The Lady Is Innocent (The Star Elite Series) (16 page)

What was it about these men that made them oblivious to the dangers they faced. Again she thought about Harriett’s tolerance, and Cecily’s, Portia’s and Francesca’s
, and started to look upon all of the ladies with new respect. They knew what their men did for a living and were willing to take on the worry and fear just to be by their side. In return, they had men who adored them and protected them with everything they had.

Her heart ached for Pie. She knew that her relationship with him had been doomed from the start. She had literally thrown herself at him and had only herself to blame that he didn’t return the love that had grown inside her. If only she could turn the clocks back, she would never have allowed anything to happen between them. Maybe then Pie would not have faced what he had. He had been the unlucky one in as much that he had been the closest to her and had witnessed the carriage being hijacked. His duty to the Star Elite
, and responsibility to protect people, had driven him to chase after her but, in doing so, he had placed his own life in terrible danger – and paid an awful price.

The guilt that assailed her almost made her cry out
aloud with the overwhelming helplessness of it. She was to blame for the state he was now in. It was all her fault. The man had been trying to kidnap her. She still didn’t know why, or who he was, but Pie had been forced to race to save her and, as a result, had been left to fight for his life. It was now down to her to make sure he was well on the road to recovery before she did as he had asked, and left for good. There was one thing she had to acknowledge, however much pain it caused her; he had been right to send her away. The further away from him she was, the better it would be, for him if not for her.

Pie was completely oblivious to the solemnity of his colleagues as they eased his battered and bruised body onto the wooden board and carried him across the field. They rode alongside him in silence all the way back to Crompton. The body of Beaulieu, who was still alive, was draped unsympathetically over Pie’s horse. They would have made the man walk if he had been conscious but, luckily for him, he had remained out cold throughout the journey. They had no intention of allowing the man anywhere near Pie from now on. Beaulieu was going to be chained and heavily guarded in the make-shift prison that was really the church, far away from anyone until he could be transported to jail for questioning.

The procession that arrived at
Crompton nearly an hour later was met with a flurry of activity that was as solemn as it was busy. The men carried Pie into the hallway and, under the direction of Harriett, carried him up the stairs and into the room he had been using. Everything was there and he had no sooner been placed onto the bed than Harriett and Hugo set to work.

Fl
orrie gasped at the sight of Pie. He was black and blue, and covered in bloodied welts. She swiped the tears away and watched while Hugo lifted Pie into a sitting position while Harriett removed his shirt.

“Go,
Florrie, there is nothing you can do right now,” Hugo ordered, his voice grave. “Wait with the others. We will send word once the doctor has been.”

Florrie
stared in horror at the marks, cults and welts that covered every part of Pie’s body. She stared at Simon who appeared at her side, but made no move to follow him, even when he took her elbow in a firm grip and tried to lead her toward the door. Her eyes met with Harriett’s for a moment and a silent understanding passed between the two women.

“I need her help,” Harriett murmured, shooting Hugo a telling look before she returned to the task of
cleaning Pie in preparation for the doctor’s arrival. Pie’s clothing was rapidly dispatched and a clean sheet was lowered to his waist.

Sucking in a deeply fortifying breath,
Florrie moved toward the bed and, with shaking hands, began to dip pieces of cloth in the bowl at her elbow. She knew that Hugo and Simon were standing at the end of the bed watching, but she didn’t break from her task and, eventually, they left. Silence settled over the room as the women worked.

Tears slowly trickled down
Florrie’s face as she gently bathed his battered flesh. The golden glow of the skin on his chest had turned to a dull grey that was alarming. She had to keep looking at the steady rise and fall of his chest, if only to reassure herself that he was still alive.

“Should he be this cold?” She placed a hand on his chest. Although there were no go
ose bumps on his skin, he was icy.

