“That someone should have been shot at my weekend party,” Harry’s Aunt Amelia wailed, and not for the first time, as she paced the length of her private parlor. Tears fell unchecked down the pallor of her powdered cheeks. “Oh my goodness…” She came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the room. “What if your father should die from his injuries? If he succumbs, we shall be ruined in Society. Ruined!” She sobbed in earnest.
If Harry’s father should die of his wounds…?
Having followed the three men to her father’s bedchamber, Harry had stood aside while the two men helped the earl to lie on the bed, before she’d then rushed to her father’s bedside.
He looked dreadful, his face pale, including his lips, as he concentrated on dealing with the pain he was obviously in.
Too much so for Harry to bother him by demanding information on what had happened to him.
Her brother, having safely delivered her father to his room, had departed for his own bedchamber to remove his soiled clothing.
Gideon stood in front of the window, his back to the room. He did not so much as glance at her, although his profile was enough for her to see the coldness of his expression.
A coldness that, after last night, Harry knew to be nothing more than a veneer.
She doubted it had been Gideon’s intention, but when he kissed her, he had revealed an intensity and depth of passion she would not have thought him capable of. And when he had held her tightly in his arms, the curves of her body pressed against his, she had felt the evidence of his desire pressing against her.
Neither Harry’s father, nor Miss Pettigrew during her years as her governess, had been comfortable talking to her about men and desire. The former because he simply hadn’t thought about it, and Harry was too embarrassed to ask. The latter because she had no knowledge of such things herself. But Edward had felt no such qualms, declaring on Harry’s sixteenth birthday that she needed to know about men’s desires for her own protection. After which, her brother talked to her at length on the subject.
As a consequence of that conversation, Harry knew that a man experienced desire in different ways, and that at least one of them could be physically seen and felt. When a man was sexually aroused, his cock became engorged, possibly to twice or three times the size it was normally.
Having never seen the size of a normal cock, Harry could only imagine what an engorged one looked like. She had decided then and there that this must be the reason ladies, including Aunt Amelia, did not discuss sexual relations in her presence. If they had, Harry would then have wanted to know how anything so large could possibly fit inside the channel between her legs.
Some conversations should remain private, she had decided.
Or felt.
As she had felt the evidence of Gideon’s desire the previous evening as it pressed against the softness of her abdomen. Their obvious difference in height had brought about a whole new set of questions. The most obvious being, with Gideon being so much taller than her, how would their bodies align if they were to engage in the sexual act together?
None of which was of the least relevance now, with her father barely conscious and obviously in a lot of pain. All Harry could do was hold his hand and murmur reassurances until the doctor arrived, brought to the bedchamber by her Uncle Walter. Her uncle had then dismissed her from the room, declaring it was unseemly for her to see her father being bared to the waist, as the doctor had instantly requested.
Harry had joined her aunt in her parlor. Uncle Walter had come to them briefly a short time ago to tell his wife their brother-in-law appeared to have been accidentally shot in his side.
Which would explain all the blood on his clothing.
But not how he came to be “accidentally” shot. Or by whom.
Harry had always thought shooting grouse and game to be a carefully controlled and coordinated sport. Although, like her father, she questioned whether it could be called sport at all when the birds, rabbits, and deer rarely escaped the barrage of pellets that were often aimed at them from several hunters shooting at the same target.
She winced at the thought of why her father might have decided to venture into the area where the other men were shooting, aware that the conversation he expected to have with Oxford must still be weighing heavily on his mind.
According to her uncle, none of the gentlemen had come forward to admit to the deed.
“Once news of this gets out, no one in Society will want to attend one of my house parties ever again!”
Her aunt’s continued lament brought Harry out of her own disturbing thoughts. “Or it might make them more popular,” she countered lightly. “Just think of the anticipation that might be felt at the prospect of being shot at one of the Whitings’ weekend house parties.”
Amelia looked at her aghast for several stunned moments until she obviously recognized the humor in Harry’s gaze for exactly what it was. She sighed heavily. “I am well aware I am being overly dramatic.”
