The Lady Flees Her Lord

by Ann Lethbridge

  A soft moan sounded in her throat. The sweet sound drove him mad with desire. He covered her mouth with his, swallowing her cries, and was rocked by the trembles quaking through her body. Heat poured from her center as her climax shivered and pulsed in her limbs and around his shaft. Her insides sucked at his cock.

  He exploded. He filled her to the womb with his essence, his life force spurting, his body pulsing and vibrating. He swallowed his own cry of triumph against her lips.

  They subsided in bliss and clung together against the tree, weak, panting, empty except for a deep languid heat. She kissed his neck and drooped around his shoulders, a heavenly burden.

  It took all his strength to remain standing. He had never reached so high so fast or spilled with such force. His mind sharpened. Oh, dear God. He’d lost all sense of honor. He’d filled her precious body with his thrice-damned seed.

  For all he knew, he’d killed her.

  “Lucinda,” he said. And stopped, his mouth full of nothing. What the hell could he say?

  She rested her head against his chest. “Hugo, we have to talk.”

  Her regretful tone rang a faint warning bell deep in his unconscious mind. A more important anxiety filled his thoughts. Should he warn her of the danger? Would she hate him for what he’d done? Surely one slip would not do the deed?

  “Mrs. Graham,” a high-pitched voice full of panic called from back toward the music and the lights. “Mrs. Graham. Where are you?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “That sounds like Janey.” Lucinda shoved at Hugo’s shoulder. Her heart had slowed from fever pitch but picked up again in painful rhythm.

  Hugo lowered her to the ground and helped her straighten her bodice.

  “Mrs. Graham? Where are you?” The shout ended on what sounded like a sob.

  “Oh, God. Something has happened to Sophia.” She lifted her skirts and ran.

  “Careful.” Hugo grabbed her hand. “The path is this way.” He guided her across the grass toward the tent lights.

  “Janey,” Lucinda called. “I’m here.”

  The girl rushed at her, wide-eyed and wild-looking, her cloak thrown over what looked like a nightgown. “Oh, Mrs. Graham,” the girl cried. “It’s Sophia. She is sick somethin’ awful and calling for you. Ma sent me to fetch you home.”

  How could she? Lucinda railed at herself. How could she be here when Sophia needed her? Her chest felt as if she’d fallen into a pond and couldn’t draw breath, couldn’t move her limbs fast enough.

  Hugo caught her shoulder. “I’ll take you in my carriage. It will be faster.”

  They ran to the edge of the field, dragging Janey with them. Lucinda pushed the panting girl up onto the seat and scrambled up behind her. Hugo untied the horses’ heads and leaped in.

  It seemed to take forever to turn the phaeton around in the lane. Surely it would be quicker if she ran. About to jump clear, she was forestalled by a brawny arm crossing in front of her.

  “Easy.” His calm voice steadied her. He flicked his whip. The horses broke into a canter.

  She gripped Janey’s sleeve. “What is the matter with Sophia?”

  “A fever. Mother thinks it could be the measles.”

  Measles. Children died of the measles. She couldn’t lose Sophia. Her mind emptied of rational thought as her every nerve focused on arriving, her body tense and rigid. Nothing breached the fog of panic as the journey went by in a blur. Was it minutes or hours before they arrived at Annie’s cottage at the other end of the village?

  The horses halted. Lucinda leaped for the ground. Somehow Hugo was there to catch her.

  “Calm down,” he said. “You are not going to help matters if you break your neck.”

  The words went into her ears, but she could not grasp their import.

  “I’ll go for the doctor,” Hugo said.

  That she understood. She nodded, pushing past him, and dashed for the front door.

  • • •

  Hugo urged the horses back to the Dunning cottage as fast as he dared, grimly aware of the doctor clutching the side of the carriage with one hand and his hat to his head with the other.

  Frustration clenched Hugo’s shoulders. Perhaps if she’d moved into the Grange as he’d wanted, this would not have happened, or at least he would not feel so helpless.

