The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh (Cynster #20) - Stephanie Laurens Page 0,124
and it tried to sting me.”
Ryder cursed; jaw clenching, he set Mary gently aside, then crossed to the box, bent, and, clamping the lid shut, picked it up.
“Be careful.” Despite her fear, Mary hovered. “It’s already aroused and you don’t have gloves on.”
Ryder didn’t reply. He carried the box to the door, then, with Mary hurrying alongside and the footmen and Forsythe following, he marched through the house, down the stairs, and, after waiting for Forsythe to open the front door, out onto the porch. There, he bent and set down the box. He glanced at Mary. “Stay well back.”
She nodded uncertainly but, for once obedient, hovered in the open doorway. Forsythe obligingly stationed himself in front of her, a little to one side so she could view the proceedings.
Satisfied, Ryder glanced up at the footmen, who had come to stand to either side of him. “Ready?”
When both grimly nodded, he used the toe of his boot to flip the lid of the box open. Sure enough, a scorpion, a remarkably brightly colored specimen, skittered on top of the folded linens inside. When the scorpion, somewhat wisely, showed no inclination to climb out, Ryder circled to the other side of the box, bent, and, grasping the rear side and bottom of the box, partially upended it, shaking it as he did.
Several pieces of embroidery fell out—along with the scorpion. Clicking and skittering, the beast shot out to Ryder’s right.
He crushed it under his boot.
Leaving the footmen to examine the remains—they’d never seen a scorpion before—he looked into the box. No further sounds came from it; carefully lifting aside each piece of cloth, each skein of silk, he searched it thoroughly. Finding nothing, he bent, picked up the two pieces of embroidery that had fallen out, shook them vigorously, then tucked them back in the box. Finally closing the box, he carried it to Mary and handed it to her. “All clear.”
She accepted the box, nodded. “Thank you.” She looked up, and he could still see the shock in her face.
He put an arm around her shoulders, tucked her against him. “Forsythe?”
“Aye, my lord—we’ll do a sweep of the room and all your apartments. In fact, I rather think we’ll do the whole wing.”
Ryder nodded. “Do.” He turned Mary, unresisting, inside. “Come and sit with me in the library.”
Some brandy would do them both good.
Half an hour later, Mary had progressed from shock to outright anger. “This has got to stop!”
“I couldn’t agree more.” Sprawled in the armchair opposite hers, Ryder sipped his second glass of brandy. The first he’d downed in a single gulp; Mary was still nursing hers.
After a moment, she said, “I’ve never seen a scorpion before, only in books.”
“I have.” He paused, then added, “I’ve a friend whose house lies outside Rye. He sees them occasionally, but they’re quite different—larger and dark brown. They’re not poisonous, although I’ve heard the sting is painful.”
“Hmm. That one was red.”
“I noticed.”
After a long moment, Mary drew in a breath, then said, “I’ve been wondering if we’ve leapt to the wrong conclusion.”
Ryder’s gaze shifted to fix on her. “How so?”
“We assumed that whoever tried to have you killed in London is also behind these incidents aimed at me, but when you look at what’s happened here—an adder in my bed, gorse under my saddle, caltrops in the road when I went out driving, and now the scorpion—while each of those incidents might have been fatal, the chances of them being so aren’t all that high.” She met his gaze. “Against that, getting stabbed almost in your heart is far more likely to be lethal.”
He frowned. After a moment said, “I can’t argue, but I’m not sure I follow where you’re leading.”
“What if the incidents here weren’t intended to do me harm so much as send me scurrying off, and potentially disrupting our marriage?”
His frown darkened. “That’s possible, I suppose.”
“It does bear considering, and also casts the incidents here in a somewhat less fraught light.”
Ryder humphed.
Mary watched him sip his brandy and hoped he was imbibing her obliquely reassuring words as completely. The principal reason for her increasing ire at whoever was behind the recent incidents was that the outcome of said incidents was feeding and stoking and insistently escalating Ryder’s protectiveness. He’d several times verged on the dictatorial and was becoming less and less pliable with every successive incident—and really, who could blame him?
Said incidents were prodding at a spot that—if all was as she hoped—would be terribly sensitive.