Virginia And The Wolf

by Lynne Connolly

  So she was reduced to a “my dear” now, was she? Ralph had used that term more than he’d used her name, as if she had given up her own identity when they married. Virginia had always disliked it, but in Francis’s mouth the words were at least tolerable.

  Butler accompanied them while Hurst went to oversee the treatment of the horses in the yard. As soon as the landlord had gone, Butler spoke. “There’s a shop up the street, ma’am. Sells all kinds of things. If you wish, I could get a traveling trunk with a few bits and pieces. Make us look more respectable.”

  Taking out his purse, Francis handed him five guineas. “You know what to get. And buy me a wig and another hat, so I may look respectable.”

  Butler bowed and left.

  She was alone with Francis. That had last happened a few days ago. A lifetime. Abruptly she turned to the window. “We should be comfortable here.”

  Turning back, she spied a tinder box on the mantelpiece. At least they could have light, since a few candle stumps sat in the sconces by the unlit fire. A couple of half-burned candles stood ready in pewter candlesticks on the table by the bed. She made good use of the box, recklessly setting light to all the candles. The room glowed with gentle light, the dark panels absorbing it.

  “This looks almost cozy,” she commented.

  His harsh laugh made her turn around. He was gripping the back of the plain wooden chair set before the chest of drawers, his knuckles white.

  “That depends on where you’re standing,” he said. “If I sit down, can you help me off with my hat and wig once the water has arrived?”

  He’d gone pale. Was the wound worse now? If he’d taken an infection, it could kill him.

  That would not happen. It must not. She wouldn’t allow it.

  A maid arrived with the promised basin and water. The small girl, no more than thirteen by Virginia’s reckoning, the tip of her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, placed the chipped pottery basin carefully on the washstand and placed the can next to it on the floor. Then she turned and bobbed a curtsy. “Would you like me to fetch you food, madam?” she piped.

  “Yes please,” Virginia said. “What do you have?”

  “Stew and bread, if you please, ma’am, with a dish of potatoes and carrots.”

  “That will do nicely,” Francis said. “Bring it up here, if you would, with a bottle of wine. In half an hour. Give our servants what they want and put it on our account.”

  The girl bobbed another curtsy and left.

  At last, Francis released his grip on the chair, but only to drag it over to the washstand, as if he didn’t have the strength to pick it up.

  Something was wrong. He’d slept all the way from Staines. Virginia’s heart rose to her throat, and she found breathing difficult. Infection could kill him. And it would be her fault. “I should have made the servants keep you in bed in London,” she said.

  A sharp, harsh laugh escaped him. “How could they do that when I knew you were in danger?”

  “Indeed, I’m grateful, but I won’t be if you’re hurt worse.”

  Francis stripped his coat off and carelessly let it fall to the floor. “Don’t be.” With an absence of his usual grace, he slumped down into the chair. “Help me off with this wig, will you? It hurts like the devil.”

  That was the first time he’d admitted to any discomfort. Pausing only to strip off her coat and push the sleeves of her shirt out of the way, Virginia hurried to help him. She wrapped a towel around his shoulders, her hands shaking.

  His cocked hat refused to budge at first. She took her time, easing it away, terrified of what she would find beneath. “I wish this room was better lit.”

  She brought the two candles closer, perching them on the nightstand. As she set to work again, she tried easing the hat around the sides, until only a patch was stuck.

  Francis took a couple of sharp breaths. Blood was already oozing from under the hat. “Pull it,” he said. “Just do it fast.”

  Putting all her strength into it, she jerked the hat.

  Part of the wig came up, and he cried out, suppressing the sound by clamping his jaw. Air hissed between his teeth. Blood poured down his neck.

  Virginia swallowed and picked up the scissors. “Hold still.”

  Francis clamped his lips together and gripped the arms of the chair.

  His wig was saturated with dried blood. Steeling herself, Virginia took up the scissors and clipped at the edges of the wig, removing the curls rolled above the ears, and the edges, snipping gingerly until she found her way under it.

