Page 99 of A Stolen Heart

“Yes,” Alexandra agreed, but her mind was only half on her aunt’s words. A chill had run through her at what Willa had said. Willa had been unusually sleepy tonight, just as she had been, and she had slept heavily, finding it hard to wake up. Alexandra remembered how groggy she had felt when her mother woke her. She had felt almost…drugged. What if she really had been drugged? And Willa, too? What if someone had made sure that both she and Willa would be sound asleep tonight?

She pushed the thought away. It was too terrible to contemplate. For if someone had drugged their food or drink with the intent to keep her and Willa asleep, then that meant that it had been done by someone inside the house, a bribed servant or…Her eyes went to Aunt Hortense, then to her mother, lying in her bed. But, no, she was thinking crazily, more crazily than her mother at her worst. They were her family, the people who loved her most in the world!

Aunt Hortense would never harm her. It didn’t matter whether Alexandra was a Ward or not. And her mother’s oddness would never have risen to such extremes.

“There is no need to keep going over this,” Sebastian said peremptorily. “Miss Ward, Miss Everhart, I suggest that you bring in another cot, and both of you spend the night here with Mrs. Ward. I shall post Murdock outside your door the rest of the night. That way you will be here to tend to Mrs. Ward if she needs you, and I can be assured that the three of you are well-protected. Alexandra, you are coming with me.”

“Sebastian!” Alexandra protested as he put his hand under her elbow and more or less propelled her from the room. “What are you doing? Where are we going? I want to stay with my mother.”

“Nonsense. You’re dead on your feet. What you need to do is get some rest. Let Aunt Hortense, who has not almost been killed tonight—for, let me see, the fourth time, or is it the fifth?—let her take care of your mother. You may sit up with Mrs. Ward tomorrow.”

“I shall. And whenever else I wish.”

“Murdock!” Sebastian led Alexandra toward her room. Sebastian’s valet stood in the doorway, surveying the damage.

Sebastian and Alexandra came up beside him and looked into the room. Two footmen were poking about, making sure every possible stray spark was extinguished. Alexandra drew in her breath sharply. “Oh, no!”

Her room was a wreck. The bed was blackened, the charred bed curtains trailing from the bedposts, and the tester had collapsed onto the mattress. There was a stinging scent of burned feathers hovering in the air. The chair on one side of the bed and the small table on the other had been singed, as had the drapes on the window. The wall behind the bed was blistered. All the burned mess, as well as the rest of the floor, was sodden with water.

“At least it didn’t reach your wardrobe, miss, or the dresser,” Murdock said encouragingly. “All your clothes should be all right, once they’re washed and aired out, of course.”

“Mm,” Alexandra responded noncommittally. Looking at the wreckage, she found it a trifle hard to look on the bright side.

“I want you outside the door of Mrs. Ward’s room tonight,” Sebastian told Murdock. “I don’t want anyone going in there.”

The short, muscled man nodded his agreement. “Won’t nobody get in, sir.”

Grabbing a straight-backed chair from Alexandra’s room, he carried it down the hall and planted it squarely in front of Rhea’s door and sat in it, arms folded, obviously prepared to wait out the night.

Alexandra looked at her room. “Where am I going to sleep? Aunt Hortense’s, I suppose, if she is going to be sleeping in Mother’s room.”

“You will be sleeping with me,” Sebastian replied.

“What?” Alexandra looked at him in shock. “You can’t be serious!”

“Can’t I?” He hooked his hand under her elbow and steered her down the hall toward his room.

“Sebastian, no! We cannot—the servants—it would be scandalous.”

“I’ve told you before—I am impervious to scandal. Anyway, if the servants are foolish enough to talk, it will be only a tempest in a teapot, since you and I are engaged to be married.”

“We are not.”

He stopped and looked at her sternly. “Do you intend to play fast and loose with my affections?”

“Sebastian! Don’t be ridiculous.”

“What else would you call it?” he asked, starting toward his room again. “Did you or did you not admit to me only a few minutes ago that you love me?”

A blush stained Alexandra’s cheeks. “Well, yes, but…”

“No buts.” He raised a finger to her lips for silence. “You say you love me yet refuse to marry me. What else can you call it except toying with me?”

Alexandra had to smile. “Don’t be an idiot. You know why we cannot marry.”

“I know the foolish reasons that you have put forth, and none of them are persuasive.”

He opened the door of his room and ushered her inside. Alexandra could not seem to find the will to resist him. She let him guide her toward the bed and help her into it.