Page 17 of Romancing the Scot
“Take me back to him,” she pleaded.
“Take you back to whom?” he asked.
“To my father. Help me find him.”
At the sound of footsteps, Hugh looked up. Jo hurried in with Anna on her heels. He pulled his hand out of Grace’s grasp and stood.
“She’s burning up. I already sent for Namby.”
He backed out of the room as his sister took charge, ordering Anna to fetch more drying cloths and a fresh pitcher of water.
Descending the steps, Hugh frowned, realizing that he’d actually been pleased when she mentioned a father and not a husband.
Chapter 6
For the first time, Grace’s head was clear. Her senses were sharp. The fog that she’d been wandering in was gone. The blur of passing days and nights retreated. The nightgown they’d put on her stuck to her skin, but she wouldn’t push back the covers.
Keeping her eyes closed, she listened to the two women moving about the bedchamber.
“Well, at least she’s not burning with fever this morning,” Jo whispered.
“Looking much better, she is, m’lady,” the maid responded in a soft voice. “But she has a long way to go, I’d say.”
A cup rattled. A blanket was shaken out. Footsteps creaked across the floor.
“We need to build her strength. Anna, tell the cook to send up something more than broth for Grace today. Perhaps some bread and jam.”
They knew her name. She’d heard Jo whisper it in encouragement whenever she was pushing medicine or water down her throat. She must have told them herself. She worried how much more she’d revealed.
Grace focused on everything she knew about her hosts. She was in Scotland, in a place named Baronsford. From snatches of conversation, she guessed the estate must be within a day’s ride or so of Edinburgh. The family name was Pennington. An English name. That alone was enough to keep her silent.
A rustle of skirts, and a window opened across the room. A warm morning breeze drifted over her like a caress, carrying the scent of early summer. Grace couldn’t pretend to be asleep for much longer. But first she had to decide how much to say about who she was and what had transpired. It was quite possible her life depended on it.
She couldn’t tell them she was the daughter of an Irish colonel who’d fought on the side of the French against the English. Or that her mother’s father was Macpherson of Benmore, a Scottish Jacobite who escaped to France to avoid hanging. Her family tree had been filled with traitors to the English crown. The Macpherson land and their wealth had long ago been seized by the king. Beyond that, she knew nothing of her family, if any still existed. She’d never stepped foot in England or Scotland.
She had every reason to fear what the Penningtons would do if they were to discover any of this. Could she be jailed for the so-called crimes of her family? They might view her as a spy who tried to slip into the country in a shipping crate.
You’re safe here.
His words had been a line thrown to her when she was drowning in a sea of nightmares. Those moments when she couldn’t tell day from night, when she didn’t know if she’d been here a day or a month, his words had come back to her, soothing her troubled mind.
That night when she’d found herself wandering, searching for her father, Hugh Pennington had tried to ease her fears.You’re safe here.
Safe,she repeated in her mind, knowing she could put no faith in it.
A heavier tread entered the bedchamber, and Grace recognized the voice of the man she’d heard them refer to as Dr. Namby.
“She slept through last night,” Jo said after greeting him. “For the first time. No coughing, no restlessness. And this morning, it seems the fever has broken.”
As the physician’s cool fingers touched her forehead, Grace could no longer hide behind the pretense of sleep. She opened her eyes.
The bushy white eyebrows quirked above his thick spectacles, and a grin deepened the lines in his face.
“Youaredoing better, aren’t you?” he asked, lifting her wrist to check her pulse.
Jo joined the physician at the bedside. Dark circles under her eyes bespoke the vigilance she’d maintained. During brief moments of wakefulness and relative clarity, Grace had taken the opportunity to study her. With her high rounded cheekbones, chocolate-brown eyes, and lustrous black hair, Jo was a striking woman. But there was also a tightness in the lines around her mouth and at the corners of the eyes that hinted of a life not devoid of pain.
She was Hugh’s sister. She wore no rings. A spinster?
