The Taste of Innocence (46 page)

She gasped, and pain sliced through her. She stiffened, trying to breathe, to ignore the spreading agony.

From behind she heard a cry—Hills. Blacktail’s reins slid from her weakening grasp; the gelding thundered on. Something had hit her on the back; through the fiery pain she could feel something there, stuck to her, bouncing with Blacktail’s gait. Anchoring one hand in his flying mane, she clung; with her other hand, she groped behind her, trying to feel what had struck her—she felt a shaft, and feathers. Just touching it made her gasp, made her head swim.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw blood, wet and red, on her glove. An arrow?

Her mind could barely take it in.

Flailing to catch up with her, Hills drew alongside. “My lady!” His face ashen, he reached for Blacktail’s reins.

“No!” Sarah gasped. “Don’t stop. Whoever shot it—they’re still there.”

If she hadn’t leaned forward…

She let herself slump onto Blacktail’s neck. “The manor.” Her voice was weak, but Hills heard. “Let him run and he’ll take me there.”

Keeping her eyes open was too hard. She let them close, but forced her mind to follow their progress—she’d ridden this route countless times; she knew every inch of the way.

She knew when Blacktail swerved to take the path to the back of the manor. Sensed the change as he moved off the grittier bridle path onto the beaten earth running between her father’s fields.

Then came the wooden bridge over the stream; each step jolted her. She cried out, nearly swooned, but managed to cling to the last remnants of consciousness…until cobbles rang under Blacktail’s hooves and he halted.

Snorting, tossing his head, in the manor’s stable yard.

She heard shouts, calls, a confusion of voices, then hard but gentle hands were lifting her down…

Sighing, she let them have her, and slipped into shrouding darkness.

Sprawled in an armchair before the fire in his library, Charlie studied Malcolm, who was seated in the other armchair across the hearth reading one of Charlie’s investment banking reports from London—and willed him to read faster. Still, it no longer truly mattered. He glanced at the windows, saw the afternoon closing in. Sarah would soon be back. Indeed—he inwardly frowned—he would have expected her back by now.

Had there been some problem at the orphanage?

He shifted, surreptitiously glancing at the clock. Nearly four o’clock. She should be back by now. Perhaps she’d returned but hadn’t thought to look in…

His inner frown deepened; she’d know he’d want to know—he couldn’t believe she wouldn’t at least look in to tell him all was well.

The impulse to rise and go and find out—if she was home, and if she wasn’t, to ride out to meet her and find out what had delayed her—welled, but…Malcolm was still a valuable source of information, and he had promised to go over the intricacies of investment banking in return for Malcolm’s insights into railway financing.

Another two minutes ticked by in silence. Charlie was assembling the words to excuse himself to at least go and learn if Sarah had come home when heavy running footsteps echoed in the corridor outside the library.

Startled, both he and Malcolm turned to the door as it burst open.

Crisp rushed in. The man had actually run down the corridor; Charlie was on his feet even before Crisp said, “My lord, it’s Lady Sarah. Hills has just ridden in saying she was shot while riding home from the orphanage.”

A desolate chill clutched Charlie’s heart. “Shot?” He was already moving to the door.

Crisp turned with him. “Hills says with an arrow, my lord. He’s quite sure of that. She was struck in the back. It happened before the manor—she’s there. Hills says she swooned, my lord, but her father said to tell you the wound isn’t life threatening.”

Charlie was striding rapidly down the corridor. Then he remembered, halted and turned back. And saw Malcolm following some paces behind, his face pale, his expression as drawn—as grimly horrified—as Charlie felt.

Malcolm brusquely waved him on. “Go! Don’t worry about me.”

Charlie didn’t wait for more; he turned and ran for the stable.

On Storm’s back, Charlie thundered north across his fields, taking the fastest route to Conningham Manor and Sarah.

Five minutes later, Malcolm Sinclair left Morwellan Park by the drive; on his black gelding he also turned north, keeping to the road.

