by Julia Donner
A shout from the lane took her attention. Mr. Hoskins and his daughter, Fanny, came up the lane at a run.
Relief relaxed her tensed shoulders. “Mr. Hoskins, over here, please!”
Villagers came to watch the unconscious stranger gently transferred from the verge onto a door and carried down the tree-shaded lane to the stone cottage at its end. Then came the awkwardness of lifting the wounded man off the door and carrying him up the staircase to a bedchamber on the first floor. Olivia winced when Harry’s head was allowed to loll back as he was carried. Fanny had thrown an old blanket over the coverlet, then in a businesslike manner, evicted the gawkers.
Olivia washed her hands in a bowl of water provided by Mrs. Hoskins, who hovered in the bedchamber doorway, gripping her hands at her waist.
“Oh, Mrs. St. Clair, don’t you think he should have been taken to the inn?”
“I wasn’t sure he would make it that far. He’s lost so much blood.” She undid and lifted the edge of the makeshift compress she had awkwardly tied in place with cut pieces of reins. “Thank heavens! The bleeding has slowed to a seep.”
“I know you help out Dr. Wentworth and all, but should you be taking care of this stranger?”
Olivia didn’t want to be unkind but did intend to be firm. “Mrs. Hoskins, stranger or not, this man is in need. It is our duty to help.”
Mrs. Hoskins left, muttering as she went down the stairs and back to the kitchen. Grumble, she did, but she would also start a sustaining broth and whatever else she thought would be nourishing for an invalid.
Olivia exhaled a deep sigh and carefully peeled back the compress. The larger laceration still seeped but the smaller two on the other side of his face had slowed to almost nothing. Very soon, the larger wound would start to swell to the point where it could not be stitched. She went out to the hallway and searched the linen cupboard for clean cloths. She dipped the cloths in cool water and draped his head. He never moved and stayed that way while she fetched her sewing basket.
There were no bell pulls on the upper floor, so she called for Fanny, who came bounding up the steps, skirts flopping and brown hairs escaping from her cap.
“Yes, Mrs. Olivia?”
“I’m sorry to have to ask you to do this, but I’m going to need your help to hold his head still. And we’ll have to tie down our injured guest while I stitch up his wounds. We can’t wait for Dr. Wentworth.”
Fanny snorted and shook her head. “No use waitin’ on him. Heard he was in his cups at the inn. Wouldn’t want a drunk sticking a needle in my face.”
Olivia didn’t say it, but she wholeheartedly agreed. After getting the man’s wrists bound and the cords tied to the bed slats, Olivia rinsed her hands and threaded her best silk through her thinnest needle.
Her back ached by the time she had the worst laceration stitched closed. The other wounds didn’t take half the time the first had. She’d finished stitching by late afternoon and sat down to rest, which wasn’t for long.
Fanny returned with the strips of linens she’d cut for bandages. Harry’s wrists were freed while Olivia dressed his head in a turban that covered most of his face, leaving his nose and mouth uncovered.
Fanny left with the bloodied cloths and the man’s boots. Mr. Hoskins would be needed to help Olivia to remove the clothes, since Fanny had never married. Olivia sat in a chair by the bed, feeling the ache along her back and neck from bending over for so long and holding her body taut during the stitching.
The portmanteau sat by her foot. She searched the contents, found shaving gear but no nightshirt. The man was too wide through the shoulders for her late husband’s nightwear. It didn’t matter that he was so much taller. The point was to have him decently covered.
All of his things were embroidered or stamped with his name, Harry Collyns, but she remembered him without verifying it from the graceful script etched in gold. She had met him long ago, before she was out of the schoolroom. It had been a brief encounter, a gallant gesture from a startlingly handsome young man.
He’d never remember her or the incident, but she’d never forget that wide, smiling mouth, so beautifully formed, but now, the youthful fullness of his face and lips had thinned. After she’d wiped the blood from his face, she noticed the change from boyish, angelic beauty to a lean, more mature appearance. His determined jaw line was now more pronounced. The slender frame of a young lad had become the broader figure of a man in his thirties. But he hadn’t gone to fat and instead had become lean with delineated muscle. After peeling and cutting away his ruined clothes, she’d lost her breath when a shaft of sunlight had washed him in a golden glow.
