Page 75 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
She’d worn a black silk scarf to the funeral. It still hung about her throat and shoulders—the perfect material from which to fashion a tourniquet. Drawing it off and starting to twist the long length between her hands, she explained to Sean, Mitch, and Fred—and Ferguson and several maids and footmen who came to join them—what they were going to do and why.
Mitch, Fred, and two of the footmen set to work clearing the shattered stone and the remains of the gargoyle, giving her, Sean, and Ferguson a clearer area in which to work.
While Ferguson and Sean cut away Thomas’s trouser leg and applied and tensioned the tourniquet under her direction, she confiscated the maids’ aprons, folded the material into a thick pad, then pressed the pad around the wound—and nodded to Sean to pull out the offending shard. He did and blood gushed, but she immediately pressed down and, using her weight, leaned on the wound. Thomas grunted and stirred, but then fell unconscious once more.
“Just as well,” she muttered. She looked at Sean and Ferguson. “Now we can move him—to his room and his bed.”
Despite her words, she didn’t like the fact that Thomas was still unconscious. But she hadn’t succeeded in finally taking him as her lover only to lose him—that wasn’t going to happen.
* * *
Thomas swam back to consciousness while they were laying him on his bed. Which seemed more than passingly strange. They were all there—Sean, Mitch, Fred, and Ferguson, and other members of the staff…
He tried to remember what had happened, why they were placing him fully clothed on his bed, but his head felt as if it were being used by someone as a drum while also being stuffed full of wool… Ordered thought eluded him.
They laid him down, so very carefully, on his back. His head sank into the pillows, and blinding pain erupted above his left ear. He sucked in a breath even as he registered that one lower leg of his trousers had vanished and there was something tied over his exposed calf—then Lucilla was there, leaning over him, offering him a glass, urging him to drink.
He was parched.
Sean helped raise him, and he drank long and deep.
As they eased him back onto the pillows, his eyes drifted closed, and he fell into a dreamless sleep.
* * *
When next he awoke, he’d regained full command of his wits. The pain in his head was still there, but had receded to a dull throbbing ache. Unfortunately, it had been joined by a more definite, more focused pain in his left calf. Eyes still closed, he sent his awareness searching; he decided that what he could feel in his leg was the pull of stitches. As for his head, he must have hit it on the terrace flags…
Memory flooded back.
He opened his eyes—and saw Manachan sitting in a chair beside the bed. Thomas scanned the room; no one else was there. He returned his gaze to his uncle’s face. “Lucilla?”
Manachan nodded, as if approving the question. “She escaped unharmed—oh, a few scratches and a bruise or two, maybe, not that she’s admitted to even that much.”
Thomas frowned. “Where is she?” She’d been there earlier, when they’d laid him on the bed; he remembered that much. And his leg had been stitched—her handiwork, no doubt. A glance at the windows beyond Manachan showed the fading light of late afternoon. It had been late morning when he and Lucilla had gone out on the terrace… He met Manachan’s eyes. “What happened?”
“You and Lucilla were walking on the terrace when someone pushed one of the gargoyles off the roof with the clear intention of killing you. You, her, or both of you—clearly they didn’t care which.” Manachan made the statement with no inflection, simply stating facts. “Ferguson and Edgar went up and checked—there’s no other explanation. A statute that heavy doesn’t shift a foot or more to fall on its own.”
When he simply lay there, staring unseeing past his uncle while taking all that in, and said nothing, Manachan added, “I heard about the adder, too.”
Thomas refocused on Manachan’s face, then sighed. “A man turned up in Lucilla’s room last night. She woke and saw him creeping toward the bed, a cushion in his hands. She screamed, and he fled. I saw his back at the end of the corridor, but I couldn’t tell who he was. He was wearing a cowled cloak, so she didn’t see his face, either.”
Manachan grunted and scowled. “That’s even worse.”
“I was trying to persuade her to leave—and not getting anywhere—when that damned statue fell.” Thomas gritted his teeth and pulled himself up to sit with the pillows at his back. Grimly, he stated, “After this, I’ll make sure she goes.” After a moment, still frowning, he glanced at Manachan. “In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t already sent her packing.”
Manachan studied him for a long moment—then, to Thomas’s disquiet, his uncle grinned. “You’ve come along nicely. I always knew you would. You’ve learned to think with your head, which is all well and good, and especially necessary for running a business or any other enterprise. But, my boy, you haven’t finished evolving yet.” Manachan wagged a stubby finger in gentle admonishment. “You need to learn to think with your heart as well as your head. That’s what connects us to others, to those we need to be closest to as well as to our communities, such as clan. Such as family. If you don’t learn to think with your heart, you might amass all the wealth in the world, but you won’t have anyone to share it with. You won’t have anyone to share your life with, and then what use will it be?”
Thomas was momentarily at sea, unsure how his uncle’s sudden lurch into philosophy connected with any of the topics they needed to discuss.
Yet with no more than a pause for breath, Manachan rolled on, “I want you to take Lucilla back to the Vale, and then I want you to turn north and head on back to Glasgow.”
Thomas blinked.
Before he could argue, Manachan continued, “You need to recuperate, and you can’t do that here.” Manachan’s blue eyes met Thomas’s, and there was no give in Manachan’s steely gaze. “You can’t remain on the estate because, for whatever reason—and clearly there is some very pertinent reason—someone here, someone in the clan, doesn’t want you—or Lucilla—around, and their antipathy toward the pair of you extends to the point of murder.”
Manachan paused. “I can’t have that.” His jaw firmed. “As Laird of the Carricks, I can’tallowthat.”
And suddenly Thomas was very aware that he was, indeed, facingTheCarrick. His uncle’s strength had returned in no small measure. Even while he rejoiced in that improvement and delighted in his own satisfaction that Lucilla had been able to restore Manachan to such a degree, he also recognized that dealing with a restored Manachan would be very much more difficult than dealing with a run-down Manachan had been.
