Blackstone's Bride

Curious, Eleanor sat and watched the shadows lengthen, watched the lightning bugs come out. She listened to the sounds of the dying day, to the bird that always sang just at dusk, whose name she could never remember. To the sound of some small animal thrashing through the underbrush.

Thrashing through the underbrush?

Not her animals. They crept. They clucked and scratched or browsed. They hopped or flew, and a few even slithered. None of them ever thrashed.

Swinging her bare feet, she continued to watch the edge of the laurel slick, searching for whatever had made the odd noise. It sounded almost like…a groan?

And then her eyes widened and she was on her feet. “Oh, my mercy!” Racing toward the edge of the clearing, Eleanor reached out to catch the battered creature that stumbled through the rhododendrons and staggered toward her. A few feet away, she stopped, suddenly wary.

Chapter Three

He wasn’t one of the Millers. Eleanor didn’t recognize the man as anyone she’d ever seen before. Barely even recognized him as a man, the way he was slumped over, his arms cradling his body as he broke through the laurel slick and lurched shoulders first into the clearing.

She reached him just as he collapsed, nearly carrying them both to the ground. Bracing her feet, she managed to lean her weight against his in a manner that supported them both until she could regain her balance.

“Steady, steady,” she murmured. “I’ve got you now—don’t try to move.” Oh, God, oh, God, what do I do now?

In the dusky light his hair appeared black. Or wet.

Blood? That wasn’t water dripping across his face. It was too dark. “Are you hurt?”

Of course he was hurt! This wasn’t the waltz they were doing!

“They— I—” Clutching her, he swayed, tried to speak and broke off. He tried again. “Damn,” he muttered.

Eleanor replanted her feet and braced herself to support his full weight. “Shh, don’t try to talk, just lean on me. Can you walk at all?”

If he collapsed she could probably roll him uphill to the cabin, but getting him inside would be another matter. Tie him in a quilt and drag him up the steps? Was it physically possible?

It might finish him off. Whatever had happened to him, he didn’t look as if he could survive much more punishment. Both his eyes, his mouth…his entire face was battered and swollen beyond belief. Dear Lord, it hurt just to look at him.

“What happened to you?”

“Mm.” It was more groan than answer.

“That’s all right, you don’t have to talk now. Let’s just rest a bit.”

“Mm!” There was urgency in the single utterance, enough so that she sensed his meaning. He wanted her to…

Hide him? “All right, we’ll try to get you inside, but if you have any broken bones, walking isn’t going to help,” she told him, reduced to stating the obvious. “Lean on my shoulder—steady now. That’s it.” He was a good half a foot taller than she was, and must outweigh her by fifty pounds. Hard as a rock, but a dead weight. “Don’t try to hurry—that’s it, one step at a time.”

Who on earth could have done this awful thing? One of the Millers? God in heaven, she hoped not, but there was no one else around.

It took almost more strength than she possessed, but eventually they made it as far as the porch, moving two steps forward, falling one step back. “How on earth am I going to get you up the steps and inside?” she wondered aloud.

He held up a shaking hand, silently pleading for time to catch his breath.

Just as well, because she needed time to think. There was no way she could drag him inside without his cooperation—at least not without aggravating his injuries.

“What to do, what to do?” she murmured, not expecting an answer and getting none. She had managed to help cousin Annie from her bedroom to the front parlor so that she could watch the passersby, but by that time her cousin had weighed barely eighty pounds. This man was built like…a man.

“Who are you? Who did this terrible thing to you? It wasn’t the work of an animal, I don’t see anything that looks like teeth or claw marks.”

Might as well talk to a rock. The poor man was past answering. It was a wonder he’d managed to get this far.

“Where did you come from?” she asked.

Could he have been coming to help her get away? Had he somehow heard of her plight and come to help, and been caught on his way up the hill?

Lord, she didn’t want to be responsible for this.

She couldn’t even summon help from any of the Millers, not until she knew who had done this awful thing…and why. If it had been Alaska, he wouldn’t even need a reason, not if he’d been drinking.

“Now,” he panted after a few minutes.

“Yes, well—all right—we’ll take it slow and easy.” She eased her shoulder under his arm, conscious of the heat of his body. Aside from the coppery scent of blood, he smelled of whiskey, but something told her he wasn’t drunk. Could he have come to buy whiskey from Alaska and got into a fight over the payment?

At the moment it didn’t matter. He needed help and until she knew more, she didn’t dare call on anyone to help her help him. He was wet and shivering. Dirt and dead leaves were stuck to his clothes, his skin. He was barefoot. One sock on, one sock missing, which told her he hadn’t set out that way.

“Who did this to you?” she asked again as she helped him deal with the last step up onto the porch. Something was wrong with one of his limbs. It was either broken or badly sprained. If it was broken, moving him this way had to be causing irreparable harm, but what else could she do? She certainly couldn’t leave him lying outside with night coming on.

From the valley below came the faint sound of more shouting. Someone fired a gun. She had a feeling they weren’t hunting. They never shouted when they were hunting. At least, not when they were hunting wild game.

Hurry, hurry, hurry, she urged silently.

They made it through the door, and Eleanor took a deep breath and steered him toward the sofa, one of the few pieces of furniture Devin hadn’t sold. “I’m sorry we don’t have a doctor, but there’s a woman in the village below here who’s considered something of a healer.”

He caught her hand in a painful grip. Dark eyes glittered through swollen lids.

“What are you trying to tell me?” she whispered. “You want me to go? You don’t want me to go?”

He shook his head, his look so urgent that finally she got the message. “You don’t want anyone to know you’re here.”

His response said it all. What was it he feared, that this time they might succeed in killing him? “All right, just rest then for now. I’ll do what I can to clean you up, and after that…well, we’ll see.”

She gave him half an hour to rest before she came at him with a basin and cloth. She needed to know the extent of his injuries. If the man died on her…

He wouldn’t. She simply wouldn’t allow him to die.

Cleaning him up was embarrassing for her and painful for him. She was no fainting maiden, afraid to look at a man’s body, for heaven’s sake, it wasn’t that. Not entirely. But no matter how gentle she tried to be, there was no way she could discover where and how badly he was hurt without causing him further pain.

“My, you do have an extensive vocabulary, don’t you?” she said dryly the third time he let fly with a string of mumbled obscenities. At least he was speaking in words of more than one syllable now.

“Sorry.” It was more a groan than an apology.

“Never mind, I’ve heard worse than that from little boys.”

She hadn’t, but he didn’t need to know it. If she didn’t know better she might have thought the twitch of his swollen mouth was a smile.