Harry Collyns had been a boy impossible to forget. Now that he’d matured, Sir Harry might be a man she couldn’t resist.
Chapter 3
Tremendous pounding brought Harry out of the deepest sleep he’d ever experienced. The noise ceased, but the quiet made obvious the discomfort inside his head, like it had been crammed full of sticks.
The room was dark. No light seeped through the coverings over his eyes. The bedclothes felt heavy and damp, the air close and suffocating. He started to cast off the coverings then realized he wore only his smalls. What if someone besides his valet entered the room?
His face itched. When he reached up to scratch, he encountered bandages and came fully awake. A brief flash of panic flushed through him when he discovered his entire head heavily swathed.
A memory bloomed—a curve in the road, the horses shying from a wind-flung object. He remembered a sharp sense of worry from the sound of a woman’s voice trying to calm the thrashing horses. Following that, nothing but a few hazy recollections of bed linens changed and being bathed by gentle hands.
A vague scent of roses lingered, the only pleasant thing about the airless room. His mother had loved roses and made pouches of dried petals to put inside her clothespress.
Distant murmurings followed the cessation of the pounding. A door creaked and someone approached his bed. With it came the scent of roses and a hesitant touch on the back of his wrist.
Harry turned his hand over to present his palm. “I believe I know how I got here, ma’am, but wonder where I am. My last recollection was being very near a coaching inn at Lesser Beardsley.”
“Indeed, Sir Harry, you are quite correct. I’m glad your faculties were not impaired from your injuries.”
When he tried to move, a hand pressed against his shoulder. “Please, before anything else, a sip of barley water.”
A firm hand slid under his back, urging him to sit up. “Any dizziness?”
“None at all.”
She wrapped his hand around a glass. He drank down the unpleasant contents and asked, “Would it be possible to have plain water or wine? And your name?”
“Mrs. St. Clair. You are at Beechgate Cottage, very near the village.” He heard the sound of water being poured and she again wrapped his hand around the tumbler.
“Thank you, ma’am.” After handing back the glass, he carefully settled back against the pillows. “Would it be possible to open a window?”
“Certainly. It’s close in here and a lovely day outside.”
A clunk and a squeak preceded a rush of humid, but exquisitely fresh air. The scents of summer, freshly mowed grass and hay, flowers and damp earth filled the room. Harry’s muscles relaxed. The feeling of being trapped fled.
“Mrs. St Clair, is the bandaging around my head necessary?”
Her skirts swished in the quiet of the room. “Perhaps not now that you’re awake. You have a great many stitches and I feared you’d open them if they were left uncovered.”
“How long have I slept?”
She encouraged him to lift his shoulders and flipped the pillow. “Only two days. Often when people sustain head wounds, they will stay unconscious for a long time.”
“My horses?”
“Safe and sound. They came through the incident with only a few scrapes and are stabled at the coaching inn.”
&nbs
p; “My thanks. They aren’t yet fully trained. I worried when I heard a female trying to calm them. Was that you?”
“Yes, but there was no need to worry. I’ve been around cattle ever since I could walk. Perhaps before. Father put me on my first pony before I was out of leading strings.” A cool hand touched his cheek. “You don’t feel feverish, so I’ll ask Dr. Wentworth his opinion about taking the bindings off. But only with your promise to not disturb the stitches,” she sternly added.
“Please extend my thanks to him for his care and to you and your husband for taking me in.”
“I am a widow, Sir Harry.”
“Ah, I am so sorry, ma’am. This must be a terrible imposition.”
Skirts swished again. “His passing happened a long time ago. Rest now, and I’ll have some broth heated for you. We have no bell pulls on this floor, but I’ve placed a bell on the table to the right of the bed. Rest well, Sir Harry.”
“Ma’am, how do you know my name? Have we met before?”
