‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ She abandoned the second ladder to hurry towards him. ‘Let me at least steady the bottom or you are going to fall…’ Before she could grab it, it wobbled again, then folded in on itself, sending her father, her worktable and the entire contents of her paint box flying.
He hit the floor with an ominous thud and immediately screamed in pain as jars of pigment and bottles of thinners and oil shattered around him.
‘Oh, Papa!’ She crouched among the carnage as he writhed in agony, the ladder now on top of him and his leg still caught between two rungs. ‘Are you all right?’ He groaned, in obvious pain. ‘Where does it hurt?’
‘Everywhere!’ He angrily swatted away her hands as she tried to keep him still. ‘It hurts blasted everywhere. My leg…my back…’ He tried to sit and instantly winced.
Behind her, the ballroom doors suddenly crashed open revealing a startled Isobel and an even more startled Piers. He took one look at the scene and ran towards them, so fast his boots skidded on the polished wooden floor as he came to a halt beside her.
‘What the hell happened?’
‘He fell from the very top of the ladder before I could get there to steady it.’
Piers nodded, quickly taking control of the situation in a calm, measured way she envied. ‘Please try to stay still, Mr Brookes…let me take the weight of the ladder while we figure out how best to proceed.’ He turned to her, his eyes flicking tellingly towards her father’s leg before silently conveying to her he was concerned about it. ‘It might be badly sprained.’ Although his pointed stare suggested he feared worse. Now that she looked at it, he was probably right. It was twisted at an odd angle. ‘I do not want to risk moving it until we can do so without jarring anything.’
‘Faith—can you clear away the worst of this glass?’ Several shards of which were dangerously close to her father’s head. ‘Isobel—fetch my parents. Tell my mother exactly what has happened and tell her to round up some hefty footmen. Ask my father to send for Dr Freiberg from Harley Street with all haste. Not our usual physician—we need someone who specialises in bones.’
Faith cleaned up as much of the glass as she could until the Countess of Writtle rushed in with a battalion of capable staff who she commanded like Nelson at Trafalgar, and the next frenzied few minutes seemed to happen in a blur around her. She sat cradling her father’s head, doing her best to keep him calm and still while Piers organised the footmen to carefully remove the ladder. Then, as they anxiously awaited the doctor, he asked him question after question.
Did you bang your head? Are you dizzy? Is your vision blurred? Can you feel your toes?
* * *
A physician rushed in.
He had a kind face, slate-grey hair and a neat, pointy beard. When he spoke, his reassuring voice was heavily accented. German perhaps? Or Russian? Faith had no clue but whatever it was, bizarrely Piers seemed to know the language because he spoke to the man in a rapid tumble of foreign words as he pointed to her father’s leg gravely and explained the entire situation.
By this point her Papa was past caring about anything beyond coping with his pain. His face was ashen, his skin clammy and his eyes closed. He could talk through gritted teeth if he had to, but it seemed like too much effort.
Impotently, she watched the doctor cut away his trouser leg and remove his shoe and stocking, then covered her mouth with her hand so as not to alarm her poor Papa with a gasp when she saw the angry bruising and swelling on his shin. The limb was misshapen, confirming all her worst fears. She did her best to soothe him as he was thoroughly examined, and the doctor’s nimble fingers carefully checked him from head to toe. He asked the exact same questions Piers had, except he made her father prove he could move his fingers and toes. Finally, he dripped a few drops of laudanum in his mouth, enough that she could feel the exact moment when the tenseness left her dear Papa’s shoulders and his body relaxed.
As his breathing became heavy, the doctor finally addressed her.
‘His leg is broken. It feels like a clean break.’ The physician smiled at her. ‘This is good, liebling. I will reset it here while he sleeps. I suspect he has fractured his right wrist too as it took the brunt of his weight when he landed. This is also good because it saved his head. I see no signs of concussion—yet. I will have a better idea once he comes around after I have set his leg. I have given him enough laudanum to keep him comfortable while I do that as it will not be pleasant, but I would rather do it correctly now than give the bones any time to set badly. The rest, I think, is just bruising. Perhaps some strained muscles too. And, no doubt, some severely damaged pride. All will heal, I promise, although the pride is always the trickiest, especially if the patient is as stubborn as I fear your father is.’