“He will be fine. We will get him warmed up when we have cleaned his wounds. The doctor should be here soon.”
Harriett glanced at the clock and roughly calculated how long it would take the doctor to get there. For each minute longer the man took, the closer Pie was to losing his fight for life. She didn’t say so to Florrie, but she didn’t like the look of some of the deeper wounds and would feel considerably happier when the doctor was in attendance. Pie’s injuries were a far cry from the coughs and colds she usually treated, and she wasn’t afraid to admit that she was out of her depth.

They finished working on Pie at the same time that the doctor appeared in the doorway.
Florrie ignored his careful look and stood back to allow the man to work. She felt slightly sick at the sight of the bloodied bowl sitting on the table beside her and, now that the worst of the wounds had been cleaned, realisation of what had happened to him began to dawn on her.

“Let’s leave the doctor to work,” Harriett suggested, capturing
Florrie’s hand in hers and leading her toward the door. Florrie was so very pale that Harriett knew that if she didn’t sit down soon, she was likely to fall down.

Florrie
was in a daze by the time she arrived in the study. She collapsed into the chair Simon held out for her and accepted the proffered brandy from Hugo. She took a fortifying sip with trembling hands and stared down at it for several long moments. At any other time she would have felt slightly overwhelmed by the presence of so many people in the room. Jamie had arrived, accompanied by a worried looking Cecily and had joined Hugo, Harriett, Portia, Archie, Jonathan, Rupert, Simon, Francesca, Stephen and Florrie. Despite the number of people, silence hovered over the room. It was a rather strange feeling, but Florrie felt as though she was part of one large family, even though she hardly knew them.

She would not have blamed them if they had accused and lambasted her for bringing
Pie so much trouble, however she could sense nothing in the tense atmosphere except stoic patience while everyone waited.

Trays of food came and were sent away untouched. Drinks were replenished over and over
again. The floor was paced. They dozed, wept, hugged and stared into space.

The hours ticked by. Darkness had fallen outside
. Florrie watched the hours tick by until she decided that she was going to go upstairs and see the doctor herself if he didn’t come down with some news soon. She briefly wondered if the man had left already, and hadn’t bothered to call in to tell them he was going when the door suddenly opened and the weary looking doctor appeared.

“Well?” Hug
o demanded, studying the exhausted man. He placed his goblet down carefully. The gravity on the doctor’s face wasn’t lost to anyone in the room. Portia grabbed Archie’s hand. Everyone stared and waited.

The doctor looked cautiously at the women for a moment, clearly hesitant to discuss the man’s condition in front of the ladies.

“How is he?” Harriett snapped impatiently. She placed her hands on her hips and glared at the medic, aware that Florrie had stood and moved to her side.

“He has taken quite a beating. There are numerous cuts and bruises along with several broken ribs. I cannot tell whether something has been damaged inside just yet. Right now
, all we can do is watch and wait. I will remain with him throughout the night,” the doctor studied Hugo gravely. “If he is still with us by then, he has a fair chance of survival. That is all I can say right now.”

Hugo’s lips twisted in a
parody of a smile and he nodded at the man and muttered a quiet thank you. The doctor turned and left.

Florrie
stared at the door for a moment before she looked at Hugo. “I am going to sit with him for a while.” She didn’t wait to see if anyone was going to object. Nobody was going to stop her. Luckily nobody tried, and she left silence in her wake as she made her way up the stairs to his room.

Within minutes she had taken a seat next to Pie’s bed. She took his cold and lifeless fingers in her hand and simply sat there, staring at his battered face. She was aware of the doctor on the other side of the bed
and watched while the man checked Pie over time and again for any sign of change. She didn’t pay attention to what he was doing. She was oblivious to everything except the depth of love she felt for the man in the bed, and the awful guilt that weighed heavily upon her shoulders.

