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‘What?’ the adventurer asked rather breathlessly, as if not quite willing to admit her lucky escape had scared her so much she hadn’t been listening.
‘You know you can climb that tree, so perhaps that’s enough.’ He did his best to reason with her as if every inch of him wasn’t intent on persuading her to come down before she fell and he must try to catch her.
‘There’s no point me knowing I could do it if nobody else does.’
‘Yes, there is. You have the satisfaction of achievement and I’ll know.’
‘No, you won’t. I’m only halfway up.’
‘Which is about ten times as far as anyone else I ever came across can get. Being further up than anyone else can be has to be enough at times, don’t you think? I believe that’s the sign of a truly great person—knowing when it’s time to stop and be content.’
His latest critic seemed to think about that for endless moments before she took another step either way and he felt slightly better when the whippy branches above her head stopped swaying from the intrusion of a small human into its stately crown.
‘Do you really think it’s a big achievement to get this far?’
‘Of course it is; Joan of Arc couldn’t have done better.’
‘She got herself burnt,’ the urchin said doubtfully.
‘There is that, of course. Well, then, whatever great woman you think the most highly of couldn’t have done, as well. No woman of my acquaintance could touch you.’
‘What, not even one?’ she asked as if she didn’t think much of his taste in friends.
‘One might have done, but she died nearly a year ago now and I suppose by then even she was getting a little old for climbing trees. She would have been up there with you like a shot otherwise,’ he assured her.
‘And you think she would have thought this is far enough?’
‘I’m certain of it, she was the most lionhearted woman I ever came across and even she would say it’s enough to prove your courage and daring to yourself at times. Now I do wish you’d come down, because I’m getting a stiff neck and I’m devilish sharp set.’
‘Why don’t you just go, then?’ the girl said rather sulkily.
James wondered if he’d blundered and might have to risk both their lives by climbing up after her. If the girl insisted on going too high for him to be able to break her fall, even if he could judge the right place to try, he might have no choice. A lot of those branches simply wouldn’t take his weight, though, so he wondered if he could shout loudly enough to attract the woodsmen and hope they were lean and limber enough to do what he couldn’t.
‘There’s roast lamb and apple pie for dinner,’ he said as if that was all he could think about right now. He hoped the mention of food would remind her she hadn’t eaten for at least an hour and eating might trump adventures even for intrepid young scamps like this one.
‘I wish I was going to your house for dinner.’
‘I suppose if we’d been properly introduced I might get you invited another night. I’ve heard rumours about plum cake being available for hungry young visitors at any time of day, but I don’t suppose you like it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Only boys like plum cake, don’t they?’
‘No, I’m as good as any boy and twice as hungry.’
‘So girls don’t prefer syllabub and sponge cake after all, then?’
‘I don’t.’
James was delighted to see the girl look for a way down almost without noticing she was doing it. She might make it back down to earth without killing herself on the way now, but he tried not to let his relief show lest she went further up the tree, because she couldn’t let him see she was almost as scared as he was she might fall right now.
‘What don’t you like? So I can tell Cook when you come to dinner,’ he went on as if he hadn’t noticed she was thinking better of her plan to reach the top of the slender tree.
‘Cucumbers and rice pudding.’
‘Oh, dear me no, I can’t think of a worse combination.’
‘Not both at the same time, idiot,’ she said scathingly and felt less confidently for footholds on the way down and his heart seemed about to take up residence in his mouth as he watched her fumble, then find one.
‘How, then?’ he made himself ask as if he hadn’t a serious thought in his head while she hesitated between the next unsteady foothold and an even less likely alternative. Luckily the first held long enough to let her find a better and he sucked in a hasty breath and tried to look calm and only mildly interested when she found the nerve to look down again.
‘Rice pudding is worse, it looks like frogspawn and tastes like it by the time it gets to the nursery all cold and shuddery,’ she told him rather shakily.
‘I know exactly what you mean, but it goes down much better with big spoons of jam. I would never have got through school without wasting away if my brother hadn’t insisted I have jam with my pudding or succumb to a mysterious ailment unique to our family.’
‘I wish one of my brothers would think up stories to get us out of having to eat cold rice pudding on its own,’ she said wistfully and moved a few feet closer to the ground.
