Chapter Twenty-Six
In the depthsof darkness, sound made itself known. Firstly jumbled voices, odd words joined together as though at random but making no sense. After an eternity, these words unscrambled to form sentences, but she still couldn’t understand them because her head was pounding so hard. So she lay there, inert in the darkness, listening until the sentences began to make sense and her headache began to lessen.
“She should start to come to herself shortly.” A man’s voice. One she should know. One she loved the sound of.
“I should have stopped her from going, only she didn’t tell me what she were going to do, nor that she were coming here.” Dear Betsey’s familiar voice, one she could never mistake. She must be at Rampton Farm. But for the life of her she couldn’t remember how she could have got into the situation she now found herself in—lying in the dark just listening. Very odd.
Perhaps she should try opening her eyes. Someone appeared to have glued them shut. It took an immense effort to lift just one of them a crack, and when she did, bright light spilled in, determined to blind her. She shut it again in a hurry.
Someone took hold of her hand. “Miranda?” The man again. The man whose name she should know because it was the most important name in the world. A gentle voice. A soothing voice. She should recognize it but couldn’t scrape up who he was from her memory,so she gave up trying. She only knew that she loved the owner of that voice.
“Miranda?”
She edged her eyes open again and this time the light wasn’t so dazzling because someone was sitting between it and her and she could see a dim silhouette of his head and shoulders. She blinked and the image swam into focus.
Harry. He was Harry. Tears squeezed out to run down her cheeks. And he was not shot.
He was gazing down at her, his brow furrowed in concern. He was the one holding her hand.
Harry. Dear, sweet Harry. The man who’d come to save her.
She tried to wet her dry lips with no success. Her mouth felt as though she’d drunk nothing for weeks, parched as a desert.
He put a sponge to her lips and she sucked at the water it contained.
That felt a little better.
The room behind him came into focus. It was alarmingly pink. Where on earth was she? All the bedrooms at the farmhouse were painted white, and none at the Hall had ever been such a dazzling shade of pink.
He must have wetted the sponge again because it was back at her lips. Cool water trickled into her mouth and she swallowed.
“Where am I?” Despite the water the words came out as though she were an old frog down by the pond at the bottom of the Hall gardens, creaky as an un-oiled door trying to open.
“You’re safe now,” Harry said, smiling down at her. Were those tears in the corners of his eyes to match her own. “You’re quite safe.”
“Where?” She couldn’t quite manage the other two words again.
Betsey’s familiar face appeared just behind Harry’s. “You’re still at Thornby Grange, my love. But you’re safe. Your Harry made sure of that. That madman won’t be hurting anyone ever again.”
Betsey had called him Harry. She’d never done that before. It had always been “Sir Henry” every time she referred to him, which had not been often. Was this the seal of approval? She swallowed a little more water. “How long?”
Harry was stroking her hand. “Only a day. It’s after midday on the day after he kidnapped you.”
A day? Wasn’t there something wildly important that she must have missed? Hadn’t she come to Thornby to prevent it happening? But Harry was here, as safe as she was, so what had happened? She would have pushed herself up on the pillows but Betsey’s firm hand held her down. “The duel?” she managed.
“Never happened,” Harry said. “Sir Julian’s under lock and key. Has been since yesterday. For trying to kill me and shooting you instead.”
She couldn’t deny the relief that came flooding over her, not just that the duel she’d set out to prevent hadn’t happened, but also that Sir Julian was locked up. Nodding only made her head hurt more, so she closed her eyes for a moment.
She felt Harry lifting her head and a few drops of something bitter slipped into her mouth. She made to spit but Harry stopped her.
“You need to rest,” he whispered. “I’ve given you a little laudanum to help the pain, and I’ll sit with you while you sleep. You won’t be alone. When you next waken, you’ll be much restored. The bullet did you very little damage thanks to your robust stays. Thank God for women’s upholstery is all I can say. Sleep now. And remember you’re safe.”
She lay back on the pillows, drowsy with the drug he’d given her and allowed herself to drift away into a deep and dreamless sleep.
As the echoesof the gunshot had died away, Harry had clasped Miranda’s inert body to his chest, for a moment too shocked to react. She’d done it so quickly. As Sir Julian pulled the trigger on his pistol,she’d stepped in front of him. Everything had happened so fast. He’d had too little time to push her aside, too little time for either of them to avoid the shot from only ten feet away. And she’d gone down into his arms, unconscious and bleeding. Was she dead?
He spared the briefest of horrified glances for Sir Julian, who’d dropped the pistol and was standing, still in the bedroom doorway, staring with eyes so bulging there could be no doubt of his insanity.
