Читать книгу A Warriner To Protect Her - Virginia Heath - Страница 14

Chapter Five

Still just one month to go...

Her attentive physician tied the last of her clean bandages, then sat back on the mattress to smile at her. ‘It is indeed a miracle you are this hale and hearty. I was convinced you would die when Jack brought you home, yet now there are just a few sprains and cuts left to heal. You obviously have a strong constitution indeed. A day or two of rest and I dare say you will be as good as new.’

Letty certainly felt better. And cleaner. The youngest Warriner, Jacob, had brought her a bucket of hot water, some soap and towels at her request, so she had managed to rinse the mud and grit from her hair. She was sat up in bed, her belly pleasantly filled with food and dressed in a freshly laundered gentleman’s shirt. She bestowed her healer with one of Violet’s best smiles—the one which had been fêted in society as the most stunning of the Season—and hoped her swollen lip would not spoil its impact. ‘Thank you, Doctor. I am grateful for all you have done.’

‘I am no doctor yet,’ he said a little wistfully, ‘but perhaps one day.’

This surprised her. ‘I was certain you were a proper physician. Your medical knowledge is excellent. Without your help, I do not doubt I would have died. Why do you not get a proper licence to practise medicine?’

He stood and busied himself with tidying away the soiled bandages. ‘I study and read extensively, and I am sure that one day I will qualify. However, it is not just my efforts that saved your life. The majority of your thanks should be directed at my brother Jack. He was the one who brought you home and he has scarcely left your side since your arrival. He was the one who spent the nights tending to your fever and making sure you were kept warm.’

Letty recalled the eldest Warriner had slept on the floor beside her last night. Clearly, he had spent a few nights on that hard floor on her behalf—odd when he had appeared so suspicious and put upon, although, for reasons she could not fathom, his diligence did not surprise her. ‘Then I shall extend my gratitude to him also, Dr Joe, as soon as I see him next.’

He had not been there when she had awoken this morning, which at the time Letty had been relieved about. Jack Warriner saw too much. Whether or not he really was a good man, as both of his younger brothers had suggested, she would have to see. However, neither Jacob nor Joe Warriner had been guarded in their answers this morning when she had bombarded them with a stream of questions. Thanks to them, Letty now knew for certain she was not a prisoner in this house. Jack Warriner had found her on the road and brought her home, and by doing so, had saved her life.

Home was a four-hundred-year-old manor house surrounded by thirty acres of park and farmland. Mostly farmland. The Warriners grew wheat and raised sheep, and hardly moved in the sort of circles Bainbridge and her duplicitous uncle did. Apparently, only the second eldest, Jamie, had been to London and then only once on a fleeting visit, so they would have no idea who she was either.

They all worked on the land, with the exception of Jamie who had only recently arrived back from the war, and was still recovering from the damage Napoleon’s army had done to his body. The three younger brothers also had enormous respect for Jack. It shone out of their eyes whenever he was mentioned in a conversation and they clearly deferred to his leadership on all matters of importance.

The Warriners were fiercely loyal and hugely protective of one another, the sort of tight family bond Letty had never experienced, yet always yearned for. They loved one another. It was plainly obvious and she could not help envying them for that. It must be nice to know there was always somebody there for you, ready to support you or simply to commiserate with when times were tough. To always have someone to turn to. Letty had not had such support since the untimely death of her parents at seventeen. She had ostensibly been all alone in the world—yet nobody had really pitied her because she was the Tea Heiress after all, as if her money could somehow fix her broken heart, or banish her loneliness and make everything bright in the world again.

If something happened to one of the brothers, the others would move heaven and earth to rectify things or would support each other in their grief. She had been missing from Mayfair for days—and sincerely doubted anybody had missed her at all. Not really. Her swathes of friends might comment on her absence at a ball or afternoon tea, but Letty was not convinced any of them genuinely cared enough to investigate the true cause of her absence. She did not possess one true friend, the sort a girl could confide in or depend upon. Nobody had ever assumed she might want one and she had no idea how to go about getting one. And that was a humbling thought, as well as a depressing one. She had more money than she could ever spend in one lifetime, yet she envied the Warriners.

