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Rhys led the way through the drawing room, his eyes on Helen. A heavy curl had come down from its pins to fall over her shoulder. Threads of gold and amber caught the firelight to guide him through the smoke. He nearly laughed at the notion of her hair as a beacon, but the situation was too grave for levity.
He finally reached her side and, taking her hand, he led them through the house. Once or twice, he paused to recall the villa’s winding corridors. His brain must have been fogged with smoke because it took him longer than it should have to reach the entrance.
When they finally emerged onto the lawn, Rhys stopped and clasped Helen to him, assuring himself she was unharmed and uncaring who witnessed their embrace. This was not a night for honoring the proprieties. She was of the same mind, and she gripped him tightly, fisting his coat in her small hands as she held fast to him.
They were safe.
The fire burned hotly at his back while the cool night air bathed them. Her hair smelled of smoke rather than night jasmine, and Rhys’s jaw tightened to think of all the ways he might have lost her.
“You’re safe,” she said, echoing his own thoughts. “When you jumped in front of Sir Rupert, I thought—” Her words caught, and she started again. “I only wish I’d given him more laudanum.”
Rhys pressed her to him more firmly.
“The guards have all fled,” Tyndale informed them. Akeem came next with Sir Rupert, who’d finally succumbed to Helen’s dose to be half-carried, half-dragged down the villa’s steps by his former henchman. When the pair reached the lawn, Akeem dropped the man to the ground without ceremony and turned back to the house.
“You can’t go back inside,” Tyndale urged, staying him with a hand on his sleeve. “It’s too dangerous.” No sooner had he spoken than the south wing collapsed in a tremendous shower of sparks, ash and fire. The sound of it must have been deafening, but Rhys only heard his own pulse beating in his ears.
He lowered himself to the ground and landed somewhat more heavily than he’d intended. Dimly, he thought he must have caught fire as well, as heat seared his side.
Helen bent over him, and her loose curl tumbled forward to land on his chest. He wondered how soft it would be if only he could lift his hand to touch it. She pulled his coat aside, her brow puckering. Her lips moved, and he frowned in confusion because he thought she might have said, “You’re a flowerpot.”
Or, quite possibly, “You’ve been shot.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THREE DAYS LATER
Rhys swallowed, but it felt like his throat had been filled with sand. He tried again.
“You’re awake,” a soft voice said to his left. He tried to open his eyes, but someone had glued them shut. “Would you like tea?”
“Or broth?” Another voice, this one to his right.
“I think tea would be better for a man in his condition.”
His condition?What condition would that be? He tried to wiggle his fingers and toes, just to assure himself that he could. Satisfied with the success of that endeavor, he thought perhaps a bit more sleep might be in order.
“Rhys has always enjoyed tea when he’s feeling peaky.”
“I think getting oneself shot earns a better adjective than ‘peaky.’” That voice… so prim and proper, not unlike that of a schoolteacher. Or a governess. Did she say he’d been shot?
He forced his eyes open and when they focused, he saw bed curtains above him. A face appeared on his right to block the blue silk. Fiona.
Another face appeared on his left. Helen. His ladies were safe. He smiled and closed his eyes.
——
“I’ll speak with Mr. Shepheard about sending up a man to shave him. I’m certain Rhys would be appalled to see how his whiskers have grown.”
“I don’t think he would mind so much,” Helen said, recalling the shadow of Rhys’s whiskers as they’d traveled through the delta. “They lend him a bit of dash.”
“Hmm… He’s been asleep a long time. I wonder if we should wake him,” Fiona said.
Helen eyed Rhys’s sister, who could be a bit of an opinionated termagant. She frowned and said, “I do not think we should wake him. I’m certain he needs his rest.”
Fiona ignored her opinion to whisper, quite loudly, “Rhys.”
His lashes fluttered on his cheeks, and he opened his eyes. They were clear and silvery and much more focused than they’d been the previous day. A smile tipped his lips as he eyed them, and Helen wondered how long, precisely, he’d been awake.
