The Tempting of Thomas Carrick by Stephanie Laurens

ill—very ill. Whatever struck them down happened, I think, the night before last. Others found them yesterday and sent for the clan’s healer. As far as I can make out, the healer arrived late last night, and the others left the Bradshaws in her care.” He paused, then simply said, “I arrived at the farmhouse less than an hour ago. I think the healer—Joy Burns—must have had some sort of seizure. I think she’s dying—she’s certainly very low. I don’t think she had time to treat the Bradshaws at all—they’re still very ill.”
    Lucilla blinked. “But they’re alive?”
    Lips tightening, he nodded. “For the moment.”
    “I’ll come.” The words were past Lucilla’s lips before she’d thought—not that she had to think, not in this. A summons such as Thomas had brought was her reason for being—at least for being the Lady’s representative in those lands.
    He eased out a breath. “Thank you. The clan doesn’t have another healer, at least not that I know of.”
    She shook her head. “No.” She looked around for her gloves, spotted them on a mossy rock by the altar. Bending, she picked them up. “Joy was training a younger woman, but I spoke with Joy a few months ago, and she said…Alice, I think the name was, wasn’t yet up to taking on the role in any independent way.”
    Pulling on her gloves, she walked toward Thomas, but her mind was already ranging ahead. “Joy would have taken all she needed, and I carry the essentials wherever I go, so there’s no reason I need to go back to the manor and fetch anything…” She halted beside Thomas and, surprised, reached with her senses…
    Abruptly, she looked at him. “What did you do to Marcus?”
    Thomas grimaced and gripped her elbow.
    She struggled to suppress her reaction to his touch. Even muted by the velvet of her riding jacket, it scorched.
    But her twin…was where she’d left him at the entrance to the path, but he wasn’t…aware. He wasn’t thinking.
    Thomas turned as if to follow the path out of the grove, but she stood her ground. And waited.
    She’d grown very good at waiting, thanks to him.
    His lips tightened, but—wisely—he didn’t attempt to physically urge her on. “My clansmen need your help urgently. Cynster—your brother—would have argued. Persuading him to let you ride north with me, even if he came, too, would have taken time.” He met her eyes. “Time Joy Burns and the Bradshaws may well not have.”
    She held his gaze. “So…?”
    “I tapped him on the head. Not too hard, but he’s unconscious.”
    She drew in a long breath, searched his eyes, then shook her head, twisted her elbow free of his hold, and started walking. “You do realize he’s never going to forgive you for that?” And as Marcus would be his brother-in-law eventually, “never” was going to be a very long time.
    Falling in beside her, Thomas shrugged. “If it means I get you to the Bradshaws in time to save them, I’ll live with his animosity.”
    The images—of Joy Burns lying on the kitchen floor, as still and as cold as death, and even more those of the Bradshaw children, wracked and weak in their beds—had filled his mind as he’d ridden away from Casphairn Manor. Realizing that Marcus, being with his sister, would almost certainly be standing guard—almost certainly looking out over the Vale—Thomas had foreseen the inevitable argument and delay, and had acted to avoid both.
    He’d circled and reached the grove from higher ground. He’d left Phantom a short distance from where he’d spotted Marcus’s and Lucilla’s mounts, then quickly, but with a woodman’s caution, he’d made his way to where he’d guessed the grove had to be.
    Not far from the entrance to the path into the grove, Marcus had been sitting on a rock, looking out over the Vale; he’d been so deep in his own thoughts that Thomas had had no difficulty coming up behind him without Marcus realizing.
    One swift blow was all it had taken. He’d