  “You were lucky to find me at home, my lord,” the doctor said. “Another ten minutes and I would have left for Squire Dawson’s.”

  Did the man think Hugo wouldn’t have dragged him from the ball? He clung to a thread of calm. Angering the doctor wouldn’t help Sophia. “I appreciate you changing your plans, Doctor. And of course I will drive you to the Hall after you see the child.”

  “If you continue to drive like this, my lord, I might even arrive there before m’wife.”

  Hugo slanted him a grin. “Send your bill to me.”

  “Like that, is it?”

  Damn. “Mrs. Graham is a friend. I simply happened to be on hand at the news of her daughter’s illness.”

  “Hmmph.”

  Hugo didn’t care what the doctor thought, so long as he aided the child.

  They passed the Red Lion, its windows dark for once, with the Peddles raking in coin at the fête. At last, Hugo drew the horses to a halt outside the Dunning cottage. Please God they were in time.

  The doctor, overweight for his fifty years, huffed and puffed his way to the ground. “Damned contraptions,” he muttered when his feet hit terra firma.

  Someone must have been watching for them, because the front door spilled light into the lane just long enough to admit the heavyset figure. If a calm mother of three was anxious, it didn’t bode well for Sophia. He clenched his jaw and swung down, suppressing a bit of huffing and puffing of his own. Dancing, and what followed, hadn’t done his leg one bit of good. In fact, his thigh burned like the very devil.

  The world seemed to slip sideways in a sickening rush. What had been a perfect day had become a nightmare of an evening. First he’d lost control and now this. He wanted to beat something to a pulp or run for the hills like a bloody coward. He was always running. He’d run from his father, then he’d run the night he’d as good as killed his wife—Juanita. Tonight, he was staying right where he was. He would not let Lucinda down the way he’d let his mother and his wife down.

  He went to his cattle’s heads, tension in his back nigh unbearable, the horses’ hot breath on his face. The smell of horse and leather in the warm night air reminded him of nights in Spain. Of the nightmares. God. He hadn’t had one bad dream since he’d met Lucinda, but now he was living one. He clenched his fists and pressed his knuckles against his lips to stem the stream of curses hovering on his lips. He wanted to storm into the house, to protect Lucinda from the doctor’s words. All he could do was swallow his nausea, hide his weakness, and wait. But Goddamn it, he wished he could do more.

  Light from the opening door blinded him for a moment.

  “Lord Wanstead?”

  Lucinda. He steeled himself to hear the bad news, to be her rock. “I’m here.” He moved around the horses. “How is she?”

  Her laugh sounded shaky. “The doctor sent me away. Too many questions.” The sound of tears in her voice felt like a sword blade to his heart.

  “Did he say anything at all?”

  “She has a fever. He was listening to her chest but said he couldn’t hear anything apart from my voice. I could not sit still, so I came out here.”

  Even in the dark he was aware of her fingers twisting, of the barely restrained emotions tearing her apart. He clenched his fists to stop himself from reaching out and pulling her close.

  “Annie says there are all kinds of things it might be.” She dashed a hand across her face. “Sophia is all I have.” Her voice was thick and broken. “If anything . . . happens to her . . . I don’t know what . . .”

  “She will be fine.” God help him. Children were such fragile things. So were their mothers. He repressed a shudder. If the child died
. . . He pushed the thought aside. “I’ll take a message to your family, if it would help.”

  She jerked back. “My family?” She reached for the side of the phaeton for support. “No.”

  He took a step toward her. “Surely they would want to be of assistance, to know?”

  She drew back. “I am estranged from my family. I can . . . will not ask them for aid.”

  At a loss, Hugo slammed his fist against the panel of the vehicle and cursed.

  She flinched and backed away.

  He reached out. “I’m sorry. I’m not angry with you. I hate doing nothing.”

  She took his hand and brought it to her lips in a gesture so tender it almost unmanned him. “Your presence here means more than I can say,” she murmured.

  Without hesitation, he enfolded her in his arms and pressed his lips to her hair, his heart aching with the effort to contain something so large he thought it might split asunder.