He waited through an uncomfortable pause before she answered, and for some reason, felt anxious to hear her reply. “Perhaps you never noticed, sir, but your name is beautifully embroidered with gilt thread on everything inside you portmanteau. Good afternoon to you, sir.”
Time passes slowly, he discovered, with one’s head bound and vision blinded. Putting together the fragments of his memories of the accident quickly became a bore. He allowed his senses to reach out, to investigate his bedchamber. It felt small, the area somehow compressed.
He began to create an imaginary picture of his hostess. She had a soothing presence, soft and gentle, making him think of a matron, plump and contented, in a cap with wisps of silver hair peaking from its lacy edging. Even though her tone sounded abrupt and somewhat tart, her presence gave him peace, a sense that all was right with the world when she was near.
A smile rubbed his cheeks against the edges of the bandages when he heard footsteps in the passage. When the door creaked open, he said, “Mrs. St Clair, how glad I am that you’ve come back. I must ask to have this clump of linens taken off my head.”
“It’s Fanny, sir, not Widow St. Clair.”
A stab of disappointment startled Harry. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been hoping for the return of Mrs. St. Clair’s company. “You are her daughter, Miss Fanny?”
“Oh, no, sir. Plain Fanny. I belong to Mr. and Mrs. Hoskins. We live down the lane and come in each day to take care of Mrs. St. Clair. I apologize, I do, sir, for makin’ the noise earlier. I forgot you were in here and tacked up a picture what had fallen.”
“Please, don’t let it bother you. It was high time for me to wake up. It’s impossible to know the time of day without the light. Don’t know what I’d do if it weren’t for the chickens.”
He dutifully swallowed the broth Fanny brought, striving to tolerate her constant jabbering. Any company was better than sitting alone in the dark—too many things he didn’t want to think about—too much time for his mind to wander down mental roads he didn’t care to travel.
Curious, he asked, “Fanny?”
“Sir?”
“Mrs. St. Clair, does she receive many visitors?”
“Hardly ever. She’s what they call a recluse.”
He thought about how to ask more questions without encouraging a servant to gossip about her employer then gave up on discretion. An eager chatterbox, Fanny would no doubt enjoy the telling, whereas one would have to be careful not to pry with someone as restrained as Mrs. St. Clair. Something about the widow made him more than merely curious and unwilling to wait until the bandages were removed to develop a clearer impression.
“Fanny, has Mr. St. Clair been dead for some time?”
“The Reverend? Must be over a decade by now. I was still in nappies.”
He dabbed his mouth with the edge of the serviette she’d draped across his chest before asking, “Ah, her father was a clergyman?”
“Still is, but her husband was a man of the cloth, too. He’s the one what died the martyr’s death.”
He swallowed another spoonful of soup. “That’s enough, thank you. You wouldn’t have any rare sirloin in the kitchen, would you?”
“Doubtful, sir. The Reverend St. Clair never ate meat.”
Not bothering to mask his horror, Harry coughed in disbelief. “No meat? How does one live without it?”
“La, sir, much of the world does without it, I expect. The widow doesn’t mind meat but the cost is dear. We have a lovely stream nearby. Do you like fish?”
“Sorry, Fanny, I’m still reeling from the thought of life without beef or the occasional joint of lamb. The late Reverend St. Clair, he was a man of strict principles?”
Fanny lowered her voice to an awed whisper, “He was an abolitionist! So’s the missus.”
“A woman of principle. Laudable.”
“Oh, she’s never loud about anything, sir. Goes about so quiet and commonsensical, but don’t make her angry.”
A stitch pulled when Harry grinned. He tugged at the edge of the bandage, careful not to scratch, and lowered his voice to mimic Fanny’s whisper. “A fire-breather, is she?”
“Oh, not that, sir. She don’t mind bein’ crossed. I’d say she’s more the one for having no stomach for injustice. The missus can’t abide leaving someone in need. She sort of must help them. I guess that’s why she’s let a strange man into her house. Ma and Pa think—”
When Fanny abruptly stopped, Harry dulcetly asked, “What do they think, Fanny?”
