Page 70 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
What he felt was…a curious hiatus. As if he were living in a different world, on a different plane, in some other, alternate reality to that of his life in Glasgow.
As if this life with her and that one did not connect, did not touch, did not impinge on each other.
Stay and be my protector until dawn.
Here. With me. In this bed.
That isn’t a request.
This—you and me like this—is as things should be. Life for us as it needs to be.
It is what it is, and I’m content with that.
All words she’d said, and every one had held the ring of truth. For all her inexperience, she seemed to see this—whatever it was that had grown and then flared so powerfully between them—more clearly than he did.
Given that, given the unwavering self-assurance he could feel radiating from her with respect to him, her, and them together, he was fast coming to the conclusion that, for however long their liaison lasted, his best way forward might well be to follow her lead.
The thought brought him up short, made him mentally blink.
For the last twenty years, ever since his parents had been taken from him, he hadn’t followed anyone else’s lead, had allowed no one to arrange his life for him. He’d followed his guardians’ advice not because they were his guardians but because that advice had furthered his own self-determined ambitions.
Yet now, even though he stood at a pivotal point in his wider life, he was contemplating—more, advocating—following Lucilla’s lead.
He turned his head and looked at her. Studied her face as she spoke to Niniver, and wondered what spell she’d worked on him.
Sensing his gaze, she glanced at him. She searched his eyes, then faintly arched a brow.
Suppressing a frown—he could detect no sign that she was intent on bending him to her will, nor could he see any reason why she should be—he shook his head slightly.
“So…” Niniver was frowning down at her hands and had missed their exchange. “When will you start the next stage of Papa’s treatment?”
Looking across the table, Lucilla replied, “Assuming I examine him before we leave for the church, then when we return after the funeral, Alice and I will make up a restorative—something he can continue to take that will build on the improvement I hope he’ll have experienced overnight.”
She placed her napkin beside her plate and glanced at Thomas as she pushed back from the table. “Which reminds me that I should check with Alice in the still room.”
Thomas rose and drew back her chair. She met his eyes and smiled—a private smile between them.
He held her gaze. He hesitated, but then nodded. “Have them fetch me when Manachan calls for you. I’m sure he will before getting ready for the funeral.” His lips twisted wryly. “Either he will, or Edgar will remind him.”
She smiled and inclined her head. “Indeed.”
Entirely satisfied with how matters were progressing on all counts, with a nod to Niniver, she left the room.
* * *
Thomas quit the dining room shortly after Lucilla. He resisted the urge to reassure himself that she was safe in the still room; at his suggestion, Ferguson had stationed a footman in the lower passageway within sight of the still room door, with orders to go in and sit inside once Lucilla arrived.
While she remained on Carrick lands, until they solved the mystery of whatever was going on, and until he understood who had come to her room last night and why, she would be watched over.
Going out of the front door, he circled the house to the side terrace, where he could be assured of privacy while he paced.
Lucilla seemed to have shrugged off last night’s attack—if it had been an attack. He’d got the impression that, as in the end nothing had happened—and indeed, the incident had given her the opportunity to indulge in an activity she’d clearly wished to embrace—in her view all was… How had she put it?It is what it is, and I’m content with that.Although she’d been speaking of what lay between them, the same words seemed an accurate reflection of her attitude to the man who had crept up on her while she’d slept, a cushion clutched in his hands.
Thomas felt his face harden. It had to be comforting to have such faith and belief in fate, for want of a better term, but he was much less sanguine. He remained deeply unsettled by the incident. And, even more, by how it might connect with all the other odd things that had been, and apparently still were, going on.
Yet as he’d told her, the man could have been any clansman; everyone knew the manor doors were never locked, and most knew the layout of the house well enough to look for her in that particular wing.
But had the man actually intended to harm her —or had he come hoping to speak with her, perhaps to warn her, but he hadn’t wanted her to wake and scream?
