Edith Layton

One
HE REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS TO FIND HIMSELF sprawled on the ground,…

Two
HER UNINVITED GUEST WASN’T OUT OF HIS SENSES for long,…

Three
“NO,” HE SAID, PUTTING A HAND OVER THE CUP. “No…

Four
THE PAIN IN HIS LEG WAS SICKENING, BUT HE REFUSED…

Five
“THOUGHT YOU’D BE ASLEEP!” ALEXANDRIA EXCLAIMED. She’d tiptoed into the…

Six
THE DAY HAD BEEN A RARE AND BALMY ONE, BUT…

Seven
“NO,” ALEXANDRIA SAID AS CALMLY AS SHE could, though she…

Eight
THE BARN WAS QUICKLY RENOVATED. AUSTIN GRIMES hired the men…

Nine
“EWEN!” DRUM LAUGHED AS HIS COUSIN DUCKED his head under…

Ten
SOON AFTER DRUM’S COMPANY LEFT, THE BOYS came home from…

Eleven
ALEXANDRIA WOULD HAVE KNOWN THE MAN AT her door was…

Twelve
“MUCH BETTER!” DRUM SAID WITH ENTHUSIASM as Grimes carefully helped…

Thirteen
THE MOON RODE HIGH, THE NIGHT WAS ADVANCED, the world…

Fourteen
“IF WE CHARGED ADMISSION, OUR FORTUNES WOULD be made,” Drum…

Fifteen
IT WAS A WARM EVENING AFTER A PARTICULARLY rare early…

Sixteen
THE AIR THAT CAME THROUGH THE FRACTION OF the open…

Seventeen
AN EVEN LARGER COLLECTION OF NUBILE YOUNG women were gathered…

Eighteen
“OUT!” GILLY RYDER SHOUTED. “LEAVE MY HOUSE this minute or…

Nineteen
THE MUSICIANS WERE PLAYING A WALTZ was hard to be…

Twenty
SHE DIDN’T KNOW HOW IT HAPPENED. ONE MINUTE, Alexandria was…

Twenty-one
DRUM SAT STILL AT ALEXANDRIA’S SIDE, BUT SHE could feel…

Twenty-two
“MISS GASCOYNE WAS IN THE WRONG PLACE AT the wrong…

Twenty-three
ALEXANDRIA KNEW SHE SHOULD BE WORRIED. NO, she ought to…

Twenty-four
SHE WAS WARM, SHE WAS FRAGRANT, SHE WAS DOCILE in…

Twenty-five
ALEXANDRIA SAT IN THE DARK IN A HUDDLE FOR what…

Twenty-six
THE DUKE OF WINTERT ON STROLLED INTO THE room in…

About the Author

Praise

Other Books by Edith Layton

Copyright

About the Publisher

H
E REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS TO FIND HIMSELF
sprawled on the ground, dizzy and confused. He tried to sit up and a wave of pain washed over him, so profound it made him feel sick. He couldn’t move anyway. Some enormous thing was pinning him to the ground. That thing was screaming. He didn’t believe it. This was impossible; it couldn’t be happening.

His head was a jar of thunder, but he concentrated, trying to block pain and force awareness. The last thing he could remember was riding along the road, thinking about what his father had said. There was much to think about. For once the usual litany of complaints and demands made sense. He hadn’t been paying attention to the road, but then he never expected to be pitched off his horse. He was an excellent rider, it was a simple country road, and the weather was fine too. In fact, he had left the highway to enjoy the day and relax from the hard riding he’d done all morning.

He found the perfect place: a quiet lane surrounded
by fields of vivid yellow blooming rapeseed. Scarlet cups of poppies bobbed above green grasses in the meadows as his horse ambled along peacefully. He half listened to birdsong, feeling the newly warm sun on his upturned face.

He remembered the horse stumbling, and his surprise. Then the way he’d gripped the reins, trying to hold up the horse by sheer force. He had heard the crack of gunfire too.

Gunfire?
He blinked, scowled, his thoughts reeling. The war was over, this was England, he was safe, he was home. But he’d heard gunfire—afterward, as he felt himself being borne down to the ground. And then crushed into it.

The light seemed to be draining away now; he could hardly see, much less think. He ran a hand over his eyes, and recoiled. He stared at his hand. It was dripping red. He’d spread blood all over his face, into his eyes. His last thought was that he really should get up and help his horse. Except his horse was lying on him and that made it difficult. He smiled at the absurdity, and welcomed the darkness.

Alexandria was washing the dishes after luncheon when she heard a babble of excited voices at the front door. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but there was too much commotion for her to ignore. She knew her brothers well. She quickly laid down the dish and ran into the front hall. When she got there she found the boys taking the front door off its hinges.

“Have you lost your
minds
?” she demanded.

Rob swiped a lock of hair back from his eyes and she saw how they sparkled. He hopped from foot to foot in a
fever of excitement. “No, Ally, but we have to carry him on something, don’t we? We can’t just drag him. And where are we going to get a hurdle? The door’s fastest. It’s famous! The most exciting thing!” he said as he avidly watched Vincent and Kit trying to unscrew the hinges. “We thought he was dead. I was sure he was. But Vin here put his hand on his throat and he was alive! Since we’re the closest house, we’re bringing him here.”

