Secrets of a Summer Night
Page 100

When Annabelle finally came to herself, she blinked repeatedly to let the assuaging fluids spread across the stinging surface of her eyeballs. “Simon…?” she mumbled, struggling upward. She was gently subdued.
“Rest for another minute,” came a gravelly voice. “Your husband is fine. A bit battered and scorched, but definitely salvageable. I don’t even think his damned leg is broken.”
As full awareness seeped over her, she realized in sluggish amazement that she was half-sitting in Lord Westcliff’s lap, on the ground, with her gown partly undone. Glancing up into the earl’s harsh-planed face, she saw that his tanned complexion was streaked with black, and his hair was rumpled and filthy. The usually impeccable earl looked so sympathetic and disheveled and approachably human that she barely recognized him.
“Simon…” she whispered.
“He is being loaded into my carriage as we speak. Needless to say, he is rather impatient for you to join him. I am taking the both of you to Marsden Terrace— I’ve already sent for a doctor to meet us there.” Westcliff shifted her a little higher in his arms. “Why did you go in after him? You could have been a very wealthy widow.” The question was asked not with mockery, but with a gentle interest that confused her.
Rather than answer, Annabelle turned her attention to a bloody blotch on his shoulder. “Hold still,” she murmured, using her broken fingernails to grasp the end of a needle-thin metallic shard that protruded from his shirt. She tugged it out quickly, and Westcliff’s face twitched with pain.
Regarding the shard as she held it up for him to see, the earl shook his head ruefully. “God. I hadn’t noticed that.”
Enclosing the object in her fingers, Annabelle asked warily, “Why did you go in, my lord?”
“Having been informed that you had dashed into a burning building to fetch your husband, I thought to offer my services…perhaps open a door, clear an object from your path…that sort of thing.”
“You were rather helpful,” she said, deliberately matching his bland tone, and he grinned, his teeth white in his smoke-blackened face.
Carefully, Westcliff helped her to sit up. Keeping his arm behind her back, he closed the fastenings of her dress with a deft, impersonal touch, while he contemplated the full-bore devastation of the foundy. “Only two men perished, and one still unaccounted for,” he murmured. “Miraculous, considering the scope of the disaster.”
“Does this mean the end of the locomotive works?”
“No, I expect that we’ll rebuild as soon as possible.” The earl stared kindly into her exhausted face. “Later you might describe to me what happened. For now, allow me to take you to the carriage.”
Annabelle gasped a little as he stood and lifted her in his arms. “Oh—there’s no need—”
“It’s the least I can do.” Westcliff flashed another rare smile as he carried her with facile strength. “I have some amends to make, where you’re concerned.”
“You mean because you now believe that I actually care about Simon, instead of having just married him for his money?”
“Something like that. It seems I was mistaken about you, Mrs. Hunt. Please accept my humble apology.”
Suspecting that the earl was rarely given to making apologies of any kind, much less humble ones, Annabelle linked her arms around his neck. “I suppose I’ll have to,” she said grudgingly, “since you saved our lives.”
He shifted her more comfortably in his arms. “Shall we cry pax, then?”
“Pax,” she agreed, and coughed against his shoulder.
While the doctor visited Simon in the master bedroom of Marsden Terrace, Westcliff took Annabelle aside and personally tended to the wound in her upper arm. After tweezing out the metal chip that was half-buried in her skin, he doused the area with alcohol while Annabelle screeched in pain. He dabbed the cut with salve, bandaged it expertly, and gave her a glass of brandy to dull her discomfort. Whether he had added something to the brandy, or pure exhaustion had amplified its effects, Annabelle would never know. After downing two fingers of the dark amber liquid, she felt woozy and light-headed. Her voice was distinctly slurred as she told Westcliff that the world was fortunate that he hadn’t gone into the medical profession, which he gravely acknowledged was probably true. She staggered off drunkenly to find Simon, and was firmly dissuaded by the housekeeper and a pair of housemaids, who seemed intent on washing her. Before Annabelle quite knew what had happened, she had been bathed and changed into a nightgown purloined from Westcliff’s elderly mother’s closet and was lying in a soft, clean bed. As soon as she closed her eyes, she sank into a helpless slumber.
To Annabelle’s chagrin, she awoke quite late the next morning, struggling to gather where she was and what had happened. The moment her thoughts touched on Simon, she floundered out of bed, paying no heed to her handsome surroundings as she padded barefoot into the hall. She crossed the path of a house-maid, who looked mildly startled by the appearance of a woman with wild, unbound hair, a scratched and reddened face, and an ill-fitting nightgown…a woman, who, in spite of a thorough washing the night before, was still strongly scented of foundry smoke.
“Where is he?” Annabelle asked without prelude.
To the housemaid’s credit, she comprehended the abrupt query and directed Annabelle to the master bedroom at the end of the hall.
Coming to the open doorway, Annabelle saw Lord Westcliff standing by the side of the huge bed, where Simon was sitting up against a stack of pillows. Simon was bare-chested, his shoulders and torso swarthy against the snowy linens that had been pulled up to his midriff. Annabelle winced as she saw the profusion of plasters affixed to his arms and chest, having some idea of the discomfort that he must have endured in having so many metal pellets removed. The two men stopped talking as soon as they became aware of her presence.