  Her body trembled with tears waiting to be shed. And yet her inner strength, her resilience, held her together. Distract her. It always worked well for his men. “Earlier, I was about to tell you that I am leaving for London tomorrow.”

  Her body stiffened.

  He patted her shoulder. “I wrote for an appointment to see a doctor.”

  Her face tilted up. “About your leg?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m glad. There must be something they can do.”

  That she could even spare a thought for him in her current state shattered every wall he’d built around his heart. He gave her shoulders a brief squeeze.

  Having said the words, he was committed. He forced the image of knives and screams out of his mind. “I won’t leave until I am sure Sophia is well.”

  “Thank you, but it really isn’t necessary.”

  Was she telling him he wasn’t necessary when already he missed her? Odd how uncertain he felt with this woman.

  The front door swung back, bathing them in light. Lucinda jerked away from him as if he was hot. That side of his body felt the chill of her absence, and his arm felt empty, useless. He clamped his jaw shut on a protest. He had no wish to keep her from her beloved daughter, nor did he have the right to join her in her suffering. Not yet.

  “Mrs. Graham?” Annie called.

  “I’m here.” Lucinda hurried into the cottage without a backward glance.

  Hugo stared at the door. It might as well have been the walls of Badajoz. For all his size and strength, he could not break through it. Instead, he lingered in no-man’s-land, where he’d always been. Curse it.

  Only a man who could offer love would be permitted inside that inner circle.

  Love. The word had an ominous ring. He wanted companionship and physical comfort. But love? Was that the emotion filling to bursting a heart he thought he’d frozen out of existence? Or was it merely sympathy?

  As tense as a drum skin, Hugo waited. Damn it. The child would be all right. Little Sophia had to get well. He refused to allow anything else.

  He grabbed the horses’ bridles and turned the carriage around. As he brought them to a halt, the door opened again and this time the doctor emerged. Annie waddled after him.

  Chest tight, Hugo narrowed his eyes. The doctor better have a good explanation for his departure.

  “How is the child?” His voice sounded as if he had swallowed acid.

  “Too much sun,” the doctor said. “And probably too many lollipops.” He glared at a chastened Annie.

  “She was having such a good time,” Annie said. She threw Hugo a glance of appeal. “I thought she was just excited.”

  “Spoiled,” the doctor said. He glanced at Hugo. “I have given Mrs. Graham detailed instructions. She seems intelligent enough to follow them. I will check back in the morning.” He threw his bag up onto the seat. “Now, your lordship, you better get me to this party before my wife has my head on a platter.”

  “The child will be all right? You are sure?”

  “Yes, my lord.” His voice had the dry quality of a man pressed beyond patience. “She needs cool and quiet and a physic to help her sleep.”

  Hugo’s breath left his body in a huge rush. The tension in his shoulders and jaw flowed away on a river of thankfulness.

  The doctor heaved into the carriage. Hugo leaped up beside him.

  “My lord,” Annie called. “Mrs. Graham said to thank you and remind you to keep your appointment in London.”

  Mrs. Graham would. Damn her. He could not prevent a smile.

  • • •

  The table chilled Hugo’s bare arse. His stones retreated inside his body like a couple of cowards. Hugo wanted to join them.

  “Tut, tut,” the highly recommended surgeon uttered. He poked at the center of the swollen red mess of Hugo’s thigh.

  Gritting his teeth, Hugo stared out of the window, peering between blackened chimneypots at what little he could see of clouds drifting across a patch of hazy blue rather than look at the tray close at hand, where knives and saws and pincers lay ready for the surgeon. A navy man who’d sawn off more limbs than he’d had Sunday dinners.

  A comforting thought.

  London. He hadn’t been here since his come-out. The past two weeks hanging about at Grillons for an appointment to see this doctor had been hell. His glance dropped to his jacket neatly folded beneath his breeches on the chair; he remembered what was in his pocket and smiled. At least he had not wasted those days.

  The surgeon poked at Hugo’s puckered and weeping flesh.

  Hugo jumped. “God’s teeth, man.” He barely prevented himself from planting the surgeon a facer.

