“I’m sorry for your pain,” he said softly, his voice scarcely audible over the crackle in the hearth.
“I’d thought that I’d killed him,” she wept through a thick throat.
“But you didn’t,” he said with renewed force.
“I shot a man, Mr. Notley!” Her voice echoed off the shelves of books before the fire gave a crackle. “And this evening, I stabbed him in the shoulder with a pilfered penknife. No matter what he did to me, I’d never thought myself capable of such violence.” She blinked away the last of her tears and swiped at her chin with the palm of her hand.
The muscle in Mr. Notley’s jaw jumped. “You defended yourself, Miss Smith. No one would fault you. And, to be candid, he deserves a hell of a lot worse for what he did to you.”
Her heart gave a sharp twist and her hands tightened in her lap. In another lifetime, perhaps, the man’s actions would have incurred the wrath of the males in her family, encouraging them to call him out or have him put on trial. Butthiswas her life, and her identity was currentlyMiss Smith, an unimportant governess in a difficult and dangerous circumstance. She was entirely at fault.
Mr. Notley leaned forward, placing his elbows on his desk. “It is vitally important, Miss Smith, that you tell me who he is. What is his name?”
Meeting his gaze, she grimaced apologetically. “I do not know his name…but somehow he knows mine.”
Leo cursed under his breath. “What does he look like? Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“I would, yes. He is really rather…beautiful.”
Something dangerous flashed in Mr. Notley’s gaze as his lips raised in a silent snarl. “Describe him,” he grunted, withdrawing a pen, ink, and a piece of parchment.
Juliana cleared her throat and waited until Mr. Notley’s pen was poised and waiting before she spoke. “His hair is blond and wavy, his jaw strong, nose patrician. He has high cheekbones, and his eyes are a deep green.”And full of malice.
She was silent for a moment before she shivered and described her encounter, starting with her pilfering a penknife from Mr. Notley’s home and concluding with the kick to the bastard’s cods and her flight down the road.
“He said that he was following through on orders?” Mr. Notley mused darkly, looking up from his notes to pin her with his sharp stare.
She nodded.
His lips tightened into a grim line. “Christ, Miss Smith, that cannot mean anything good.” He leaned back in his chair and scratched at his beard. “I will speak with my man on the matter and come up with some solution. In the meantime, you are not to leave Woodhaven Hall.”
* * *
Tick,tick, tick, tick…
The mantel clock in the library was excessively loud to Leo’s ears, and he scowled at the irksome thing. He sat in his wingback chair by the warm embers of the fire, a brandy in his hand and worry in his heart.
He understood, now, why Miss Smith had come to him wishing for a perfunctory deflowering, and while he might disagree with her methods, she deserved to have some semblance of control over her future. In fact, the notion was not quite so repellent now as it had been then…
The events leading up to that moment had felt forced from Miss Smith, pulling with them memories and emotions that she’d clearly wished to suppress. Damn, but they had stirred an unfamiliar primal need in him to find and destroy those who had wronged her. It was ludicrous. And hell if she wasn’t in far deeper trouble than he’d thought. Not only was the villain searching for her, but she’d enraged him by foiling his original plan, whatever it had been.
Any intention to send her on her way was entirely dependent on what Percy and the other footman had found on the road. Was Miss Smith in further danger? Were he and Lizzy at risk having her at Woodhaven Hall? Or had the man been wounded enough to be captured?
Leo’s skin tingled with nerves that he attempted to quell. There was no sense in worrying about something that had not yet occurred. He would await Percy’s return to the estate before he considered their next course of action.
Tick, tick, tick…
“Damned clock,” Leo grumbled before swallowing another gulp of brandy.
Boots’ head lifted from his curled position at Leo’s feet, and let out a soft bark.
“Leo?”
Leonard snapped his gaze to the library’s opened doorway to see Percy striding in.
“What news?” Leo asked, standing.
Percy stopped an arm’s length away, frustration and exhaustion marring his features. “We found a good spray of blood—even beneath the freshly fallen snow—and a large set of footprints retreating into the forest. We attempted to pursue the man, but he must have staunched the flow of his blood and found a way to cover his tracks, because the trail ran cold not far into the forest’s entrance. We continued to search, but found nothing.”
