Recklessly Yours (47 page)

With great relief they found the animal safely in the stall where they had left him earlier. They made short work of their errand and turned toward home, the colt's lead rope wrapped securely around Colin's hand.

 

The next morning, Colin stood beside Holly in the stables as she reached up and stroked the animal's neck. In her other hand she held a halved apple. She raised it and the colt snatched the fruit from her palm.

“I believe I would recognize this horse if I were blindfolded,” she said.

“Perhaps more readily.” Colin smiled, remembering how yesterday, when he'd first brought the colt home, Holly had insisted on examining him from every angle to make certain he was the same horse the queen had named Prince's Pride. “He looks much like the rest of the Ashworth stock. What is inside him makes him unique.”

“The enchantment.”

He chuckled softly. “Have you become a believer in Celtic magic?”

“No.” She turned her face to him, her expression causing his chest to tighten. “I am a believer in the magic you have created through your science. Through your brilliance as a horse breeder.”

“I don't think . . .” His throat constricting, he closed the small space between them and pressed his forehead to hers. “I don't think any compliment has ever made me more proud.”

Her arms encircled his neck and she pulled him lower still for a kiss—one quickly interrupted by the colt's impatient nudging. They broke apart, and Holly fed the animal the other half of the apple. “The bracken . . . do you think it was Antoine who poisoned the horses?”

Colin scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “I wish I knew. All I can say is I won't rest until I have the answer. The investigation shall continue.”

“If it
was
Antoine, I shall certainly feel guilty about having accused Mr. Bentley.”

“He need never know.”

“That's true. Isn't it, boy?” she cooed to the colt. She laughed softly as the animal lowered his head and snuffled as if searching out further fruit. Then she sighed. “We do need to bring him back to Devonshire as soon as possible.”

Colin started to question the claim that
they together
must bring the colt anywhere when he realized that if he went to Devonshire, he would most assuredly bring Holly with him. And everywhere else he happened to go. He'd almost lost her yesterday; he wasn't about to let her out of his sight, at least not until the queen's decree forced their separation.

“There is no need to bring that colt anywhere,” a voice said from down the aisle. They turned to peer through the dusty shafts of light streaming through the narrow windows. “At least not with any immediacy.”

Colin squinted into the intermittent shadows and brightness. “Grandmama?”

With her butler, Hockley, trailing behind her, Grandmother walked—not hobbled but walked at a pace that had Hockley almost running to keep up—down the aisle. When she reached Colin and Holly her smile tilted like that of a young debutante. “It is I.”

“But . . . how? When? I don't . . .” Realizing he was stammering, Colin closed his mouth and simply marveled at the sight before him. Grandmother still clutched her cane, but she'd used it haphazardly, as if out of habit more than from any true need. With a delighted grin he kissed her cheeks. “I don't understand. How can this be? You haven't visited Masterfield Park in . . .”

“At least five years,” she finished for him. Then her gaze shifted to Holly and her eyebrows angled to an amused slant. “How are you, my dear?”

“I am well. Thank you, Your Grace. And you . . .” What began as a question quickly transformed to a statement that echoed Colin's own sentiments. “You look positively splendid.”

“Thank you, dear. I feel splendid. More splendid than in . . . goodness . . . I don't know how many years.” She placed a gloved hand on Colin's cheek. “Since those first few years after your grandfather passed away.”

Colin nodded his understanding. Before he could comment, however, she moved past him and stood before the colt. “So, here is what all the trouble has been about.”

“He can go home now, Your Grace, where he belongs.” Holly absently stroked a hand down the colt's nose.

“Yes, he should go home. But it is no longer of the utmost urgency.” Grandmother's exuberant expression melted years, even decades from her age. “Everything has changed. Two days ago Jon Darby's sow birthed a healthy pair of piglets. The sun has come out, and the seed crop we had believed to have been washed away when the river flooded is beginning to sprout. Apparently, everyone has taken these occurrences as a sign, for the farmers and shopkeepers resumed the tasks that had gone ignored these many weeks. And me . . . well!” She held her arms out, the cane dangling in the air. She then turned a narrow-eyed gaze on Holly. “One wonders . . .”

