list that rested under Heath’s name.
“Martha…this evening, tell Mr. Moore to come to meet me in the garden.”
She did not have to look up to see the surprise on Martha’s face, “Are you sure you are up for that, My Lady?”
Canting a look at the bruises that to her mind were already turning a healing red, she smiled, “I have no doubt.”
Amusing herself with the read books and soft naps, Penelope ate dinner in her rooms and dressed in a deep-green dress with long sleeves. To both guard against the creeping cold and covering her bruises and with Martha’s help, went to the garden to wait for Mr. Moore.
The evening was cool, and she sat on a half-shadowed wooden bench, hemmed in with high rose bushes and a thick green hedge. Her hands were plucking on her lap as she mused over the look Heath had given her last night, or that morning to be literal.
Did he want to kiss me? I have never been kissed before…
“My Lady?”
She lifted her head to meet curious gree
n eyes a good distance away from hers. Tapping the space beside her, she silently ordered him to sit. He did not, and she did not blame him as anyone who saw them that close could have misconstrued what was happening with them. Perhaps she should have done this in the library instead.
“Thank you for the salve,” Penelope said while resigning herself to having him stand.
He nodded curtly, “My pleasure.”
“May I ask…where did you get that salve? Goldenrod is a little hard to come by this time of year,” she asked hesitantly.
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