Sarah woke to the gentle, soothing touch of her mother’s hand smoothing her hair back from her forehead. The fiery pain in her back had eased, faded; the sensation now felt like a large raw scrape.

Opening her eyes, she blinked. She was lying on her side, her head in her mother’s lap. Gingerly she raised her head and slowly pushed herself up, registering the slide of her blouse over a bandage across her back.

“Gently, now.” Her mother helped her up; when Sarah sat straight and steady, she released her. “There now.” She looked across the room. “Miss Twitterton, perhaps you could ask Cook to send up that chicken broth now.”

Consulting her head and discovering it steady, feeling stable enough on the familiar window seat in the back parlor, Sarah looked around, saw Twitters’s skirts disappearing around the door, and Clary and Gloria, both with eyes wide, regarding her avidly from across the room. They looked as if they had questions ready to burst from their lips. Before they could decide which to ask first, she looked at her mother. “Was I really shot with an arrow?”

Lips thinning, her mother nodded. “A quarrel from a crossbow. Your father’s ropeable—there’s simply no reason anyone should have had such a weapon out, not in this season.”

Sarah tried to reach behind her; she winced as skin and muscle protested.

“No need to touch it.” Her mother caught her hand and drew it away. “As luck would have it, Doctor Caliburn was here talking to your father. He cleaned the wound and said it was little more than a deep scratch.” She patted Sarah’s hand, then released it, drew in a breath and let it out with, “He said you were very lucky.”

Hearing the quaver in her mother’s voice, ruthlessly suppressed though it was, Sarah summoned a smile and squeezed her hand. “I’m all right—truly.”

Other than the painful scrape on her back, she was. Shifting around, she looked out the window at the gathering dusk. “What time is it?”

“A little after four. We sent your groom to inform Charlie, of course.” Her mother shook out the short jacket Sarah had been wearing, and the remnants of the blouse that had been beneath it. “The jacket can be washed and mended, but the blouse isn’t worth the effort. That’s Clary’s you have on.”

Sarah glanced down at the fine linen decorously covering her, then flashed a smile at Clary. “Thank you.”

Clary waved dismissively. “Never mind that—what did it feel like? The arrow going in, I mean.”

“Clary!” Lady Conningham bent a severe frown on her blood-thirsty daughter.

But Sarah grinned and thought back. “Like a burn, actually.”

“That’s enough, girls.” Lady Conningham quelled Gloria with an even more dire frown as Twitters reappeared bearing a tray with a bowl of Cook’s famous restorative chicken broth.

“You need to build up your strength,” the diminutive governess sternly advised as she laid the tray on a small table before Sarah. “No doubt the earl will be here shortly and you won’t want to swoon again.”

Hiding a smile at Twitters’s ability to always know just what argument to employ to get her charges to do anything, Sarah dutifully picked up the spoon and sipped.

She’d never swooned before; somewhat to her surprise, she did feel in need of sustenance.

Just as she laid the spoon in the empty bowl, the crunch of hooves on gravel drew all eyes to the forecourt—to Charlie as he flung himself out of the saddle and strode to the front door.

Her mother regarded her, a worried frown in her eyes. “Are you well enough to stand?”

Carefully Sarah got to her feet; Twitters hurriedly removed the table and tray. Other than a twinge across her back, she felt no lasting ill effects. Her head remained steady; reinforced with chicken broth, she felt tolerably normal. “I’m perfectly all right.”

And she wanted to go home. With her mother and Twitters hovering, ready to fuss, let alone Clary and Gloria straining at her mother’s leash, wanting to demand every gory detail, while the manor was comfortable it was no longer her place.

The realization crystallized in her mind—then the door was flung open with such force it nearly hit Clary, who yelped and caught it.

Charlie didn’t seem to hear. Framed in the doorway, his eyes, darkened and burning, raked her—cataloguing every tiny detail from her head to her toes. Reaching those, his gaze flashed up to her eyes. With the same painful intensity he scanned her face, her eyes, her expression. “Are you all right?”