  She chopped the wig away, bit by bit, the only sound in the room Francis’s heavy breathing and the sharp snap of the scissors. When she had reduced the wig to a patch, where dried blood made the gray curls dark and stiff, she put the scissors down. “We’ll have to soak the rest.”

  The chair and the washstand were at the wrong height for him to tilt his head back far enough. The gash was on the right side, at the back of his skull. Virginia swallowed her nausea and set to work, getting him to lean his head over the bowl while she repeatedly poured water over the remaining patch of wig, turning his dark brown hair into a black, bloody mess.

  And still the scrap of wig refused to budge. She daren’t pull it because of what it might bring with it. The hat had been bad enough. Her heart pounded, her tension palpable. But she said nothing and did everything she could to keep her hands steady.

  A knock at the door made her shout, “Wait!”

  Glancing at Francis, she hurried to the door and opened it, standing in the opening, preventing the little maid seeing him.

  “Let me take that,” she said, putting her hands under the large tray that contained a brown pot, plates, and a bottle of wine with glasses and flatware. A loaf of bread sent a welcome fragrance to her nostrils, giving her temporary respite from the heavy, metallic scent of blood.

  She even managed a smile before she pushed the door closed with her foot. As if everything here was normal. But she was afraid. Her stomach had clenched like a fist, and despite the appetizing scents emanating from the tray, she wouldn’t be able to eat a single morsel.

  Balancing the heavy tray between her hands, her elbows resting on her hips to help with support, she nearly dropped the whole thing when Francis came to stand before her and firmly took the tray.

  Fresh blood was pouring down the right side of his face and neck.

  Virginia gasped and held her breath, lest she give herself away with a scream. He looked as if he’d come fresh from the battlefield. Ignoring her response, he nodded at a drop-leaf table set in a corner of the room. After she hurried to open it, he placed the tray carefully on the surface.

  “Now,” he said, turning back to the washstand. “Let’s get this thing sorted out before our dinner gets cold.”

  “This thing” took another fifteen minutes and all the cloths the maid had brought. But eventually Virginia could see the gash, and to her relief, it wasn’t as bad as when she’d first seen it. “There’s no infection that I can see. Either there was none or the blood washed it away.” No swelling at the edges of the wound, no heat around the site. “Does it throb?”

  He swallowed a laugh on a snort. “Somewhat,” he agreed mildly. “But better than when it had that wig stuck in it. I thought it would burst.”

  “It won’t now. We’ll leave it open for an hour or two, and then dress it.” Amazingly, a clot was already forming. “I’ve never seen anyone quite so resilient.”

  “Not even your husband, the brave soldier?”

  “No.” Virginia bit her lip. She’d answered too quickly. “He had scars from before I knew him, and a bad one from the injury that put him out of active service. I never saw his wounds when they were freshly inflicted.” Only the deep, angry scars and what his injuries had done to him. “He had a dent in his head he said was from where a bullet had parted
his hair.”

  Francis huffed a half laugh as Virginia swabbed away the worst of the blood around the wound. She would leave the gash to heal itself. She had considered stitching the wound, but that would have been a last resort, as stitched wounds were hotbeds for infection. “It doesn’t need packing.”

  If the gash had been worse, she’d have packed it to keep it open, so the wound could heal from the inside out. But this wasn’t as bad as she’d feverishly imagined all day.

  At some points she’d considered stopping the carriage and racking up wherever they found themselves so she could deal with this injury. Infection could take hold and kill a patient in a matter of days. Ralph had told her of men taken hale and hearty from the battlefield, dead from a minor wound by the end of the week. His stories had curdled her blood, but he’d needed someone to talk to, so she had let him talk.

  That was when she’d decided that stoicism was her best strategy, so that nobody would ever know what had happened during her marriage. Or more precisely, not happened.