“
We
are?” Vin muttered as he kept trying to unscrew a hinge off the door. “I asked the little villain to stay with him to keep ants or animals or such away, but he insisted on helping us. Can’t blame him for not staying on alone, though. It’s a bad sight.”

Alexandria sighed. Another wounded creature for her to tend to when the boys got tired of it. “Leave the door alone,” she commanded. “Go back and treat it where you found it. If it’s that big, you can’t have it.”

All three boys gaped at her.

“Where are you going to put it?” she asked in exasperation. “The barn? There’s scarcely room for poor old Thunder. And how do you know the thing isn’t diseased? We can’t have Thunder catching anything. Tend to it in the wood, and then let nature take its course.”

“It’s a
man
,” Rob said, his eyes wide. “And he’s half dead.”

“There’s a horse, too,” Vin said, bending to his task again, “but I think he’s all right. He’s trembling and covered with blood, but it’s only a graze because you can see a furrow where the wound is. And he’s sprained a hock, we think. But the man looks almost gone. He must have hit his head or something. We can’t tell how much of the blood is his and how much the horse’s.”

“Lud!” Alexandria gasped, untying her apron. “Why didn’t you say so? You boys get the door. I’ll get towels, water, some salts…Did any of you think to fetch the doctor?” She saw their expressions. “I didn’t think so. Rob, stop standing and gaping. Be useful. Saddle Thunder and go fetch the doctor.” She cast a critical eye on the door. “I’ll get some lard. Those old bolts will take you a year if you don’t grease them. Now, where is he?”

It was only half a mile, and Alexandria ran all the way, but when she got there she thought she might be too late anyway. The man lay at the side of the road at the foot of the hedgerows. She stopped in her tracks, breathing hard, a hand on her heart. He was a tall man, well dressed, but he was tumbled in a graceless heap, like a child’s cast-off rag doll. The dark head was flung far back, the long face was gray. One of his legs was bent at an impossible angle, and his neck didn’t look much better. Her breath caught. She looked closer. It wasn’t his neck but his neckcloth that was awry, unraveled and splattered with crimson.

Vincent saw the direction of her horrified gaze. “I had to unwind his cravat to see if there was a wound,” he explained. “There wasn’t. At least I couldn’t find it. Just blood, as you see. It may be from his horse,” he said, gesturing to the horse that stood head down and trembling, nearby. The animal had an oozing wound on its flank. Vin knelt beside the man and looked up at Alexandria with worry in his eyes. “I felt his neck for signs of life,” he said. “There were some—when we left him.”

Alexandria bent and put a trembling hand to the
man’s neck. She breathed a sigh of relief to feel a faint but steady throb beneath the clammy, cold skin.

She rose, swallowed hard, and nodded. “Well,” she said with more courage than she felt, “we’d better get him on the door, hadn’t we? Don’t jostle him,” she added, though she didn’t know how they could help it.

Vincent was sixteen, Kit fifteen. Though they were of average size for their age, neither was big enough to take a grown man’s weight, and this fellow was very tall, if lean—and a dead weight, Alexandria discovered. She knelt by his head and put her hands under his shoulders to support that vulnerable neck. The boys positioned themselves at either side of him. They awaited her signal. She nodded. They lifted.

Not much moved but their own muscles.

“Put him down,” Alexandria said, though he hadn’t been moved more than an inch. “Put the door right next to him, at his side. Now, if we don’t try to lift high, just inch by inch, we can do it.”

They tried again, desperation adding energy. Alexandria looked down as she strained, terrified that motion might cause some unseen wound to bleed anew. None did.

Working together, scarcely breathing for fear of dropping their burden, they edged the man onto the door, pulling and tugging him the rest of the way. Alexandria was shaking with exhaustion and fear when they were done.

“Well,” she said again with bravado, “let’s get the door up and get back to the house.”

“We’ll never,” Vin said, shaking his head. “We need Thunder and some rope so we can pull it, like a sledge. But we’ll never carry him all the way.”

“And you told Rob to take Thunder,” Kit said sadly.

Alexandria looked around. “We’ll use his horse,” she said.

“It’s hurt!” Vin said.

“It lives,” she said. “It walks, doesn’t it?” she asked angrily. She was angry at circumstance as well as herself. She loved animals as much as the boys did. But as always, reason had to be stronger than her own weak will. “We have to get him home,” she went on. “The horse should be there too. If it can walk, it can pull. At least better than we can, right?”

They looked at the horse. The blood crusted on its side was terrible to see on its otherwise glossy roan coat.

“We could go to town, and see if we can get help,” Vin said.

“And leave this man here in the dirt to bleed to death?” she demanded, her voice shaking. “Who knows where the doctor is and what he’s doing, or if he can come at once?”

Kit went sprinting back for a rope. Then they fastened it around the door, tied that to the horse, and with many apologies and promises of treats, patting and whistling, they got the animal headed toward their cottage. Still, by the time they reached the front yard they were all sweating as hard as the horse was, and holding back tears. The horse’s wound had opened again. The man was grayer in the face.

