Amanda Scott(8)

Chapter 2

You, there! What are you doing in here?”

The woman’s imperious tones seemed to come from far away, but Sibylla felt an immediate quickening of guilt. Was she not at Sweethope Hill House, where she ought to be? To be sure, she had no memory of arriving, but—

“You have no business in this chamber, girl,” the authoritative voice went on. “Begone, and do not let me catch you here again, or”—Sibylla struggled to collect her wits—“it will be the worse for you.”

“I told her she could stay.”

That deep, masculine voice was not distant but very clear, very firm. Nevertheless, it certainly ought not to be in Sibylla’s bedchamber.

Her eyes flew open.

She was lying on her side in a cupboard bed, and the first thing she saw was the waiflike child standing beside it, her thin hands clutching each other at her narrow waist. Now that she was dry, one could see that her hair was short, softly curly, and very fair. Her face was pinched and drawn, her pale blue eyes wide.

Following the child’s gaze to an unfamiliar doorway,

Sibylla saw Simon Murray of Elishaw, watching her. A fashionably attired woman with a long, horsey face bridled like an irritated mare beside him.

Sibylla thought vaguely that she ought to recognize that face and the English lilt in the woman’s voice. Where had she—?

Abruptly, she realized the woman was Simon’s mother, Lady Murray.

The villain had not taken her to Sweethope Hill House. Instead, he had ridden a greater distance with her, to Elishaw Castle, his home.

Her ladyship stood stiffly, cheeks afire, but controlled herself enough to say, “You do not know this child, sir. It could be diseased.”

A movement from the child drew Sibylla’s gaze. Indignation had turned the wraithlike little figure almost as stiff as her reluctant hostess.

“Shhh,” Sibylla murmured.

“Ye’re awake!” the child exclaimed. “Praise be, for I feared ye were—”

“I told you she was just sleeping, Kit,” Simon said, snapping Sibylla’s gaze back to him. He had spoken so gently that she would not have believed it was his voice had she not looked in time to see his lips still moving.

“I am at Elishaw, am I not?” she asked him, astonished to hear the feeble croak of her voice and feel its roughness. Her throat was sore.

“I thought it best,” he answered coolly, as if that were that.

“Oh, but I must—” As she started to sit up, pain sliced through her head, inside and out, making her shut her eyes.

She reached to find a lump on her forehead as she continued trying to sit. But in the brief time she’d had her eyes shut he had closed the distance from doorway to bed. Putting a firm hand on her shoulder, he pressed her back to the pillows.

“Lie still,” he commanded. “I have sent for our local herb woman to provide something to ease your pain. You’ve taken a hard knock to your head.”

“That log . . . no, a branch clouted me as I was trying to keep the river from impaling us on another. Faith, I scarcely remember! How long was I unconscious?”

“Just a short time,” he said in that maddeningly cool tone, as if what had happened had been quite ordinary. “You stirred shortly after you fainted, and—”

“I never faint,” she replied, firmly suppressing the discomfiting memory of coming to in his arms. “Doubtless, I suffered a delayed reaction from the blow.”

She was thinking with gratitude that her voice sounded stronger, more like her own, when his sharp gaze locked with hers. As she gazed back, her confidence faltered. His hand still touched her shoulder, and she was vaguely aware of its warmth there, but she seemed to lack strength enough to speak or look away.

She had known his eyes were dark and had thought them merely dark brown. They were not. They were a deep, almost fathomless green and strangely hypnotic.

She often felt as if she could look into a person’s eyes and know his mind, but one would never see deeply enough into Simon Murray to see anything but green.

As faintly as when she was first awakening, as if the sound came from a great distance, she heard Lady Murray say, “Simon.”

He glanced at his mother, straightening as he did, and broke the spell. For spell it must certainly have been, Sibylla thought, to have rendered her speechless.

Speechlessness was not one of her normal characteristics.

Though he had taken his hand away, her bare shoulder still felt warm where he had touched it. Bare! She tugged the coverlet higher.

That brief glance was the only response he made to his mother before he looked back to say, “It may be rare for you to faint, but you did. You stirred shortly thereafter, murmured something unintelligible, and then you slept.”