“You can have strawberries, if you like,” Nell suggested helpfully.
“I’ll just have tea for now, thank you,” Emma murmured.
The noise subsided once more as Derek came into the kitchen, his arm around Peter’s shoulders. Derek looked haggard, but the boy’s cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright, and he walked with a bounce in his step.
“You’re sure you heard nothing?” Derek was asking.
“I told you, Dad. I was out on the cliff path, reading. I didn’t even know she was there until everyone started to shout.”
“All right, son, all right.” Derek pulled the boy to him in a rough, sideways hug, then let him run to Nell’s side.
“She’s not dead,” Nell informed her brother bluntly.
“I know,” Peter replied, “but she’s gone.” The boy glanced over at the stove. “Madama, may I have strawberries, too, please?”
“Miss Porter? If I might have a word?” Derek gestured to the fireplace, where a tall settle offered a degree of privacy. Emma slipped out of Bantry’s jacket and returned it to him with a murmur of thanks, then joined Derek on the high-backed wooden bench.
“Miss Porter,” he began. “Emma. Want to thank you for looking after my daughter. Traumatic experience for such a young child. Not sure—” Derek stiffened as a thin, high-pitched scream sounded in the distance, then was abruptly cut off.
Knives and forks clattered to the tiled floor as the men at the table sprang to their feet and streamed through the kitchen door. Derek rose, too, and stood looking distractedly from the door to his children until Bantry waved him on.
“Go, man, go,” Bantry urged. “I’ll keep an eye on the young ’uns.”
Pausing only to drop a kiss on the top of Nell’s head, Derek raced from the room, with Emma hot on his heels, following the thud of retreating workboots to the entrance hall.
Emma felt as though she’d stumbled into a war zone. The chubby mechanic, Gash, was holding the front door open and the roar of an idling helicopter thundered through it on the wind. Newland, with his black beret tilted at a rakish angle, was barking orders to the group from the kitchen. Two men in windbreakers were wheeling Susannah toward the open door on a collapsible stretcher, her neck strapped in a padded brace, her head swathed in bloodstained bandages, and Syd Bishop trotted alongside, carrying the overnight case Mattie had packed.
Mattie lay at the foot of the main staircase, her head cradled in Kate Cole’s lap. Beside them knelt a bearded man in a white turban and caftan, brown socks and sandals, and a black leather bomber jacket. Crowley hovered nearby, white-faced, while the duke patted his shoulder, and Hallard stood to one side, observing the scene with intense concentration.
“What’s happened?” Derek asked.
“She’s fainted,” replied the bearded man. “Some people do, at the sight of blood.” Standing, he reached over to touch Crowley’s arm. “Not to worry. Get her to bed and keep her warm. She’ll be up and running again after a few hours’ rest.”
“Very good, Dr. Singh,” Crowley replied.
Syd had followed the stretcher-bearers out to the waiting helicopter, and Dr. Singh ran to catch up with them. The men from the kitchen had dispersed, and Newland and Gash, after conferring briefly in the doorway, had headed out after the men, closing the door behind them.
The duke knelt beside Mattie. “Poor child,” he murmured. “Hallard, please fetch the brandy and bring it up to Mattie’s room. Ask Madama to send up a pot of tea, as well.” As Hallard sped off in the direction of the kitchen, the duke lifted Mattie’s slight form in his arms and carried her up the main staircase, with Crowley close behind.
Kate Cole hung back. Looking worriedly from Derek to Emma, she said, “I’m afraid that Grayson and I must leave for Plymouth shortly, to prepare for a news conference there this afternoon. We’ll want to keep the press away from the hall, you understand, so we may have to stay on a few days, until things settle down.”
“Using Grayson as a decoy?” Derek asked.
“More like a lamb to the slaughter,” Kate confirmed. “You’ve no idea what we went through when Lex died. Photographers behind every bush. So we may be away for some time. I hate to leave you short-handed, but with Crowley looking after Mattie—”
“We’ll be fine,” Derek assured her. Kate nodded gratefully, handed Derek a card with a phone number where she could be reached in Plymouth, and turned to run up the stairs. Dr. Singh’s helicopter roared briefly overhead, then faded in the distance.
The entrance hall was suddenly silent. Derek looked down at Emma. “Library?” he suggested hesitantly. “Drink?”
“Maybe two,” she replied.
Emma rested her elbow on the arm of the brocade couch in the library and ran a finger around the rim of her glass. It was almost ten A.M., and she wished she’d eaten breakfast. The first sip of the duke’s single-malt whiskey had steadied her nerves, and the second had cleared her head, but a third, taken on an empty stomach, would probably put her under the table.
She glanced over at Derek. He sat at the other end of the couch, legs crossed and arms folded, frowning silently at the empty hearth. He hadn’t moved since Bantry had stopped by to ask if Master Peter and Lady Nell might go with him to Madama’s kitchen garden. Even then he’d only nodded.
He wasn’t worrying about Susannah, Emma knew. He’d responded to Emma’s words of consolation with a blank stare, followed by a shrug and an automatic “Bad show,” as though he’d momentarily forgotten who had been injured.
Was he still brooding over his children? Emma honestly didn’t think he had much to worry about on that score. Nell seemed to be handling the situation very calmly, and Peter appeared unfazed. Emma suspected that the children were more resilient than their father gave them credit for.
Emma, too, had recovered quickly, not only from the morning’s shocking events, but from her brief infatuation with Derek. She was no longer tongue-tied and clumsy in his presence, at any rate, and she thought she knew why: Whether widowed or divorced, a single man raising a family was invariably looking for someone to mother his children. And since motherhood, even by proxy, had never been one of Emma’s career goals, Derek was indisputably out of bounds. The realization came as a relief; Emma was tired of making a fool of herself over a pair of handsome blue eyes.
“Derek,” she said, putting her glass on the end table, “I think I’ll step outside. I need a breath of fresh air.”
Derek surprised her by immediately unfolding his long limbs and rising from the couch. “I’ll come with you,” he said. And then, as they were strolling slowly across the great lawn, he surprised her again by saying that it was his first visit to Penford Hall.
“I thought you and Grayson were old friends,” Emma said.
Derek pursed his lips. “We met in Oxford ten years ago,” he said. “I was touching up some plasterwork in the cathedral and he was practicing a Bach cantata on the organ.” Derek stopped walking and swung around to face the hall. “Haven’t really been in touch since then.” Raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, he tilted his head back and let his gaze travel slowly along the irregular roofline. “A hodgepodge,” he muttered, “but a structurally sound one.” He looked over his shoulder at Emma. “You wouldn’t call Penford Hall a ruin, would you?”
Pointing at the fragmented façade of the castle, Emma replied, “That’s a ruin.”