  Carefully, she smoothed his short hair away from the wound. She’d washed all the old blood out. It only had to dry now. She rinsed the blood from his throat, spread his shirt open at his neck so she could do so. The intimacies would have made her blush had she been thinking about her actions, but she concentrated on the one thing.

  “Do you think Jamie had my house watched?”

  “Undoubtedly. I did not call on you by appointment. They were waiting for me.”

  “That makes my skin crawl.” Because it did. To think someone was spying on her made her shiver.

  “I can’t tell you how much better that feels.” He examined the pieces of wig littering the floor, a wry smile curving his lips. “Thank you.” Scraping the chair back, he got to his feet, his shoulders drooping in weariness but his eyes more alert.

  She smiled back, sharing her relief with him.

  “Let’s eat that food now. I’m ravenous.”

  Her stomach growled. It unfurled from its tense knot, reminding her how empty it was. A lot of time had passed since their adventure in Staines.

  This time Francis took charge, ushering her to the table and carrying the chair over for her. He found a three-legged stool by the bed and settled on that, balancing easily. No swaying or dizziness greeted her perceptive gaze.

  He doled out the stew onto the plain white plates and added a generous helping of vegetables before reaching for the loaf and firmly cutting a few slices from it. “Eat,” he commanded.

  Relief had given her back her appetite. The meal was plain but delicious. After hours of cooking on the fire, the meat melted in the mouth. When the first mouthful hit her taste buds, Virginia groaned. She plied her spoon faster until she caught Francis watching her. “What is it?”

  “However hungry you are, you never forget your manners.”

  “Of course not.”

  He turned back to his food, smiling. “Don’t talk, eat.”

  She was only too glad to follow his example. They didn’t speak again until they had finished, and she leaned back with a most unladylike satisfied sigh.

  A knock sounded on the door. After a glance at Francis, Virginia got up to answer it. Nobody must see Francis with that wound. People would remember it, and then their attempts at traveling quietly would be at an end.

  She opened the door wider when she saw who it was.

  Hurst and Butler came in, carrying a small, battered traveling trunk between them. “We got what we thought you might need, sir, ma’am. Told the landlord we was bringing it in from the carriage,” Hurst said, before casting Virginia an apologetic smile. “I’m not familiar with what ladies need, so Butler saw to that part.”

  “Butler has experience with the ladies?” Francis drawled. He’d turned his chair so that it had its back to the window, making his wound less visible.

  Butler bowed his head. “I had a wife once.”

  Virginia didn’t want to ask what had happened to her, but he volunteered the information.

  “Went off with a soldier, ma’am. Haven’t seen her in years.”

  Goodness. In her world weddings were a contract as meaningful as any other. A marriage had ramifications far beyond the joining of a couple in wedlock. Butler behaved as if marriage was a temporary condition. No doubt if he met someone else, he would marry her without concerning himself too much with the details. Such as being married to somebody else.

  “Have you eaten?” Francis asked.

  “Yes, sir. When you told us to leave you alone for an hour, we took the opportunity to eat,” Butler said.

  “Good food here,” Hurst added.

  Had he done that, asked to be left by themselves? Virginia had been so busy she hadn’t had time to wonder why the men had not reappeared. And Francis’s position now, turning his wound away from scrutiny. The men knew he was hurt, so he need not hide it from them. Was he sensitive about it? Did the injury make him feel vulnerable?

  Together with the knowledge came the understanding that he had let her into that world, into the inner circle. Francis was a difficult man to know, and he was allowing her close enough to get to know him. The veneer she’d hated in London because it prevented her getting close to him had gone.

  Lord, that was something. Too late to wonder if she wanted it. Of course she did. His trust sank into her as if he’d stroked her from shoulder to toes, a warm, reassuring touch of support totally foreign to her. Nobody trusted her, nobody had treated her as an adult, until she’d taken control of her life and made them.

