The Forest Lord (46 page)

She withdrew, and
Eden felt herself being shifted about. Donal's warmth left her side. "I'll take her, your ladyship," Dalziel's distant voice said, and she was lifted into strong arms and carried from the post chaise and across the snow. The whole world was a mass of white streaked with black and red.

"Donal," she whimpered.

"There, lass," Dalziel said. "It'll be well, you'll see. You come with me, now."

Struggle was beyond her. Her body came to rest amid blankets meant to cushion the berline's hard seats, and more were tucked around her. A soft woman's voice murmured above her. She could not get warm.

Donal was gone.

Tears came, at last—quiet tears that seemed to fall from someone else's eyes. They dampened the blanket wrapped over her chest and shoulders, but she couldn't lift her hand to blot them away.

After a time the berline lurched forward again.
Eden had very little sense of movement, anything beyond the suffocating universe of the berline's interior. She forgot where she was going and why. The more she labored to remember, the thicker grew the fog in her head.

In her dreams, Papa held out his blunt-fingered hand with a broad smile and called her name.

"Let go, my pet," he said, as he'd once called her so long ago. "It's not worth the candle."

At last she stopped struggling and surrendered to peace.

Like any wounded creature of the forest, Hartley
sought the darkest and most sheltered place he could find in which to battle death.

This enemy was no stranger to him. He had seen countless humans—mortals—come and go, though he had been close to few of them. He had seen great trees topple and mighty stags driven to their end by young, vigorous rivals. He knew that death was a part of life on this earth.

But never had he faced it himself, not like this.

The iron ball had worked its way deep into his body from the wound in his side, tracing a path of searing
agony,
it had come to lodge very near his heart, leaching its poison into his blood.

Had he seen the shot coming, he might have made himself insubstantial, a wraith that the ball could not touch.

But he had been caught off guard when Claudia raised the pistol and fired. He had been completely vulnerable.

And Claudia had known exactly what to use to hurt him.

Iron.
Cold Iron, the deadliest weapon man could wield against the Fane.

He crawled into the hollow of the fallen oak, where brown leaves pressed against him in a rustling cocoon. Each movement sent the poison coursing more swiftly through his body. Each breath brought screaming pain.

Claudia had shot him. Claudia
knew
what he was. Had
Eden told her?

He ground his teeth to fight the greater anguish of that possibility. Had
Eden warned her aunt what to expect? How had either of them known the way to disable one of his
race
?

He had no doubt that Claudia meant his death. But had
Eden done the same?

No. He refused to accept it. She had rejected him a second time when she'd not returned to the forest, but she would not seek his death. She could not have known what Claudia intended.

But she must have told Claudia what he was.
And made her aunt believe.

Hartley closed his eyes and concentrated on drawing air in and out of his burning lungs. That he was not already dead was a mark of his tolerance for exposure to Iron that would cripple another of his kind. He had handled bits, harness buckles, gates, nails, and other iron implements and tools used in everyday mortal life. He had become used to the constant discomfort.

But touching Iron with his hands and having it planted within his body were two different things. And this wound would even kill a human, for whom the metal was no worse than any other.

He did not dare use his magic to close the wound and stop the loss of blood, for the blood kept the metal from concentrating in his body. He knew what the next few days would bring: stillness, silence, enduring endless pain, and fighting every moment for his life. Fighting with all the tricks his Fane body could devise.

And most of that fight would be utterly beyond his control.

He heard the scrabbling of small animals about him, gathering to the silent call of his distress. They could not help him, either. But he took comfort in their nearness and their gentle, hesitant concern.

It was the only comfort he could find. The thoughts circled about in his head, becoming
more bitter
with every turn. Did
Eden know he had been shot? Had she even thought to help him? Had she simply driven on, watching him bleed into the snow?

And Donal—had he seen his mother's
aunt try
to kill his father?

No answers came. But amid the haze of his pain, Hartley clutched at the plans forming in his mind: plans of tracking
Eden wherever she might run, of finding her, standing before her and forcing her to confess her perfidy.

And of taking Donal from her, away from this tainted earth.

Healing sleep enfolded him: a sleep that would end with his body whole or dead. It was said that no Fane dreamed like mortals, but Hartley did. In his dreams,
Eden lay in his arms and repeated the words she had said once, an eternity past: "
I love you
."

In his dreams, he believed her.

On the second morning at the inn in Ambleside, Eden
forced herself to rise. She ignored
Nancy's protests and asked the maid to help her dress. Each small motion required utmost concentration, but with her
abigail's
help she managed to wash and don her half boots and pelisse.

Nancy
insisted that she drink at least a few sips of tea, and she did so, though nothing tasted pleasant on her tongue. She was still very ill. Walking had become as much a challenge as climbing the steepest fell.

But she had to get to
London. That was where Claudia would send word. Claudia had Donal. She was keeping him safe from Hartley.

She
must
be keeping him safe.

Eden
had dreamed during her first long period of sleep at the inn, the night after their departure from Hartsmere. She had dreamed, not of Donal or Claudia, but of her father as he had been in his youth: bluff and stout, good natured, more a country squire than a belted earl, casually affectionate with her when he did not forget she existed, and always a little surprised at her detestation of the countryside.

