Wicked at Heart (33 page)

"I will
take care of you, Damon," she murmured, lightly touching his face through
the hot bandages.  "So help me, God, I will see you out of this, and I
will see you better, even if it kills me.  I
will not let you down
."

A gust of wind
buffeted the coach, and a growing part of her fought against the premonition
that she was not bringing the Marquess of Morninghall home to heal — but to
die.

The coach bumped
over a rut in the road and began to slow as the horses labored up yet another
hill.  Anxiously, Gwyneth stared out once more, hoping for her first glance of
Morninghall Abbey, but there was nothing out there but an occasional farmhouse
tucked into a valley, the clouds moving like great ships across the blue sky,
and wide, rolling fields, the grasses randomly sprinkled with dandelions and
tiny white daisies.

But, there was something
different, now.  A coolness in the air perhaps.  A darkening as some of those
massive clouds began to slide across the sun.  A sense of uneasiness, maybe
even expectancy, as though this ancient land knew its lord had finally come
home, and it was preparing the scene for his arrival.  Gwyneth shivered,
feeling it in her very bones, and on the seat across from her the marquess
murmured something in his opium-induced stupor and tried to raise his bandaged
head.

She took his
hand in both of her own, squeezing the long, hot fingers.

"It's all
right, Damon.  I am here."

"No . . .
not here . . . Gwyneth, where are you?  Gwyneth. . . .
Gwyneth
—"

"Easy,
Damon, we're almost home . . . to Morninghall Abbey."

Her words only
seemed to agitate him further, and he began to thrash like a child.  He got one
of his arms free of the strap and began tearing at his bandages.

"Do hurry,
Edwards!" Gwyneth called up to the driver.

"Get on
with ye!" the man yelled, trying to coax more speed from the flagging
horses.

Gwyneth leaned
forward and put her arms around the marquess, tried to hold down his struggling
body with her own.  She did not know if he recognized her, did not know if the
damage he'd sustained had reduced his keen intelligence to that of an infant,
but her nearness seemed to calm him and he went still, moaning in pain, the
sweat gleaming on his throat and his chest rising and falling with his rasping,
quickening respiration.

Outside, the
clouds were definitely growing thicker, gathering like a massing army and
blotting out more and more of the blue sky.  As the wind gusted again, she
could feel the heavy threat of rain in the air.

"Almost
there, my lady," came the footman's voice from above.  "Another half
a mile at most."

Thank God.

Damon lay back
against the seat, shaking and making horrible keening noises of pain and fear.

Her own heart
pounding, Gwyneth took his hand in her own, trying frantically to calm him.  Now
the road was leading into a great tree-lined drive, curving gently as it
followed the crown of this highest, noblest hill.

Damon clutched
her hand in a death grip, his harsh, rapid breathing filling the coach.

Her fingers
began to throb and she tried to free her hand, but his grip became desperate,
savage.

Greenish
darkness and a cool, eerie silence came as they passed beneath a low, heavy canopy
of oaks.  Sounds were amplified.  The horse's hooves crunched against the
gravel; the squeak and rattle of the coach echoed against the wall of huge
trees on either side.  A drop of rain splashed into the coach, followed by another. 
And there, looming up out of the shadowy depths ahead, was a huge pair of iron
gates which barred the drive from this point on.  A massive, eight-foot-high
wall draped with ivy ran out from either side of them, the yellow stone going
dull beneath the heavy trees and the sudden retreat of the sun.

The coach came
to a lurching stop.  Gwyneth looked out and saw, perched high atop pedestals on
either side of the gates, two ancient sentinels of black stone — mighty,
life-sized wolves, warning her away with baleful, staring eyes.

She swallowed
hard and, as Damon's grip on her fingers became crushing, looked through the
gates.

Beyond them was
a long, flat drive laid out like carpet for royalty.

And there, clouds
of gray framing its majestic, forbidding splendor, stood the great house
itself, Morninghall Abbey.

"We're
here, my lady!"

The clouds moved
across the sky.  The last of the sunlight fell off.

