“Go!”
He picked her up, placed her on her feet, and shoved her unceremoniously toward the door. “Go.”
And Emeline found herself outside Samuel’s room. She fled down the hall, her skirts dripping bloody water and her heart overflowing with pain.
Chapter Twelve
That night, when all was quiet in the castle, Iron Heart woke on the stroke of midnight. He felt a nameless fear, and leaving his marital bed and the princess asleep, he grasped his sword and went to find his baby son. When he reached the nursery, the guards were asleep outside the door. Quietly, he cracked the nursery door open, and what he saw inside froze the blood in his veins. For a giant wolf, its fangs glittering in the dark, stood over his son’s crib....
—from Iron Heart
Oddly, he’d slept well. That was Sam’s first thought the next morning. It was as if Lady Emeline had laid a balm not only on his feet, but also on his soul. Which was a strange thought. She’d laugh if she’d heard it; she was such a prickly little thing.
His second thought was that his feet throbbed with pain. He groaned and sat in the huge bed the Hasselthorpes had provided for him. The entire room—like the house itself—was magnificent. Red velvet curtains hung from the bed, the walls were paneled with dark carved wood, and a thick carpet lay on the expansive floor. The cabin he’d grown up in might almost fit in the bedroom. If this was what they’d given him, probably the least important of their guests, what had they given the others?
He grimaced. The thought left Sam disgruntled. He didn’t belong here in a house of velvet and antique wood. He was from the New World, where men were judged by what they achieved in their own lifetimes, not by what their ancestors had gained. And yet he couldn’t dismiss England altogether. This was Lady Emeline’s home, and she fit in as only one who was born into this country and class could. That fact alone should’ve been reason enough to stay away from her. Their worlds, their experiences, their lives, were too far apart.
But that hadn’t been why he’d pushed her off his lap the night before. No, that had been an instinctive move, one that had gone against his body’s own wishes. He’d been throbbingly hard, had been thinking of nothing save putting his body within hers, and then he’d known it wasn’t right. He’d not wanted her capitulation if it was because of pity. Pity wasn’t the emotion he wanted from Lady Emeline. Not at all. ’Course, maybe that made him a fool, because his cock certainly didn’t seem to care why she’d lain across his lap like butter melting on toast. It only knew that the lady had been willing, and like a hound set to a scent, it was already proudly awake and ready for the chase.
First things first. He smelled like a pigsty, the result of running the night before until the sweat streamed from his body. Sam limped to the door and called for hot water. Then he sat and examined his feet. Lady Emeline had done a good job. The bottom of both feet were covered with broken blisters, and he had a rather nasty cut on the right one, but the wounds were clean. They’d heal properly; he knew by experience.
His bath was in a tin tub that barely fit Sam’s body, but the warmth and steam felt good to his aching muscles. Then he dressed, grimacing as he laced his older pair of moccasins, and went down to break his fast. The hour might be late for him, but for an English aristocrat, it was still early and when he limped into the breakfast room, it was only half full.
The room was long, running across a portion of the back of the house. Diamond-paned windows lined the outer wall, letting in the morning light. Instead of one long table, smaller ones had been set here and there for the diners. Sam nodded to a gentleman whose name escaped him and tried to correct his limp as he made his way to the dishes laid out on a sideboard on the far end of the room. Rebecca was already there, peering at a plate of fried gammon.
“There you are!” his sister muttered at him.
Sam glanced sideways at her. “Good morning to you, too.”
She scowled at him, then cleared her brow when she saw Lady Hopedale staring at them. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” He placed a slice of gammon on his plate. He’d noticed the other day that it was particularly good here.
“Pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” his sister said in palpable exasperation.
Sam looked at her. In fact, he had no idea what she was talking about.
Rebecca blew out a breath of air, then said slowly as if talking to a very small child, “You were gone all day yesterday. No one knew where you and Lord Vale were. You were missing.”
Sam opened his mouth, but she leaned into him and continued in a whisper, “I was worried about you. That’s what happens when you suddenly disappear and no one can find you and people start wondering if you’ve fallen into a ditch and are lying dead somewhere. Your sister starts to worry about you.”
Sam blinked. He wasn’t used to accounting for his movements to anyone. He was a grown man and in the peak of health. Why would anyone worry about him? “There’s no reason to worry. I can take care of myself.”
“That’s not the point!” Rebecca hissed loud enough to make a matron with pendulous jowls look back at them. “You could be the strongest, most well-armed man in the world, and I would still worry if you disappeared for no reason.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Rebecca slapped a salted herring onto her plate. “What doesn’t make any sense is you.” She turned and marched off with her fish.
Sam was still staring after her, trying to understand where he had gone wrong in the conversation, when Vale spoke beside him. “Your sister’s feathers seem to be ruffled.”
Sam glanced at the other man and winced. Vale’s face was ashy-gray, and he swayed almost imperceptibly as he peered at the plate of gammon. “You look like a pile of horseshit.”
“Most kind.” Vale swallowed. His gray face was taking on a greenish undertone. “I don’t believe I’ll have anything to eat just now.”
“Good idea.” Sam heaped buttered kidneys on his own plate. “Maybe some coffee?”
“No.” Vale closed his eyes for a second. “No. Just some barley water.”
“As you think best.” Sam called a footman over and asked for a glass of barley water.
Vale winced. “I think I’ll sit in the corner where it’s quiet.”
Sam smirked and piled two pieces of toast on his plate before following the other man to a small, round table. He ought to be sympathetic. The devils that plagued Vale were the same as his, although the symptoms they evoked were different.