He did not say anything.
Nor did she.
Finally she felt the wheels of the carriage slowing, and when she peered out the window she saw that they were approaching an inn with a cheery little sign that said, The Rose and Crown, est. 1612.
“Frances,” she said, glad to have a logical reason to speak. “Frances, it’s time to wake up. We’re here.”
Frances blinked groggily and leaned on Elizabeth, who did not utter a complaint.
“Frances, are you hungry?” Sarah persisted. She leaned forward and jostled her knee. The carriage had come to a complete stop, and all Sarah could think about was escape. She had been trying so hard to keep still, to keep quiet. It felt as if she hadn’t drawn a breath in hours.
“Oh,” Frances finally said with a yawn. “Did I fall asleep?”
Sarah nodded.
“I’m hungry,” Frances said.
“You should have remembered the biscuits,” Harriet said.
Sarah would have scolded her for such a petty comment except that it was a relief to hear something so perfectly normal.
“I didn’t know I was supposed to bring the biscuits,” Frances whined, coming to her feet. She was small for her age and could stand in the carriage without crouching.
The door to the carriage swung open, and Lord Hugh took his cane and stepped out without a word.
“You did know,” Elizabeth said. “I told you.”
Sarah moved toward the door.
“You’re stepping on my cloak!” Frances howled.
Sarah looked out. Lord Hugh was holding up his hand to help her down.
“I’m not stepping on anything.”
Sarah took his hand. She didn’t know what else she could possibly do.
“Get off my— Oh!”
There was a shriek, and then someone stumbled hard into Sarah. She lurched forward, her free hand swinging wildly for balance, but to no avail. She fell, first onto the step, and then onto the hard ground, taking Lord Hugh down with her.
She let out a cry as a splinter of pain shot through her ankle. Calm down, she told herself, it’s just the surprise. It was like stubbing one’s toe. It hurt like the dickens for one second, and then you realized it was the surprise more than anything.
So she held her breath and waited for the pain to subside.
It didn’t.
Chapter Twelve
For a moment, Hugh had thought himself whole again.
He was not entirely sure what had happened inside the carriage, but moments after Sarah placed her warm hand in his, she let out a cry and came toppling toward him.
He held out his arms to catch her. It was the most natural thing in the world, except that he was a man with a ruined leg, and men with ruined legs should never forget what they are.
He caught her, or at least he thought he did, but his leg could not support their combined weight, not when amplified by the force of her fall. He did not have time to feel pain; his muscle simply crumpled, and his leg buckled beneath him.
So it didn’t really matter if he caught her or not. They both crashed to the ground, and for a moment Hugh could do nothing but gasp. The impact had sucked the very breath from his body, and his leg . . .
He bit down on the inside of his cheek. Hard. Strange how one pain could lessen the intensity of another. Or at least it usually did. This time it did nothing. He tasted blood and still his leg felt shot through with needles.
Cursing under his breath, he forced himself to his hands and knees so that he could get to Sarah, who was sprawled on the ground next to him.
“Are you all right?” he asked urgently.
She nodded, but it was that jerky, unfocused type of nod that said that no, she was not all right.
“Is it your leg?”
“My ankle,” she whimpered.
Hugh knelt beside her, his leg screaming in agony at being overbent. He would need to get Sarah into the Rose and Crown, but first he should check to see if she had broken the bone. “May I?” he said, his hands hovering near her foot.
She nodded, but before he could even touch her, they were surrounded. Harriet had jumped down from the carriage, and then Lady Pleinsworth had run out from the inn, and God knows who else was pressing in, and pushing him out. Finally Hugh just hauled himself to his feet and backed up, leaning heavily on his cane.
The muscle in his thigh felt as if someone had impaled him with a burning knife, but even so, it was a familiar sort of pain. He hadn’t done anything new to his leg, it seemed to tell him; he’d just pushed it to the limit.
Two gentlemen arrived on the scene—Sarah’s cousins, he thought—and then Daniel was there, pushing them away.
Taking charge.
Hugh watched as he checked her ankle, then he watched as Sarah put her arms around his neck.
And still he watched as Daniel swept through the crowd and carried her into the inn.
Hugh would never be able to do that. Forget riding, forget dancing, and hunting, and all those things he mourned since a bullet had mangled his thigh. None of those seemed to matter anymore.
He would never gather a woman in his arms and carry her away.
He had never felt like less of a man.
The Rose and Crown Inn
An hour later
“How many?”
Hugh looked up just as Daniel slid onto the stool next to him in the barroom at the inn.
“How many drinks?” Daniel clarified.
Hugh took a gulp of his ale, and then another, because that was what it took to finish the mug. “Not enough.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Sadly, no.” Hugh signaled to the innkeeper for another.
The innkeeper looked over. “One for you, too, m’lord?”
Daniel shook his head. “Tea, if you will. It’s early yet.”
Hugh smirked.
“Everyone is in the dining room,” Daniel told him.
All two hundred of us, Hugh almost said, but then he remembered that they were splitting up between inns for lunch. He supposed he should be thankful for small favors. Only one-fifth of the traveling party would have seen his humiliation.