‘He had a bee in his bonnet and wouldn’t wait for me to hold the ladder.’ If her father hadn’t been unconscious on the floor, she would have given him a piece of her mind. ‘I could see it looked precarious but…’ She huffed out a frustrated sigh. ‘Typically, he wouldn’t listen.’
‘He is a man, liebling, and all men think they are invincible and think they know best. It is our curse and you ladies should pity us for it.’
‘Mama is going to have his guts for garters for his stupidity.’ Faith looked to Piers, suddenly very conscious that in all the uproar, she had completely forgotten her mother would want to be here. ‘Has anyone sent for her?’
‘She is on her way.’
As if that was all it took to conjure her, her mother’s panicked voice came from the hallway. ‘Oh, Augustus! Oh, my dear! Oh, my poor darling! What have you done to yourself?’
Faith brought her frantic mother up to speed, and when she insisted on taking her place cradling his head, she stood close by while the doctor reset his leg, then strapped it between sturdy splints. Once that onerous task was done, and with her now lucid father shouting his disgust, Piers, the Earl and the footmen gently slid him on to the hastily removed linen cupboard door which they used as a makeshift stretcher to carry him upstairs.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After a full-blown and noisy tantrum just before ten, Dr Freiberg reluctantly agreed a very belligerent but not concussed Augustus Brookes could be transferred to his own bed in Bloomsbury that night.
While Piers thought it too soon and a good deal too late at night for such shenanigans, he also sympathised with the man. Mr Brookes had at least three weeks of bed rest ahead of him, followed by several more weeks and possibly months of convalescence and that would be less tedious in his own surroundings. There was nothing worse than being ill in someone else’s home. He had once endured a week in a baking inn in Lisbon after being struck down by a horrendous vomiting illness. In the gaps between being bent doubled in agony he whiled away the time pining for his own sheets and ceiling. While this house wasn’t infested with cockroaches and hotter than hell itself, Augustus Brookes would feel less self-conscious and beholden in his own place.
His leaving was likely also a blessing for their entire household, not that he would say that out loud while Faith and her family were sat in his drawing room, because the tempestuous artist had already proved himself to be a very troublesome and demanding patient and the soprano wasn’t much better. Flustered, her theatrical tone was so high-pitched it could shatter glass and she did seem to be one for being flustered as a matter of course, even though everyone else, bar her husband, had calmed down hours ago. Even Faith and both her sisters had apparently had enough of her parents and had taken refuge with his family in the drawing room while their biggest and most well-sprung carriage was readied to transport an invalid.
The physician was adamant the only way his patient could be safely moved so soon after he had strapped him up was lying flat on his back. Which meant that much to their precise and pernickety housekeeper’s disgust, the door which had only just been reattached to her precious downstairs linen closet was being presse
d back into service and was in the midst of being unscrewed as they spoke.
‘I am so sorry about the delay to your tableau, my lady. We were so looking forward to working on it.’
For the second time, Faith was apologising for something which wasn’t her fault because his mother had been obviously and visibly disappointed by the delay. She had wanted to show off, and doubtless brag about, her coveted Brookes masterpiece at the ball she always held on the first of May, but with the great artist out of action for heaven knew how long, that wasn’t going to happen. The wrist he had fractured was the one attached to his painting hand and the damage to that bothered him more than his broken shin bone.
‘It cannot be helped, Faith dear. I shall just have to have another ball in the new year so I can show it off then. I am sure your father will be as right as ninepence long before then. Dr Freiberg was confident his injuries will only set him back a few months.
A few months.
