His heart didn’t cease its frantic pounding until Caroline was lying on a puce brocade settee in the drawing room, a pale blue knitted blanket pulled over her.
“Tell me again you have no pain in your belly.”
“No, North, just in my head.”
“All right. Tregeagle has gone to fetch Dr. Treath. He’ll be here very soon now. Here, drink this tea Polgrain made for you. Alice, I swear to you she’s all right. Please don’t worry. You sit down and drink a cup of tea yourself. Duchess, please see that Alice sits down and drinks.”
Dr. Treath and Bess Treath arrived just as the clock was painfully grinding out its four afternoon strokes, sounding like a king with an awful sore throat bellowing at his subjects.
Dr. Treath smiled at her even as she knew he was studying her, then pulled over a chair and sat down. “Now, let me see this lump on your head.” His fingers were gentle, probing very lightly, feeling the outline of the bump that was rising. Then he sat back and just looked at her.
“Hold still now,” he said, slipped his hands beneath the cover and her clothes. Caroline tensed up, she couldn’t help it. North took her hand and held it.
“Do you need anything, Benjie?” Bess Treath said.
He didn’t immediately answer.
“Benjie?”
“What? Oh no, Bess. She’s all right.” He smiled down at Caroline. “I do want you to rest, no strenuous exercise. If you have any bleeding, any cramping at all, you send for me. Tregeagle thought it was a rabbit hole?”
“Yes,” the Duchess said.
When at last the Treaths had left, and Alice was finally convinced Caroline wasn’t going to die and had retired to her room to nap, the Duchess cleared her throat and said, “Please close the door, Marcus.”
He cocked his head at her, but did as she asked.
“What is it, Duchess?” North said.
It was Caroline who answered. “It wasn’t a rabbit hole like we’d first thought.”
“No,” the Duchess continued. “It was a wire stretched taut between an oak tree and the stone fence. It’s narrow in that stretch. I didn’t want to tell anyone, best keep it amongst ourselves for now.”
“She rides that way most every day,” North said, and felt pain and fury knot his guts.
“Which means,” the earl said, “that the wire was meant for her, no one else. But you were with her, Duchess. How did you miss that wire?”
“Caroline was riding a bit in front of me there, since it is so narrow. When she went over I immediately pulled up my horse. I tripped over the wire when I was running to her, though, and landed flat on my nose.”
“Then,” the earl said slowly, “both of you could have been hurt. Damnation, North, I don’t like this at all.”
North was remembering when both the earl and the Duchess had been shot, the fear, the utter rage he’d felt, that he’d seen in Marcus’s eyes. He shook his head. He remembered telling Marcus that he had to stay calm, rage wouldn’t help his wife. He wondered if Marcus would tell him the same thing now. He drew a deep breath.
“I have spent four months now with death and mystery and tragedy sitting on my right shoulder, never far from my thoughts or my mind. I hadn’t been home two weeks before I found Caroline’s aunt, dead on that ledge beneath St. Agnes Head. I couldn’t find out who’d killed her. Then that poor woman, Nora Pelforth, and I’ve been unsuccessful there as well. Then Coombe disappears and there’s the bloody knife in his room. All of it is madness. It must be aimed at me, it must. I simply can’t figure out who’s doing it and why. I can’t figure out who would hate me so much.”
Caroline said, even as she lifted herself onto her elbows, “You’re forgetting about Elizabeth Godolphin, who was killed three years ago, North. You weren’t here then. No, you’re wrong about this.”
North cursed rather fluently, then said abruptly, “Then it must be revenge against my father or my grandfather. Marcus, I want you and the Duchess to leave. The thought that the Duchess could have been hurt again curdles my blood. Yes, I want you gone tomorrow.”
“No,” the Duchess said slowly, “I don’t think so, North.”
Tregeagle cleared his throat from the doorway. “My lord.”
“Yes, dammit, what is it, Tregeagle?”
“It’s the Young Person, Alice, my lord. She informs Miss Mary Patricia, who rightfully informs me since I wouldn’t allow her to come in here and disturb you, that Alice believes her time has arrived.”
“Oh no,” Caroline said, struggling to get to her feet. “The babe is too early. He was getting really big, but it’s too early. Oh no, North.”