Defending the Duchess - Rachelle McCalla Mills & Boon Love Inspired Suspense

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“Can you walk on it?” Linus bent one gentle arm around her torso as if to help her up.

      Fighting back tears, Julia realized there wasn’t time to cry. What if whoever had attacked her came back before Linus’s fellow guards arrived? What if the brute wasn’t alone? Were there other men lurking among the bluffs? She shivered as she tried to stand.

      With a tentative hand she reached for the guard. His arms were very muscular, the sweat already drying from the breeze off the sea. She placed her hand on his forearm and felt her heart lurch. What did it mean? There wasn’t time to consider it. Leaning heavily on Linus, she hoisted herself onto her good foot and tested her injured limb.

      “Ow.” She winced as her toes touched the sand.

      “I need to get you out of here,” Linus cautioned her softly. “Can I carry you?”

      “You can try.” She started to protest that she wasn’t as light as she looked, but before she could speak Linus scooped her up, cradling her in his arms as though she didn’t weigh a thing. He turned and trotted down the beach, moving as quickly as she had while jogging.

      Tears leaked down her cheeks in spite of her efforts to restrain them. Her ankle throbbed. Somewhere in the craggy cliffs behind them, her attacker was probably escaping.

      “Do you have a flashlight?” Julia sniffled back her tears.

      “Not on me. Sorry.”

      “Shouldn’t we try to find that guy before he gets away?”

      “No. We could be outnumbered. That man was a trained fighter.”

      The sobs she’d been biting back rippled convulsively through her. Why had a trained fighter attacked her on Lydia’s peaceful beach? She slumped against Linus’s shoulder, grateful he’d intervened.

      “I called my fellow royal guards,” Linus assured her, still running. “They’ll look for him.”

      “He’ll be long gone.”

      “Good. Maybe he won’t ever come back.”

      Julia wanted to believe the guard’s assessment. The attack had to have been a fluke, a freak coincidence after the incidents back home. The guy was probably some random weirdo. Surely Linus had chased him away for good.

      Right? Just some random weirdo who happened to be a trained fighter.

      Who’d jumped out of nowhere when she was the only person around, and asked her for a file, mere weeks after someone had broken into the files in her office.

      A random coincidence?

      Julia heard a low, pain-filled moan and realized it came from her own lips. She’d come to Lydia to support her sister. But what if she’d brought more trouble to the kingdom of Lydia?

      Linus paused at a bench. He lowered her onto the seat as he spoke into his earpiece. “I’m returning Miss Miller to the palace.”

      After another brief exchange, he assured her, “Guards are scouring the bluffs.”

      “They haven’t found the guy who attacked me?”

      “They’re looking for him.” He shook his head apologetically. “It’s dark. Those cliffs have a lot of places where a person can hide. Seaview Drive connects to a number of spur roads into the mountains, besides leading to the border. He could be hiding anywhere.”

      Julia nodded and tried not to let her terror show. Her attacker hadn’t been caught after all. He’d gotten away and could return again. Julia shivered, not because of the temperature, but at the thought of her attacker on the loose, somewhere in the vicinity, possibly even watching them from a distance right now. Unable to bear any weight on her bruised ankle, she leaned on Linus and looked past him to the darkness beyond. The sun had set and the first stars twinkled down on them.

      The beach looked serene, even in darkness.

      But the deceptive darkness hid someone who wanted to hurt her.

      TWO

      Linus stood panting next to the bench and studied the duchess. A dozen different thoughts warred for attention inside his head, not least among them his concern for Julia’s immediate safety. Where had her attacker gone? Had he been acting alone? Between the darkness and the craggy bluffs, the man could be anywhere.

      Why had the duchess been attacked? If the man had meant her immediate harm, he could have knocked her off and run away before Linus could have caught up to him. No, it seemed the man wanted to kidnap her or at least drag her out of sight before enacting his plans.

      Linus felt his stomach roil with revulsion. He didn’t want to imagine what the assailant’s plans had been. From what he had observed of her, Julia Miller was a delightful, caring young woman. She hadn’t done anything to provoke the attack. Even now, with her face streaked with sand and sweat and her hair ruffled from its ponytail, she looked sweet. Innocent. Pretty.

      He put those thoughts out of mind. He shouldn’t think about how the duchess looked, and he could grill her on possible theories later. Right now, he needed to focus on her well-being. That meant calming her fears and determining whether the injury on her leg warranted a trip to the hospital. And he needed to figure out how to get her off the beach. After chasing her all the way from the palace, fighting off her attacker and then carrying her back through the shifting sand, he was beat. He wasn’t sure he could carry her all the way to the hospital, or even to the palace. But he was reluctant to pull any men off the search for her assailant just to fetch them a car.

      On top of all that, Linus couldn’t shake the question of why the duchess had deliberately run off without him in the first place. Sure, she’d probably underestimated the risk and just wanted a moment to herself. But she could have explained as much to him and he’d have worked something out so that she could have some space and still be safe.

      Didn’t she trust him?

      Or was she running from him?

      The thought clamped around his lungs with cold fingers and he stopped panting. During their interactions over the past two days, he’d felt an odd frisson, of attraction or aversion, he couldn’t be sure which. But there was something there. He’d told himself not to worry about it, but if it was enough to send the duchess running from the palace without him, then he couldn’t ignore it any longer. It would have to be addressed.

      Lowering himself onto the other end of the bench, he faced Julia.

      In the light of the rising moon, he saw the glimmer of a streak of tears descending down each of her cheeks.

      He swallowed. How was he supposed to raise the question that had suddenly become the foremost on his mind? If she really didn’t want him around, she certainly wouldn’t want to discuss it with him.

      “Did I offend you?”

      She startled and blinked up at him.

      In his exhaustion, his voice had come out a good half octave lower than its usual bass. He probably sounded sinister. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “I’m sorry. You’re supposed to page me if you want to go out.”

      “When I go out under guard it seems like such a fuss. I thought it would be easier this way.” The emotion behind her words strained her voice plaintively.

      Linus almost felt guilty for pursuing her. But then, if he hadn’t arrived when he did, her attacker would have carried her off. Obviously she wasn’t going to share more of her feelings right now, and he needed to get her to a secure location. He switched topics. “How’s your leg? Do you need a hospital?”

      “It’s just a surface injury. I can try walking.” She planted her feet on the ground and started to stand, then winced.

      Linus scooted across the bench to her side, ready to help in whatever way he could, but unsure if she welcomed further contact with him. It would be easier if he didn’t find her so charming, if her predicament didn’t

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