A Midnight Clear

by Lynn Kerstan

  On her last trip, barely able to see in the flagging light, she removed the down coverlet from a bed in the largest chamber and put it inside a truckle bed. The roped bed was far from heavy, but she kept stumbling over her cape as she backed down the stairs, towing it along with one hand and trying to lift her cloak with the other.

  What the devil was she doing? Fallon wondered, arriving in the entrance hall to see Jane Ryder pulling on something that resembled a small coffin. He mounted the stairs to help her.

  “What is this you’ve commandeered?” he asked as she moved aside to let him pick it up.

  “A truckle bed.” She looked him over. “You were gone rather a long time, sir. I was growing concerned.”

  “It was dark in the stable,” he said, following her down the stairs. “But it’s been in recent use, lucky for Scorpio. I found reasonably fresh hay and a small sack of oats.”

  She led him to a parlor where she apparently planned to make camp for the night. He saw enough blankets and pillows for five people, a pile of stubby candles on a side table, and his saddle pack.

  “I trust you still have the tinderbox,” she said briskly. “We must get a fire going before the light fails altogether. The kitchen first, I think.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, removing the box from the saddle pack. Colonel Wellesley used to give orders in precisely that tone.

  While he built a fire in the enormous kitchen fireplace, Miss Ryder carried in several buckets of snow and filled the heavy cauldron suspended just over his head. She seemed to know what she was about, and he was hurting in too many places to question her. She brought in a candleholder, too, so he was able to find his way back to the parlor.

  There, in the light of his single candle, he selected three small logs and finally managed to set them ablaze. Fumbling idiot, he thought, stretching his icy hands to the flames. There was a time when he could raise a fire with only his knife, a small piece of flint, and a few dry leaves.

  It was the cold, he decided, and the snow. He was used to long hot days, not these paltry hours of northern winter daylight. He knew how to survive in torrential monsoon rains but had got himself lost in a minor snowstorm.

  In spite of everything, he was beginning to enjoy himself.

  When he arrived at Portsmouth ten weeks ago, he’d been sure his adventures had come to an end. And nearly every minute since had proven him right. His life had become a tedious round of solicitors, housing agents, tailors, butlers, valets, and courtesy calls to the barest of acquaintances.

  This might be poor stuff, as adventures went, but he meant to make the most of it. If only the devil would stop pounding on his head with a hammer. His leg hurt, too, although for the past hour he had been pretending otherwise. He suspected that fairly soon he would be all but useless.

  On that thought, he began to light a few of the candles Jane had gathered. He hauled the odd-looking couch closer to the fire, deciding that Jane could sleep there, and was looking around for something else to do when she appeared at the door.

  “We’ll soon run out of firewood,” she said. “Have you any objection to breaking up a few pieces of furniture?”

  “None whatever,” he replied, wondering why he’d not thought of that.

  “Dining-room chairs will be easiest, I believe. Shall we have at them?”

  Together they bashed the chairs against the floor and carried armloads of wood into the parlor, stacking them alongside the hearth. All the while she kept glancing at him surreptitiously, watching, he was sure, for signs of weakness. Naturally that made him all the more determined not to show any.

  He thought he had been fairly convincing as he placed his last load of wood on the hearth and brushed his hands together. “What next, Miss Ryder?”

  She regarded him from the parlor door, arms filled with splintered chair legs and backs. “I’ll take these to the kitchen,” she said. “By now I expect the water has come to a boil. While I prepare a basin, will you devise a way to tear that length of muslin into strips? It’s the one there on the table, beside the towels.”

  He bent and drew a slender, long-bladed knife from inside his riding boot. “This will slice through most anything. But why—?”

  “Bandages,” she said, her startled gaze fixed on the knife. “We’ve left your wounds untended overlong, I’m afraid, but it’s hard to decide what to do first in these circumstances. Carve a few strips of muslin, please. I’ve found a small sewing box with needles and thread, in the event stitches are required, but there were no scissors.”

  “Stitches!” When he shook his head, it felt as if a cannonball were rattling about in his skull. “That won’t be necessary, I assure you.”

  “A bit squeamish?” she inquired pleasantly. “Well, we shall see, once the wound is cleaned. I shall require access to it, of course. While I am gone, my lord, pray remove your boots and trousers.”

  Chapter 8

  JANE TOOK HER time in the kitchen, certain that Lord Fallon would not be pleased if she returned at an awkward moment.

  On a tray she assembled slices of dried apples, the tin of crackers, and two potatoes. She decided to save the tea for breakfast and filled a pitcher with snow for drinking water, setting it on the hearth to melt. Then she washed a pair of pokers for roasting the potatoes and laid them beside the supper tray.

  Next she gathered what she would need to tend the wound on his leg. A bit of soap, hardly more than a sliver, went onto a second tray, along with a large stack of white napkins she’d found in the dining-room sideboard.

  She went into the pantry then, hoping to locate a bottle of cooking wine. An application of spirits helped to forestall putrefaction, she had been taught, as did a poultice of spider webs. There were plenty of those to be found, of course, but she was unready to apply spider webs to aristocratic Fallon flesh.

  The kitchen was warm now, so she removed her cloak and draped it over a ladder-back chair. Had enough time gone by? She guessed it had been twenty minutes since she left him, but her reticule and watch were in the parlor, and the hands on the kitchen clock were fixed at half past eleven.

  How long did it take a man to remove his trousers?

