Mary Balogh - One Night for Love

"If I am dreaming," he said, smiling at her, "don't tell me."

"Your fever broke two hours ago," she said. "You have been sleeping. But you are awake now. Are you hungry?"

"Thirsty," he said.

She was wearing only a thin shift, he could see when she got out of bed and crossed the room to pour him a glass of water. She held it while he sat up. It took him awhile to do so—he had refused her help. But she set a bank of pillows behind him after he had taken the glass. He leaned gingerly back against them after he had finished drinking.

"Civilian life makes one soft, Lily," he said. "If this had happened in the Peninsula, I would have been back on the battlefield by now."

"I know," she said.

He patted the bed beside him and took one of her hands in his when she sat down. "I suppose," he said, "no one was caught."

She shook her head.

"You must not fear," he told her—not that he could really imagine Lily cowering with prolonged terror. "It was one of those senseless and random acts of violence that always seem to happen to other people. He was some sort of madman, or else something had happened on that night to give him a grudge against the world and we happened to be there in his line of fire. It will not happen again."

"It has happened before," she said.

He did not for a moment misunderstand her. He felt himself turn cold. He had not, he realized, believed his own explanation—except that he had nothing to offer in its place. Why would anyone wish to shoot at either him or Lily?

"Someone has shot at you before?" It was too bizarre even to think about.

She shook her head. "Not shot," she said, and proceeded to tell him about the distant glimpse she had had on the rhododendron walk of a figure in a black cloak and the feeling she had had in the woods that she had spotted someone in a cloak again. She told him about the stone falling from the cliff as she had been scrambling on the rocks below. She told him about her near encounter with death in Hyde Park.

"Someone wants me dead," she said.

"Why?" He frowned. He wished he did not feel so damnably weak. He wished his brain was not working so sluggishly.

She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.

Someone wanted Lily dead and had almost got his wish on three separate occasions— once at Newbury .

He reached for her suddenly, hardly even noticing the screaming pain in his shoulder. He brought her down half across him and wrapped his arms about her, her head cradled on his left shoulder.

"No," he said, almost as if by his very will he could protect her, "it is not going to happen, Lily. I swear it is not. I failed once to save you. It will not happen again."

"You must forget about that ambush in Portugal," she said, her hand smoothing over the side of his face. "You saved my life at Vauxhall. The slate is wiped clean."

"No one is going to harm you," he said. "My word on it." Ridiculous word of a man who had not even known that her life had been threatened and almost lost on his own property.

She kissed the underside of his jaw. "You must rest again," she said, "or the fever will come back."

"Lie down with me, then," he said. "I do not want to let you out of my sight."

She came around the bed and lay down beside him beneath the covers. "Rest," she said. "I should not have said anything until you were strong again."

He took her hand in his and turned his head to look at her. "Let me make love to you?"

She hesitated, but she shook her head. "No," she said. "Not yet, Neville. It is not the right time."

She was calling him Neville again, he noticed. And although she had said no, she had added not yet . He closed his eyes and smiled. Where the devil would he have found the energy if she had said yes?

"Besides," she said, "you are still too weak."

"Grrr," he said without opening his eyes.

She laughed softly.

She must have used up a great deal of energy nursing him. And for all her calm manner, she must have been exhausted by anxiety. She was fast asleep within minutes.

Neville lay beside her, staring upward. Someone wanted Lily dead. It made no sense. Why? What possible motive could anyone have? Who could possibly have any reason to resent her? Try as he would, he could think only of Lauren or Gwen. And the sort of resentment either of them might feel was certainly not the stuff from which murder came. Besides, they were far away, Gwen at Newbury, Lauren at her grandfather's. She had decided to go there quite on the spur of the moment soon after his departure for London, his mother had written, but had refused company for the journey.

Who else?

There was no one else.

What did Lily have that anyone could want, then? Lily had nothing. Her locket was the only thing of any value that she possessed, and no one would want to kill her for the sake of a gold locket when almost every mansion in Mayfair must be loaded down with far costlier jewels. Besides, until the evening of Vauxhall, she had not worn the locket since the Peninsula. There might have been money for her in Doyle's pack, but it would not have been a sum for which to kill. Besides, whatever it was had been burned.

His mind for some reason stuck on that idea. Perhaps because there were no other ideas.

Was it likely that Bessie Doyle would have burned the contents of that pack without sifting through them first? If there had been anything of value, would she not have kept it? Had she kept something apart from the bag itself? She seemed a woman of open enough honesty, though. He had not been given the impression that she was hiding anything—he still did not believe it.

She had been away from home when the pack arrived. Presumably her husband had received it. He had died in an accident before she returned home, leaving the pack and its contents spilled all over the floor in one corner of the cottage.

Almost as if he— or someone else —had been searching for something.

Without understanding the reason, Neville felt chilled and uneasy.

Sergeant Doyle had been trying to tell him something before his death. Something he ought to have told Lily and someone else. Something about the pack he had left back at the base. He had repeatedly told Lily that there was something inside it for her. Was it possible that William Doyle had found whatever it was?

And had been killed as a result?

But there was no way now of discovering the answers.

This was ridiculous, Neville thought impatiently. He would be writing Gothic novels before he was finished. But then the idea of three attempts being made on Lily's life was ridiculous too.

And then a memory popped into his head as if from nowhere—a detail he had not paid much attention to at the time. A letter had come, Bessie Doyle had told him, informing them of Sergeant Doyle's death. And William, who could not read, had taken the letter to the vicar to read to him. If the pack itself had contained a letter or a package with some writing, would he have taken that too to the vicar ?

This was ridiculous stuff, Neville thought again.

Someone wanted Lily dead. Nothing was more senseless than that. But somehow, somewhere, there must be a reason for it.

He knew then what he was going to have to do.

He closed his hand more protectively about Lily's.

He was going to save her. If it cost him his life, if it cost him her , he would save her from terror and death. He would not stop looking until he found and destroyed whatever—or whoever —was threatening her.

Chapter 23