A Warriner To Protect Her. Virginia Heath

around his neck. The place where all hopes and dreams were mercilessly crushed under the hobnail boot of responsibility, while Jack sunk deeper and deeper into debt with every passing year. Just thinking about it made him lethargic.

      And slightly nauseous.

      Or perhaps that was merely the whisky and the ale. Jack wiped his dripping face with the back of his sleeve and almost lost his seat when his horse suddenly reared noisily. He struggled with the reins to bring the beast under control and that was when he saw her. Almost like a ghost, the woman appeared out of the trees. Her skin eerily pale in the flimsy moonlight, hair and thin dress plastered to her body, eyes as wide as saucers as she stared back at him. Then she fled, wet skirts and a pronounced limp hampering her progress.

      It took several seconds for his alcohol-impaired mind to register what else he had seen. A vicious gag. Bound hands. Sheer terror.

      She was stumbling ahead of him along the narrow, rutted lane which led to his house as if her very life depended on it. Judging by the state of her, it probably was. Jack’s wits finally overpowered his inebriation and he swiftly directed his horse after her.

      ‘Miss! Wait! I mean you no harm.’ The wind carried away his words.

      As he came alongside her, Jack bent low in the saddle and grabbed her arm. She spun around and tried to extricate herself from his grip, fighting like a cornered fox to escape him.

      ‘I mean you no harm!’

      He could tell by the way she struggled that she was exhausted. Shouting at her was not going to calm her.

      ‘Let me help you.’ He said this quietly and he saw her blink as she heard him. To prove it, he released the grip he had on her upper arm and held up his gloved hands as if in surrender. Automatically, she went to bolt and he forced himself not to try to stop her. It was the right thing to do. She hesitated. Turned back. Her wide eyes locked on to his and she simply gazed at him, as if she were searching the depths of them to the man he was inside, to see if he could be trusted. Then, almost as if all her strength and determination was gone, she began to slip to the ground.

      Jack managed to grab her arm again before she crumpled into a heap and used all of his formidable strength to pull her now deadweight body on to his saddle. He cradled her in his lap; her damp flesh was like ice and it made him wonder how long she had been out here, exposed to the winter elements. She felt so very delicate in his arms. Precious.

      He tried to work the gag free. It refused to move. Rainwater had sealed the knot tight and whoever had tied it had done it so harshly, he could not move it. This close, he could just about make out the bruising on her face. Her lip was badly cut and swollen, suggesting she had been beaten as well as bound. And the very fact he had discovered her stumbling blindly along a deserted lane, past midnight and wearing what appeared to be only a bedraggled, sleeveless silk gown meant she had probably managed to escape. Only then did it suddenly dawn on him that her captors might be searching for her. Whoever had bound and beaten this delicate woman was not going to be the sort of person to listen to reason. If she had escaped, it went without saying they would stop at nothing to get her back. Whoever she was, she needed his help.

      Without thinking, Jack kicked the horse into a gallop, holding the reins tightly with one hand while the other held his unconscious passenger close to his body to keep her safe. He ignored the sting of the wind and rain on his face. Nothing else mattered but getting her home and to safety. Markham Manor might well be in dire need of a new roof, but at least his troublesome ancestors had had the good sense to surround it with a twenty-foot wall and an archaic pair of similarly proportioned gates which weighed a ton. He had a feeling tonight, for the first time in over two hundred years, the Warriners might actually need them.

       Chapter Two

      One month, three days and approximately

      sixteen hours remaining...

      Jack carried her limp body into the hallway and shouted for his brothers at the top of his voice. Used to jumping to attention at his tone, they arrived one by one on the landing. First came Joe, the second youngest and only four years his junior, and by far the one he was keenest to see first. He took one look at the woman and the physician in him burst to the fore.

      ‘I’ll get my things.’ And he was gone again.

      Then came Jacob, the youngest, who crossed his brother on the landing, dark hair on end and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Close behind him limped Jamie, the closest in age to Jack. Both men instantly sprang into action the moment they spotted the burden in Jack’s arms.

      ‘What the hell?’

      Jacob just stood and gaped as he reached the bottom step, trailing after Jack as he hauled the woman into the high-ceilinged great hall which now served as the drawing room. He had already lowered the woman on to a sofa by the time Jamie managed to get there. Like the brilliant soldier he had been before his injuries, it did not take his brother long to assess the situation.

      ‘Where did you find her?’

      ‘She just appeared in the middle of the road. She was conscious then.’ That she had failed to regain consciousness in the last twenty minutes was a worry. In the dim lamplight, her skin now had a grey pallor beneath the caked mud which did not bode well.

      ‘Any signs of whoever did this to her?’ Jamie asked.

      Jack shook his head. ‘But the storm is still raging outside. Even if there had been an army right behind me, I doubt I would have heard them. Make the place secure!’

      Jamie responded immediately to Jack’s command, turning to Jacob. ‘Get my sword and pistols from my bedchamber, and grab something for yourself. We’re going to close the gates.’

      The two brothers were gone by the time Joe returned with his medical kit. Despite the fact there had been no money to send him to university again this year, Joe had still relentlessly studied medicine in the vain hope he would one day qualify as a doctor. He had done since he was a young boy. What he did not know about the workings of the human body was not worth knowing. He watched Jack carefully cut through the gag and the cord at her wrists, then remove them, before kneeling to examine her.

      ‘She’s like ice, Jack! We need to warm her up.’ Joe fished in his bag for some scissors and began to cut the woman’s clothing open from the hem up.

      ‘What do you think you are doing?’ Jack exclaimed, because somehow stripping the poor girl seemed a bit extreme.

      ‘I have to get her out of these wet things, Jack, and dry her off or it will be impossible to warm her. Hypothermia can kill. Fetch some blankets.’

      For once, Jack did exactly as he was asked. His younger brother might well bow down to him on all other matters, but in this situation, he trusted Joe more than anyone else to help the stranger. Secondly, Jack had precious little medical knowledge, had no idea exactly what hypo-whatever-it-was meant and it felt morally wrong to stand by gawping while she was relieved of her clothing. Wasting no time, Joe was in the midst of his examination when Jack came back, his patient’s torso thoughtfully now covered in a coat.

      ‘I do not think she has suffered any broken bones, though until she is awake, it is difficult to know for sure. There are cuts and bruises all over her—see?’

      Jack passed the pile of blankets towards his brother and glanced down at the poor girl’s visible bare arms and calves. His brother was not wrong. Filthy wounds and grazes marred the pale skin. ‘Look at the bruising here.’ Joe pointed to the left arm. ‘If I had to take a guess, I would say she had a bad fall from something and landed on her side. Judging from the size and colour of the bruise, it’s a miracle her arm or collarbone did not shatter from the impact. Some of these punctures are quite deep. The cut on her lip is nasty too. And her wrists have been rubbed raw by the cord around them—those wounds are angry and prone to become infected. She had to have been tied up for hours. I need to clean them all thoroughly.’

      Relegated to the