Vin took the horse to the barn. Alexandria crouched down by the wounded man. She bathed his cold face and stroked the lank black hair from his forehead as Kit went to fetch a blanket to keep him warm. She still couldn’t see a wound and decided they should strip
him here in the yard to find if there was one. There was no way to get him in the house. That made her fight back angry tears, because it was a hard thing for a man to die in a yard like a stray dog, when there was a bed nearby. She put a hand over his heart to reassure herself that he still lived, then began to undo his jacket. Her hands shook as she struggled to peel it away.

The boys helped her get the tight-fitting jacket off. They gasped and cringed every time they had to shift the poor fellow. But he didn’t stir on his own. The shirt came off next, and they sighed to discover no great mortal gaping wound beneath. Still, by the time the doctor arrived, Alexandria wondered if he should have saved himself the trouble of hurrying.

Alexandria watched in anxious silence until the doctor straightened from his examination of his patient. The man now lay on the bed, where the doctor had helped to carry him.

“Well, one thing is certain, he’s a gentleman,” Dr. Pace finally pronounced. “That’s clear. Or at least he’s a wealthy man brought up as a gentleman, because he’s clean, barbered, and his nails and teeth are taken care of. His horse, his clothes, even his underlinen are of the finest. We should open the bag you found on his saddle and go through it to find out more, his name and whereabouts. In case he doesn’t waken,” he added.

Alexandria looked up sharply.

The doctor avoided her eyes as he closed his case. “It’s a possibility,” he said defensively.

Her brothers always said her accusing gaze could make a saint stammer. She let it speak for her.

“I’ve taken care of what I can see,” the doctor
protested. “The leg’s fractured. In two places. I’ve set it. Lucky he was out for that, it would have been a brute of a thing to do with him awake. There are cuts and bruises. I dressed them. I think most of the blood came from the horse, though. The lads said its side was grazed. Those shallow wounds bleed like the devil. Young Vin tells me he’s got it stopped now. I’ll see for myself before I leave. But as for this poor fellow? I can’t see any such wound on him. Still, he isn’t stirring.”

He saw Alexandria’s alarm and answered her unspoken question. “Why doesn’t he wake?” He sighed. “It could be temporary. It could be worse. Who knows what’s been damaged inside the head? I can’t see through bone so I can’t know the extent of it. And the horse may have rolled over on him. It may be that he bleeds internally. I don’t know. When—if—he wakes, he can tell me where it hurts.”

“And if he doesn’t wake?” she asked tersely.

He shrugged. “Then we must find his relatives and let them see to him.”

“I don’t like going through a man’s personal items,” Alexandria said uneasily. “It is an invasion of his privacy.”

“So is death,” the doctor said gruffly. “If he doesn’t regain his wits, he’ll die, whatever else his injuries.” He frowned at her expression. “An unconscious man can’t drink or eat, can he?” he asked rhetorically. “It would be a pity for a man to die among strangers.”

They both stared at the tall stranger lying in her bed. Silent and ashen, he lay back, his long nose pointed at the ceiling. He looked as though he were already dead, though more careful scrutiny showed his chest still rising and falling.

Alexandria nodded, and swallowed hard. “Help me look through his belongings, please.”

The boys had brought in the leather bag they’d found strapped to the unknown man’s saddle. Alexandria picked it up with unsteady hands, put it on a table by the window and stood back to watch the doctor unfasten it. He whistled in surprise as he peered inside.

“As I said, a wealthy gentleman, to be sure.” The doctor removed linens, handkerchiefs, two fine white neckcloths, and a pair of neatly folded clean shirts of the best design, and carefully laid them aside. He picked up a fat leather purse, drew open the strings, and his eyes widened. “Only a fool carries this much money with him,” he said with a scowl as he laid aside the purse. “A fool, or a deadly shot,” he added, as he gingerly slid a long pistol out from under a pair of hose.

“Or a criminal,” Alexandria said, shaking her head. “He also had a knife in his jacket.”

“
And
that small pistol inside the boot I had to slice off,” the doctor said thoughtfully. “And no name anywhere,” he said, shaking the last items out of the satchel. A set of silver razors, a small bottle of scent, a hairbrush, toothbrush, and a folding metal cup tumbled out onto the bed. There was an enameled snuffbox that contained some fine white powder. The doctor took a pinch and brought it to his nose. “For the headache, nothing more,” he said, pouring it back.

He scooped up the contents of the case and started putting them back where he’d found them.

“Nothing more than an initial on any of it.
D
. The same as on that fine ring he wears,” the doctor said, eyeing the bedside table and the ring they’d pried off
the stranger’s hand. “A sapphire, unless I miss my guess, set in onyx. Must have cost a pretty penny. Interesting design. Might tell us something, if he hasn’t stolen it. Might tell us something that way even so. I’ll take it with me and ask Vicar to have a look. The man’s a fiend for knowing rank and precedence,” he remarked absently, as he closed the case. “Always preaching the renunciation of worldly aims and goods, but he’s got a library of books on stately homes and such.”