As the night ticked
slowly by, she realised just how selfish she had really been. Throughout the last few years she had considered her aunt Tabatha to be the most selfish person in the country. Now it appeared that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree because Florrie had behaved with a recklessness that had brought Pie to this. She should have stayed away from the wedding and remained at Tabatha’s house. At least then Pie would have been able to spend the two weeks with his colleagues enjoying himself as he had planned. Instead, they had all been drawn into her aunt’s seedy life of crime and her own fight for freedom. The cottage in Norfolk, her haven, suddenly didn’t seem such a welcoming place to want to be. She feared that the price both she and Pie had paid for her to get there was a price that wasn’t worth paying.

Still, there was no going back now. She had gotten him into this mess and it was down to her to ensure that she did what she could to get him out of it. There were still a lot of unanswered questions but
they were irrelevant now. What was most important was that Pie made it through the night. As soon as he was on the road to recovery, Florrie would leave for Norfolk, preferably before any further trouble was brought to his door.

She settled back in her chair and, with the ticking clock the only noise within the room, began to wait.

Pie awoke
feeling uncomfortable and confused. Every part of him ached and he was so blasted hot. Sweat beaded his brow. He groaned when he tried to turn his head. The fire was roaring heartily in the grate. Why was the room so warm? Was it winter already?

“Well, it’s about time you joined us,” Jonathan drawled from his chair beside the bed. “Good Lord man, I thought we were going to have to
push you out of that bed with a barge pole.”

Pie stared at him for a minute. Jonathan looked really tired. Lines of stress and worry were clearly evident on his face. What had happened?

Pie lifted his head and groaned as pain explained up the back of his neck. “God, what happened to me?”

Jonathan shook his head. “You came face to face with Beaulieu,” he drawled starkly.

Pie puffed his cheeks out. “I take it I came off the worst?”

Jonathan shook his head again. “I am afraid not. Beaulieu died
yesterday.”

“
Yesterday? How long have I been here?” He tried to lift his head again but groaned in defeat. There were so many questions tumbling through him that he didn’t know where to start.

“This is the
second day now. It’s about time you started to make a recovery,” Jonathan sighed and drew the chair he had been sitting on closer to the bed so Pie could see him without bringing himself further pain. He was in clear discomfort. Jonathan eyed the bottle of laudanum for a moment before mentally shaking his head. Pie would probably throw the bottle at him if he suggested taking any.

“
Florrie?” In spite of the pain, Pie turned quizzical eyes on Jonathan.

“She is downstairs.”

Pie sighed, studying Jonathan’s face closely. There was something his friend wasn’t telling him. “Is she alright? Was she hurt?”

“She is fine. Exhausted and worried about you. We have all been worried sick. Simon succeeded in dragging her out of here about an hour ago
, only because he threatened to haul her out by the scruff of her neck if she didn’t leave you and get some rest. She has been here, day and night, since you arrived.”

“She is unharmed though?”

Jonathan rolled his eyes and propped his booted feet on the bed. “She is much better than you. Prettier too,” he drawled, watching the familiar fire enter Pie’s warning look. His lips curved into a grin. “She has been quiet but it has been stressful.”

“You said Beaulieu is dead?”

“Yes, he died a few hours after we brought him in.” Jonathan had no doubt Hugo would tell him how Beaulieu had been taken to the church to wait for transportation to take him to jail for questioning. Hugo had managed to ask him a few questions and obtained a few answers before Beaulieu had died from his injuries. Not that anyone cared very much.

“He tried to kill
Florrie because he couldn’t be certain that Florrie hadn’t seen him kill Hampton; whose body she found.”

“Hampton? Do we know of a Hampton?”

“Nope. We don’t know who he is but have him on our list to investigate. With Beaulieu and Hampton both dead, nobody is likely to know about their demise until we want them to.”

Pie sighed and shook his head. “He was the on
e who tried to run Florrie over?”

“He is, and the one who tried to kidnap her as you know.”

“Good God.” After everything that had happened, he had never stopped to consider once that any of the attempts on Florrie’s life had been because of the Star Elite. God, she must hate him. “Does she know?”

