Chapter 8
The last thing he remembered was the bang.
No, that wasn’t exactly true. The last thing he remembered was landing on top of Ellie, feeling her small, slender body underneath his, and worrying that he was going to crush her.
Then there was the bang. The third one, if he had counted correctly. Followed by the most acute pain he had ever felt in his entire life. Pain so severe that he had to bite the inside of his mouth to keep from crying out, and even then, he was not able to hold in the agony.
And then blood.
He remembered blood, the smell of it fresh and thick in the air.
And then blackness.
After that, there were only snippets of things.
Looking up at several men, who appeared to be carrying him, the ceiling above vaulted and painted with frescoes.
Another man bending over him, touching his arm.
Then pain, sharp and insistent, as something went into his flesh, again and again.
But after that, he remembered the pain lessening. The smell of blood fading.
And then an angel.
A woman, the most beautiful he had ever seen in his life, sitting next to him, her gaze calm and her face pale as she watched him sleep. He had seen this face before. On the road. Had seen it twisted in fear when he had pulled her out of the waves.
Had seen it laughing as she told him about her interests in poetry and philosophy. Had seen it annoyed when he had tried to suggest that women could not understand Aristotle.
Ellie…
But was she real, or a hallucination? Had he dreamed her? Had she survived the shooting on the road? Or was this her ghost visiting him?
He could not tell, and then the blackness of sleep took him again, ending all his questions.
When he woke again, he was in a dark room. It was nighttime, from what he could tell. Heavy curtains fell in front of the windows, but no light slipped from underneath them. And the house, or wherever he was, was very quiet.
Sleeping in the chair next to him was the angel from his dreams.
Ellie.
She was alive. And even more startlingly beautiful than he remembered.
Her dark hair had been let down, and the almost black waves fell all the way around her shoulders and down to her elbows. Asleep, she looked very calm and peaceful, although he missed the piercing blue eyes that he had come to know so well already.
Not wanting to wake her, Rupert very carefully and quietly sat up and looked around.
He was in a four-poster bed in a large, richly decorated room.
There were tapestries hanging on the walls, and portraits of gentlemen in powdered wigs.
In one corner was large wooden wardrobe, while an escritoire sat in another.
Rupert frowned. It appeared that he was in someone’s home. The home of someone wealthy and sophisticated, probably landed gentry.
Words began to come back to him, memories that he had not been able to find in the fog of injury.
Pendleton Manor…
Ellie had said something about getting them to Pendleton Manor, that they would be able to see a doctor there.
To Nathaniel Carlton’s home.
Panic bloomed in Rupert’s chest. Was it possible that Nathaniel was here, that he had seen Rupert and identified him as the Duke of St. James? Had he told Ellie that the man she had brought to his door was no merchant, but was in fact a duke?
Even worse, if Nathaniel knew that he had been shot, then the whole ton would soon know of the attack.
And that was the last thing Rupert wanted.
He needed time to figure out what exactly had happened and who had been after him.
And if every gossip rag in the country was writing about it, then the attackers would surely just go underground.
And that wouldn’t give Rupert the chance he needed to try and find them.
If he could find them.
It was possible that whoever had attacked him had merely been a highwayman looking to rob them. But if that was so, then why had they fled after shooting at them, rather than stay and rob them? It made no sense.
The only conclusion that Rupert could come to was that the men who had shot at them had had a reason. Either they were after Rupert, or they were after Ellie, and since he could think of no reason why assassins would come after a governess, then…
He frowned, more memories from the attack filtering back to him.
Had Ellie referred to Vivienne by her first name? He thought he remembered that, but that would not make any sense. No governess would refer to her employer by her given name.
He glanced again at the sleeping woman, and something shivered through him. He did not know the truth about Ellie’s identity, but he had a feeling that the governess was keeping something from him.
He could wake her and ask. He could demand the truth. But they both had their secrets, and after she had saved his life, he ought to allow her to have hers.
Speaking of which, he needed to leave before Nathaniel identified him and Ellie realized he had lied to her, if she hadn’t already. And before his attack was the gossip of the entire ton.
Rupert slipped out of bed. The moment he did, he felt a sharp pain in his arm.
It took all of his self control not to cry out.
After several calming breaths, he pushed up his shirtsleeves to see that a bandage had been wrapped tightly around his upper left arm where the bullet must have hit him. It hurt, but not as badly as before.
His clothes had been spread on a chair, and he dressed as quickly and as quietly as he could, careful not to wake Ellie.
At one point, as he pulled on his boots, she stirred in the chair, and he froze.
For several seconds, he stood very still, waiting.
But her eyes did not open, she merely turned over, her head lolling slightly.
Finally, Rupert was dressed. For a moment, he hesitated, then he walked over to Ellie. Reaching out, he let his fingers graze very gently along her cheeks. She stirred, but she did not wake.
Thank you, he thought silently. Thank you for saving my life. I suppose we are even now.
A tightness filled his chest. Would he ever see her again? Probably not. But he knew where to find her now, and if he was ever in desperate need of her, he could come back to Pendleton Manor. It would mean revealing the truth, but there were worse things than that.
