When they finally reached the front door and were able to step outside, away from the crowd of partygoers, Theo swept Megan up into his arms and carried her to the Morelands’ waiting carriage, despite her feeble protestations that she could walk.
“You pride has been maintained,” he told her. “Now hush and just let me take care of you.”
Her head ached too much to protest, Megan decided, and she leaned her head against his chest gratefully.
The coachman jumped to open the door of the carriage, and Theo bundled her inside. Megan leaned back against the leather squab of the carriage seat, wincing a little as her head touched the material. Theo swung into the seat opposite her, and the carriage set off at a sedate pace. Her forehead ached, a continual pounding that was in counterpoint to the sore spot on the back of her head. She closed her eyes and tried to pull together her scattered wits.
What had happened to her? She had been looking for Julian Coffey, hoping to talk to him; she remembered that much, though she had not, of course, revealed that to Theo and the other Morelands. She remembered winding through the ballroom, searching for Coffey, then spotting him and starting after him. Everything after that was a blank.
One thing she was sure of: she had not fainted. That was something she had never done in her entire life, even during the most tension-filled or gruesome moments she had gone through covering her newspaper stories. She had been cinched up more tightly at the waist tonight than she was accustomed to, but she did not remember feeling faint.
If she had not fainted, it followed that someone had intentionally knocked her out. That would account for the sore spot on the back of her head. She reached up and gingerly wound her fingers into her hair until she touched her scalp. There was a lump forming there, and she could feel dampness, too, as well as the rougher texture of dried blood.
But who had hit her? And why?
She opened her eyes and looked across the carriage at Theo. He was watching her silently, his eyes shadowed in the dim light. He was the obvious suspect.
There was some stubborn part of her that did not want to admit it, but that was what made the most sense. He was the person who had found her. It was easy, after all, to find a person if you were the one who had felled her.
Theo knew she had been poking her nose into things. Perhaps he had seen her following Julian Coffey. He might have known that Coffey could give her the information she needed. So, to stop her from questioning Coffey, he had sneaked up behind her and cracked her over the head.
She remembered opening her eyes and finding Theo bending over her. There had been fear in his eyes, something she had attributed to concern for her. But wasn’t it more likely that it was fear that she had seen him when he attacked her and would identify him? Or simply the fear of discovery that had led him to hit her to begin with?
There had been something else in his gaze, she remembered as she thought about it. Despite the expression of concern on his face, there had been a watchfulness in his eyes, a certain shrewd consideration.
It occurred to her that it was perhaps very foolish of her to be riding alone in a carriage with the man. Her stomach tightened. She reminded herself that everyone in Theo’s family knew that she had gone back to Broughton House with him. He could not risk harming her, not with everyone aware that she had been alone with him.
She laced her fingers together tightly and leaned into the corner of the carriage, closing her eyes once again, in a pose of resting. Inside, every part of her was on alert, poised for defense.
The time passed slowly, but eventually the carriage rolled to a smooth stop in front of the Moreland mansion. Theo climbed out and turned to help Megan down. She put her fingers in his to step down, and his hand closed possessively around hers.
“Your hand is cold,” he said, and peered down into her face.
“I’m fine.” She knew it was fear that had sent the blood rushing from her extremities, not shock, but she did not want to say so.
“Let’s get you inside, so I can look at your head.”
“I only want to go to bed,” she said, hating the weakness in her voice.
He shook his head. “Not when you have been out cold like that. You need to stay awake.”
He whisked her through the front door and down the hall to a cozy, masculine room paneled in oak and furnished with dark maroon leather chairs. It smelled pleasantly of tobacco, and against one wall was a cherrywood sideboard on which sat glasses and decanters of liquor.
Theo rang for a servant and sent him for the supplies he wanted. Then he turned and went to the sideboard, where he poured golden brown liquid into two short glasses. He took a hearty drink from one glass and handed the other one to Megan.
She looked doubtfully at it.
“Don’t be missish. Drink it down,” he ordered her. “It will warm you up.”
Cautiously, Megan took a sip. She shuddered at the strong taste, but it did warm her throat as it slid down. She took another, larger, sip.
The footman returned with a tray containing a bowl of water, a bowl of ice and a tin of medical supplies. Theo turned up the gas sconces to their brightest and lit a kerosene lamp, which he placed on the small table beside her.
Dismissing the footman, he dipped a rag in water and squeezed it out, then gently parted her hair and dabbed the rag against her wound. Megan sucked in her breath sharply at the pain.
“Sorry.” He continued to clean the wound, touching it as lightly as he could. “Someone cracked you a good one.”
“What?” Megan’s eyes widened, surprised at his blunt statement. “What do you mean?”
“Come, come,” he retorted. “Surely you don’t expect me to believe that you fainted.”
Finished cleaning the area, he dabbed a bit of ointment on her wound and pressed a small pad to it.
“That is what everyone said.”
“It seemed the most likely explanation. And they didn’t look at the location and severity of that bump on your head. I did. It split the skin and was a little high and to the side—not a likely place for your head to hit the floor when you fell. Looks more like someone knocked you out.”
“Oh.” Megan didn’t know what to say.
Theo wrapped up a few small chunks of ice in a towel and handed it to her. “Here. Hold this against it. It will help the swelling.”
He sat down in a chair across from her. “Who was it, Megan? Who hit you?”
“I don’t know!” she blurted out honestly. “I don’t remember. The last thing I remember is leaving the ballroom.”
Even as she said the words, a wisp of a memory came into her mind—a shadowy corridor lined with walls of stone, lights flickering in wall sconces. She had been in the basement, far from the place where she was found.
“You’re lying,” Theo said dispassionately.
“No. I mean—yes, I just remembered that I was in the basement. But it is the very vaguest memory. I don’t know why I was down there or how I came to be upstairs when you found me.”