She got the impression life was tough for the family—although such disloyalty had not been vocalised explicitly—and she suspected the main obstacle between Joe qualifying as a doctor, and not, was decidedly financial. That might work in her favour. In her experience, those in need of money were easily bribed and her father had often commented on the benefits of ‘greasing a few palms’. In a few weeks, she could easily fill the palms of all four Warriners with gold and still not make a dent in her reserves.

And then again it might not. If they desperately needed money quickly, they could well sell her back to Bainbridge if the opportunity presented itself. At least Bainbridge could pay them instantly—Letty would have to wait weeks to get her hands on her own money. The appointment was already made with the solicitor on the day of her birthday to sign the papers which would give her her longed-for independence. It was also the day she would consign a generous portion of it to the charitable trust she intended to set up in her name and begin carving out a new life filled with noble purpose rather than pampered inertia. Once that was done, she intended to begin searching for premises right away and nobody would be able to stop her.

Her uncle had always been most dismissive of her desire to put her money to work and had refused to allow her to spend it on anything apart from gowns and fripperies she did not need and had long ago ceased to want. But on that glorious day, in one month’s time, she could do with it whatever she pleased. The Warriners might not want to wait.

The fact that she had not been attended to by the family servants niggled. It was almost as if the brothers were intent on keeping her presence here a great secret. Why would they do that unless it was for sinister purposes? Was it for her protection or was it for theirs? The most pressing problem was that Letty really did not know if this family was to be trusted.

Until she did, it was probably sensible to have an escape route. As soon as Joe left her on a quest to fetch her some tea, Letty eased her legs over the side of the bed. After carefully testing her weight on her bad ankle, she hobbled across the room to the faceted, leadlight window and peered out.

Markham Manor was indeed in deepest, darkest, dankest Nottinghamshire. One side of the estate was fringed with dense woodland. The outer edge of the estate ran directly alongside the River Idle, so unless they came by boat or battled their way through the trees, the only way Bainbridge could enter the grounds was to the east, and via the narrow, rutted dirt lane her rescuer had found her on. A lane whose only destination was here.

In the distance, Letty could just about make out the high wall which she now knew enclosed the Warriners’ land. She also knew the huge gates were now locked because Jacob had moaned about the effort it had taken to do so and the splinters he had received in the process. A little further along, and purposely hidden behind tangled vines, was a smaller gate, a secret escape route which sounded positively medieval and very romantic. The Warriners of old must have needed such a device, as well as a great deal of fortified protection, if they had built such defences, yet those same defences now gave Letty a great deal of peace of mind. She had been here three days and nobody had come a calling. The more time passed, she hoped, the less likely it was they would do so.

Directly below her window was a cobbled courtyard which housed a large iron pump handle and a small mountain of buckets balanced haphazardly on top of each other. Other than that, the courtyard was bare. Her bedchamber must face over the kitchens then, in the rear of the house and well away from prying eyes in the lane. The drop from her window to the courtyard was significant enough to cause injury, she estimated, yet not quite high enough to result in death. There was trellis alongside her window, covered in the gnarled old branches of a wisteria left quite barren by the winter. If she had to, she could lower herself from it carefully and make a dash for the woods.

Satisfied the outside was safe, Letty turned and began to hobble towards her bedchamber door to investigate the layout of the house when the door opened and Jack Warriner strode in.

Then stopped dead.

She was wearing his shirt. That should not have come as a surprise because his brother had dressed her in his shirt when they had transferred her unconscious body to Jack’s bedchamber because the only other one in any habitable state had mould creeping over the damp, cracked walls. Except the sight of her standing there in it was simply staggering. She had legs. Lovely, shapely female legs which were bare to mid-thigh where the tail of the shirt hung. And the most wonderful golden hair Jack had ever seen. A tumble of corkscrew ringlets fell past her shoulders, the short curls around her face framing it like a halo. His words dried in his throat and his eyebrows shot up as he stared at the beautiful creature right in front of him.

