When the hired carriage finally creaked to a halt, Richard cautiously opened the door and stepped down onto a cobblestoned entry drive. He rapped at the driver’s step and the man leaned down. “Are you certain this is where she lives?”
The man paused for a few seconds. “Yes, sir, this is where she always asks me to bring her. It’s the old duke’s hunting lodge.”
“The duke?” Richard vowed this entire adventure had gotten crazier the colder he’d gotten. “You’re joking.”
“Nah, wouldn’t joke to an officer like you. She’s the barmy old woman who was the Duchess of Sidmouth, years and years ago. She’s outlived two of the dukes. Her grandson’s the one now. The granddaughter hides away with her in the family’s hunting lodge.”
“But I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me this to begin with?”
“It’s the slow time of the year. Travelers stay away in the rainy season. Man’s got to eat.” The driver opened his hands wide.
Richard reluctantly paid the man for the long, meandering ride, shook his head and went back to the open carriage door to help the duchess who thought she was an actress out onto the cobblestones.
He’d no more than set her onto her feet than he was violently attacked and knocked over from the rear.
God’s toes.Not only had her grandmother attacked two Royal Marines, now Max, one of her son’s mastiffs, had flattened what appeared to be an officer in the King’s Navy onto the cobblestones in the drive. Harriet sighed. Would this night ever end?
She rushed to the man’s side, motioning to two of her footmen to help pull Max off the poor man.
When the two men finally dragged the dog away and rolled over the officer, he showed little signs of life. Drool covered the sleeves of his uniform jacket. An ugly gash slanted across his forehead, seeping blood. She sighed again, but kept her bow tightly drawn with an arrow still notched into position. She wasn’t taking any chances.
Harriet had a fleeting concern that perhaps she’d be the one in a ship’s brig before the night was over, but she would not allow her grandmother to come to harm. What if he was dead? Where would she hide the body? The image of the pet cemetery down near the cove flashed through her mind. Although from the size and heft of this soldier, she did not want to think of how they’d slide him down the steep, cliffside path.
His body seemed so still, she dropped the bow and let the arrow clatter to the cobblestones. Kneeling close, she placed her hand on his chest and laid her ear over his mouth to listen for breathing. After a few minutes, she felt an almost imperceptible rise of his chest beneath the drool-covered scarlet jacket.
A gusty exhale of hot, peppermint-scented breath blew past her ear, and a brief hint of sandalwood soap rising from his still warm chest made her body clench in places she’d forgotten still functioned. She jumped back to her feet as if scalded.
“Help me. Quick. He’s alive. Let’s get him inside before the Cornwall cold kills him.” After trying to pick up the heavy, muscular soldier by his arms and legs without success, the two footmen improvised a temporary cot from the wooden ramp across the dry moat. They rolled his body onto the ramp and called for two more servants from the lodge to help carry him inside.
“Where should we put him, milady?” the taller of the two footmen asked.
She ran her fingers through her already windblown hair and gestured to the upper story. “The duke’s old room will do. He won’t be back here for months. Not with his new wife keeping him in Venice.”
When Harriet swept a glance behind her, she realized with relief her son must still be asleep in bed with Fleur watching over him. Max had done what he was trained to do—protect her little family from harm. Her son’s trusty guard had no idea, nor did he care, what the sight of a scarlet uniform meant. She walked to the huge mastiff’s side and scratched the top of his head between his ears, just the way he liked. She kissed the tips of two of her fingers and brushed them over his cold nose.
She’d nearly forgotten her grandmother who still stood in the shadows murmuring nonsensical, garbled lines from Shakespeare. She moved to the elderly woman’s side and put an arm around her. “Come inside, Nana. Everything will be fine. You’re home now. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Richard awoke slowlyand had a devil of a time getting his eyes to open. They were damnably heavy for no particular reason and seemed to be sealed shut with some sort of sticky glaze. He was no toper and was pretty sure he wasn’t stale drunk.
A tentative swipe with his fingers revealed the substance weighing on his eyelids was more slippery than sticky. What the devil?
When he tried to sit up, the effort was too much, and he flopped back down. He isolated the throbbing pain in the vicinity of his forehead as a swollen knob and slash of some sort with blood still seeping from the wound. Had he been in a fight? Yes, earlier the evening before, but he certainly had no recollection of taking a punch that severe. And then the whole, sad farce came back. The old woman who had insisted on performing the witches’ scene from Macbeth in a seedy, harbor-front tavern. The crowd that had pelted her with rotten food and other things. He and his sergeant had waded into the mob of jeering men.
After he’d tried to return the crafty old wench to her family—that was where the details became fuzzy. He’d spied a fiery-haired Amazon aiming a bow and arrow at him just before someone took him out from behind.
Just then his door opened a crack and a wary eye stared back at him. The woman in what he’d thought had been a bad dream the night before glided into the room, followed by a footman with a tray of buttered toast and a pot of hot, steaming tea. Her long, flowing russet hair was held back by a kerchief this morning and she carried a basin of what looked like hot water. A second footman followed with shaving gear and gauze linen bandage-like strips. More importantly, she wasn’t armed with a lethal bow and arrow.
He couldn’t wait for an explanation of this havey-cavey set-up and why he’d been attacked the night before just for trying to do the right thing and deliver an old woman safely home.
In the morning light,the man in her cousin’s bed did not look nearly so menacing as he had the night before. A twinge of regret stung Harriet somewhere in the vicinity of her breastbone. Bereft of his intimidating scarlet uniform, he was just another man. A man with dark, tousled bed hair, broad muscular shoulders, and piercing blue eyes in stark contrast with the weathered tan of his face. When he sat up and moved back toward the pillows the footmen had piled behind him, the sheet slipped and showed more of just how muscular that body was beneath the uniform. Harriet stopped breathing for a moment before she got a grip on her meandering mind and returned to the business at hand.
“I apologize for last night. My son’s guard dog, Max, mistook you for a threat to the family and slammed you down onto the cobblestones.” She paused a moment and subconsciously smoothed the skirts of her morning dress. “He’s a good dog, but his immense size can be dangerous when he launches himself at someone.” This time she brushed her hands down her skirts to dry the dampness invading her palms.
He tilted his head, and a mischievous spark lurked in his eyes. “You’re telling me a dog did this?” He pointed to the growing lump on his head.
At that moment there was a loud swishing sound of paws and toenails clicking on the floor outside the room, and two huge hounds, accompanied by one small boy, slewed into the room.
Harriet gave a deep sigh. “I’m sorry. Introductions are probably in order. According to your sergeant, who showed up this morning extremely agitated, but is now peacefully eating breakfast in the kitchen, you are Lieutenant Richard Bourne. I am the Dowager Marchioness of Blandford, and this is my son, Nicholas, the current marquess.”