Dishes clattered as Fanny cleared up. “Well, beggin’ your pardon, sir, but the talk in the village is that you should be at the inn.”
“And they are absolutely right. If I didn’t have a head swathed in a turban, it’s there I would be. Fanny, perhaps there’s some bread or a wheel of cheese in the pantry?”
“I’ll ask, sir.”
But more satisfying fare was not to be. Dinner came, again bland poultry broth, which did little to satisfy the craving for something more substantial but helped him to drift off into a dose. Night noises woke him. Somewhere in the house, not far away, a woman sang, a low, sultry alto. Smiling, he recognized the melody, a German folk song. The day before, outside his window, he’d heard her humming a Mozart opera. When she broke off a chanson, he listened to a nightingale until the door squeaked.
“Sir Harry?”
“I’m awake, Mrs. St. Clair.”
“So sorry to disturb you, but the window should be shut for the night.”
He listened as she crossed to the window. “Having it open throughout the day was wonderfully distracting. It’s odd what one notices when there’s nothing to see. Mr. and Mrs. Hoskins had an argument today, and Fanny, somewhere nearby, talked to chickens.”
“Yes, she was gathering them in to roost. I’m partial to fresh eggs every morning. Dr. Wentworth thinks you should have eggs tomorrow.”
What he really yearned for was a slab of half-raw beefsteak and a bottle of claret. “And the bandages?”
“They can come off. It will advance the healing if you sit in the sunlight.”
“I look forward to doing so. After a few days in the dark, it will be a pleasure to sit by the window. Or perhaps in the garden?”
“Dr. Wentworth suggests to go slowly. He’s concerned about the blow you took to your head. Have you suffered any dizziness?”
Even though he hadn’t heard her move, he sensed that she’d come closer to the bed. “Very little but I’m never ill and have always healed quickly. And although I’m grateful for your kindnesses, it would be better if I move to the village as soon as I am able.”
“There’s no need for you to concern yourself about that, Sir Harry.”
“Your kindness is greatly appreciated, but the main subject of Mr. and Mrs. Hoskins was their worry that I shouldn’t be here.”
“They’re overprotective and their concern has them overstepping. The main thing is that you are not well enough to be moved.”
When s
he became quiet, he said, “I must admit, it’s a comfortable bed and the linens are certainly cleaner than what one endures at a posting inn.”
“I’ve neglected to ask if someone waits for you.”
“No. I had planned to drive only part way to my destination. Phipps, my valet, went ahead to ready the middle leg of the trip. He pushed on, since the journey can be made in one, long day. He has difficulty sleeping at inns due to a terror of insects but does wonders with pressing a neckcloth.”
“I see.” Her response to his joking sounded tight, disapproving. “Then I shall wish you a good night. Shall I have Mr. Hoskins come up to attend you?”
“No. He’s arranged everything in reaching distance.”
He could almost hear her discomfort from the subject of the chamber pot tucked under the bed. When a floorboard creaked, he stopped her from leaving by asking, “Are you the singer?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Someone sings. I doubted it was Fanny, since it’s mostly opera and lieder.” He waited for her response.
She finally answered, sounding uncomfortable. “I hadn’t realized…. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
“Not at all, ma’am. You have a lovely voice. Contralto. It’s so strong and vibrant for someone your age.”
Silence, extending to a longer, more awkward quiet. He’d taken a chance, bringing age into the conversation. He had to know more about her, driven by a strange curiosity. It was a terrible breach of etiquette to make such a leading comment, but she didn’t say much about herself, which seemed so unusual. He’d lived his entire life around people who spoke of little else but themselves. In the company he kept, if the topic changed from the speaker’s life, it invariably moved to gossip—the meaner the more satisfying.
“Goodnight, Sir Harry.”
The door clicked shut with no answers to relieve his curiosity. But tomorrow, the bindings would come off. He would see her expressions and satisfy this odd compulsion to know more about Mrs. St. Clair. It would also mean he’d have to leave Beechgate Cottage, and the idea of that set his back up. He didn’t want to leave and that was the problem.