Holly backed up half a step. “Your Grace?”

Grandmother thrust her cane into Hockley's hands. Then she gripped Holly's shoulders and drew her closer. “Hmm. Yes, there is a difference about you, too, my dear.” She glanced over at her butler. “Hockley, would you mind?”

The man gave a nod and, with Grandmother's cane in hand, he retreated down the aisle.

Holly's gaze darted to Colin, and then returned sheepishly to Grandmother. “I don't understand.”

“Oh, I think you do.” Grandmother released her. Gripping Colin in similar fashion, she studied him as if he were a specimen under a microscope. “When I arrived Sabrina informed me of an impending wedding. Ah, yes. It is clear to me now.”

Her capriciousness was beginning to exasperate him. “Good grief,
what
is clear, Grandmama?”

“The two of you. You've . . .” Her eyebrows arced in amusement.

“Grandmother.” Colin injected a good dose of warning into the word, but she went on smiling shrewdly while Holly blushed furious shades of red.

Finally, Grandmother threw back her head and laughed. “Do you children not see? Your union has lifted the curse.” She clapped her hands together. “Briannon has her resolution and we are free.”

“Oh, Your Grace, that cannot be so. You
know
it cannot.” Holly gently clasped his grandmother's hand. Colin feared she would attempt to dissuade Grandmother of her romantic, magical notions by denying the existence of the curse, but Holly only said, “Whatever your grandson and I have done, we are not married . . . not yet . . . and therefore—”

“My dear,” Grandmother interrupted, “do you not realize that in Briannon's time, marriage was a simple matter of handfasting and . . .” She lowered her voice, though her whisper rang with delight. “Consummation, though not necessarily in that order. In Briannon's eyes, in her heart, you are married
enough
.”

“Grandmother's right,” Colin murmured quickly. Curses or no, he agreed that in his heart of hearts, he was already married to Holly Sutherland and nothing could change that.

But Holly wasn't finished trying to reason with his grandmother. “Your Grace, you're forgetting one essential part of Briannon's legacy. Perhaps the most important part—”

Colin cleared his throat loudly, and Holly broke off with a bewildered scowl.

“There is no arguing with my grandmother once she has made up her mind,” he said.

Holly hesitated; then her scowl faded and she nodded.

 

Later that afternoon, Holly stood alone in the doorway of the guest chamber where Henri de Vere had been brought. The physician still could not say with any certainty what the man's fate would be, though his having held on this long was cause for optimism.

Willow and Ivy asked after the health of their distant cousin often, but other than an initial visit, neither had showed any inclination to venture to this wing of the house. To them, the man represented danger and changes neither of them welcomed. These forebodings loomed over Holly as well, but after being caught smack in the middle of the two brothers, tricked by one and rescued by the other, she alone understood that her future hinged on finding a balance between the past and present, between danger and change, between what she wished for and what simply was.

How Henri de Vere, still unconscious, could possibly provide the answers she sought, she didn't know. She only knew she was drawn to him and helpless to resist that almost magnetic pull. While Colin continued to care for the horses down at the stud, she slipped away from her sisters whenever they appeared not to need her, to see if Henri had awakened. To will him to recover.

Because if he died, how many secrets about the Sutherland sisters would go untold?

Usually she stood only in the doorway, but this time she couldn't resist tiptoeing to the bedside. Dr. Fanning, who'd come all the way from Windsor, had slipped out moments ago to stretch his legs. Holly and Henri were alone.

She leaned over the prone man, noting his linenlike pallor, the blue shadows beneath his eyes. Even bluer veins stood out like frozen rivers on his temples, and his lips stretched thin and bloodless across his face. Could a person hover so close to death and still recover? She said a little prayer, not only for Henri but for everyone—her sisters and the Ashworths, and the faraway folk of Devonshire. She even included the horses, with thanks that the illness had passed. Everyone here went about in a state of relief, almost happiness, though they curbed the latter emotion out of respect for their injured guest.

