Julia Justiss - The Rake to Reveal Her

Fighting the despair threatening to suck him down, he reminded himself again why he’d left friends, fiancée, and all that was familiar.

To find himself...whatever was left to find.

Wearily he picked up his pace, his rattled brain still righting itself. He traversed the sharp corner around which his horse had disappeared to find himself almost face to face with a young woman leading a mare.

They both started, the horsing rearing a little.

‘Down, Starfire,’ a feminine voice commanded. Looking up at him expectantly, the girl smiled and said, ‘Sir, will you give me a hand? I was almost run down by a black beast of a stallion, which startled my mare. I’m afraid I wasn’t paying enough attention, and lost my seat. I’ll require help to remount.’

His mind still befuddled, Dom stared at her. Though tall enough that he didn’t have to look down very far, his first impression was of a little brown wren—lovely pale complexion, big brown eyes, hair of indeterminate hue tucked under a tired-looking bonnet, and a worn brown habit years out of date.

The unknown miss didn’t flinch at his eye patch, he had to give her that. Nor did her eyes stray to the pinned-up sleeve of his missing arm—the sleeve now liberally spattered with mud and decorated with leaf-bits, as was the rest of his clothing. Heavens, he must look like a vagrant who’d slept in the woods. It was a wonder she didn’t run screaming in the opposite direction.

His lips curved into a whimsical smile at the thought as her pleasant expression faded. ‘Sir, could you give me a hand, help me remount?’ she all but shouted.

Dom flinched at the loud tones. She must think me simple as well as dishevelled. As his mind finally cleared and her request registered, his amusement vanished.

The images flashed into his head—all the girls he’d lifted in a dance, tossed into saddles...carried into bed. With two strong arms.

Anger coursed through him. ‘That would be a bit of problem.’ He gestured to his empty sleeve. ‘Afraid I can’t help you. Good day, miss.’

Her eyes widened as he began to walk past her. ‘Can’t help me?’ she echoed. ‘Can’t—or won’t?’

Fury mounting, he wheeled back to face her. ‘Don’t you see, idiot girl?’ he spat out. ‘I’m...impaired.’

Crippled would be a better description, but he couldn’t get his mouth around the word. He turned to walk away again.

She hurried forward, the horse trailing on the reins behind her, and blocked his path. ‘What I see,’ she said, her dark eyes flashing, ‘is that you have one good arm, whether or not you choose to use it. Which is more than many of the soldiers who didn’t survive Waterloo, including my father. He wouldn’t have hesitated to give me a leg up, even with only one hand!’

Before he could respond, she shortened the lead on the horse’s reins and snapped, ‘Very well. I shall search for a more obliging log or tree stump. Good day, sir.’

Bemused, he watched the sway of her neat little bottom as she marched angrily away. With well-tended forest on either side of the lane—deadfall quickly removed to provide firewood for someone’s hearth—he didn’t think she was likely to find what she sought.

Turning back towards Bildenstone, he set off walking, wondering who the devil she was. Not that, having spent the last ten years either with the army, at his hunting box in Leicestershire or in London, he expected to recognise any of the locals. That girl would have been only a child the last time he’d been here, seven years ago.

He’d probably just insulted the daughter of some local worthy—though, given the shabby condition of her riding habit, not a man of great means. He meant to limit as much as possible any interaction with his neighbours, but in the restricted society of the country, he’d likely encounter her again. Perhaps by then, he’d be able to tender a sincere apology.

* * *

Stomping down the lane without encountering any objects suitable for use as a mounting block, Theodora Branwell felt her anger grow. After a fruitless ten-minute search, she conceded that she might have to walk all the way back to Thornfield Place before she could find a way to remount her horse.

Which meant she might as well abandon her purpose and try again tomorrow.

Not the least of her ire and frustration she directed at herself. If she’d not been so lost in rehearsing her arguments, she would have heard the approaching hoofbeats and had her mount well in hand before the stallion burst around the corner and flew past them. After all the obstacles they’d ridden over in India and on the Peninsula, how Papa would laugh to know she’d been unseated by so simple a device!

No sense bemoaning; she might as well accept that her lapse had ruined the timing for making a call on her prospective landlord today.

She had Charles to check on, she thought, her heart warming as she pictured the little boy she’d brought up. Then there were the rest of the children to settle, especially the two new little ones the Colonel had just sent her from Brussels. Though the manor’s small nursery and adjoining bedchamber were becoming rather crowded, making settling the matter of the school and dormitory ever more urgent, Constancia and Jemmie would find them places. But she knew the thin boy and the pale, silent girl would feel better after a few sweetmeats, a reassuring hug, and a story to make them welcome.

How frightening and strange the English countryside must seem to a child, torn from the familiar if unstable life of travelling with an army across the dusty fields and valleys of Portugal and Spain. Especially after losing one’s last parent.

It was a daunting enough prospect for her, and she was an adult.

The extra day would allow her to go over her arguments one more time. She liked Thornfield Place very much; she only had to convince Mr Ransleigh, her mostly absentee landlord who had now unaccountably taken up residence, that turning the neglected outbuilding on his property into a home and school for soldiers’ orphans would cause no problem and was a noble thing to do.

A guilty pang struck her. She’d really been too hard on the one-armed, one-eyed man in the lane. Though he might have been injured in an accident, he had the unmistakable bearing of a soldier. Had he suffered his wounds at Waterloo? Recovering from such severe losses would be slow; frustration over his limitations might at times make him wonder if it would not have been better, had he never made it off the battlefield.

She knew it was. She’d have given anything, had Papa been found alive, whatever his condition. Or Marshall, dead these five years now.

The bitter anguish of her fiancé’s loss scoured her again. How much different would her life be now, had he not fallen on that Spanish plain? They’d be long married, doubtless with children, her love returned and her place in society secure as his wife.

But it hadn’t been fair to take out her desolation on that poor soldier. Wholly preoccupied with her own purpose, she only now recalled how thin his frame was, how dishevelled his rough clothing. When had he last eaten a good meal? Finding employment must be difficult for an ex-soldier with only one arm.

He’d not carried a pack, she remembered, so he must be a local resident. Country society comprised a small circle, she’d been told, much like the army. Which meant she’d probably encounter the man again. If she did, she would have to apologise. Perhaps in the interim, she might also think of some job she could hire him to perform at Thornfield Place.

Satisfied that she’d be able to atone for her rudeness, she dismissed him from her mind and trudged down the lane back towards Thornfield.

* * *