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“It wasn’t nothing!” The maid scurried around the curricle. “It was a man. He climbed onto the carriage and grabbed Lady Hartford.” The maid paused, gave a quick dip, and added, “my lord.”
“A man?” The blood in his veins may well have turned to ice. “What man?”
Ivy looked at the ground.
“Ivy?” he prompted. “Who grabbed you?” He drew in a breath when he saw the little tremor travel through her shoulders.
In a delicate pink spencer and matching dress, she was so small and perfect. So pretty and untouchable. He wanted to snatch her to him and feel every inch to ensure she was well.
Instead, he forced himself to speak more softly. “What happened, Ivy?”
“Perhaps my mistress should go inside,” Muriel suggested.
Cillian gave a curt nod. He didn’t much want Ivy outside anyway, not if Marshall was around. The estate was too vast and his staff too few for them to keep an eye out for the bastard. The thought he could be watching them now made the hairs on Cillian’s neck stand on end.
He took Ivy’s hand and led her into his saloon. It wasn’t as pretty or elegant as her room, but the darker walls and older furnishings offered a warm, safe embrace from the world. Or perhaps that was just how he felt since they’d spent the night watching over the hedgehog.
Or perhaps he was getting soft in his old age, he thought with a wry smile.
“Sit,” he ordered, somehow keeping the tension from his voice. If Marshall had touched her, he wanted to kill him. He needed to hunt the man down and make him pay. Ivy’s hands trembled as she sat in a leather armchair far too big for her and fished through her skirts to produce two knitting needles and a ball of yarn.
He frowned. “How do you—” He shook his head. How she secreted those things upon her person was not important right now. “What happened?”
“There was something in the road.” She chewed on her bottom lip for a few moments while her fingers worked quickly with the knitting needles. “Muriel said it was just a tarpaulin in the end.”
“A tarpaulin?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“So we stopped, and Muriel went to see what it was, but it was just a tarpaulin.”
“I think we established that.”
“And then the man jumped into the curricle, and he wouldn’t let me leave and he grabbed me.” She lifted her arm slightly and Cillian imagined he could see the impression of Marshall’s fingerprints on her coat.
He flexed his hands at his side. “What did he do?”
Her fingers slowed and her gaze lifted cautiously to his. “He said you are a terrible man and that you killed someone.”
The look in her eyes slammed him in the gut. She believed Marshall. She had to. Everyone else did. Why would they not? Marshall had always been charming and handsome and well-liked. Who would believe a scarred man with a very real history of blood on his hands over that man?
“What else did he say?”
“That was it. Muriel grabbed him by his hair, and I shoved him to the ground.”
She said it so matter-of-factly, as though they had just enjoyed hot buttered crumpets in the park together rather than conquered a dangerous man.
Not long ago Cillian wouldn’t believe this woman capable of shoving a man to the ground, but he’d seen her diligence and determination in the running of the house and looking after her animals. Ivy might not be bold or confident, but she had a strength no one could deny once they recognized it.
“So he didn’t hurt you?”
“He pinched my arm a bit.”
Cillian hissed out a breath and dropped onto his haunches in front of her to snare her attention. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Ivy. It’s my fault.”
“Because you killed someone?”
