floor. When he looked at his hand, he saw smears of blood on his fingertips. Then things got hazy, a sort of mist descending on him, and the last thing he was sure of was that he was falling.
When he came to, the first thing he was aware of was acute embarrassment. The second was that his head was in Marian’s lap, her fingers carding through his hair in a manner that was almost gentle and caring. This was so disconcerting that he sat bolt upright.
“Easy,” Marian chided. “I caught you once. The next time you’re on your own.”
“Entirely reasonable,” he managed, his tongue thick and lazy in his mouth.
“I forgot how you used to do that,” Marian said. “Still do, I suppose. Remember when I fell from the apple tree and bloodied my nose? You were out for five full minutes. I thought you had died.”
“You bled all over me!” Percy protested. At the time he had been entirely certain that passing out was the only reasonable course of action when someone had bled all over one’s waistcoat, and he still believed this to be the case.
“I don’t know how you can play around with swords if you faint at the sight of blood.”
“I don’t play around with swords, and I’m entirely too skilled to let myself be cut to bits, thank you.”
“Shut your eyes so I can wipe the blood from your hands and face,” she said, rising to her feet.
He complied, hearing her soft footsteps cross the room, then the sound of water being poured from an ewer. She took his hand and briskly wiped each finger. “Now your face,” she said. He tilted his chin up, wincing only slightly as she passed the damp cloth over his jaw. “Now are you going to tell me who hurt you?”
“It was your highwayman.”
“Ah. I take it he won’t be lending us a helpful hand, then?”
“Oh, he’ll be lending us a hand. I guarantee it. Marian, who is he? He did not react well to the sound of my father’s name.” Percy gestured at his bruise.
“I imagine the country, if not the entire hemisphere, is filled with people who become consumed with a murderous rage when they hear of the Duke of Clare.”
“True,” he said. But Marian’s response hadn’t really been an answer to the question he had asked. “Does this man have a special reason to hate the duke?”
“You should ask him,” she said lightly.
That still wasn’t a proper answer. He knew Marian well enough to understand he’d never get any information from her she didn’t choose to divulge, so he let the topic drop. Still, he had the uncomfortable sense that she was playing a deeper game than he was, and was playing for stakes he didn’t yet understand. “Who told you about him? When I left England, you certainly didn’t have any connections to London’s criminal demimonde.”
Her jaw tightened. “A lot happened after you left.” She shook her head briskly, her eyes sparkling with what he at first thought were tears but then recognized as anger. Then she got to her feet, the bloody piece of meat in her hand.
“What are you doing with that thing?” he asked.
“I have an idea,” she said.
Before he could ask what she meant, she stepped out the window. He held his breath as she descended the trellis instead of edging along the ledge back to her room. When her feet hit the ground, the old hound who patrolled the gardens of Clare House came up to her. But before the dog could bark, Marian dropped the meat, then sprinted toward the gate.
Chapter 13
“You’re an idiot,” Betty said the next morning when Kit stumbled downstairs, his clothes rumpled and his face unshaven. “I can smell the gin on you from across the room. I hope your head hurts.”
It did, but he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of his saying so. “Remember the man in the brightly colored coats?” he asked, the sound of his voice ricocheting off the insides of his skull like seeds in a dried-out gourd.
“The one who stares at you all day?” She dragged a chair across the floor to the table where it belonged with more clatter than could possibly be necessary.
“He’s the Duke of Clare’s son.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Well, bugger me.”
“Hence, the gin.”
“Fair,” she said, her expression softening marginally. For a moment he thought she was going to hug him or attempt to say something soothing, and he braced himself, but she recovered