Chapter 17 #2
He got one hand under him and tried to roll onto his back. She pushed his shoulder and together they moved him until she could see his face. His eyes remained closed, shadowed by lines of pain, and blood trickled across his cheek, coming from his hair.
“Good heavens, what happened?” she asked, not at all certain what to do.
She tried to lift his head into her lap, but he groaned so she stopped, feeling helpless and afraid and suddenly very vulnerable in the dense woods.
Mr. O’Neill’s eyelids fluttered, then finally opened, and he winced. “Have to go….have to protect him….Meriel?”
She leaned over him, her hand on his chest, feeling relieved at the steady beat of his heart. “I’m here. Shall I go for help?”
“Oh, God, Stephen!” He gasped out the words, then came up on his elbows. He looked wide-eyed and frightened and not himself.
She put her arm beneath his shoulder, not sure if she was trying to comfort him or hold him. “Stephen’s fine, I left him with Nurse Weston.”
He shook his head back and forth. “But Charles…got to keep him from Charles…” His head lolled back against her shoulder.
She didn’t understand what he was talking about; what had put him in this condition? Running her hand across his scalp, she found the large bump almost immediately. Her fingers came away sticky with blood.
Shocked, she stared about, wondering if he’d fallen. She didn’t see a rock, or any mark on a nearby tree. But she did see a thick branch lying in the leaves about five feet away, one end covered in blood.
As if someone had hit Mr. O’Neill as he was walking by.
Could there be thieves in these woods, so close to the ducal estate? But surely if someone had meant to rob him, he would have done it already.
Unless she’d scared the thief away, and he was only waiting for a vulnerable moment…
“Your Grace, we have to get you back to Thanet Court. Can you stand?”
He tried to push away from her, but he was so weak she could easily hold onto him.
“No,” he murmured, “He can’t know…his plan…worked.”
“Who can’t know?”
But he only shook his head, and she wondered if he was talking about his cousin, Sir Charles Irving.
Mr. O’Neill had just said he needed to protect Stephen from him.
She felt a chill of uncertainty and wished desperately that she knew what was going on.
She’d had a premonition that he was keeping something from her. Did it really have to do with Stephen?
“Your Grace—”
He took several deep breaths, and she could see the calmness return to his eyes—or at least cover up his panic.
“There’s—there’s an old hunting lodge…another hundred yards down this path.” He squinted and groaned and put a hand to his head. “Take me there.”
“I don’t know—”
Mr. O’Neill grasped her hand, and his eyes blazed darkly into hers. “He can’t know he succeeded!”
Every instinct in her said that something was terribly wrong, that he’d lied to her about his purpose masquerading as the duke. But she looked into his face, so full of desperation and worry, and could only help him. She’d question her own motives later.
“All right, can you stand up?” she asked.
Between the two of them, he was soon on his feet, shaky, leaning on her heavily, but seeming in no danger of falling down. With his arm around her shoulders, his body pressed tight to the length of hers, she felt almost shy and flustered, two things no other man had ever made her feel.
“Are you certain you can walk that far?” she asked.
He nodded and began to put one foot in front of the other. She led him out onto the path, and he tripped over a root, threatening to send them both sprawling.
“Your Grace—”
“I can do it,” he said heavily.
The farther they walked, the more he leaned on her. The weight of him bent her spine and made her shoulders ache. Even her legs began to burn with pain.
The path curved, and there was the hunting lodge.
The front door hung ajar, and the shutters over the windows were broken in places. The roof was thatched, but a corner of that had somehow been stripped off to reveal the bare wooden slats of the ceiling. It looked like no one had hunted or lodged there in years.
“Your Grace, are you certain it’s safe?”
He nodded. “Spent my…childhood here.”
She glanced up at him curiously. He had his own secret place, just like her Willow Pond.
She helped him inside, and though the place smelled musty and damp, it was cozy enough.
There was a small bare cot, a crooked wooden table, and two chairs that looked as if they might hold a child’s weight.
Mr. O’Neill leaned heavily on the table, then lowered himself into a chair. She winced, but it held him.
And then she saw the blood trickling down his neck from the gash in his head.
“You’re still bleeding,” she whispered. She put aside her feeling of helplessness and went to the battered cupboard in the corner. “Do you have supplies in here?”
He closed his eyes and shrugged. “We used to.”
She found a bucket, a half-burned candle, flint and steel, a knife, and a couple rags. She held a rag up with two fingers and grimaced.
“What did you use these for?”
He opened one eye. “Cleaning rabbit carcasses?”
“Ugh.” She dropped it back in the cupboard.
“I’m just teasing. I can’t remember. But there’s a stream out back for washing.”
She had no choice. She washed the rags out as best she could, filled the bucket with water and came back inside. Mr. O’Neill was sitting up straighter, and his face was regaining some color.
She set to work, parting his hair until she could find the wound and cleaning it out as best she could. There were bits of tree bark to remove, but the blood flow itself had almost stopped.
“So you didn’t see who hit you?” she said.
“No, he came from behind. Probably just a thief.”
She straightened to see his face. “That’s not what you implied.”
“My head had just been dented. I’m sure I wasn’t making sense.” He gave her a lazy grin.
“Do not try to be Cecil with me. I will no longer be so gullible.”
“I’m not trying—”
“You think by distracting me that I won’t remember what you said, how frightened you were for Stephen’s safety? And you said it all had to do with your cousin Charles.”
“I’m sure I didn’t mean—”
“Richard!”
She used his Christian name in a forceful, angry tone.
He blinked up at her, so close, yet so far away.
“You’re still lying to me,” she said. “I knew it wasn’t only Cecil’s vanity at stake. That rationale just didn’t make sense!”
But he was stubborn, remaining silent until she was finished cleaning the wound.
“Meriel,” he said in a soft voice, “forget about this.”
“I won’t. I can’t. If Stephen is in danger, I need to know.”
“It’s none of your business.”
She glared at him. “Everything to do with Stephen is my business.”
“I can take care of everything. This is just a misunderstanding.”
She saw it now—his stubborn insistence on protecting her, like he was protecting Stephen. He was a liar and a cad…but maybe for the right reasons.