James estimated she was still about thirty feet above his head and worryingly unsafe when the girl’s elder sister appeared at the edge of the clearing, looking visibly shaken and pale as milk. She seemed about to distract the girl with a terrified exclamation and part of him whispered it would be good if she turned out to be a widgeon and released him from the spell he’d been in danger of tumbling into since the first day he laid eyes on her.
This wasn’t about him, though, so he shook his head and glared at her to keep quiet. He’d done his best not to know the Finch family better after spotting this disaster of a female hovering on the edges of it after church a few weeks ago. And who would have thought he’d let himself be cajoled and persuaded inside one of those for the good of his sooty soul quite so often?
‘I don’t think my brother would save me from rice pudding at every meal now we’re grown up if that makes you feel better,’ he shouted cheerfully enough.
He held his breath as the next branch the child tried gave an ominous crack. Again she skipped hastily on to the next and both watchers let out a quiet sigh of relief. The girl in the tree had frightened herself with her own daring and he had to keep her calm enough to take the next step to safety and the next, until she was low enough to catch if she fell.
‘Why not?’ she quavered bravely and how could he not put all he was into saving a girl who seemed as reckless and brave as Virginia must have been as a child?
Despite her mass of golden hair and bluest of blue eyes, she reminded him of Hebe’s little daughter Amélie. The defiant determination not to cry and admit how frightened she was put him in mind of the poor little mite he’d smuggled out of Paris at the behest of Hebe’s mother. The Terror had taken her husband and sons, now treachery had robbed her of her daughter, but she was still brave enough to part with her grandchild. Now it was up to him to see that the child had a better life than her mother and the responsibility felt terrifying at times.
‘We argued,’ he admitted, although it wasn’t exactly true. The problem was he and Luke hadn’t even had the heart to argue, they just let each other go and that was that.
‘Me and Jack argue all the time,’ the girl said matter-of-factly.
‘Is he your only sibling?’ he said with a warning glance at the one he wanted to know about least right now.
‘What’s a sibling?’
‘A brother or sister.’
‘Oh, no, but Nan’s only a baby and can hardly walk yet. I’m next, then there’s Jack, he’s two years older. Sophie is fifteen; Josh is at Oxford. Joanna is quite old and she’s getting married in November. Rowena has been grown up for years and years; she lived with her mama-in-law for ages but she’s home now. I hope she stays with us. She’s really old, but much more fun than Sophie. It’s nice to have one big sister who doesn’t scold all the time.’
James couldn’t spare a glance at Mr Finch’s eldest daughter to see how she’d reacted to that quaint summary. ‘Your parents must be busy with such a large and enterprising family,’ he managed coolly.
‘Oh, Papa and Mama are always busy. What with Papa’s pupils and all those services, Mama says it’s a wonder we ever see him.’
‘You must be Reverend Finch’s daughter, then?’
‘Why do people always say that as if it’s a surprise?’ the girl grumbled.
‘I really can’t imagine,’ he said wryly.
His breathing went shallow as the child stretched a grubby bare foot to find her next precarious hold. At a crash of unwary movement behind him he turned his head to bark a furious command at Mrs Westhope and saw a gangling stripling stumble into the clearing. Shock at the sight of his sister perched halfway up the wretched tree was written all over the boy’s ashen face. James drew breath to shout out an order to be silent just too late.
‘Good Lord, this time she’ll kill herself, Rowena,’ the boy shouted furiously.
The girl in the tree started, snatched at a much-too-slender branch to steady herself and screamed when it snapped off. This time there wasn’t another close enough to grab and save herself. She did her best to stumble on to another slender branch and shuffle her way back to the relative safety of the trunk. James’s heart seemed to jump into his mouth as he tried to calculate where best to stand to break the child’s fall, at the same time as briefly snatching off a prayer she wouldn’t need him to in the first place, since it was so hit and miss. The force of even her slender little body made the fine branches whip away or break as she grabbed at them. He winced for the scratches and bruises they would cause even as he reminded himself far worse would happen if he didn’t get in the way and stop her fall.
‘Stay back, you’ll do no good,’ he ordered the boy who looked about to dash forward and get in the way.