Surprised—faintly stunned—to see him so shaken, to be able to so openly see his emotions, raw and naked in his face, displayed without thought before her mother, Clary, Gloria, and Twitters, she mentally shook herself and hurried to find a smile and hold out her hands. “Other than a wound on my back—and I have it on excellent authority that that’s little more than a deep scrape.”

He muttered something—she thought it was “Thank God!”—then he crossed the room in two strides, took her hands only to draw her nearer, then gently folded her in his arms, careful not to touch her wound, the fingers of one hand tracing oh-so-lightly over the bandage across her back.

“Hills said you were hit below your shoulder blade.” He murmured the words against her hair.

She couldn’t believe how comforting his warmth was, how soothing it felt to have his strength surround her.

The sound of a throat being cleared had him lifting his head and turning, but he didn’t let her go.

“Perhaps,” her mother said, “we should adjourn to the drawing room.”

Sarah knew the instant Charlie realized that he was not just wearing his heart on his sleeve, but waving it for everyone to see. He stiffened; the muscles in the arms around her tensed, but they didn’t ease—he didn’t release her or set her back from him.

She caught his sleeve, tugged. When he glanced down at her, she spoke to him rather than her mother. “Actually, I’d prefer to start back to the Park before full dark.”

Her mother said, “I really don’t think —”

“Of course.” Charlie cut across her mother without compunction. “I’ll borrow your father’s carriage.”

Holding his gaze, she grimaced lightly. “I rather suspect I’ll do better on Blacktail. The carriage will jar the wound more than Blacktail’s stride, and the way home is all across fields, no hard roads.”

He frowned. From the corner of her eye, Sarah saw her mother open her lips to protest, but she paused, then reluctantly closed them.

“If you’re sure you’re well enough to sit a horse.” Charlie was still frowning, but his gaze had grown distant; she sensed he was planning, then he refocused on her and nodded. “Very well. But if we’re going to ride home, we’ll need to leave now.”

He turned to her mother and with his usual charm smoothed her ruffled feathers, reassuring her that her chick would be in safe hands.

Sarah hid a grin; he wouldn’t be thrilled to know that it was his earlier blindness to all but her that her mother found most reassuring, that it was that that had her unbending enough to accompany them to her father, and thence to the stable yard.

Charlie lifted Sarah to her saddle. He stood by her stirrup, holding it and watching as she settled her skirts and picked up the reins. She seemed strong enough, but she was moving carefully—and he knew she wanted to go home.

And with that he had no argument.

He turned away, shook hands with Lord Conningham, then swung up to Storm’s back. He steered the big hunter to come up alongside Blacktail, then with brief nods to her family, they slowly walked out under the stable arch, past Clary and Gloria, who were smiling brightly and encouragingly, then they turned both horses’ heads south.

At first they just walked, then Sarah pushed Blacktail into an easy canter. Charlie kept pace—until they were over the first rise and out of sight of those watching from the manor.

“Rein in.” He watched as Sarah—rather more tight-lipped than she’d been in the stable yard—obeyed.

When Blacktail halted, she turned her head and looked at him, brows rising.

He halted Storm beside her, then edged the big gray close to Blacktail’s side. Transferring his reins to one hand, he reached for her. “Come here.”

That she allowed him to grasp her waist and lift her over to sit across his saddle with no protest told him he’d been right; her wound wasn’t as unpainful, as unaffected by riding, as she’d hoped.

“I’ll be all right,” she murmured as he settled her legs and skirts, her undamaged side to his chest.

“True, but this way will be less painful. Lean against me.”

He took Blacktail’s reins and tied them to a ring on his saddle, then he curled one arm around her, supporting her and holding her to him, picked up Storm’s reins, and rode on.

Cradled as she was, his body, his spine, cushioned her against any jolts, any sharp movements. Gradually, she realized and relaxed; with a sigh, she rested her head against his shoulder.