‘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