  “You had better have a swig of this.” The surgeon held out a brown glass bottle.

  “What is it?”

  “Laudanum. For the pain.”

  “You are going to operate now?” Hugo swallowed bile. At any moment his leg might be lying on the black-and-white tiled floor. He’d known this was a bloody bad idea. He shifted forward on the table, prepared to jump down.

  “I wouldn’t call it an operation,” the doctor said. “I think there’s something in there. I want to have a look. He picked up a scalpel and a pair of forceps from the tray.

  Hugo bit back his instinct to decline the honor. “The last doctor said he’d removed all the fragments.”

  The surgeon’s soft gray eyes shot to Hugo’s face. “Ah. So you had more than one operation on this.”

  “Yes. Once at Badajoz, and again in Lisbon. Doctor Mullet recommended I come and see you if I had problems.”

  “Good man, Mullet.”

  “Not if he left something in there.”

  “Well, we won’t know if you don’t let me look. And I can tell you this, my lord. This is not going to get better unless we open it up. You are lucky you came now. In a month’s time I would be taking this leg off. I promise you that.”

  Bloody doctors. Hugo wanted to howl his rage. “Fine. Look all you want. But I’m not having the leg off.”

  “Would you sooner die?” Two months ago, facing an endless empty future, struggling alone with his demons, he might have said yes. He didn’t bother to answer.

  “I have brandy if you prefer,” the surgeon said, waving the laudanum under his nose.

  And while he drifted in a drunken stupor, who knew what the knife-happy doctor would do. “Neither.”

  He clenched his fist and felt the scrap of fabric nestled in his palm. He’d found it on the grass after the fête, recognized the little blue flowers and the initial, and had intended to return it to Lucinda before he left for London. In an unconscious gesture, he lifted to his nose and inhaled its lingering scent of lavender and woman. His woman.

  “Well, if you bloody well pass out, make sure you fall backward or risk cutting an artery.”

  The doctor handed him a strip of leather. “Bite down. And don’t think about hitting me.” The grim expression also held empathy.

  “Saw a lot of action in the navy, did you?” Hugo asked.

  The man�
�s lips curved in a humorless smile. “Too much.”

  Hugo knew exactly how he felt. He stuffed the leather in his mouth and watched the scalpel approach his thigh. Of their own accord, the thigh muscles bunched.

  The surgeon made a swift stabbing stroke.

  Pain shot up Hugo’s leg and straight to his gut. “Jesus. Hell. Bugger.” The muffled words exploded from his throat.

  “That the best you can do?” the doctor said. “You army types are all the same. A bunch of molls.” He held a cloth against the flow of blood.

  “You bastard,” Hugo spat around the gag. He concentrated on breathing through his nose instead of paying the doctor in kind.

  “Sit still a moment longer, please, my lord.”

  The surgeon nudged the spectacles off his forehead onto his nose. “Magnifying glasses,” he said, bending over Hugo’s leg. All Hugo could see through the blur of watering eyes was the back of the doctor’s graying head and the brown mole on his neck.

  Another stab of pain. Christ. What the hell was he doing?

  “Aha.” The exclamation had an ominous ring.

  “What?” Hugo squeezed out between his teeth.

  The surgeon straightened. He whacked the cloth against Hugo’s thigh and pressed Hugo’s hand on it. “Push down on that.”

  He held up what looked like a thick hair or a short bloody piece of string. “Well, well. Look what we have here.”

  Hugo removed the damp strip of leather from his mouth and swallowed to moisten his tongue. “What the hell is it?”

  “If I’m not mistaken, it’s braid. Good quality gold braid, too. The cheap stuff would have caused a much worse mess.”

  “Braid?”

  “Part of a uniform. Shot must have carried in there. Not surprised Mullet didn’t find it when he was looking for metal.” A puzzled look crossed his face. “How the hell it got in your leg, I can’t imagine. We usually find it in shoulder or arm wounds. Off the jackets, you know. I even found a button once, months after the injury healed. It had worked its way up to the surface.”