Good girls don't go snooping where they don't belong.
But Lady Delia Scarborough never claimed to be a good girl.
Lady Delia Scarborough wants her sister back from the grave.
Since that can't happen, she'll settle for the next best thing...
Making...
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Delia felt as if she had been awake for months. In truth, however, she was only missing two nights' worth of sleep, and it wasn't as if she had anyone to blame but herself.
"You can go to bed if you like. I will watch over her. The doctor said she would be fine." Kieran's words were curt, hard enough to strike flint.
Ever since Alice had woken up, there was a distance between them again, something that was somehow worse than their first fight. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but it was a barbed kind of silence, something watching and waiting.
She could hear Kieran trying to bring some dark beast inside him under control, but perversely, she could not let it be either.
"I'll sit with you. Two pairs of eyes are better than one, and if one of us falls asleep, the other will have the watch."
"I am not going to fall asleep." Kieran hesitated. "But thank you."
The two of them sat by Alice's bedside, one on either side of the little girl. The doctor had been and gone, leaving behind some drops for her splitting headache but saying that she did not require so much as a stitch for the gash.
"Truly, she will be worn out. If she turns away food that she enjoys or if she complains of an unbearable pain, send for me again, but most likely, she will only need time and quiet to heal."
Kieran had frowned at that, but Delia was inclined to trust the man. She and Lissa had picked up their share of childhood bumps and contusions, and in the end, rest was the best healer that could be found.
Time passed in a kind of haze for the three of them, broken up only by Alice waking up and demanding food. She tried to play games, but she tired so quickly that it was hardly worth it to try. Instead, she slept, and on either side of her, Kieran and Delia watched.
Sometime on the second night, it occurred to Delia that she needed to go retrieve her bag from where she had stowed it in the back hall. It contained all of her fresh clothes, but it also contained the enameled snuffbox, and she needed it back in her possession.
How bizarre. In the middle of all of this, I had forgotten about it. I never thought that I could forget something like that.
"I am going to fetch some water and then I think I will take a nap. As long as you are all right here?"
Kieran shot her a look but only nodded, returning his gaze to Alice's face. Delia felt another pang for him. She knew he was still blaming himself, but in the end, the only thing that would fix that was time.
There was something almost frightening about Brixby Hall on a dark, stormy night. It turned all of the halls that she had come to know stark and strange, and they all seemed longer than she thought they should be.
To Delia's relief, she found her bag where she had left it, and she smiled a little.
I should have a word with Kieran about the servants in this hall. It was to my advantage, but really, in truth, they should not be letting strange bags go unnoticed.
With her bag in hand and with Kieran so distracted, she thought she should not have too many troubles sneaking it back into her room before he noticed it. For a moment, she was troubled by how she was taking pains to stay rather than to leave, but she dismissed them.
Well, I can hardly leave when Alice is doing so very poorly.
It was an excuse, and one that she would have to answer to sooner rather than later, but at the moment, all she needed to do was to get back to the nursery undiscovered.
It really is surprisingly creepy when the thunder and lightning are flashing.
She was just turning the corner when a flash of lightning illuminated a large man's form standing in front of her. For a moment, she could almost discern his features, but then he lifted up some kind of thick and stifling cloth bag and threw it over her head. As Delia shouted in surprise, a hand came down to cover her face through the bag, cutting off her airflow even as another arm came down and wrapped around her body.
Oh, my god, he's so strong!
Her first instinct was to freeze, but the idea of a man in a place that she had worked so hard to make safe for a little child freed her. She could not get the breath to scream or shout, but she flailed out with her hands and feet. She felt a vicious sort of satisfaction as she landed a kick on the man's shin, and he swore.
Suddenly, an image came back to her of the hall that they were in, how there was an old vase set on a pedestal in the corner. She could only be a few feet away from it, and in a desperate gamble, Delia went limp in the man's arms, making him loosen his grip for just an essential moment. He cursed, and she threw herself backward, not caring if she wound up on the floor.
Her grasping fingers found the mouth of the vase, and after that, it was only a small amount of pressure to topple it entirely. The old porcelain hit the polished marble floors with a deafening smash, and for a moment, her attacker froze. Then he cursed, dropped her, and as she was trying to get her breath back, his footsteps faded in the distance.
Just as she tore the bag from over her head, she saw light coming from either end of the hall, servants awakened from their slumber, and oh, thank goodness, there was Kieran, marching toward her like a general on campaign and straight behind him, amusingly enough, his valet, bearing a candelabra as if it were a club.
"Delia! What in the world has happened?"
Despite her frightening ordeal, Delia spared a moment to think what bad form it was to call a governess by her first name. It would surely set the gossips' tongues to wagging.
"A man attacked me! He put this... this bag over my head, I tipped the vase over..."
The valet went slightly pale, and he turned to Kieran. "My lord, there was a window open in the hall we just passed..."
Kieran swore and turned to the butler, who had appeared in a striped nightshirt but looked for all that ready to serve. "Send every footman out into the rain. If there are tracks, I want to find them. And send a groom for the doctor."
Delia started to protest that she was fine, but then Kieran scooped her up in his arms, and she looked down at her bloody hands blindly. She had cut her palms when the brute had dropped her among the sharp broken shards of the vase, and she was still bleeding.
"Kieran..."
"Shush. We will see you mended soon enough."
"I do not need—"
"Hush. Do not force me to be derelict in my duties twice in so short a span of time."
She could feel the rage and guilt radiating away from him, and with a soft sigh, she relaxed in his arms. Now that the excitement was over, a strange lassitude came over her, as if she was seeing everything through a thick pane of glass.
Can it really be him? The man who carries me so gently and who is so worried about me now, could he truly have seduced my sister and then abandoned her on the road to die?
