Lord Cavendish Returns (23 page)

The door
swung silently open and she slipped through seconds before Harper,
who closed the door and locked it in a motion that was so swift, so
silent, that she didn’t have the time to move before he appeared
next to her. The sudden warmth of him so close felt wonderful and
she had to fight to stop herself from burying beneath his jacket in
search of his warmth. It positively radiated from him, and she
wondered how he managed to stay so warm when it was so cold. The
clothing he was wearing was no warmer than hers, yet he was
positively glowing, whereas she was finding it impossible to stop
shaking.

She
fumbled her way through the darkness in search of candles, and
managed to light two of the ornate candlesticks that sat just
inside the entrance hall. The sight of the huge cavernous main body
of the building gave her the shudders and she turned away from the
strangely sinister sight with a shiver. Silence weighed so heavily
that she felt it start to close in on her.

“
Are you alright?”

“
I will be glad when this is all over and done with,” she
replied softly. “I am sorry to be such a goose. It is just that I
don’t like the dark.”

“
I know, but it is too late to back out now,” Harper warned
her. “Where should we look first?”

“
There isn’t likely to be anything out here. The only things
that are stored out here are the bibles over there.” She pointed to
a long rack of bibles available for use by the
congregation.

“
What about the candlesticks?” He nodded to the one she had in
her hand.

“
There are only these two out here. The rest are in the ante
room.”

They
moved to the door that led to the ante room, but had taken no more
than a few paces when a quiet click behind them drew her
attention.

She
gasped and spun around. “Harper!” They watched the heavy iron ring
on the door slowly begin to turn. The quiet rattle of the door
indicated that the man was trying to get in. When the door didn’t
budge, the ironwork was slowly lowered back into place.

“
He can’t get in. The key is in the door,” Harper whispered
softly and sensed her nod. “Let’s see what we can find and then we
can get out of here.”

“
I am not going back out there,” she protested, but followed
him anyway. He didn’t appear to have heard her though because he
was already studying the lock on the ante room door.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“
It has
definitely not been tampered with,” Harper sighed. He ran a hand
wearily through his hair and winced when his fingers accidentally
caught the large lump on his temple.

“
I hate to say this, but I really do not think it the register
is here,” she said wearily when they had searched both the crypt
and the church but came up empty handed. “There is nothing missing
and no sign of forced entry into the ante room, which we do usually
keep locked by the way. I think it is safe to assume that you
didn’t interrupt a thief.”

“
I know. The man who attacked me is out there,” Harper growled
and nodded toward the door. He realised what he had said when she
gasped and looked at him in horror, and mentally winced when he
realised that he would just have to come clean with her.

“
The person with the footsteps must have passed us on the
lane. They are out there. I am sorry, Arrabella, but I think it is
the man who hit me.”

“
No random attack then. I mean, it can’t be if he is following
us.”

Harper
nodded his agreement. “Why attack me though? I mean, if he has the
register, why not just leave with it like you said?”

“
He wants to stop you going after it,” Arrabella mused as she
stared blankly at the carpet.

“
There is something really odd about this, I don’t mind
admitting. It feels like they want a confrontation.”

“
A confrontation about what? The register?” She gasped. “But
you are not normal.” She clapped her hand over her mouth when she
realised what she had said. Humiliation and remorse flooded her
cheeks. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It is
just that most people would be sitting in front of the fire after a
knock on the head like you had, but not you. You have to go
charging out into the night to spend two hours in a freezing cold
church.”

He could
understand what she meant and wasn’t offended in the least by what
she said. He wasn’t normal and never really had been. No ordinary
person could deal with the work he did with the Star Elite. It was
just that he had never realised before just how gung-ho he was
toward the challenges that presented themselves to him. This time
was different though; this time he had Arrabella to protect and
look after. He felt responsible for the fact that her lips were now
tinged with blue and her fingers had not stopped shaking since the
moment they had lit the first candle, and he was certain neither
had anything to do with his sexual magnetism. She was cold, yet she
hadn’t uttered a word of protest.

“
Let’s get you home,” he whispered and walked toward her. “I
don’t know about you, but a cup of hot chocolate would be wonderful
right now.”

The idea
of the luxuriously scented confection made her stomach rumble,
however she still hesitated and made no attempt to follow him to
the front door.

“
Are you coming or not?” He asked impatiently when she stood
staring after him.

“
Not,” Arrabella declared firmly. “I am going to stay here,
thank you.”

Harper
froze and stared at her with his brows lifted. “You need not worry
if he is still out there. I won’t let him hurt you.”

“
You saw that latch. There are no ‘if’ in this. He is
definitely out there. The only consolation is that he is soaked to
the skin now too, and probably too cold to chase us, but it is
still not something I want to test, thank you very much. I can’t go
out there, Harper.” Just the memory of the muted sound of footsteps
that had walked through the darkness behind them was enough to
instil fear into her belly, and she had no intention of repeating
the experience ever again.

“
Look, you cannot stay in here all night. You are already
frozen and soaked through. If you stay here until morning you are
asking for illness. Please don’t lose sight of the fact that the
man has already stolen the register, and attacked me. He is not
likely to be put off by daylight if he wants to stop us going back
to Hambley Wood. What is the point in cowering in here all night
and making yourself too ill to fight him if he does
strike?”