That was the way she tried to remember him, not as the man who had sold her to an inhuman creature, married her off to Spencer Winstowe, and then abandoned her. But she had no curiosity to expend on the cause of such dreams.

During her brief intervals of consciousness,
Eden had tormented herself trying to remember what had happened before she and Claudia separated. So much of it was like a nightmare.
First Hartley's appearance… then Claudia insisting that Donal could not be safe with his mother.
Eden's sudden illness, that made her aunt's suggestion seem the height of good sense.
Of necessity.

But Hartley had not followed her to the inn. Perhaps he had followed Donal instead.

The need for grim focus on simple actions kept
Eden from driving herself mad with such thoughts. She called for Dalziel and accepted his help, along with
Nancy's, to make her way downstairs to the inn yard. The anxious innkeeper followed, offering every sort of aid but the kind she needed most.

The berline stood waiting with the well-rested horses.
Eden fixed her eyes on the coach and took one step after another, leaning heavily on Dalziel's arm.

A man stepped directly into her path. Dalziel and Nancy stopped, clutching
Eden to keep her from falling, and Dalziel opened his mouth to rebuke the human obstruction.

The man turned about. His clothing was of good cut but well worn and too large on his thin frame, his hair in need of cutting, and the valise he carried had seen much abuse.

Even so,
Eden recognized him. And all the shocks of the past week crashed in upon her with renewed force. Only Dalziel's firm grip kept her on her feet.

"Papa," she whispered.

Had there been any way to do so,
Eden would have continued on and ordered Dalziel to drive away. But her father stood there, staring, by turns flushed and pale. And her ravaged body had become paralyzed by a score of conflicting emotions.

Anger was first.
Wild, unreasoning anger.
Then
came
joy that he was alive and had returned. Next
was
grief, and then the lunatic desire to laugh and laugh and laugh.

But such violent emotion sapped too much of her precious strength. She shut it all away in a part of her mind where she could find it again later, and faced him.

His lips moved
,
forming a name he didn't speak. His throat worked. She realized with dull amazement that he was afraid. In all her life she could remember seeing him afraid only once before, and that was at the border inn when he'd bargained with Cornelius.

"
Eden," he whispered. "Lass, to see you again…"

"Lord Bradwell?" Dalziel stammered.

A public inn was no place for a painful reunion. "It is all right, Dalziel,"
Eden said. "If you would help me to the coach, I shall sit down. Father—" She could not bring herself to call him Papa again. "I am glad to see that you are well. We will have some privacy in the coach."

As unsteady on his feet as she, Lord Bradwell turned and stumbled after her and Dalziel.
Nancy fluttered about her, but once
Eden was seated, she asked the
abigail
and coachman to wait inside the inn.

Her father sat opposite, clasping and unclasping his hands. "I cannot believe it," he said hoarsely. "I have been searching for you, Eden, all over
London. They said you had gone to Hartsmere, so I came north. I was just about to leave the inn when—" He swallowed. "It is a miracle that you are here. I have so much to explain…"

Why did you take my son
?
Eden bit her tongue to keep from screaming the question. "Where have you been, Father?"

"On the continent.
Nowhere,
and everywhere. But you… they told me that Winstowe was dead."

"Yes. I have spent the past ten months at Hartsmere."

He looked at her as if seeing her clearly for the first time, taking in her half mourning and the signs of recent illness. "You go there now?"

"I am bound for
London." She closed her eyes. Her sickness, which had briefly abated, was seizing upon the strain of this unexpected meeting. "Why did you not write? I did not know if you were alive or dead."

His voice cracked in a sound that might have been a laugh. "I might as well have been dead. Losing everything due to my own folly and cowardice, leaving you to make your own way…"

"I have been well," she said. "Hartsmere is prospering."

"Hartsmere," he whispered. "I had not thought that you would go back."

"Nor did
I
." She looked down at her remarkably steady hands. "Spencer died almost a year ago. It was necessary to retrench and restore my income. Hartsmere seemed the best option at the time."

Lord Bradwell bowed his head. "I believe I understand you. Spencer left nothing but debts."

"Yes."

"And when the allowance stopped coming—when I disappeared—what remained could not have lasted long. Spencer—" He pulled his hand over his face. "
Eden, I did not realize his true nature when I encouraged you to wed him. All I could think of was to…" He shook his head. "I am… deeply sorry."

So he had known what Winstowe was. But he had not remained to support her with a father's love, even his haphazard sort of affection.

And he had stolen her child.

"I have much to atone for," he murmured.
"So much."

"Such as sending my son away to strangers?"

His head jerked up. "What?"

"My son, Donal—the one you sent to live in
Ireland." Her bitterness leaked out. "Spencer told me of his existence before he died. Donal has been living with me at Hartsmere."

"But that is im—" He looked as ill as she felt. "The boy is alive?"

If this was some cruel game on his part, he had changed more than she could imagine. "Why do you ask, Father? Did you not know? Did you not lie to me by telling me he was dead?"