* * * *
“There was no need to knock me down the stairwell, Brixton,” Samuel grumbled, glaring at Daniel as he rubbed hissore shoulder.
“I don’t know as that’s so, Lymington. Looked to me like Dunn had the best of ye.”
“The devil he did. He was crawling on his knees up the stairs, for God’s sake.”
“Eh, well, it didn’t look like it from where I was standing.” Brixton’s lips stretched in a grin that managed to be both menacing and infuriating at once. “Beg pardon, my lord, but it’s best to be safe. That’s why ye tackled me in the woods, innit? To besafe?”
“So that’s why you did it? To get me back? Damn it, Brixton, you nearly dislocated my shoulder!”
Brixton shrugged. “Yebroke my hand.”
Samuel subsided with a huff, and rested his head against the wall behind him.
They were both silent for a time, then Brixton began making a strange sound—something halfway between a grunt and a wheeze. It took a minute before Samuel realized the disturbing noise was meant to be a laugh. “What’s so amusing, Brixton?”
“For a little while there, I thought ye were going to rip Dunn’s throat out,” Brixton said with unmistakable relish. “I would have liked to see that.”
“And I would have liked to rip the villain’s throat out.”
“I wouldn’t have stopped ye, but ’is neck will find anoose soon en—”
A pitiful cry came from the other side of the closed bedchamber door, and Samuel’s gaze shot to Brixton’s. He saw his own fear reflected in the man’s face, and his stomach dropped. IfBrixtonwas afraid, then this was bad, indeed. “She, ah…Emma will be all right, won’t she?”
“’Course, she will be. She may be a little bit of a thing, but that lass is stronger than she looks.”
But Samuel saw Daniel’s uneasiness, and fear gripped him, tightening his chest.
He’d carried Emma all the way from the icehouse back to Lymington House, muttering prayers the entire way that his arms around her would warm her, but she’d been so cold, her slender body wracked with deep, uncontrollable shudders.
Lady Crosby had been weeping on the settee when they burst into the drawing room. Lady Silvester and Lady Lymington had been attempting to comfort her, while Lovell and Lady Flora stood silently nearby, their faces pale, and Flora’s eyes red from crying.
The moment Lady Crosby saw Emma lying pale and limp in Samuel’s arms, however, she’d dried her tears, and leapt into action with all the self-righteous wrath of an aggrieved grandmother.
Samuel had never seen anything more frightening in his life.
She’d ordered Samuel to carry Emma upstairs to her bedchamber at once and put her directly into bed, tucked up as snugly as possible while the fire was built to a roar in the grate. The entire household had converged in Emma’s bedchamber by then, but Lady Crosby had banished the lot of them with the fury of a mother hen protecting her baby chick from a pack of hungry foxes, then ordered a hot bath be brought as soon as possible.
Samuel hadn’t dared argue with her. Even Brixton had doneas he was told.
Now the two of them were standing in the hallway outside Emma’s bedchamber as a half dozen servants rushed back and forth between the kitchen and guest wing, the footmen bearing large pails of hot water, and the housemaids with stacks of blanketsin their arms.
Once the servants had filed back out, Lady Crosby had closed the bedchamber door with a determined click, without sparing either Samuel or Daniel a glance.
Since then, an eternity had passed.
Another might pass in its wake, and another still, and Samuel wouldn’t stir a step from Emma’s door. When she woke, she’d find him right by her side, where he belonged.
And if he was obliged to be firm to get past Lady Crosby to Emma, then so be—
“Lord Lymington?”
Samuel whirled around to find Lady Crosby standing at the open bedchamber door. “Lady Crosby! Is Emma—”
“Calm down, my lord. Emma is awake, and asking for you. Now, Daniel.” Lady Crosby cast a stern look at Brixton. “You’re to come downstairs with me at once, so the doctor can see toyour injuries.”
“Ye keep your hands to yerself, Lymington,” Brixton growled, stopping Samuel before he could close Emma’s bedchamber door behind him.