And the Marquess
of Morninghall's hand slipped from hers as he fell into a dead faint.

~~~~

"Hurry, we
must get him inside!" Gwyneth cried, leaping down from the coach before it
had even come to a stop and yanking the door wide as two bewigged and liveried
footmen hurried forward.

The steps of the
great house were lined with servants, the men elegantly dressed and powdered,
the women watching with anxious eyes.  Gwyneth, casting a quick glance toward
her sister's coach, just coming down the drive, had no time to take in the
arrayed magnificence, no time to properly greet the elderly butler who
introduced himself as Britwell, no time to wonder about the nervous looks
passing between the twin ranks of servants.

She impatiently
waved a footman toward the open door of the coach.  The servant, a huge,
strapping country lad, leaned into the vehicle and brought the marquess out. 
Holding his master like a babe in his arms, he looked to Gwyneth for direction.

They hurried
toward the house.

"I trust
you got Admiral Sir Graham's missive?" Gwyneth asked as Britwell rushed
along beside her.

"Yes, my
lady.  It arrived yesterday.  The doctor is waiting in His Lordship's
bedroom."

The marquess
stirred, began to moan, and, as the footman carried him past the twin rows of
servants and up the stairs, started fighting against the arms that held him,
thrashing and crying out with pain.

"Right this
way, my lady," Britwell urged, hurrying the little party into a
magnificent receiving hall, down a corridor, up a sweeping flight of stairs,
and down another corridor lined with books, portraits, busts and antiquities. 
He was moving fast, nearly running, so Gwyneth grabbed up her skirts and began
to run too, trying to keep up.

"No . . .
NO!" Damon was mumbling, as the footman rushed him down the hall. 
"Gwyneth, no . . . don't let them bring me in there, please —"

At the far end
of the long corridor, a man emerged from a room and hurried toward them.

"I'm Dr.
MacDowell," he puffed, staring anxiously at the man thrashing in the
footman's arms.  He quickly ushered them all into the bedroom, dashed to the
bed, and began turning down the sheets.

"Set him
right here, man —"

Damon's fist was
flailing, swinging into empty space.  "Gwyneth, no . . . Not here . .
."

"He doesn't
want to be in here!" Gwyneth cried, trying unsuccessfully to prevent the
footman from putting the struggling marquess on the bed.

"He has to
be in here, it's the only room we have prepared for him," the doctor
snapped.  "Footman, close the door, pull those drapes —"

"Gwyneth! .
. . Help me . . . the wolf . . . going to bite me. 
Don't let him bite me
. . . Mama's in here . . . she'll hurt me —
Gwyneth
!"

"It's all
right, my love," she said soothingly, leaning over the bed and taking his
hand.  "Nothing is going to hurt you."

"Pay him no
mind, he's delirious," the doctor said gruffly, pushing her out of the way
as he took Damon's arm, shoved up the sleeve of his nightshirt, and felt around
for a vein.  "It's just nonsense he's spouting, nothing more."

"Wolves,
Gwyneth," the marquess whispered, his bandaged head thrashing from side to
side on the pillow.  "Don't let them bite me . . . don't let them bite me
. . ."

Desperate,
Gwyneth spun to look around the room — and saw what he could not see but
obviously remembered well.

"Get
rid
of that hideous thing!" she cried, spotting the great pelt of black fur
that hung above the massive stone fireplace.

Britwell protested,
"But my lady, that wolf hide has been there since the first marquess
killed it with his bare hands back in —"

"I don't
care how long it's been there, get rid of it, it's frightening him!"  She turned
and saw a huge portrait, directly opposite the bed, of a formidable looking
woman in court dress and jewels.  "And who is that?"

"It's his
mother, the late marchioness —"

She waved
another footman toward the painting.  "Get that
witch
off the wall
and out of here too!"

"But my
lady, it's his
mother
—"

"
Get her
out of here!
"

The footman ran
toward the painting.  Britwell, speechless, stood back with a little smile of
admiration on his face.  Down came the wolf pelt, and out the door.  Down came
the painting, and out the door.  There were two pedestals on either side of the
huge, carved bed, and on them sat two more wolves, these of black marble;
without hesitation, Gwyneth grabbed up a spare sheet, tore it in two, and threw
it over each baleful, staring head.

On the bed the
marquess had curled into a pitiful ball, his arms over his head and covering
his bandaged face.  He was sweating and trembling convulsively, and as the
doctor tried to come near him, he struck out with a fist that, even
directionless, was potentially lethal.

Unafraid,
Gwyneth went to him, sat down on the bed, and snared his white-knuckled hand. 
She held it to her cheek, gently stroking the fingers.

"It's all
right now, Damon.  Those stupid wolves are gone.  Your mother's gone. 
I'm
here, and I'm not going to let anyone hurt you."

As he curled
himself around her fist, sobbing brokenly, she looked up at the doctor.  A
shocked stillness hung over the room, and everyone in it was staring at her
with a mixture of fear and respect, as though she were some general just in
from a war.

The doctor swallowed
hard.

"You may examine
him now," she said, firmly.  "He'll give you no more trouble."