James had to forget him and hope his elder sister would stop the boy. She must have dragged her brother away, because James could pick the best spot to try and catch the child. He braced himself against the impact of the solid little body now hurtling towards him in a flash of flailing arms and grubby petticoats. A pity she couldn’t grow wings like the buzzards he’d been watching earlier, he found time to reflect as stalled time passed sluggishly. He did his best to second-guess gravity and snatch the girl from the shadowy arms of death by adjusting his stance as she fell. An image of this intrepid child lying lifeless and broken if he failed flashed in front of his eyes to truly horrify him, even as he stepped back to compensate for a little flail she managed, as if trying to slow her flight on the way down. He couldn’t quite think her a hell-born brat as every sense he had was intent on saving her from as much harm as he could.
Time flooded back in a rush. The girl’s speed crashed into him with all her slender weight behind it. He frantically closed his arms and caught her close. In the flail of limbs and hammer of his own heartbeat he knew he was between her and the dry, hard-packed earth. For a long moment it seemed they would escape winded and a bit bruised. Then he felt his foot slide on the smooth bark of an outstretched tree root, as if the wretched thing was reaching out to claim them even now he had the girl safe. Unable to flail about and get his balance because of the child in his arms, he had no hold on solid ground. He twisted and turned as best he could to save the girl injury and fell heavily to earth with a bone-jarring thud and actually heard his own head slam against the next tree root with a vicious crack. Almost at the same time a harder, sharper slap of sound rang through the wood like a death knell as James fought hard to hold on to his senses.
Chapter Four (#ulink_8921881b-1ba7-5ef7-a939-1080a33b65de)
‘Oh, Lord, Hes, what have you done?’ Jack Finch yelled.
Rowena let go and they dashed to the dark-haired stranger who still held Hes, despite a blow to his head that still seemed to echo round the clearing. Perhaps he’d been mortally wounded by the shot that followed his fall so closely it might almost have been one sound.
‘Be quiet, Jacob Finch,’ she ordered, knowing shock and his full name would silence him while she took her little sister from Mr Winterley’s arms and willed air into her lungs. ‘You can let her go now,’ she told the all-but-unconscious man. Her little sister was whooping for air with dry little groans that terrified Rowena that she’d never restart her much-tried lungs without wiser help than she had right now. ‘Let her go!’ she demanded this time.
He did one of those terrifying saws for air that echoed Hester’s and she wrested her suddenly frighteningly small sister out of his grasp. She spared a preoccupied moment to be relieved his much-more-powerful lungs were forcing air into his labouring chest now they were free of the slender weight.
‘Come on, Hes, breathe,’ she shouted desperately.
‘How could you, Hes?’ Jack shouted, terror making him sound so furious he could hardly get the words out. ‘How could you?’ he repeated on a sob.
‘Hush, Jack,’ Rowena managed to say as calmly as she could when her own nerves were stretched almost to breaking. ‘Sounding as if you’d like to strangle her won’t help her recover. She’s alive and breathing, so leave her to me now and run for help as fast as you can. We must get her home and get help for Mr Winterley. We owe him our sister’s life,’ she reminded him when Jack shot Mr Winterley an impatient look, as if he was the last thing on his mind.
‘I startled her and made her fall in the first place, didn’t I?’ he said, an agony of self-reproach in his eyes.
‘And did you make her go up the tree she’s been expressly forbidden to climb time and time again? You know you didn’t, so just run to Raigne as fast as you can now, love, and we’ll worry about who did what later. Tell the grooms to bring a hurdle or the best sprung cart they can find, but go now, love, and hurry. They need a doctor and Raigne is closest.’
‘I suppose someone has to fetch him, even if Mama and Papa are home and I don’t suppose they will be.’
‘No, go to Raigne and tell Sir Gideon what happened. He’ll know exactly what to do and which order to do it in.’
‘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.
The bronzed smoothness of this man’s skin was tight over high cheekbones and she suspected he was forcing stillness on himself now. Perhaps he was suppressing his injuries so as not to shock her little sister with his moans of torment? She refused to think about the chance that really had been a gunshot aimed with deadly accuracy. After all, she had to sit here with her shocked little sister and a semi-conscious and injured man until help came. The idea hostile eyes could be looking for a chance to try again felt intolerable right now, so she wasn’t going to admit it was possible on a sunny autumn day in safe little England.