Which of course also meant Piers was unlikely to see Faith again this side of the summer. He hadn’t considered that consequence until now and it depressed him immensely. While common sense told him this was likely for the best, because he frankly needed some serious distance to get over his current foolhardy obsession with her since their kiss, another part of him, the masochistic, optimistic, thoroughly besotted, idiotic part of him was devastated by the blow.
He realised, with a start, that he already missed her and she was currently sat opposite him. Still in her shapeless painting smock, her hair curling all over the place where most of it had long escaped its pins, he was fairly certain he had never seen anything quite as lovely in his life. And now that he knew how her mouth tasted, he already recognised she was going to be difficult to forget in the interim. Nigh on impossible probably, because it had been one hell of kiss. A perfect, passionate, earth-shattering, foolhardy kiss which never should have happened.
One he wanted to regret, but couldn’t, even though he bitterly regretted the circumstances. After pouring her heart out and confiding her darkest secret to him, when she had tentatively offered the hand of friendship, he’d responded by hauling her into his arms and kissing her like a starving man at a banquet. Making absolutely no secret of his desire to be more than her friend. Although, as much as he had flagellated himself for his mindless, crass stupidity in the hours since, reminding himself that no matter what he desired, vibrant women like her weren’t suited to mundane men like him, she had kissed him back. And it had been so splendid, he couldn’t think of another kiss he had indulged in which topped it.
Which of course made it all the more awkward. Because despite their mutual polite protestations afterwards that it had been a silly heat-of-the-moment slip which meant nothing, born out of their mutually fragile emotional states at opening up to one another so honestly, the insistent and blatant bulge in his breeches hadn’t been nothing and it hadn’t been friendly.
Instead, it had loudly proclaimed his ferocious, decidedly unfriend-like lust for her and there was not a cat’s chance in hell she hadn’t felt it. Especially as Piers had hardly been subtle about it. He had even groaned his appreciation as he had tugged her lush body tight against his needy one. A guttural, carnal moan before he had greedily plundered her mouth some more.
No wonder she was having trouble meeting his eyes tonight. Not that that seemed to make his seek hers less.
‘I shall arrange for my father’s men to remove the redundant canvas and restore the wall this week so that your lovely ballroom still looks its best. Fortunately, I had only just finished the base layers, so we shan’t be throwing away anything important.’
His mother brushed this away. ‘There is no need to throw it away, we can store it somewhere until you return.’
‘Alas, it is so large, even if stored with the utmost care, my lady, it would probably warp. We shall doubtless have to start it afresh when my father is recovered anyway—but fear not, I have saved the dimensions, and that will certainly help speed things up once he is ready.’ Her gaze flicked to Piers briefly, the swirling emotion in them unfathomable. ‘Hopefully towards the end of summer.’ Was she relieved to be shot of him? Disappointed? Still mortified by their too short but too enlightening foray into passion?
Milton, their unflappable butler, coughed politely at the door. ‘The carriages are ready, my lord.’
‘Splendid.’ Piers stood, grateful for something else to do rather than mull over his own awkward situation, then went to war with his wayward eyeballs, forcing them to face anyone who was not the woman they fervently longed to gaze at. The one he doubtless owed another grovelling apology to if he ever managed to get her alone. ‘Then we should get going.’
They had already planned everything meticulously. Once the footmen had carefully loaded the prostrate artist into the biggest carriage with his wife, the ladies would leave in the Brookeses’ own conveyance and Dr Freiberg in his. Between them, they would carry the bushel of footmen needed to transport Augustus Brookes at the other end. Piers was going to follow on his horse to oversee things. Not that he really needed to oversee things, but it did not feel right to abandon the family to the aftermath of the accident when it had occurred at his home. Besides, if he hadn’t insisted on accompanying them, his father would have, and he wanted a chance to talk to Faith even though he had no earthly clue of what to say, any more than he had any clue of what he really wanted when his head, his heart and his body all now apparently craved entirely different things.
