Chapter Two #2
“That’s the wrong man, you bloody idiot!” she cried at the footman. “Not him. The other one.”
Adrian raised a hand to his face.
For a moment Emma thought he had withstood the blow. Then he put his other hand out to the wall to brace himself and slowly crumpled to the floor.
“It’s the wrong man,” the maid cried again. “What have you done, Teddy? What have you done?”
The wrong man, Emma thought in despair, dropping Adrian’s coat. Men were wrong in general, or so she believed at that moment. Male pride and imprudence. Was this to be her entire life? Was there no peace?
She glanced down the stairs and saw her brother Heath staring up at her in alarm. A good man, she thought. An example of one who was rarely wrong. He asked her a question, but the words were indistinct.
She could not manage an answer, at any rate. Shaking her head in a wordless plea for help, she rushed over to the man who had fallen in the hall. She dropped to the floor and slid her arm beneath his shoulders, raising him against her.
Wrong man or not, Adrian had only meant to protect her.
Adrian felt her bend over him, felt her hand upon his. She had light bones and a strong, confident manner, a peculiar but appealing combination in a woman. He knew he’d offended her sensibilities, quarreling at a wedding, but from his perspective, there had not been a choice.
He hadn’t been away from England for so long that he had forgotten there were rules to follow. He supposed the finer points would come back to him sooner or later. Not that he cared to impress anyone. He had done his wicked best to distance himself from his heritage.
Emma Boscastle had made quite an impression on him, though. Unexpected, that. He couldn’t remember Heath mentioning her, except in the vaguest terms. But then Heath was a private person, as Adrian tended to be, and he kept personal matters to himself.
How the clodhopper of a footman had managed to attack him with a chair was testament to the lady’s charms. If Adrian hadn’t been intent on protecting her, he would not be crushed against her soft, tempting breasts at this moment.
“Your head is bleeding,” she said in alarm, stroking his temple. “Please don’t be seriously hurt. I shall not allow it,” she added, and he smiled to himself, imagining his Renaissance angel taking up his cause in the good court.
Or the fiery one below. He hadn’t exactly lived an exemplary life.
He ought to tell her he had no intention of surrendering his earthly existence at all. But a pleasant darkness beckoned.
Something warm touched his cheek. Her lips? “Did you just kiss me?” he asked with a half-smile.
“Indeed, I did not,” she said softly. “I cannot fathom why you would even ask.”
The footman who had assaulted him, the maid, and Sir William stared down at him as if at the end of a dark tunnel. Their faces receded. “My God, Emma,” Sir William said faintly. “How did this happen?”
Both she and Adrian ignored him.
“Your kiss felt like the brush of an angel’s wing upon my face,” Adrian murmured.
“What a fanciful notion,” she whispered. “It must be your injury.”
He sighed. “I think I’m…tired. What happened to the half-wit who brained me?”
“Don’t go to sleep,” she said in panic. “We shall worry about the footman later. Stay awake.”
“I’ll stay awake if you kiss me again.”
“I never—Lord Wolverton?” She lifted his shoulders with her left arm and pressed her head in panic to his chest.
She could feel the reassuring thump of his heart against her cheek.
He was a man in his prime, well built, with a soldier’s taut physique.
It would take more than a blow on the head to snuff out the life of a man his size, wouldn’t it?
Although the ladder-back framework of the hall chair that had felled him showed deep fissures that she suspected could never be repaired.
“Lord Wolverton,” she exclaimed in the voice that never failed to command the obedience of not only her students but her family. “You will be fine. You are not allowed to expire. Or to fall asleep yet. Stop frightening me. It isn’t nice. Wake up.”
His heartbeat seemed to have slowed. Was he still breathing? Frantic, she lifted her face to his throat and listened to his respirations.
Without warning he shifted into her. His wide mouth captured hers in a tentative but deliberate kiss that proved beyond doubt he was more than alive.
“Someone should have warned you,” he whispered in a barely audible voice.
For the span of several heartbeats she could not think.
And when finally she did, she told herself that while he may still be alive, he could have sustained a lasting injury. Because he had defended her. A chivalrous wolf. She brushed a lock of dark gold hair from his bleeding temple. “Warned me about what?” she asked distractedly.
He heaved a sigh against her bosom. “That an angel has no business kissing a devil.”
“I never kissed you—” He sighed and turned his head into her lap.
Her lap.
Yes, appearances mattered. Her reputation mattered, but not as much as the life of a man who had come to her defense in the blink of an eye—in fact, Emma could not help thinking that the entire situation might have turned out better all the way around had Lord Wolverton not been so hasty to play the hero.
“You will be fine,” she said as much to herself as to him.
How many times had her reckless brothers fallen out of trees, windows, speeding carriages, to their apparent demise?
More than once the young demons had lain at death’s door.
And Emma, being one of the only two Boscastle children whom everyone agreed showed a modicum of sense, and who fretted the most of her family, was the only one to despair over them.
“My little mother,” her own mama would frequently call her.
But this man, this hard, solid, handsome man whose heavy weight had virtually blocked the flow of blood to her lower extremities, would not expire.
A firm hand touched her shoulder. She glanced up into her brother Heath’s face. “What the devil happened?” he demanded.
Suddenly she realized that they were alone, Sir William and the two other servants having wisely taken their leave. “What happened, Emma?” he repeated.
Heath knelt beside her, his face grim.
One did not expect to see a duke’s heir felled by a chair on the carpet during a wedding reception. Any person of good breeding would understandably be perplexed.
“There has been an…incident,” she said as calmly as possible.
“An incident?” He lifted his brow. “Have you been hurt?”
She gestured at the splintered chair. “No. He got into a fight.”
“That doesn’t sound like Adrian.”
“He caught Sir William forcing his intentions on—”
“What?”
“—on my hand. William wouldn’t let go of my hand and Adrian interceded.”
Heath smiled darkly. “Now that sounds like a duke.”
She forced herself to remain calm. “Is he going to be all right, Heath?”
“Did he insult you?”
“Not in the least.” She shook her head, her worried gaze riveted to Adrian’s still face. “He was trying to defend me, and the footman hit him with a chair by mistake.”
Heath slid two fingers beneath Adrian’s white neckcloth to feel his pulse. “In that case, I can state with complete confidence that he shall be all right.”
“Then why isn’t he moving?” she asked in a distraught voice.
Heath smiled. “Ask him.”
She looked down into a pair of hazel eyes smoldering with unholy mirth. Adrian’s lean cheek pressed into the curve of her breast.
A wolf, indeed.