“Yes, Hugo told her.” Jonathan murmured. He watched the shock enter Pie’s eyes and was glad that his friend was going to make it. For a while there
, they had all had their doubts that the big man would be able to best the enemy and had dreaded the news that death would pull him down. But, true to form, Pie had fought back with everything within him and was on the road to recovery.

Pie
wanted to see her. “Where is she now?” He glanced around the room.

“
She is either downstairs being force fed some food by Harriett, or in her room getting some much needed rest.”

Now that his senses were starting to return, Pie realised he was absolutely starving. He struggled to sit up. With a grunt and a curse he managed to collapse against the pillows, eyeing the bell pull in disgust. It was so very far away that he knew he couldn’t make it. What the hell had the doctor given him?

The loud rumbling of Pie’s stomach broke the silence and Jonathan chuckled. He rose to the bell pull and tugged several times, and had barely sat back down before the butler appeared at the door. With the speed in which the man had arrived he must have been waiting right outside the door.

“Food please,” Pie ordered, ignoring the startled look the butler gave him.
“Plenty of it.”

“Bring some for me too,” he called, laughing at the disgruntled look on Pie’s face. “If you want to chase
Florrie, I am afraid you are going to have to run for it,” he drawled after several moments of silence.

“What do you mean?” Pie demanded, turning to stare at his friend. He knew that she must be angry to have been embroiled in the Star Elite’s work
, but surely she realised that he would never have allowed any of it to happen if he had even had the slightest suspicion that the dead man in the churchyard had anything to do with spies.

“I mean
, Florrie feels guilty for what happened to you,” Jonathan sighed, dropping his feet onto the floor and bending forward to brace his elbows on his knees. “I overheard her talking to Harriett. She feels as though it was her fault for taking a walk on the morning she found the body. She believes that if she hadn’t found the corpse then none of this would have happened.”

Pie cursed. “What else does she believe?”

Jonathan looked askance at him. “Look, I am not privvy to her bloody thoughts. I am just telling you what I overheard. I think that if you want her to take you seriously then you need to talk to her about it. I am not a bloody relationship adviser, just telling you what I think you ought to know.” He was the last person who was in a position to advise anyone on relationships and didn’t mind admitting it.

Pie sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. I just find the logic of females hard to fathom sometimes, that’s all.”

“Me too,” Jonathan sighed in commiseration.

The men chatted amiably for a few minutes before Simon and Hugo arrived with relieved grins on their faces. They despatched the butler to fetch more food and
summoned Rupert, Jamie, and Archie to join them.

Pie was exhausted simply by eating but
, now that his stomach had been satisfied, he felt edgy and restless. His thoughts kept turning again and again to Florrie, and he wondered how she was, where she was and if she was safe.

The memory of lying on the ground waiting to die weighed on him. Until his dying breath he would never forget t
he smell of the earth or the feel of the rain on his face. Moreover, he would never be able to come to terms with the bitter regret that continued to haunt him that he had very nearly lost everything that had come to mean so much to him. Now all he had to do was convince Florrie to remain at Crompton long enough for him to convince her that a life by his side wouldn’t involve being shot at, kidnapped, or finding any more dead bodies.

The following day
Florrie was deep in thought as she walked into the breakfast room. She had spent most of yesterday, and all night, fast asleep and now felt groggy and muddled. Her first thought when she had stumbled out of bed had been for Pie. Had he woken up yet? Was he well? Her thirst for knowledge had her hurrying through her morning ablutions.

At the top of the stairs she briefly considered the closed door to his room. What would she do if she went in and he had passed away while she had been asleep?
She couldn’t eat until she knew. Quietly tiptoeing across the landing she eased the door to his room open, and frowned at the empty bed. Her heart sank to her toes. A maid was busy sweeping the rug at the bottom of the bed and stopped to look up at Florrie.

“Where is he?”

“He has moved, ma’am,” the maid replied.

“Where to?”

“Downstairs, I think miss.” The maid stared at her.

“Downstairs?”
Florrie gulped weakly. She spun on her heel and headed downstairs as fast as her feet could carry her.