Emerald-green eyes stared back at him in surprise before she crouched and her arms covered her thighs. ‘Would you mind turning around, please!’ she squeaked and his wits returned.

‘Yes, of course! Sorry!’ Jack spun on his heels and faced the door, grateful for the opportunity to catch his breath and simply breathe.

There was a woman in his bedchamber.

Because after seeing her legs there was no way he could continue to think of her as a patient. There had not been an actual woman in Markham Manor since his mother had died a decade ago and he could barely remember the last time he had seen a woman’s bare legs. May? Last spring, in Lincoln? Although at the time he had not really taken much notice of the tavern maid’s legs because he had had to travel home before dark and he was more concerned with other parts of the woman. Perhaps he should have, because surely one pair of legs was much like the next? What was it about these particular legs he suddenly found so alluring?

He heard her scramble back towards the bed and the rustle of the covers as she made herself decent. ‘You can turn around now Mr... Jack.’

Somehow, seeing her sitting up in his bed, all tousled and proper, made it worse and he felt the falls of his breeches tighten uncomfortably. She looked as tempting as a baker’s window and, by God, he was desperate to taste her. But he had no time to spare to consider such unexpected yearnings, definitely not for a woman in his care and definitely not when he sensed impending danger.

‘We need to talk... Violet.’

Her lovely eyes widened further in alarm at the use of her proper name and Jack finally knew for certain she had been economical with the truth. However, it was difficult to be annoyed at her for the omission. In her shoes, he’d have probably done much the same.

‘There are men in the village looking for you.’ A look of terror washed across her delicate features which he experienced an enormous desire to soothe. ‘We did not alert them to your presence here. I thought it prudent to talk to you first before I entrusted them with any information.’

She visibly sagged with relief, the motion causing the open neck of the capacious linen shirt to fall to one side, exposing the smooth, pale skin of her delicate, feminine shoulder. Jack’s groin tightened again and to cover it, he sat down heavily on the mattress in front of her. ‘I think it is time you told me the truth. Don’t you?’

Her golden head bobbed in assent, causing the blonde curls nearest her face to bounce. He suppressed the urge to reach up and touch one. Run his fingers along the length of it to see if it actually did feel like spun silk. She worried her bottom lip nervously with her teeth, drawing his hungry eyes there too. Her mouth was pink and plump and ripe for kissing. For some inexplicable reason, Jack was sorely tempted to kiss her. Not that he would, of course. The poor girl was frightened enough already, the last thing she needed was his case of rampant, wholly inappropriate lust.

‘How many men?’

‘Three. The others and their coaches have gone elsewhere to search for you, although I doubt they are too far away either. There are not many villages in this part of the county. They claimed to be working for your family.’

Her expression hardened. ‘In a manner of speaking, they are.’

‘They also claimed you were abducted, although I gather you would rather not be returned to them?’

He watched a flurry of emotions play on her face. Fear, confusion, mistrust, then finally acceptance. She stared back at him levelly. ‘Those men—was one of them an older man? Grey hair tied back in an old-fashioned queue?’

Jack shook his head. ‘No. The man I spoke to called himself Mr Smith. He had a scar across his cheek here.’ He swiped his finger in a jagged line down his own cheek to the jaw in demonstration.

‘Layton. His name is Layton. He works for the Earl of Bainbridge.’ She sat back on the pillows, tucking her knees to her chest and hugging them. It was an unconscious gesture which suggested she needed to protect herself from whatever it was these men had come to achieve. It sparked something visceral inside him. Something primal and male and territorial. It made him want to slay dragons for her—a ridiculous notion which suddenly came out of nowhere and blindsided him. She could be lying through her pretty teeth, yet that made no difference to his urgent need to be her knight in shining armour. What was wrong with him? It wasn’t like him to be so fanciful. Jack did not usually have those sorts of feelings for women. He liked them well enough...but always in a pragmatic and sensible way. He had never been a romantic man—although a part of him was certainly feeling that way if he was thinking of himself as her knight and conjuring imaginary dragons in his obviously addled mind.