Sabrina, however, could scarcely subdue her elation. Lately she was all smiles, and told anyone who would listen how her horsemanship skills had returned to their former level. With the dowager duchess's help, Colin's mother contentedly planned the upcoming ball, and the wedding to follow. And just this morning Holly had caught Colin whistling to himself—whistling! As if he hadn't a care in the world.

If only that were true. . . .

“Hélène?”

With a gasp Holly drew her gaze away from the window. But when she stared down at Henri, his eyes were closed and he appeared as unconscious as ever. She leaned lower. “Mr. de Vere . . . monsieur . . . did you say something?”

Though his eyes stayed closed, his lips twitched, and “Hélène” slipped out on a shallow breath.

“Yes, I am here. Right here beside you.”

“Must . . . have . . . care.”

The last word ended on a raw wheezing, and Holly felt guilty for having encouraged him to speak at all. That guilt only intensified when a rusty bubble broke at the corner of his mouth.

She laid a hand on his upper arm through the blankets. “Please don't speak. Not just now. The doctor will return any moment, and he will make you comfortable.” As if to prove her point, sunlight glinted on the vial of laudanum left on the bedside table.

“Must . . .” He struggled against the coverlets, perhaps to sit up, perhaps to speak.

Holly laid a gentle finger across his lips and spoke in his ear. “I promise I will have a care, if you promise to lie still.”

He gave a nod, or perhaps his neck merely spasmed, for in the next instant he coughed. Suddenly his eyes blinked open and he stared lucidly up at her. “Danger . . . not past.”

His intensity frightened her, and she pulled back with a start. “What danger? Your brother, or something else, something more?” She leaned close again, but she saw that he had fallen into a faint. Moments later, Dr. Fanning returned and took her place at the bedside.

Outside in the corridor, raised voices from the ground floor sent Holly hurrying to the stairs. In the hall below, all the Ashworths and Holly's sisters milled about in turmoil. Questions flew haphazardly; some were answered, others went unheard.

“Oh, how beastly!”

“He was a beastly man! He deserved what he got.”

“Whatever brought him here, to us?”

“And what of his brother?”

Colin met Holly at the bottom of the staircase. “He's been found,” he told her. “He's being laid out in a storeroom belowstairs.”

She didn't need him to elaborate. “Alive, or . . . ?”

Colin shook his head, then gathered her to his chest while around them the pandemonium continued. “The wound was to his gut. There was no way he could have survived, even with medical attention. He bled out during the night.”

“Where . . .” Her pounding heart made it impossible for her to form full sentences. But she discovered that she didn't need to, for Colin anticipated her thoughts perfectly.

“Quite close to the vale, where I'd hidden the colt.”

A dismaying thought brought her head up off his shoulder. “Geoffrey . . . oh, I hope it wasn't his bullet. . . .”

“It wasn't. Dr. Fanning has already pronounced the wound indicative of a smaller ball than the rifle could have held. It was my shot that killed Antoine.”

Her arms were around his waist, and now she tightened them, squeezed with all her strength. He clung just as tightly. Tears sprang to her eyes and flowed freely, soaking his coat front, while her sobs echoed into him and shook his frame. “It's all right,” she whispered between her weeping. “You had no choice. You did it for me.”

“I'd do it again,” he whispered back.

From behind her, a hand came down lightly on her shoulder. “Everything will be all right now, Holly-berry. We're safe again. We can go on with our lives.”

She eased away from Colin, loath to let him go. Turning, she beheld Willow's teary-eyed smile. Her hand went to her sister's cheek, even as dread plummeted to the pit of her stomach. They were not safe. Even before Henri had spoken to her, she had known, deep down, that their lives would never be the same again, and that the danger would not pass even if Antoine left this world.