An Unexpected Pleasure (The Mad Morelands #4)(72)

“I found you here,” Theo said. “No one had seen you in quite a while, so I started looking for you. You were nowhere downstairs, so we began a search of the rest of the house. I found you here.”

Megan looked around her, careful not to move her head too suddenly. “Where is here?”

“A back hallway on the second floor,” Theo replied, his green eyes studying her. “Do you not remember how you got here?”

“No. I have no idea.” Megan raised a hand to her head. “My head aches.”

“I think you must have fainted,” Anna told her, “and hit your head when you fell. You may have been unconscious for quite some time. I don’t know how long it was before Theo found you.”

“The last thing I remember was talking to, uh, a woman. I don’t recall coming upstairs at all.” Megan’s brow furrowed.

“Don’t worry about it,” Anna said. “It is often so with head injuries. People forget what happened right before. It will come back to you later, perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” Megan agreed somewhat doubtfully. She felt as if her head was stuffed with wool batting.

“I’ll take you home,” Theo said, and slid his other hand beneath her knees, as if to pick her up.

“No! I can stand,” Megan exclaimed and started to rise.

“Stubborn,” Theo said beneath his breath, and helped her up, his arm around her back.

Megan swayed a little, and he steadied her.

“I’ll carry you,” he told her firmly.

“No. I won’t make such a spectacle of myself in front of everyone,” Megan protested, blushing. “Just give me a minute.”

She could not keep from leaning against Theo as she stood there, gathering her strength. The Morelands all gathered around her, gazing at her with such concern on their faces that she felt tears prick at her eyes. She hated deceiving these kind people.

“We shall go home with you,” the duchess said.

“Oh, no! Please, stay. I don’t want to ruin your evening,” Megan protested.

“It’s all right. I will take her home,” Theo told his parents. “I’ll send the carriage back for you.”

The duchess agreed somewhat reluctantly, and they started down the stairs. Megan was determined to walk on her own, but every step sent pain jarring through her head, and she was grateful for the support of Theo’s arm.

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.