  A brief recollection of her father’s utter bewilderment when she’d refused to come home after Ralph’s death crossed her mind, forcing her to suppress her smile.

  “We ate well, too.”

  “Ma’am, the taproom goes front to back of the house, so we’ll sleep there tonight. We’ll spot anything unusual,” Butler ventured. He seemed to be relishing this adventure. Her London butler had hidden depths. A treasure indeed.

  After glancing around at the mess, he set to tidying the room, sweeping up the bloodied towels and rags, opening the window before carrying the basin over. With a shout of “Gardez l’eau!” he tipped its contents out of the window.

  “Thank you. We’ll leave as early as possible in the morning,” she said.

  Francis spoke. “Send today’s coachman and carriage back. We’ll hire new ones for tomorrow. If we do that every day, we’ll have a better chance of deterring any pursuers.”

  Surprised, Virginia said, “I thought we’d already lost them.”

  Francis gazed at her, his expression as serious as she’d ever seen it. “Possibly. I’m taking no chances with you, my lady.” His eyes held an unspoken message, one she chose to disregard. Too warm, too intimate.

  “Your injury, my—sir,” Butler said. “How is it?”

  Francis waved the man’s concern away. “It will do. It’s bathed and clean, and it hasn’t taken infection. Although it cost me my wig.”

  “As to that, sir, we bought you another, as you asked. We obtained razors, strops, soap, and a wig at the barber’s at the end of the street. But the wig isn’t like what you’re used to.”

  Francis shrugged. “It’s of no concern. I’m pleased you found one. The less we stand out and make ourselves memorable, the safer we will be.” He counted out guineas from his severely depleted purse. “Take these to pay off the coachman from today and procure another carriage and driver for the morning, if you will. If you cannot, then we will have to keep the ones we have. Get the new one before you dismiss the old.”

  Butler took the money and bowed, his ingrained habits getting the better of him. Hurst nearly did the same, but caught Virginia’s sharp gaze and changed his mind, giving a short bob of his head instead.

  Hurst gathered up the remains of the meal, piled it on the tray, and took it with him, leaving the half-full pitcher. A
fter a doubtful glance at Francis, which said more than words ever could, Butler followed in Hurst’s wake. Virginia went to the door and closed it behind them.

  Suddenly unaccountably shy, she took her time turning to face him. “I’ll take the chair,” she said hurriedly. “I’m sure it will be comfortable.”

  “I’m not.” He got to his feet, the easy motion belying the way the lines bracketing his mouth deepened. He was still in pain. “I’d offer to sleep there, but I assume you won’t allow that.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “And you’re not going down to the taproom,” she said, equally firmly.

  So there was the bed. As if drawn to it, they both looked. It was a perfectly ordinary inn bed: old-fashioned, perhaps discarded from a nearby manor. Virginia had slept in them many times, mostly with a maid or Emilia Dauntry for company. She steeled herself.

  When she’d shared a bed with Ralph, especially in the latter half of their marriage, they could have been in different beds for all the contact they made. So why shouldn’t she share with Francis? She knew him well, and he was not about to force anything on her that she did not want. She could remain mainly dressed.

  But it mattered. So much that after coping with everything thrown at her today, she had to swallow her rising panic.

  He watched her. Had he seen the disturbance churning up her insides?

  Instead of confronting him, Virginia went to the trunk, knelt and flung open the top. The trunk had the remains of a leather cover on the wooden case, some of which flaked off to the floor.

  The contents were neatly packed. A nightshirt, and a night rail, caps, a fresh linen shift and petticoat, even a warm cloak met her appreciative gaze. The pile of men’s garments she left to Francis, but she pulled out what was laid reverently on top. Holding the bob-wig in both hands, she burst into laughter.

  Country squires, merchants with no pretension to fashion, and comfortable vicars preferred the bob-wig. It had no curls, no tail, nothing to stop the squat object from making its owner anything but respectable. The idea of Francis wearing this sent her into gales of mirth.