~~~~

Later that
evening, many miles away on a windy stretch of the Channel, Connor Merrick
stood at the helm of the schooner
Kestrel
and watched the random lights
of the English coast sliding in and out of the mists just off to starboard.

They were
close-hauled on the starboard tack, the schooner sailing so close to the wind
that Connor's face was damp with salt water, his hair wet with spray.  Wind
hummed through stays and shrouds, and the black, endless waves angled out of
the night toward them, breaking against
Kestrel
's rapier-sharp bows and
parading beneath her hull in great, sweeping swells of mighty power and hissing
foam.

"See
anything yet, Orla?" he called to the woman who sat far out astride the
bowsprit, watching.

"Not
yet."

Not yet.
 
A signal, three short, hooded blinks of a lantern, wasn't much to ask.  Had Milford
been detained?  Where the hell was he?

He stared grimly
at Orla's slim figure, a dark smudge against the charcoal night and darkened
sea.  With her piratical past she was priceless, he thought, as sharp and keen
as a well-honed knife.  He was sure going to hate losing her, but he did not
love her, not in the way she wanted to be loved.  He could give her a place on
Kestrel
,
he could give her friendship and adventure and a reason to exist — but he could
not give her love.

He thought of
the one man who could — and smiled wryly.  It was doubtful that the Reverend
Milford, once he asked for Orla's hand, would take kindly to her roving the
seas and smuggling prisoners of war off the hulks any more than his
brother-in-law Sir Graham Falconer had to his sister Maeve's desire to continue
terrorizing the West Indies as the formidable Pirate Queen of the Caribbean.

Poor Maeve.

Poor Maeve,
my arse.

His ribs were
still
sore.

He wiped the
spray from his face, remembering.  No sooner had he left Nathan's body hidden
beneath a tarp in the marshes when alarms had sounded from the prison hulk, and
he'd rowed frantically back toward the stricken ship just in time to see Lady
Gwyneth Evans Simms take what surely would have been a fatal tumble into the
harbor had he not been there to fish her out.  Her hysterically babbled news
about Morninghall had been like a fist to the gut, and in that moment Connor
had known it was the beginning of the end.  Without the marquess aboard the
prison hulk, all was lost.

And young Toby
had yet to be rescued.

Not that he'd
had time to do the deed himself.  He'd barely brought Lady Simms to shore and
watched her disappear into the crowds when a figure had dropped lightly down
into his boat like something out of a boarding party.  He'd looked up to see
his sister, elegant in silk and sharks' teeth, smiling that ominous smile of
hers and calmly holding the point of her dagger against his ribs.  People had
been rushing about like chickens with their heads cut off — rushing to shore,
rushing to boats, rushing to piers, yelling, shouting, giving orders — but none
of them had taken notice of the ex-pirate queen, and
she
had been
equally oblivious to them.

I want my
ship back.  Now.  And, Orla.

It had taken all
of Connor's significant powers of persuasion to convince her to let him keep
Kestrel
. 
After all, Maeve might've married an Englishman, but her heart was still
American, and even she could not argue that
Kestrel
was best kept in the
service of the country that had built her.  With a promise to sway her powerful
husband to abandon the hunt for the missing schooner, Maeve had finally set her
lips and ordered —
ordered!
Connor thought, with a little chuckle — him
to "just return
Kestrel
to our home in Barbados when you're damn
well finished with her,
or else
."