“Do you want to join us?” Daniel asked.
Hugh looked over at him.
“I didn’t think so.”
The innkeeper set another mug of ale in front of Hugh. “The tea’ll be ready soon, m’lord.”
Hugh lifted the mug to his lips and downed about a third of it in one gulp. There wasn’t nearly enough alcohol in the stuff. It was taking him far too long to squash his brain into nothingness.
“Did she break it?” he asked. He had not intended to ask questions, but this he had to know.
“No,” Daniel said, “but it’s a nasty sprain. It’s swollen, and she’s in quite a lot of pain.”
Hugh nodded. He knew all about that. “Can she travel?”
“I think so. We’ll have to put her in a different carriage. She’ll need to elevate the leg.”
Hugh took another long drink.
“I didn’t see what happened,” Daniel said.
Hugh went still. Slowly, he turned to his friend. “What are you asking me?”
“Just what happened,” Daniel said, his mouth twisting with disbelief at Hugh’s overreaction.
“She fell out of the carriage. I failed to catch her.”
Daniel stared at him for several seconds, then said, “Oh, for God’s sake, you’re not blaming yourself, are you?”
Hugh did not reply.
One of Daniel’s hands waved forth in question. “How could you have caught her?”
Hugh gripped the edge of the bar.
“Bloody hell,” Daniel muttered. “It’s not always about your leg. I probably would have missed, too.”
“No,” Hugh spat. “You would not have missed.”
Daniel was quiet for a moment, then said, “Her sisters were squabbling. Apparently one of them knocked into her inside the carriage. That was why she fell.”
<
br /> It didn’t really matter why she fell, Hugh thought, and he took another drink.
“So it was really more like she was thrown.”
Hugh hauled his attention off his drink for long enough to snarl, “Do you have a point?”
“She must have come from the carriage with considerable force,” Daniel said, and Hugh supposed he was speaking in a patient voice. But Hugh wasn’t in the mood to give points for patience. He was in the mood to drink, and to feel sorry for himself, and snap the head off whoever was stupid enough to approach. He finished his ale, slammed the mug down, and signaled for another. The innkeeper was quick to comply.
“Are you sure you want to drink that?” Daniel asked.
“Quite.”
“I seem to recall,” Daniel said in an excruciatingly quiet voice, “you once telling me you did not drink until nightfall.”
Did Daniel think Hugh had forgotten? Did he think Hugh would have sat here and downed pint after pint of bad ale if there were any other way to kill the pain? It wasn’t just his leg this time. Bloody hell, how was he supposed to be a man when his goddamned leg couldn’t hold him up?
Hugh felt his heart quicken with fury, and he heard his breath turn to short, angry puffs. There were a hundred different things he could have said to Daniel in that moment, but only one truly expressed what he felt.
“Piss off.”
There was a very long silence, then Daniel stepped down from the stool. “You are in no state to ride the rest of the day in a carriage with my young cousins.”
Hugh curled his lip. “Why the hell do you think I’m drinking?”
“I am going to pretend you did not say that,” Daniel said quietly, “and I suggest that when you’re sober you do the same.” He walked to the door. “We leave in one hour. I will have someone inform you which carriage you may ride in.”
“Just leave me,” Hugh said. Why not? He didn’t need to be at Whipple Hill right away. He could bloody well marinate at the Rose and Crown for the week.
Daniel smiled humorlessly. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Hugh shrugged, trying to be insolent. But all it did was set him off-balance, and he nearly slid off his stool.
“One hour,” Daniel said, and he walked away.
Hugh slumped over his drink, but he knew that in one hour, he would be standing in front of the Rose and Crown, preparing for the next leg of the journey. If anyone else—anyone at all—had stood before him and ordered him to be ready in an hour, he would have marched out of the inn and never turned back.
But not Daniel Smythe-Smith. And he suspected Daniel knew that.
Whipple Hill
nr. Thatcham
Berkshire
Six days later
The ride to Whipple Hill had been nothing short of miserable, but now that she was here, it occurred to Sarah that perhaps she had been lucky to have spent her first three days with a swollen ankle trapped in the Pleinsworth coach. The ride might have bumped and jostled, but at least she’d had a logical reason to remain off her feet. More to the point, everyone else was stuck in one place on their bottoms, as well.
No longer.
Daniel was determined that the week leading up to his wedding should be the stuff of legend, and he had planned every imaginable diversion and entertainment. There would be outings and charades and dancing and a hunt and at least twelve other wondrous pastimes that would be revealed as necessary. Sarah would not have put it past him to offer juggling lessons on the lawn. Which, by the by, she knew he could do. He’d taught himself when he was twelve and a traveling fair had passed through town.
Sarah spent her first full day in residence trapped in the room she was sharing with Harriet with her foot propped up on pillows. Her other sisters had come to visit, as had Iris and Daisy, but Honoria was still at Fensmore, enjoying a few days of privacy with her new husband before traveling down. And while Sarah appreciated her relatives stopping by to entertain her, she was less enthralled by their breathless accounts of all the amazingly fabulous events taking place outside her bedroom door.
