Blasted drug.
She muttered something unintelligible, and moved restlessly. The rug slipped to her waist. He swallowed—that shirt was too damned thin for words.
“Lily.”
She didn’t stir. He tried again, louder, and tried to pushher into a more upright position, but she was deep asleep. He reached across her to tug the rug back up to decency again, and she sighed and snuggled into his inadvertent embrace, her warm, soft curves pressed against him, her unbruised cheek cuddled against his shirtfront.
He regarded her helplessly. She lay against him, more or less in his embrace, relaxed and wholly trustful. His arm hovered a moment over her, then he sighed and wrapped it carefully around her—only to support her, he told himself. The road was bad. There were bumps and potholes. She could fall.
She slept on in his arms.
The bruise on her cheekbone was deepening. Lavender shadows darkened the delicate skin beneath her eyes. Tiny curls sprang from the mass of her damp hair as it dried. She must have worn it up in an elaborate twist the night she was abducted, for though it was wet and bedraggled, it was still partly pinned up. He could see a few pins glinting in the light.
Carefully he eased them out, one at a time, trying not to disturb her. Finally he had them all. He gently sifted his fingers through her soft, damp hair, loosening the tangles and spreading it out to help it dry. Dark curls twined about his fingers.
A damp lock of hair fell across her mouth. He carefully lifted it away and smoothed it back behind her ear. A small, dainty ear, with a tiny hole in the lobe. Had she lost an earring?
Cal Rutherford’s little sister. Courage obviously ran in the family. She’d been drugged, abducted, imprisoned for hours at a time in a cramped, airless compartment under a seat, subjected to lord only knew what indignities and humiliations. She was bruised, cold, wet and filthy—he’d forced her to strip in his presence and had thrown away her ruined clothes. Most females he knew would be hysterical by this stage.
Instead she’d curled up against him, practically naked but trustful as a kitten, and gone to sleep in his arms. The remnant effect of the drugs. At least he hoped it was.
Her brother had made a practical marriage in order to protect his sisters. He’d be beside himself now, poor fellow, not knowing what had happened to Lily. Brothers needed to take care of their sisters.
Ned was grateful he had no younger sisters to take care of—or brothers, for that matter. He’d proved long ago that he couldn’t be relied on to take care of anyone. He stared bleakly out the window at the shifting scenery, the weight of warm, soft woman heavy against his chest. It was raining again, a soft gray mist.
She twisted restlessly. The rug slipped, pulling the shirt awry and revealing the curve of a creamy breast and a bare, vulnerable shoulder. There were bruises on her body as well as her cheek. He dragged his gaze off her, tugged the shirt up, tucked the rug in more securely and resigned himself to the inevitable: The trip to London was going to be torture.
The carriage rattled onward. They stopped for a change of horses, but Lily didn’t stir. Her sleep might be heavy but it wasn’t restful. Her body twitched and wriggled, and the expressions that passed across her face... Whatever dreams she might be having, they weren’t pleasant.
He should have killed the villain who’d done this to her.
He couldn’t return her to her brother in this sorry state. It wouldn’t be fair either to her or to Cal. A handful of lines from his school days came to him:Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
His initial plan had been to drive on through the night and most of the next day—getting her back to London in the shortest possible time. She needed sleep, but not in a rattling jolting carriage. Proper sleep, in a bed that didn’t bounce with every pothole. And any journey to London would be interrupted every twenty miles or so when they stopped to change horses.
He wanted to relieve her of her ordeal, not add to it.
She needed calm and uninterrupted sleep, and time to let the drug pass from her system. Food. And a bath. Hewould restore her to her family with her dignity intact, not half naked, bruised, dirty and dazed.
He reached up with his free hand and rapped on the roof. “Find a suitable small town,” he said when Walton opened the hatch. “We need an inn, but nothing fashionable. The lady needs a bed, a bath, food and clothing. And all with the utmost discretion, Walton. Nobody is to know who she is.”
He hoped to hell that her family had kept her missing status a secret. No one must learn she was not still in London, safe in her own home in the care of her brother.
Because if they did, God help her.
Chapter Five
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.
—JANE AUSTEN,EMMA
Aunt Agatha was in her element in Hyde Park, taking various cronies and acquaintances up in her barouche for a turn around the park, and complaining to them of the foolish stubbornness of her niece by marriage and her charges, Rose and Georgiana—indicated by an irritable wave of a hand as the two young girls rode behind and sometimes beside the carriage.
Emm heard the first part after Aunt Agatha had set her down to walk—exercise being good for a breeding mother—as the carriage moved slowly off. “The youngest gel, Lily, is stricken with what the doctor believes is the vilest case of the influenza, but will Emmaline or the gels consent to reside with me until all danger of infection passes? Pshaw! They will not!”
Emm hid a smile. Aunt Agatha’s cronies would be used to complaints about ungrateful and intractable relatives. Much more convincing than her showing concern for a niece she’d never had much time for.
From time to time the girls broke away to tell Emm what their aunt was saying. “You should hear her, Emm,” Rose said, half entertained, half indignant. “She’s telling everyone how furious she is with you for refusing to move in with her because of Lily’s supposed illness! Apparentlyyou’re risking the health of the Rutherford heir with your stubborn foolishness—as if she has a direct connection to God and knows what sex the baby will be.”