“Uncle Walter said the doctor has declared my father’s injuries not to be serious. Think of the positive,” Harry teased. “It is a certainty there will be no lack of conversation to be had over dinner this evening.”
Her aunt mopped up the last of her tears with a lace handkerchief before stowing it away in the concealed pocket of her gown. “How Walter could have allowed such a thing to happen is beyond understanding.”
Harry grimaced. “I am sure if my uncle could have prevented it, then he would have done so.”
“I cannot think what could have possessed your father to venture into the area of the woods where he could hear the other gentlemen shooting.”
Harry could.
Her father wouldn’t have thought of the danger he was putting himself in by seeking out Gideon to discuss with him what he had seen the previous evening.
Luckily, she was prevented from having to answer her aunt’s questions by Watkins’s arrival in the doorway of the private parlor. He informed them the doctor had finished attending his patient and was now downstairs with Lord Whiting, about to make his departure. Her aunt gave a distressed squeak before hurrying from the room.
Harry had not been invited to join them, but she followed anyway, eager to hear news of her father’s condition.
She arrived in time to hear the doctor speaking over her aunt’s rising hysteria. “Calm yourself, madam. I assure you, only a half dozen of the pellets penetrated the earl’s side. I have removed them. The bleeding has stopped and a bandage applied. The earl is now taking my advice to rest in his bedchamber for the rest of the day.”
Her aunt’s gloved hand fluttered about her throat. “You are sure he will make a complete recovery?”
The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “I trust, Lady Whiting, that my medical capability is such the earl will not perish from having a few pellets of shot penetrate an inch of the skin at his side,” he reproved irritably. “The amount of blood made the injury appear far worse than it is,” he added in a gentler voice.
Harry didn’t linger in the hallway to listen to any more of their conversation, but instead made her way back to the wide staircase before hurrying up to the first floor and her father’s bedchamber.
She came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the hallway when she saw Gideon shutting the bedchamber door quietly behind him as he left the room. Harry was very much aware it was the first time they had been alone together since they kissed the previous evening.
There was nothing in the coldness of his expression as he looked down his haughty nose at her to indicate he even remembered that kiss.
Harry moistened the dryness of her lips. “My father…?”
“Has fallen asleep,” he bit out dismissively.
She nodded. “Do you have any idea what happened?”
“Your father was shot.”
“I am aware of that part,” she snapped impatiently.
Gideon shrugged. “Your father told the doctor that he believes one of the hunters must have inadvertently mistaken him for a grouse or a deer.”
Harry’s eyes narrowed at the manner in which Gideon voiced the explanation. “You sound…less than convinced by that explanation?”
“Your father believes it,” he dismissed.
“And yet my uncle says no one has come forward to claim shooting him by mistake.”
“No,” Gideon conceded before bowing. “If you will excuse me…” He moved to walk past her.
Harry reached out to grasp his forearm. “Is that all you have to say to me?”
A frown creased his brow. “I have told you what I know of the situation.”
She glared. “Have you?”
He stilled. “Would you care to explain that remark?”
She removed her hand. “Is it not obvious?”
“Not to me, no.”
She sighed. “My father saw us kissing yesterday evening. He obviously wished to talk to you this morning, and he now he appears to have been shot while attempting to seek you out.” That explanation had sounded better when it was made inside her head!
She wished she had kept it there as she watched Gideon’s expression turn stony, his eyes becoming a narrowed and flinty gray.
“I trust you are not insinuating that I shot your father because he had dared to question me regarding my having kissed you?” His voice was as cold as his gaze.
“Of course not,” she answered instantly. “At least, I do not believe you left the house this morning with the deliberate intention of shooting him,” she added lamely.
“I did not shoot him, deliberately, or otherwise.” There would be no point in Gideon doing that when he still needed to question the earl about his actions and whereabouts in the woods at Waterloo the previous year.
Not that Harry knew about any of that.
Gideon hadn’t even seen Dunhill earlier this morning. Much as he might have expected Dunhill would wish to talk to him about the previous evening, the older man had not been present at breakfast, nor when the gentlemen gathered in preparation for leaving the house for a morning’s shoot.