It was probably because of the golden hair, he reasoned, he had always had a penchant for blondes. The legs were a bonus, of course, and then there was the fact that she was lying in his bed. Staring a little warily at him with her beautiful green eyes. She regarded him thoughtfully for several moments, then sighed.

‘Letty is my name. It is the name I prefer to be called, at any rate, because my mother used to call me it as a child. However, my full name is Violet Dunston.’ She paused briefly as if he should recognise the name, and when he didn’t she seemed a little surprised, but continued. ‘My parents died in a carriage accident a few years ago and since then I have been under the guardianship of my father’s brother. Whilst I have never been particularly close to my uncle, I had no reason to suspect he wished me ill. He moved into my family house to fulfil his guardianship duties, although apart from that we really had little to do with one another.’

‘A few weeks ago, he introduced me to the Earl of Bainbridge, a man old enough to be my grandfather who apparently had expressed a desire to marry me. Unsurprisingly, I was not thrilled with the proposal and turned him down. He is a completely odious man, who has already outlived two wives and has the reputation for being a dreadful gambler. I was surprised he would even condone such a proposal. However, since then, my uncle has been relentless in his insistence that I marry the vile man—because they were friends, or so I was led to believe. We argued about it a great deal and eventually my uncle ceased pressing the suit. I assumed I had convinced him that Bainbridge was the very last man on earth who I would consider marrying. Unfortunately, I could not have been more wrong.’

Just thinking about her uncle’s treachery made her angry. All this time she had been duped into believing he had only wanted the very best for her...but he had designs on her fortune just like every other man who came knocking on her door. ‘On the night in question, I had only just dressed for a ball and was waiting for the carriage to be brought around when my uncle asked to speak with me. He offered me a glass of wine, which stupidly I drank. It was laced with laudanum. I was barely conscious by the time Bainbridge arrived, but I overheard the gist of their conversation nevertheless. Bainbridge had agreed to give him half of my fortune in return for my hand in marriage—payable as soon as Bainbridge could obtain legal access to my money. It is held in a trust, you see, until I reach the age of majority. They tied me up and I was taken to a carriage bound for Gretna Green.

‘By the time I came to, we were speeding along the road. I told Bainbridge that no court in the land would condone a forced marriage. I threatened to have the pair of them arrested and tried for their crime and that I would move heaven and earth to have the sham of a marriage annulled if he succeeded.’ Her voice wavered then, because Letty still could not quite believe it herself. ‘He laughed, claiming he had no great desire to be shackled to me for any longer than was necessary to get his hands lawfully on my magnificent stack of money and said...’ her voice faltered ‘...he said that if I failed to comply and made his life difficult, then I would force his hand. He said I would find it difficult to get a marriage annulled from the grave.’

Jack Warriner’s dark eyebrows came together fiercely as he absorbed her words. Other than that, she really had no idea what he was thinking. His very handsome face was quite inscrutable.

‘So you were kidnapped, then?’

Letty nodded. ‘Yes—but effectively by a member of my own family. If they find me, Bainbridge will drag me to Gretna Green. As soon as we are married, English law grants him my entire fortune.’

‘And then your uncle would receive his half?’

‘My father left him nothing in his will, aside from naming him as my guardian and giving him some control as trustee of the estate. As soon as I turn twenty-one, control of my entire inheritance reverts to me. The blood money earned by selling his niece to Bainbridge was obviously more palatable to him than living out the rest of his days with nothing.’

He stood and pinned her with his stormy blue gaze, giving nothing about his ultimate intentions away.

‘I need to talk to my brothers.’

Then he stormed to the door.