Had they taken him somewhere else to recover? Had he died while she had been asleep and they had moved him somewhere to await burial?

She walked into the breakfast room and gasped in shock as her gaze landed on the one person she most wanted to see.

“
Pie!” Delight suffused her face for a second as she stared at him. The urge to fly into his arms was so strong that she rocked on the balls of her feet for a moment, but she held back from giving him the hug she desperately wanted to give him; for both of them. She glanced at the men who were busy with their breakfast and struggled to know what to do.

“Hello,
Florrie,” Pie murmured. It hurt to breathe but he was going to bloody well keep moving. Now that he had gotten out of bed, sheer grit and determination kept him from going back there until it was late at night, and the same time that everyone else was going to bed for the night. He ignored the burning in his ribs and slowly drew the chair out beside him. “Come and join us.”

She was stunned. When the maid had said he had moved
, she expected him to be asleep in bed somewhere, or in a make-shift mortuary, not sitting in the breakfast room partaking of breakfast. The sight of him standing tall and strong; albeit battered and bruised, was wonderful. She struggled not to stare at him as she sat down at the table.

“I didn’t expect this,” she whispered in a voice that trembled with emotion.

Pie smiled sheepishly at her. “I may be battered and bruised, but I am not out yet.”

“Thank God for that,” she declared fervently before she could hold the words back.

“Amen to that,” Hugo drawled and lifted his cup in toast to her announcement.

She tentatively picked up a piece of toast and absently buttered it
, but her attention; her entire being, was locked on the man beside her as he dug in to his eggs, bacon and ham pie. Tears loomed and her heart ached with the knowledge that he was safe and sound. Although he could never be hers, and the gulf between them was wider than ever before, she was so very glad that he was alive.

She choked through breakfast but couldn’t say what she had eaten. The conversation flowed around her but she was lost to anything but the thoughts
and emotions swirling around in her head. She was snapped out of her daze at the mention of Portia and Archie’s wedding and turned her attention to Archie, who was suggesting that they postpone the wedding scheduled for tomorrow.

“Nonsense,” Pie drawled. “Everything has been planned around tomorrow
so there is no reason for it not to go ahead.”

“But you are ill, Pie. There is still a lot of recovering you need to do. We don’t mind putting it back for a week while you get a bit steadier on your legs.”

Simon snorted and rolled his eyes. He threw Pie a teasing look. “He has never been steady on his feet.”

Pie guffawed and clutched his aching ribs.
“I think it should go ahead as planned. I am sure Florrie won’t mind another wedding, will you?” He asked gently. He was so very glad to see her. She was a bit paler than he could remember but just having her next to him made his discomfort considerably more bearable. If only he knew what he had to do to keep her there.

“I am sure I can stay for one more,” she replied quietly
, smiling at Archie. “Then I shall be able to head to Norfolk with a lot of tales to tell,” she added ruefully. “I am sure they will consider that I am making the whole lot up, but never mind.”

“You will have to find someone to go with you who can vouch for your honesty,” Pie murmured, resisting the urge to tuck a loose tendril of hair back behind her ear.

The sad smile that curved Florrie’s lips made him ache to be able to reassure her but he knew that now was not the right time, especially in front of everyone else. He couldn’t lose sight of the last time he had seen her and had sent her away from him. There was a lot he needed to explain but didn’t know where to start. He needed some time to himself to think about the best way to approach her.

One
thing he did know was that if she insisted on going to Norfolk, he was going to be the one to take her there.

“Can I speak with you for a moment?” Pie asked, following Jamie out of the breakfast room an hour later. Florrie had already left, and had gone for a long awaited walk with Harriett and the children. It gave Pie the time he needed to put forward his proposition to Jamie.

“Anything,” Jamie said. He opened the door and preceded Pie into the old study. Glancing around him in disgust he shook his head. “I really must do something about this place.”

“It is a nice house,” Pie said, sniffing a little at the slightly unused fustiness of the place.