Elizabeth Beacon - Redemption Of The Rake

‘Don’t alarm Lady Laughraine, boy,’ the stranger managed in a broken whisper.

‘Do as he says,’ Rowena ordered brusquely. ‘Now go.’

With one last look round as if he’d like to go and stay at the same time, Jack went as fast as his legs would carry him and Rowena managed a sigh of relief. A fleeting idea that the powerful male at her feet cared too much about Callie’s serenity flitted though her head, but she banished it to a dark corner and concentrated on facts. If that really had been a gunshot so close she had felt the echo in her own ribcage, two semi-conscious adventurers and an over-bold poacher were enough for one woman to worry about right now.

Hester’s stalwart little lungs were gasping in air as eagerly as if it was going out of fashion now and colour was coming back into her pallid cheeks. Rowena went on rubbing her narrow ribcage as she leant Hester forward to help as best she could. She stared down at the stranger, feeling helpless in the face of his deeper hurts. Now Jack was gone and with the worst of her fears for Hester calming, she had time to feel the horror of what might have happened, if not for this supposedly idle gentleman. Had he sustained some terrible injury as he strove to save Hes, or maybe he’d been shot although he twisted to save her sister from a terrible fall at what seemed like exactly the right moment at the time?

Considering the loud crack his head made when it hit the tree root, how could he not be badly hurt, Rowena? If he’d taken a bullet as well there would be blood, though, wouldn’t there? She examined every inch of him visible; his closely fitting coat of dark-blue superfine was only marred by grass seeds and the odd leaf that dared cling to it. His dark hair fell in rougher versions of the neatly arranged waves she’d seen gleam like polished ebony as the late summer sun shone through the plain side windows in church only last Sunday. There was no sticky trail of blood matting it to dullness when even this far into the woods light came in leaf-shaded speckles.

She made herself glance lower and concluded such pristine breeches would give away a wound all too easily and as for his highly polished boots, what was he doing wearing such expensive articles of fashion in Lord Laughraine’s woodland? No, he seemed unmarred by bullets and she knew too much about such wounds to be mistaken. He wasn’t flinching away from the ground pressing against one or moaning in agony. She doubted he’d do that if he was badly injured, though, for the sake of the child sitting so close she would feel as well as hear them. Some instinct she didn’t want to listen to said he’d put Hes’s welfare before his own. Under all the Mayfair gloss and aloofness this was truly a man. Trying to pretend otherwise every Sunday since she had come back to King’s Raigne and found Mr Winterley a welcome guest at the great house had been a waste of effort.

Never mind that; he must be horribly uncomfortable on that unyielding root. She dare not move him for fear of causing more harm. One of the better military surgeons once told her that well-meaning efforts to help an injured man often did as much damage as the wounds inflicted by the enemy. She wanted to remove her light shawl and cushion his poor head, but would that do more harm than good?

Since he didn’t appear to have been shot she could discount that as a reason for his continuing unawareness. Perhaps she had misheard in all the shock and confusion of Hes’s wild tumble anyway and there never was a second sharp crack ringing through the now-silent wood. He did take the full force of a surprisingly substantial little body hurtling towards him after all. She suspected Hes could have broken one or two of his ribs when she slammed into him almost as hard as a bullet might. The thought of a gun being fired in anger took her back to the terrifying noise of the battlefield and the long, terrible tension every wife endured when waiting to find out if she was a widow. She shuddered at the tragic end to that waiting for her and all the other wives and lovers facing the full stop put on a man’s life by war, then drew in a deep breath to banish old terrors from her mind and concentrate on new ones instead.

‘Will she do?’ the man made the huge effort to ask in a rasping whisper.

Even the breathy rumble of it told Rowena there was more to his hurts than simply being winded by her little sister’s plunge into his arms. She shifted the small body in her arms to peer at Hester’s face and saw a trail of tears on her grubby little face that almost made her break down herself. She couldn’t put her sister aside to check on the gentleman who had rescued her. While she was grateful to him, this was Hes, her sister, and she came first, even when she was sitting between two injured souls and none of it was his fault. She wiped away her sister’s tears with her fingers and kissed her grubby cheek.

‘I don’t think much harm befell her ladyship here, as long as she does as she’s told for a day or two and doesn’t climb this particular tree ever again. I think all will be well with her, don’t you?’ she said softly and Hester managed a wobbly smile.

‘I won’t,’ she managed to gasp between breaths. Her little sister was a daredevil scrap of mischief far too headstrong for her own good, but Rowena loved her so much it physically hurt right now.

‘Pleased to hear it,’ he said, went even paler, then finally lost consciousness.

‘Is he dead, Row?’ Hester managed to wail in an almost-normal voice.

‘No, love, but remember he’s been hit on the head and probably hasn’t managed to get enough air into his lungs quite yet.’

‘He looks dead.’ The little voice sank to a fearful whisper.

‘No, I’m sure he will be perfectly fine in a day or two and Jack is sure to be at Raigne soon. You know he can run like the wind when he chooses. So help will be on its way before long and Dr Harbury will probably insist he stays in bed for a while. Mama and the doctor are sure to insist you stay in yours until we’re sure no harm was done and you deserve it, so don’t look at me like that,’ Rowena added as her little sister shuddered and seemed unable to bounce back to her normal state of barely suppressed mischief.

‘You know how much I hate being shut inside on a lovely day.’

‘Let’s hope for rain, then,’ Rowena murmured hardheartedly, with an apologetic look at the serene blue sky and a shiver. Somehow she dreaded the coming winter and all the long and lonely dark nights it would bring with it even more than usual.

‘I hate that even worse.’

‘I know, all mud and stickiness and damp stockings.’

‘Ugh, don’t,’ Hester said with another shiver and clung to Rowena in a way that made her more anxious about her little sister and at the same time guiltily annoyed at Mr Winterley for worrying them with his long and somehow painful silence.

If not for him, she could carry her little sister home and put her to bed, then send for the doctor herself. If they didn’t have to wait for someone from Raigne to take responsibility for Mr Winterley, they could be halfway back to King’s Raigne Vicarage now. Rowena would love to hand over the care of their most-adventurous child to her mother and father and take time to be shocked and shaken herself. She shouldn’t dream of being so selfish, she decided, with an apologetic look at the unconscious man. If not for him, Hes would be dead or so near to it they must pray for a miracle to save her from a fall from such a height. Now he was suffering for his heroism while Rowena wished him at Jericho.

She was a bad and ungrateful woman and ought to do penance. Luckily Papa wasn’t a fire-and-brimstone vicar who thundered hellfire and damnation at his parishioners from the pulpit and expected constant repentance from his family. Flinching away from the poor man because he lay almost as still and pale as her husband after the terrible battle at Vimeiro that day was cowardly and wrong, though. He was deathly pale under the unfashionable tan that gave him away as a contradiction. Even she knew pinks of the ton prided themselves on having a pallor that set them apart from those who toiled for a living, or country squires who rode their acres so they could afford a spring Season in town to marry off their daughters.