Mr Winterley must have a very low opinion of her after today. She had stood paralysed with fear while he acted to save the life of a child he must only have had a vague idea existed until today. Rowena shivered at the thought of his contempt for such a useless female and fought not to pass on her disturbed feelings to Hes. Struggling with her horror at being so close to a wounded man after scouring the battlefield for her husband’s mangled body that awful day two years ago, she gently laid the hand she could spare from hugging Hester on the man’s forehead, as if touching him might tell him she was sorry. His skin felt warmly familiar under her hesitant fingers. Seeing his faint hint of a frown smooth out, she made a gentle exploration of his temples and further back and was relieved to see no blood issued from his finely made ears. Not sure how she knew that was a good sign, she sighed and wished she knew more about how a vigorous male should react to the world around him.
Even with that last awful image of him in her head, Nate was little more than a boy in her memory rather than a mature warrior like this one. Why had her imagination painted him as a battle-hardened knight and not an idle gentleman of fashion? Somehow this vital man had lessened her husband in her memory and she’d meant to find out about his hurts, not compare him to a corpse on a godforsaken battlefield a thousand miles away.
Rowena caught in her breath and reminded herself she must be cool and logical, despite her fear that a mortal wound might lurk under this man’s crisply curling black hair. His fine and fashionable haircut wouldn’t guard his head from attack. She recalled the noise as he hit this confounded tree root with horror; it sounded like the crack of doom when he hit the earth with Hes locked in his arms. What a shame he wasn’t wearing the fine beaver hat she could see on the bench where Lord Laughraine usually sat after walking up to his favourite viewing point. It might have shielded his head from the worst Hes and the tree could do. She gently winnowed her fingers though the midnight unfamiliarity of his thick dark hair and felt a slight tightening of his skin. He was awake and suffering as she suspected, so she padded her fingers a little further away so as not to hurt him, then snatched them away altogether. Surely it was wrong to feel so in tune with a stranger that you knew where he hurt even when he was pretending to be unconscious? He frowned almost imperceptibly and she automatically smoothed it away and saw a faint smile relax his stern mouth.
She had touched a perhaps mortally injured man and found him warm and human under the bravado and show of a Bond Street beau. Far from being cold and glaring in death, or alive and somehow desperate to feed off her vitality, he was himself. She stopped again and he shocked her a little by raising the hand nearest to her reaching one and meeting hers as if he knew exactly where she was by instinct and didn’t need to open his eyes. He wanted her touch, it was as plain as if he’d sat up and told her so. And she wanted to touch him back; that was equally plain, since her hand closed gently on his as if it belonged there without any permission from the rest of her. Perish the thought—she reminded herself how firmly she had resolved never to marry again after she found Nate dead that day—but she couldn’t bring herself to slide her hand out of his and break the contact even so.
Tempting to tell herself the warmth spreading through her was caused by the simple human contact of another hand on hers—tempting, but not very honest. A tingle of something more exciting and less understandable ran under it, a feeling of heat and homecoming. She felt shocked to realise this was the first physical contact she’d had with Mr Winterley, a man who stayed with lords and ladies as casually as she might with her sister and Mr Greenwood once they were wed and ready to receive visitors. Even as she did her best to remind herself of the gulf between them, the feel of his hand against hers without pressure bridged it. So she sat and let warmth flow from her hand to his and back again, rather bemused by the intimacy and telling herself her lungs had an excuse to be breathless after such a shock.
Birds were still singing in the distance and Hes was squirming to be let out of the fierce hug Rowena still held her in with her other arm and that made her recall where they were and what had happened. She couldn’t simply let her little sister go or leave this man’s side to watch over her as the wary widow in her wanted to. It would be so wrong to desert a warrior in disguise while he was brought low like this. Although she hated the way his gentle grasp on her hand tugged her back into a world of feeling she thought she’d put behind her with Nate’s death, none of it was his fault. Well, part of it was, but she doubted he’d reached across the gap between them for the comfort of her touch and done it on purpose.