“
The point is that in the morning nobody can creep up on me
and I can see where I am running,” she snapped with a huff. She was
tired, cold, fed up and seriously wishing she had never agreed to
come along with him.

Harper
could see the mulish tilt of her chin and shook his head. “How
about if I go out there first, check the area and, once it is safe,
give you the all clear to come out and join me.”

“
I am not going out there,” she reiterated firmly.

Harper
bit back an oath and had to dig deep to keep hold of his patience.
After staring at the door blankly for several minutes he heaved a
sigh and watched his warm breath fog out before him. It helped him
to make a decision.

He threw
her a look as he turned to the door. “Fine. You stay here if you
want to but I am going to go home so that I can get warm and have
some hot chocolate. I will come back in the morning to fetch
you.”

While he
unlocked the door, he wondered if he could carry her out to the
lane and drop her on her feet and let her catch up with him. At
least if she was outside she would have to keep walking. He closed
his eyes on a silent prayer that she wouldn’t stubbornly stay in
the church alone and yanked the door open. Every sense was tuned to
her, or so he thought. As soon as he saw the churchyard, he paused
and turned to look back at her. He had to bite his grin at the
sight of standing directly behind him. She tipped her head back to
peer up at him and he couldn’t resist it. He dropped one lingering
kiss on her lips and bumped her nose with his.

“
Let’s go home,” he whispered and released her only longer
enough to lock the church door behind them.

As they
walked across the graveyard he was quiet and watchful, and studied
the shadows for any hint of danger with sinister intent that seemed
to make him bigger, stronger and considerably darker. Arrabella
could feel tension positively thrum through him and didn’t know
whether to be reassured or terrified.

“
You were going to leave me there all alone, weren’t you?” she
asked in a rather forlorn voice.

Harper
snorted. “Of course not. What the hell do you take me for? I am not
selfish and stupid enough to leave you there all alone, especially
while you are soaking wet and likely to be dead from cold by
morning.”

She
frowned at him. “What would you have done though?”

Harper
tipped his head to one side and studied her from the top of her
head to the tips of her boots. “Well, I guess I could manage to
carry you all the way back to the vicarage,” he mused
wryly.

Her
mouth opened and she whacked him on the shoulder for his cheek.
However, the response she was going to give was silenced by the
flurry of movement in the shadows.

“
Get behind me,” he growled and shoved her when she didn’t
immediately move.

“
What is it? What did you see?”

Harper’s
attention was caught by the definite outline of a man moving
through the line of trees that ran alongside the road next to them.
Before he could turn to give Arrabella any further instructions,
the man left the protection of the trees and raced toward
them.

It was
only then that Arrabella realised she had left the cane back at the
church. She gasped when she saw the solid black shape hurl itself
at Harper and both men fall to the floor with a heavy thud. She
glanced at the shadows and was incredibly relieved to see that
there was nobody else on their way to attack. As far as she could
tell, there were two options open to her: she could stand and watch
the men fight, or she could race back to the church, get the cane
and at least help Harper deal with his assailant. She couldn’t just
stand there and do nothing, especially given that Harper was
injured. He had fallen onto his back and had undoubtedly cracked
his already battered and bruised head on the pavement. She didn’t
stay to watch the men battle for supremacy, and raced back to the
church for the cane.

By the time she got back to the men, they were still fighting
in the centre of the lane where she had left them. She hurried
toward them and tried to make out if she recognised the man whose
hood had come off in the melee. She studied the middle aged man who
appeared nothing like a sinister attacker. There was something
almost baby-faced about him that just didn’t give her even the
remotest impression that he was a ruthless killer. She wondered
briefly if Harper was pounding the wrong man, but then she realised
that
he
had come
out of the bushes toward them, not the other way around. Still, now
that she had seen him, he didn’t appear to be all that scary any
more.

However,
putting that thought aside for now, she still had no intention of
standing in the rain watching the man hurt Harper. She had a
weapon, and wasn’t afraid to use it if she really had to. The
thought of hitting anyone with the stick in her hand made her feel
slightly sick, but this was a matter of life and death
now.

“
Get off him,” she shouted and hefted the cane
threateningly.

The
attacker immediately froze and turned toward her. It was all the
distraction Harper needed to land a solid blow to the man’s jaw.
When the attacker rolled over, clutching his jaw, Harper took the
opportunity to lunge to his feet, but didn’t get the time to do
anything else before the assailant clambered to his feet and began
to swing his fists toward him wildly.

Arrabella watched them circle around each other like she had
seen Mr Hampton’s dog do once with Miss Penton’s poodle, and shook
her head at the foolishness of men. It occurred to her then that
she could be standing outside, in the rain, for the rest of the
night if someone didn’t do something soon.

Harper
had seen enough of his opponent to be certain that the man was from
London. The cut of his clothing alone was expensive and definitely
not something you could find in even Skipton’s finest
establishments. However the fighting, although enthusiastic, was
somewhat amateurish. He was fairly certain that his attacker had
nothing to do with the case of the French spies the Star Elite had
recently rid the country of and was indeed linked to the missing
register.

“
Before I kick your backside all the way through town; do I
know you?” Harper growled. He was cold, tired, and his head hurt
like the very Devil himself was pounding on it. He had hoped to get
away without being too forceful with the man, especially with
Arrabella present, however this could go on all night. When the man
merely shook his head, Harper felt his patience snap.