Page 74 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
The warning struck her like a mental slap.
She stopped speaking and looked straight up.
A grinding scrape drew her gaze to the roof—to a stone gargoyle as it tipped, then tumbled and fell.
She screamed and grabbed Thomas, flinging them both to the side.
He’d followed her gaze. Seizing her in return, he added his much greater strength to throwing them both along the terrace.
They landed on the flagstones—or rather he did; she landed more or less cushioned in his arms.
She heard a dull crack—then a horrendouscrashdrowned out everything else.
Stone shattered and flew, shards lancing into their clothes, a thousand tiny pinpricks. She ducked and covered her head. Wrapped around her, Thomas jerked and grunted. A rock rolled against her shoe and halted.
Then fine dust spread, a cloud enveloping them, and silence fell.
She choked, coughed, then struggled up, pushing back Thomas’s shielding arm.
His arm slid away. He didn’t move.
She looked at his face.
And felt the blood drain from her own. “Oh, God.”
He was unconscious. He was injured somewhere.
For a second, panic clutched at her throat, then her healer’s training rose through her. She hauled in a deeper breath and dragged herself up to a sitting position. Then she gently touched his face. Slowly easing her hands and fingers around his skull, she closed her eyes and felt…
No break. No blood. Just one sizeable, already thickening lump above his left ear.
“God!”
“Miss!”
“Are you hurt?”
“Mr. Thomas!”
The exclamations came from multiple throats. The stablemen came rushing up, and other staff streamed from the front of the house.
She didn’t look up but continued her careful visual examination, scanning down Thomas’s body—to his left calf.
A large shard of splintered rock had embedded itself in the thick muscle.
“Miss?”
She glanced up as Sean crouched beside her.
He looked into her eyes. “Are you all right?”
She nodded and drew in another breath.
Mitch and Fred, hunkering beside Thomas, reached to turn him onto his back.
“No! Don’t move him. Not yet.” The sharpness of her tone had the desired effect; they all froze and looked at her. She nodded again, this time more determinedly, and reached for her usual brisk manner. “There’s a fragment of rock in his calf. See?” She pointed it out; it had been screened from Mitch’s and Fred’s view. “We need to take it out first. Moving him with it still in there risks jiggling it and doing more damage.”
From the fragment’s position, it might well have cut a major blood vessel; she wasn’t going to take any chances.
