Page 24 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
Thomas seized the moment and quietly said, “About you coming to Carrick Manor—we can’t ask you to leave those in the Vale without your…services, not with your mother absent, too. I was thinking I should escort you back there, and perhaps tomorrow you could ride over.”And bring Marcus with you.Thomas was fairly certain her twin would act as an effective barrier to any contact between them. Especially as Marcus would be nursing a sore head, most likely in more ways than one.
Lucilla shifted her gaze from Manachan and the children to him. She met his gaze; her emerald eyes narrowed fractionally, then her chin firmed. “That won’t be necessary. Casphairn Manor is only an hour from Carrick Manor. If, as seems likely, I need to stay for a few nights, I’ll send a note to Marcus. If anyone in the Vale needs me, he’ll send for me, but we have no sickness there at present.” She glanced at Manachan, then met Thomas’s eyes again. “As I told your uncle, I have a duty toward those on the Carrick estate, too, so at this time, my path is clear, and it leads to Carrick Manor.”
There was nothing he could say to refute that, and given her focus on Manachan—despite the raging awareness she ignited in his blood, simply by standing close, bybeingthere—he wanted her to help his uncle.
Clan trumped personal considerations.
He repeated that like a mantra as, Manachan’s visit with the children concluded, he and Lucilla, with Sean’s help, got Manachan back into the curricle. Forrester and Sean had shrouded Joy Burns’s body in a canvas sheet, and strapped the wrapped body to the curricle’s boot.
Thomas saddled and fetched his, Joy’s, and Lucilla’s horses. With Joy’s and her saddlebags in her arms, Lucilla was waiting by the curricle when he led the horses around to the front of the farmhouse. Approaching, he steeled his senses against the contact necessary to lift her to her saddle—saw her gaze grow distant and realized she was doing the same thing.
Which made his life not one whit easier.
He released Phantom’s reins and tied Joy’s horse to the rear of the curricle. Accepting Joy’s saddlebag from Lucilla, he secured it to the saddle while she did the same with her own saddlebag, setting her horse prancing. He turned and steadied the black mare, then stepped to where Lucilla now waited—holding her breath.
He gripped her waist and lifted her. Felt again the suppleness of her slender form between his hands. He deposited her in her side-saddle, then had to force his fingers to ease, to let her go.
Inwardly cursing, he swung on his heel, grabbed Phantom’s reins, and swiftly mounted.
Sean was already turning the curricle. Nudging Phantom in the curricle’s wake, Thomas settled to ride alongside Lucilla.
All the way back to Carrick Manor.
Some part of him—the rational, logical part that knew spending time with her was inimical to the future he wanted—wondered how it had come, so inexorably, to this.
Another part of him, a part he normally kept well suppressed, didn’t care. Not in the least.
* * *
By the time their small cavalcade clopped into the manor’s stable yard, Thomas had managed to refocus his wayward brain. Nevertheless, he was relieved when Lucilla dismounted without assistance; she was an excellent horsewoman and rode with an easy grace that his senses had registered even though he’d striven to keep his eyes from her svelte form.
He had questions to which he needed answers; keeping the list firmly in the forefront of his brain, he handed Phantom’s reins to Mitch and went to help Sean assist Manachan from the curricle.
Meanwhile, Lucilla spoke quietly to Fred, directing his attention to the canvas-wrapped body at the rear of the curricle. The shock in Fred’s face was mirrored in Mitch’s as, with the horses tethered, Mitch returned to help with the unloading and realized just what the bundle was.
Sean remained stoic, but once Manachan was steady on the cobbles and Lucilla came to join them, Sean saluted and stepped back. “I’ll give the others a hand.”
Manachan briefly met Sean’s eyes, then nodded. One hand gripping Thomas’s arm, Manachan reached for Lucilla’s; she deftly caught his hand and wound his arm in hers, stepping closer to help steady him.
As they made their slow way to the house’s side door, Thomas reflected that, while Manachan was far larger and heavier than Lucilla, with her spine of steel, she seemed to have no difficulty steering him, and that in more ways than one.
They entered the house and slowly continued along the dimly lit corridor toward the front hall.
Sean, Mitch, and Fred had elected to bring Joy’s body in by the front door; Thomas, Manachan, and Lucilla reached the front hall in time to witness the shock and consternation that ensued when Ferguson, Mrs. Kennedy, and several footmen and maids—all of whom, for some reason, had already gathered in the front hall—learned of Joy Burns’s death.
“No!” Mrs. Kennedy, a stout matron who had faced any number of emergencies while barely batting an eye, looked as though she would faint.
The youngest maid smothered a small scream, then burst into tears. The two older maids patted her shoulders, but they, too, looked stricken and stunned.
The footmen were white-faced. Even Ferguson looked thoroughly shaken.
Everyone was staring, increasingly ashen and wide-eyed, at the bundle of Joy Burns’s body. No one had yet noticed Thomas, Manachan, and Lucilla emerging from the side corridor.
Thomas frowned. Before he could ask, Manachan raised his head and rumbled, “What’s going on?”
All the staff whirled.
All blinked, then all the others looked at Ferguson.