Manoeuvring the patient down a long flight of stairs and into the carriage took significantly longer than any of them could have imagined, and the usually short ride to Bloomsbury took much longer because Dr Freiberg insisted on taking the lead and kept the motley convoy sedate on purpose in case any jarring undid his good work. That meant it was close to midnight when they finally arrived at the Brookeses’ town house on Bedford Place, a stone’s throw from the British Museum.
Like pall-bearers, Piers and the three footmen carried Augustus Brookes to his bedchamber, then left the ladies to get him comfortably settled. But while the footmen and the press-ganged linen closet door immediately left in the carriage, he lingered downstairs, trying to fool himself he was dawdling in case he was needed.
Feeling like a spare wheel, he accepted their housekeeper’s offer of tea and took it all alone in the strange drawing room. A room which resembled nothing like his parents’ drawing room at home. Even if he hadn’t known anything about the family, he would have guessed they were all artistic simply by the decor. It was an eclectic mix of bright colours and patterns, unusual objects and a plethora of art. The bold choice of the busily patterned fabric used to upholster the enormous but comfortable sofa should have clashed with the plain but equally boldly coloured turquoise chairs—but didn’t. Unusually, a very ornate and gilded pianoforte dominated one corner, the curled pages of well-loved sheet music stood on the stand and were piled haphazardly on the stool. One wall was positively smothered in paintings, portraits mostly and obviously from Augustus’s talented hand. While a striking, almost angry seascape hung in pride of place above the mantel, depicting one fragile-looking and solitary frigate being tossed about on foaming black waves while a tempest raged in the vivid orange sky.
* * *
He was there, twiddling his thumbs for a good half an hour before he heard Dr Freiberg on the stairs. ‘The sleeping draught should keep him peaceful till the morning, then he can have two drops of the laudanum for the pain but no more. I want him lucid when I return in the morning and I examine him again.’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’ The sound of Faith’s voice made his foolish heart sing. ‘For everything.’
‘It is no trouble, liebling.’
Instead of making his presence known, Piers remained out of sight while he listened to them walk towards the front door. Only when he heard it quietly close did he poke his head into the hallway. As if she sensed him, she turned
and smiled as she came towards him.
‘How is your father?’ He whispered this, hoping he would have a few moments with her without an audience before he bade her farewell for lord only knew how long.
She made sure the drawing room door was shut before she answered, her own voice hushed. ‘Comfortable at last, thank goodness, but in the highest of dudgeons. He has my mother running around up there catering to his every whim.’
‘And your sisters?’
‘Very sensibly escaped the hideous ordeal to go to bed a good ten minutes ago. My father is always unbearable at the best of times when he is unwell, but seeing as this is all his own fault, he is keen to milk my mother’s sympathy to distract her from tearing him off a strip for his stubborn stupidity and he has decided the best way to do that is to be a martyr. But as she chose him as her husband and took an oath to love him in sickness as well as in health, I am happy to take the coward’s way out and leave them both to it. Does that make me a bad daughter?’
‘It sounds eminently sensible to me.’ And he couldn’t think of another thing to say. Apparently, neither could she because the sudden silence was deafening. ‘I feel I should apologise again, Faith, for the other night. I am not sure what came over me…’ Lord, this was mortifying. ‘But I certainly shouldn’t have…’
‘I thought we had agreed to blame the heat of the moment and forget about it?’
‘Only because you were being too kind to tear me off a strip when I undoubtedly deserved it. You were in a bit of a state and I…well, I suppose I took advantage.’
‘Oh, dear…are you going to be a martyr like my father? Taking advantage would have been offering to rent me a little house here in Bloomsbury, or taking shocking liberties with my person, or dragging me back into the hackney to have your wicked way with me.’ Her expression was amused as she folded her arms. ‘It was just a kiss, Piers. One that I recall we both played an active part in and certainly nothing to feel guilty about or to lose any sleep over.’
Harlequin Historical February 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 Page 16