Gideon hadn’t known Dunhill was even in the woods. He had only heard a cry of pain before he ran, along with everyone else, to where they discovered Dunhill lying on the ground, his shirt and waistcoat covered in blood.
Truth was, Gideon’s thoughts had been so distracted that he hadn’t even fired his gun yet this morning when the hue and cry began deeper in the woods.
The reason for those distracting thoughts had just voiced the possibility he might be the one to have shot her father!
The conclusion of those earlier thoughts, away from the allure of Harry’s perfume, her beauty, and the fascination of her outspoken nature, had been that he must put all further idea of kissing Harry again aside and instead concentrate on the reason for his being in Bedfordshire at all. Namely, his search for Plymouth’s killer.
A decision that had been swept aside the moment Harry entered her father’s bedchamber a short time ago when Gideon had wanted nothing more than to sweep Harry up in his arms, before carrying her off to his bedchamber and kissing her until neither of them had breath left to breathe.
Having her accuse him of shooting her father had certainly put a damper on that desire.
Yet someone had shot Dunhill. Someone, as it seemed Whiting had already stated, who had yet to come forward and admit to having done so.
Gideon could think of only two reasons for that oversight.
Firstly, that the culprit was too embarrassed to admit what they had done.
Secondly, and far more likely to Gideon’s way of thinking, that Dunhill was the one responsible for killing Plymouth.
If that were the case, then Gideon did not doubt the other man had likely been blackmailed into it. But that did not make him any less guilty.
Whatever the reason, Gideon’s presence here this weekend seemed to have alarmed the blackmailer, to the degree he had decided to remove Dunhill from the chain of events altogether.
The biggest factor against that being the case was Dunhill himself.
During those months of fighting the previous year, it had been obvious the man was not naturally a fighting man. So much so that even the possibility of him killing another English soldier in cold blood now seemed untenable.
Gideon could see the worry and concern bracketing Harry’s eyes. “You may ask to check my gun, if you wish. It has not been fired this morning.”
“Why hasn’t it?”
“I accompanied the other gentlemen, but was not in the mood for the sport of shooting today.”
“Oh.”
He nodded. “We will perhaps learn more about this unfortunate event when your father is not in so much pain and is able to converse coherently. He is too uncomfortable at the moment to concentrate on anything else. He will feel much better in the morning for having rested in his bedchamber.”
She eyed him curiously. “You sound as if you speak from experience?”
“Because I do.”
Her gaze sharpened. “You have been shot?”
He nodded. “During the battle at Waterloo.”
At the time, they had all assumed it was a French soldier who shot him. The events which followed, and having recently learned Plymouth had been murdered rather than died in battle, had since caused the Ruthless Dukes to question the attack which had incapacitated the member of their exclusive group who also happened to be the best shot.
“Where were you shot?” Harry frowned in concern.
“In the back.” Gideon dismissed the cowardly action.
“High, in the shoulder? Or…” She broke off as he shook his head. “Then where?”
“Level with my heart, but luckily, it glanced off one of my ribs and embedded itself in my lung.”
“Luckily?” She drew in a harsh breath. “You might have died!”
Gideon couldn’t mistake the distress he heard in her voice for anything else. “That would have upset you?”
She glared. “Of course.”
He nodded. “I too would have considered it a tragedy.”
“I should think anyone would regret being dead before their allotted three score and ten.”
“Not for that reason,” he said gruffly, knowing, no matter what he might have decided in the clear light of day and far from Harry’s disturbing presence, that the moment he was in her company again, he instantly wanted to make love to her. As he did now. “You—” He broke off when he heard someone coming up the stairs in the direction of the hallway. “I believe we are about to be joined by your uncle.” He easily recognized the heavy tread and equally heavy breathing of his overweight host.
“Oh dear Lord!” Harry’s eyes were wide, an expression of absolute panic on her suddenly pale face as she turned to look down the hallway. “He must not see the two of us alone here together,” she hissed in warning.
“We are only talking—”
“And yesterday evening, my father saw us kissing each other,” she reminded fiercely as she reached for and opened the door to what appeared to be a linen cupboard before stepping inside and closing the door behind her.
Leaving a slightly dazed Gideon alone in the hallway to greet his host.