Her second day at Whipple Hill passed in much the same manner, except that Harriet took pity on her and promised to read her all five acts of Henry VIII and the Unicorn of Doom, which had been recently renamed The Shepherdess, the Unicorn, and Henry VIII. Sarah could not understand why; there was no mention of a shepherdess anywhere. She had nodded off for only a few minutes. Surely she could not have missed a character pivotal enough to merit a mention in the title of the play.
The third day was the worst. Daisy brought her violin.
And Daisy knew no short pieces.
So when Sarah awoke on her fourth day at Whipple Hill, she swore to herself that she would descend the grand staircase and join the rest of humanity or die trying.
She did, actually, swear this. And she must have done so with great conviction, because the housemaid paled and crossed herself.
But make it down she did, only to find that half the ladies had departed for the village. And the other half were about to.
The men planned to hunt.
It had been rather mortifying to arrive at breakfast in the arms of a footman (she had not specified how she would descend the grand staircase), so as soon as all of the other guests had departed, she rose to her feet and took a gingerly step. She could put a little weight on the ankle as long as she was careful.
And leaned against a wall.
Maybe she’d go to the library. She could find a book, sit down, read. No need to use her feet at all. The library wasn’t so far.
She took another step.
It wasn’t completely across the house.
She groaned. Who was she trying to fool? At this rate it was going to take her half the day to make it to the library.
What she needed was a cane.
She stopped. This made her think of Lord Hugh. She had not seen him in nearly a week. She supposed she shouldn’t have found this odd; they were only two of over a hundred people who’d made the journey from Fensmore to Whipple Hill. And it went without saying that he would not come to visit her while she convalesced in her bedroom.
Still, she’d been thinking of him. When she was lying in bed with her foot on the pillows, she wondered how long he’d had to do the same. When she’d got up in the middle of the night and crawled to the chamber pot, she’d started to wonder . . . and then she’d cursed the biological unfairness of it all. A man wouldn’t have needed to crawl to the chamber pot, now, would he? He could probably use the blasted thing in bed.
Not that she was imagining Lord Hugh in bed.
Or using a chamber pot, for that matter.
But still, how had he done it? How did he still do it? How did he manage the everyday tasks of life without wanting to tear his hair out and scream to the heavens? Sarah hated being so dependent on everyone else. Just this morning she’d had to ask a maid to find her mother, who’d then decided that a footman was the correct person to carry her down to breakfast.
All she wanted was to go somewhere on her own two feet. Without informing anyone of her plans. And if she had to suffer through shooting pain every time she put weight on her foot, then so be it. It was worth it just to get out of her room.
But back to Lord Hugh. She knew that his leg bothered him after too much use, but did he feel pain every time he took a step? How was it possible she had not asked him this? They had walked together, certainly no long distances, but still, she should have known if he was in pain. She should have asked.
She hobbled a bit farther down the hall, then finally gave up and sat down in a chair. Someone would be along eventually. A maid . . . a footman . . . It was a busy house.
She sat, tapping a tune on her leg with her hands. Her mother would have a fit if she saw her like this. A lady was meant to sit still. A lady should speak softly and laugh musically and do all sorts of things that had never come naturally to Sarah. It was remarkable, really, that she loved her mother so well. By all rights,
they should have wanted to kill each other.
After a few minutes Sarah heard someone moving around the corner. Should she call out? She did need help, but—
“Lady Sarah?”
It was him. She didn’t know why she was so surprised. Or pleased. But she was. Their last conversation had been awful, but when she saw Lord Hugh Prentice coming toward her down the hall, she was so happy to see him that it was astonishing.
He reached her side, then looked up and down the hall. “What are you doing here?”
“Resting, I’m afraid.” She kicked her foot out an inch or so. “My ambitions outstripped my abilities.”
“You shouldn’t be up and about.”
“I just spent three days practically tied to my bed.”
Was it her imagination, or did he suddenly look somewhat uncomfortable?
She kept talking. “And three more before that trapped in a coach—”
“As did we all.”
She pressed her lips together peevishly. “Yes, but the rest of you were able to get out and walk around.”
“Or limp,” he said dryly.
Her eyes flew to his face, but whatever emotions he hid behind his eyes, she could not interpret them.
“I owe you an apology,” he said stiffly.
She blinked. “For what?”
“I let you fall.”
She looked at him for a moment, utterly stunned that he might blame himself for what was so obviously an accident.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she assured him. “I would have fallen no matter what. Elizabeth was stepping on Frances’s hem, and Frances was tugging, and then Elizabeth moved her foot, and—” She waved her hand. “Well. Never you mind. Somehow Harriet was the one who came tumbling into me. If it had been only Frances, I daresay I might have been able to catch my balance.”
He did not say anything, and still she found herself unable to interpret his expression.
“It was on the step, you know,” she heard herself say. “That was when I injured my ankle. Not when I landed.” She had no idea why this might make a difference, but she’d never been talented at censoring her words when she was nervous.
“I owe you an apology as well,” she added haltingly.