He was just turning to go when he saw the piece of paper on the table next to her. Resting next to it was a quill and an ink bottle.
Glancing to make sure she was still asleep, he silently pulled the paper toward him and scanned over the words she had written.
It was a poem.
His heart leapt in his chest, and his hands began to shake.
It wasn’t just a poem, it was a love poem.
About the loss of someone we cherish above all else and how that loss stays with you for all your days, even if the pain of it diminishes.
Even more than the sentiment, it was the words that moved him.
She had a command of language that he had not read in some time, and as he gazed down at the poem, he felt tears in his eyes.
He was thinking of his father. Many of the sentiments she expressed were the same ones he had felt after the loss of his father.
He closed his eyes, allowing the sadness to wash through him.
When he opened them again, he thought about waking her.
Telling her he loved her poem, telling her the truth, that he was a duke, and that he wanted to court her.
To dance with her at balls and talk to her about poetry.
To listen to her opinions and debate with her.
She was still asleep. Her lips had parted slightly, and her breathing was deeper, almost a snore.
He smiled, then took the quill and dipped it into the ink. At the bottom of the poem, he scribbled out a quick line.
Thank you, Ellie, for everything. Do not stop writing. You have a gift.
Then he set down the quill, screwed the cap back on the ink bottle, and moved silently to the door. Once it was open, he glanced back over his shoulder again. For a long moment, he drank in the sight of her. Then he turned and left, closing the door silently behind him.
He moved swiftly and surreptitiously through the manor. It was not hard to find the stairs, and in the depths of night, no one was awake to see him. Outside, he located the stables, and easily found the horse he had given Ellie. He whinnied with recognition when he saw Rupert.
“Come now, boy,” Rupert murmured, as he led him out into the night. “We have a long road ahead of us.”
And indeed they did. Although Rupert did not know exactly where Pendleton Manor was located, he was able to figure out, from the direction of the thin sliver of sunrise on the horizon and several signs on the road, in which direction to head to reach London.
Soon, the sun was rising, and the road was beginning to fill with other travelers: carriages making their way from the countryside to town, the post riders galloping through, and farmers leading carts yawning with wares to sell in the city.
It took several hours, but at last, the skyline of London finally came into view.
Not long after, he could hear the sounds of the city: bells ringing out from the churches, the clangs and bangs of industry, people shouting to one another, dogs barking and horses whinnying, all the sounds that made up the hustle and bustle of the city.
He navigated his way through it toward Mayfair.
Toward home. This took another hour, as he had to cross the Thames, and it was already crowded with people even in the hours after dawn, but at last, he was making his way through the leafy, cobbled streets of Mayfair, the majestic red-brick townhouses rising up on either side of him, the silence blissful after the chaos of the inner city.
The St. James townhouse in Mayfair was on Grosvenor Square, four stories high of warm yellow brick, ivy crawling its way over the bricks and white picture windows. From the chimney, smoke was already curling, so he knew the household was awake.
He dropped his horse in the stables, then made his way inside, where he was unsurprised to find his mother already awake and pacing back and forth in the parlor.
“Rupert!” she cried, the moment the parlor doors opened and he strode inside.
His mother was in a dark gray dress of silk with a high collar and long sleeves.
There were no adornments on her neck or in her ears, with proper mourning clothes still observed more than eight months after her husband’s death.
(to be continued)
She looked, however, perfectly healthy, and the speed with which she crossed the parlor, the strength with which she seized him by the shoulders and navigated him toward the sofa, told him she was not at all ill.
As she grabbed his shoulder, he cried out, pain shooting up through him from where the bullet had gone into him, and he had the terrible suspicion that his stitches had come undone. It was his fault. He should not have ridden so far in his state, but he needed to get home.
His mother’s face went very pale. “What is it?” she gasped. “What has happened to you?”
She released his shoulder and sat him down on the sofa, then gingerly began to pull the jacket off of him. Pain shot through him again as his arm was jostled, and he grit his teeth hard.
His mother gasped as she removed the jacket. Already dreading what he would see, he looked to see where she was staring. Sure enough, the bullet wound had begun to bleed again. His white shirt was soaked in blood.
“Rupert…” His mother’s voice sounded far away now, and the patch of blood on his sleeve was going in and out of focus. “Rupert, we must call for a physician…”
“Yes.” Rupert tried to think. He blinked and looked up at his mother. He couldn’t focus on her entirely. He was going to pass out, he knew. The blood and the ride had made him weak.
“What happened?” she demanded. “Did you fall? Were you attacked?”
“I was shot,” he muttered, with the last of his strength. “But they got the bullet out… She saved me…”
“She?”
But Rupert could no longer concentrate on anything.
He closed his eyes and slumped against the sofa, letting it cushion him.
Around him, he heard his mother yell for someone to fetch a doctor.
The second to last thing he thought was that if his mother was perfectly healthy, then that meant she had lied about her illness.
There had been another reason she had summoned him back to Mayfair, and he was going to discover it.
If he managed to survive getting shot first.
The very last thing he thought of was Ellie, her blue eyes shining at him through the darkness, her dark hair falling around her shoulders as she slept, as she watched over him.