“My friends. They were supposed to find me here with...” She paused and looked meaningfully at the window where Mercy had been only moments before. “Nicholas.”
Mercy gritted her teeth. The sound of his name coming from this woman’s lips made her want to tear them off.
Instead, she took a deep breath and turned away from Lady Plymton, then tore open the door. “What is—” She broke off mid-sentence. Penelope had been sitting on the floor with her back and shoulders against the door. She fell into the room with a small yelp, only just catching herself with her hands before her head hit the ground.
Five people stood behind Penelope. They ignored her and Mercy, a few of them stepping over and around Penelope to get inside the library. They narrowed their eyes in the dim light, looking for something.
Looking for someone. But Nicholas was gone, and finding Lady Plymton and Mercy together in the library was hardly thescandal they’d hoped to witness.
One more figure, taller and marching like a soldier, joined the last few people still in the corridor. “The woman is ill. Everyone, please back away.” The deep tones of Nicholas’s baritone voice broke something inside Mercy. Their eyes met, and his were unrecognizable. Gone were the subtle hues and softness of the forest. The trees had caught fire, burned to black and blazing with such scalding heat she had to shrink away from them.
But Nicholas didn’t wince or step away from her. He took action. He pushed one of the men aside and grabbed his shoulder. “Go fetch Lord Yolten. This is his wife.”
The man, struck by that same scorching heat in Nicholas’s eyes, nodded and dashed off. Nicholas scooped up Penelope, one arm under her neck and the other beneath her knees, and strode into the library. He reached the sofa where Lady Plymton sat. “Move,” he said in a commanding tone that could only have been learned during his time in the army.
Lady Plymton wrinkled her nose but stood.
Nicholas laid Penelope on the sofa and strode back to the door. “Give this woman her privacy. I do not want anyone but her husband to enter this room. Do you understand?” Lady Plympton’s friends nodded in unison, those that had pushed their way into the library shuffled back out of it, and then Nicholas shut the door.
Mercy ran to Penelope’s side. Was she truly injured? Had the people on the other side of the door wanted in so badly they’d done something to her? Mercy grabbed both her hands, and one of Penelope’s eyes cracked open. She glanced quickly at Nicholas, lifted both of her eyebrows, gave him a quick whooshing breath of appreciation, and closed her eyes again.
Mercy slid her jaw to one side. Penelope was most definitely unharmed.
But it looked like she might need a week of convalescenceto recover from being carried by Nicholas. Apparently being married to the love of her life hadn’t left her without an appreciation for men with broad shoulders and an overactive sense of duty and honor.
Nicholas paced in front of the door. “The three of you will explain exactly what is going on here.”
“I don’t need to explain anything,” Lady Plymton said. “I was simply hoping to reconnect with you tonight, and instead, you had to go dashing out the window.”
That was why the window was unlocked and how he had returned to the library from the outside. He hadn’t needed her help, after all. Nicholas could have avoided scandal on his own. Of course he could have. He’d probably been dodging scheming women for most of his adult life.
“If that were the case, how did that note make it into my pocket? I hadn’t been anywhere near you before it arrived.” He turned to Mercy. She swallowed and tried to make herself look smaller. “How did you know to come to the library?” His commanding air dropped the smallest of fractions. His eyes raked over her. “Was it your note? Were you coming here to meet me?”
Mercy lowered her head. “No.”
He stiffened. “But you knew about it.”
She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t watch the moment he learned what type of woman he had been courting. “Yes.”
“And you didn’t try to warn me?”
She didn’t answer. As soon as she had learned about it, she had done exactly that. But itwasher fault the note had made it into his pocket in the first place.
“You didn’t just know about it, did you? Did you put that note in my pocket while we were in the drawing room?”
Mercy’s eyes flashed up to his. He was going to despise her after the events of this ball, but even she had a limit to what shecould live with him thinking of her. “No. Of course not.”
He narrowed one eye. “So it was Lady Yolten, but she would have no reason to want me alone with Lady Plymton. Which means the two of you planned this together, and Lady Plymton was only too happy to comply.”
Mercy couldn’t answer him, but she couldn’t hold his gaze any longer either, and apparently when she dropped her eyes, that was answer enough.
“Why would you do this?” His voice was hard but hoarse.
Mercy opened her mouth, but there was nothing she could say to excuse herself, not one thing she could say.
Lady Plymton scoffed. “The fool didn’t want to marry you.”
Nicholas shot Lady Plymton another one of his looks of fire, and she dropped her eyes as well.
