“I saw a figure on the rhododendron walk,” she said, “standing still and looking for me—I was in a tree. And then I came down the path and there you were. Why do you want me dead?”
His hand was over his eyes, which he had closed. “There is only one explanation,” he muttered. He opened his eyes and looked at her. “But how the devil am I going to prove it?” He blinked and looked at her with more awareness in his eyes. “Lily, it was not I. I swear it. I do not wish you any harm. On the contrary. If you but knew…” He shook his head. “I have no proof…of anything. Please believe that it was not I.”
And suddenly her suspicions seemed ridiculous to her. She could not imagine why she had ever entertained them. But then the idea that someone wanted her dead was ridiculous too. And one could hardly expect a prospective murderer to confess to the victim he had stalked for well over a month.
“For your own peace of mind,” he said, “please believe me. Oh, Lily, if you just knew how I love you.”
She recoiled in horror and pressed herself against the door so that the knob to which she clung dug painfully into her back. What did he mean? Helovedher? In what way? But there was only one way, surely. Yet he was old enough to be her father. And he was dangling after Elizabeth—was he not?
His grace ran the fingers of one hand through his silvering hair and blew out his breath from puffed cheeks. “Forgive me,” he said. “I have never been so inept. Go up to Kilbourne, Lily, and ask Elizabeth to join me here, if you will. And do me the honor of trusting me, I beg you.”
She did not answer him. She turned and opened the door and fled through it. She had every reason to distrust him—now more than ever. What had he meant by saying that he loved her? And yet, when he had asked her to trust him, she had felt inclined to do just that.
The room was dark when he opened his eyes. He was not sure if it was the same night as the one during which a bullet had been dug out of his shoulder. He rather thought it was not. He was feeling weak—and his shoulder was stiff and as sore as hell. He turned his head and winced from the pain. She was lying beside him, her head turned toward him, her eyes open.
“If I am dreaming,” he said, smiling at her, “don’t tell me.”
“Your fever broke two hours ago,” she said. “You have been sleeping. But you are awake now. Are you hungry?”
“Thirsty,” he said.
She was wearing only a thin shift, he could see when she got out of bed and crossed the room to pour him a glass of water. She held it while he sat up. It took him awhile to do so—he had refused her help. But she set a bank of pillows behind him after he had taken the glass. He leaned gingerly back against them after he had finished drinking.
“Civilian life makes one soft, Lily,” he said. “If this had happened in the Peninsula, I would have been back on the battlefield by now.”
“I know,” she said.
He patted the bed beside him and took one of her hands in his when she sat down. “I suppose,” he said, “no one was caught.”
She shook her head.
“You must not fear,” he told her—not that he could really imagine Lily cowering with prolonged terror. “It was one of those senseless and random acts of violence that always seem to happen to other people. He was some sort of madman, or else something had happened on that night to give him a grudge against the world and we happened to be there in his line of fire. It will not happen again.”
“It has happened before,” she said.
He did not for a moment misunderstand her. He felt himself turn cold. He had not, he realized, believed his own explanation—except that he had nothing to offer in its place. Why would anyone wish to shoot at either him or Lily?
“Someone has shot at you before?” It was too bizarre even to think about.
She shook her head. “Not shot,” she said, and proceeded to tell him about the distant glimpse she had had on the rhododendron walk of a figure in a black cloak and the feeling she had had in the woods that she had spotted someone in a cloak again. She told him about the stone falling from the cliff as she had been scrambling on the rocks below. She told him about her near encounter with death in Hyde Park.
“Someone wants me dead,” she said.
“Why?” He frowned. He wished he did not feel so damnably weak. He wished his brain was not working so sluggishly.
She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.
Someone wanted Lily dead and had almost got his wish on three separate occasions—once at Newbury.
He reached for her suddenly, hardly even noticing the screaming pain in his shoulder. He brought her down half across him and wrapped his arms about her, her head cradled on his left shoulder.
“No,” he said, almost as if by his very will he could protect her, “it is not going to happen, Lily. I swear it is not. I failed once to save you. It will not happen again.”
“You must forget about that ambush in Portugal,” she said, her hand smoothing over the side of his face. “You saved my life at Vauxhall. The slate is wiped clean.”
“No one is going to harm you,” he said. “My word on it.” Ridiculous word of a man who had not even known that her life had been threatened and almost lost on his own property.
She kissed the underside of his jaw. “You must rest again,” she said, “or the fever will come back.”
