The Wyndham Legacy (Legacy 1)

She realized then she was safe. No one could strike her again, not with Marcus and Badger here with her. She heard Spears say as he walked toward the bed, “I have prepared the mixture you detailed, Mr. Badger. If you can gently move her head, my lord, I will apply the mixture to the lump.”

“It will reduce the swelling and make the pain lessen,” Badger said.

“I don’t want to hurt her,” Marcus said, but then he moved her head on the pillow.

She didn’t realize she was crying until she felt someone wipe the tears off her cheeks and gently daub at her closed eyes. Marcus said very softly, “Gently now, Duchess. Spears has the lightest fingers of all of us. It will hurt though, but then it will be better. That’s what Badger promises. If he’s wrong I’ll let you smack him on the side of the head. That will make three of us with headaches.”

Spears applied the salve. Suddenly she felt nausea twist and roil in her stomach, adding to the dreadful pounding in her head. She swallowed convulsively.

Badger said, “Breathe deeply, Duchess. That’s right. It will make the sickness go away. No, don’t fight it. Do as I tell you. Deeply. Good.”

When at last they gave her laudanum, she actually felt better, but Marcus wouldn’t allow her yet to speak. “No, Duchess, I want you to sleep.”

She managed to whisper to him, “Don’t leave me.”

He was silent for a moment, a surprised silence that went on so long she was afraid that he didn’t know how to tell her that he didn’t want to remain. Then, however, he said easily, “I won’t leave you, I promise.”

She took stock of her injuries. There was a dull thudding over her left eye. The nausea was gone, as was the debilitating pain from the blow to her head. Slowly, she opened her eyes. Marcus wasn’t there and she cried out, panicked and afraid.

“I’m here,” he said, and she watched him stride quickly back to her bed. “Shush, I’m here.”

“You promised you wouldn’t leave me.”

“I just wandered to the fireplace, no destination further away than that. Ah, and once I did have to relieve myself, Duchess. But I sent Badger in to oversee your sleep whilst I was gone. How do you feel?”

“I did feel like a keg of ale that rolled off the wagon and splatted on the cobblestones. Now, the keg only has a small leak.”

“I felt something like that,” he said, then grinned at her, leaned down, and lightly touched his mouth to hers. His mouth was warm and reassuring. “Now, here’s tea for you. Badger said you would be thirsty and this fancy herbal tea he mixed for you would be just the thing.”

He helped her drink, then said, “Are you hungry?”

“No, nothing. The tea is very good.”

“You promise me you feel all right now?”

“Yes, the leak is merely a small crack now.”

“Good.” His voice lost its sweetness and became a low furious roar. “What the hell were you doing in the library with guttered candles at four o’clock in the morning?”

She wanted to laugh but a small smile was all she could manage. “The Wyndham legacy. I went searching for clues and I found another old book just like Mr. Burgess’s.”

He frowned as he said, “You should have awakened me if you wanted to go treasure hunting. You won’t go do anything alone again. Now, about that book—there wasn’t one there when I got down to the library.”

“Someone hit me and took it. Actually I guess someone saw me reading it and struck me down in order to take it.”

“No,” he said. “That’s simply not sensible. You must misremember, Duchess. You must have slipped and fallen. You must have struck your head on the edge of the desk.”

“I’m sorry, but someone did strike me, Marcus.” She saw that he believed her, but he didn’t want to. To accept it meant that someone in the house had deliberately hurt her, that someone was up to no good. She didn’t want to believe it either.

“That cursed treasure,” he said, and continued to swear as he plowed his fingers through his hair. “Where did you find the book?”

“Behind another one on a lower shelf that hadn’t ever been read or moved, just dusted periodically.”

Surprisingly, he said, “All right. You went to the library to look for a clue and you found the book. Were you in the library long? I went to your bedchamber and you weren’t there. I was perturbed—about many things—but I didn’t go looking for you.”

“I went to the Gold Leaf Room but I couldn’t sleep. As I said, I went to the library to search for a clue—I never even thought to believe I’d find the book, find anything that was important—but I did find it. Only someone else must have seen the candlelight. I didn’t hear anything, not really, just this slight movement, this sort of whispering sound, but I was concentrating so hard on the text and the sketch—”

He gently touched his fingertips to her lips. “Don’t get upset, you’ll just make yourself sick. Close your eyes a moment and breathe deeply. That’s right. Just relax, Duchess.”