  Surely he was done by now. She ladled steaming water from the cauldron into two basins, placed them on her tray, and made her way to the closed parlor door. “May I enter, sir?” she called, putting the tray on the floor. After a moment she heard a surprisingly cheerful voice.

  “Come, bright angel!”

  Oh my, she thought, fearing he had gone unhinged from the blow on his head. With distinct reluctance, she opened the door.

  Lord Fallon, a sheet wrapped around him toga fashion, reclined on the couch like a Roman god. Like Bacchus, to be more specific, for he was cradling a bottle to his chest. When she entered the room, he raised it in a toast. “Ave, Caesar. Morituri te salutant!”

  “Oh, I doubt you will expire anytime soon, my lord. Did you smuggle that bottle from Wolvercote in your saddle pack?”

  “Best idea I had all day. The only good idea, I daresay. It’s brandy, by the way, and prime stuff.”

  With an act of will, she stopped herself from rushing across the room to seize it from his hand. If Lord Fallon chose to drink when he should not, who was she to object?

  “I was just wishing we had a bottle of spirits,” she said, retrieving the tray. “How do you feel, sir?”

  “Much better than before I got the cork out of this bottle. Come have a drink.”

  “Perhaps later, thank you.”

  He was no help whatever while she put down the tray, wrestled a heavy chair and a small table nearer the couch, and sat beside him.

  He gazed at her seraphically. “Do you mean to scold me, Miss Ryder? I expect I deserve a rakedown on several counts, but will it keep until tomorrow?”

  “Certainly. And the bran
dy will be useful while I clean your wound. May I have the bottle?”

  He took another long draught and passed it over. “I rarely drink, you know. Plays havoc with a man’s wits. But those had already gone lacking, and I had a bit of trouble separating my leg from my breeches. Pieces of me and m’ trousers were stuck together, and I figured something liquid would help get them apart. Worked better when I drank the brandy, though. Got so I didn’t care, you see, so I ripped everything loose. Now I’m bare top to bottom—except for this sheet.”

  She couldn’t help but smile at him as she set the bottle on the tray. She also knew better than to look too closely at the long, lean torso stretched out on the pale blue upholstery of the couch. Rather a lot of him was not concealed by that muslin sheet.

  “May I?” she asked, gingerly lifting the sheet from his left leg and bunching it around the top of his thigh. The cuts were not deep, she saw immediately, but there were a great many splinters, and blood still oozed from the largest of them.

  His boot had protected the lower part of his leg, and his knee had somehow escaped with only a few shallow scratches. It was his thigh had got the worst of it, but only the front, she discovered after running her fingers over the parts she could not see.

  She decided to begin by washing his leg and placed a mound of towels underneath to support his knee and catch the water. Then she soaked a napkin in the hot water and began to dab gently at the cuts, starting with the shallow ones.

  He held still, making no sound as she worked. Once she glanced up at his face. He was staring at the ceiling, jaw clenched. Very much a stoic, Lord Fallon.

  Relieved his injuries were not so serious as she had feared, she worked quickly and efficiently. She was not, however, quite so self-possessed as she was determined to appear. To her mortification, even to her shame, the splendid male body stretched out before her was a powerful distraction. From the very first time she saw him in Eudora’s parlor, fully and elegantly dressed, he had rendered her breathless. Now her heart was jumping about in her chest like a mad March hare.

  “Good news,” she told him. “I’ll not be taking any stitches. But there are a great many splinters embedded above your knee, and they must be extracted.”

  He leaned forward and examined his thigh. “I don’t see anything.”

  “The overdose of brandy must have affected your vision, sir. Fortunately, I located tweezers in an upstairs drawer, else I’d have been forced to dig out the splinters with a fork.”

  “I’m going to hate this,” Fallon muttered as she brought another brace of candles to the table for extra light and settled beside him again, tweezers in hand.

  “Hold very still, please. This will hurt far more if you thrash about.”

  He made not the slightest move during the hour it required to pluck the remnants of the Wolvercote staircase from his leg. Sometimes she thought to make conversation, to distract him, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.

  After what felt an eternity, she held the candlebrace closer to his thigh, located a few tiny splinters she’d missed, and decided she had finally got them all. A good thing, too, because the muscles in her hand and arm were knotting up.

  “Tell me you are done, Miss Ryder.”

  “Very nearly.” She stood and picked up the tray. “Wait here while I fetch more water.”

  “Where would I go?” he called to her back.

  She’d expected him to retrieve the brandy in her absence, but the bottle was where she had left it. He was sitting up against the bank of pillows, arms folded across his chest, looking thoroughly disgruntled.

  After washing the leg again with warm soapy water and rinsing it carefully, she placed more towels under his knee and reached for the bottle. “This will not be pleasant, I’m afraid.”

  “A devilish waste of good brandy,” he said, lifting his gaze to the ceiling. “Go ahead, Miss Ryder. But be a good girl and don’t use the lot of—bloody hell!”

  He shot upright, clutching at the edges of the couch with both hands as the brandy seared across his leg. Even Fallon’s stoicism had its limits, she reflected as he swore long and loud in a language she failed to recognize.

  Finally he subsided onto the pillows, glowering at her. “Next time, if you please, just shoot me.”

  “As you wish, sir.” She removed the soaked towels and began wrapping strips of muslin loosely around his thigh. “Whoever has been staying here left behind a few provisions, and I’ve put together a light supper. We should do well enough until the storm blows through.”

  “How soon will that be?” he demanded. “Before morning?”

  “Let us hope so. But in my experience, the weather pays little heed to wishes, even those of a marquess.” Satisfied with the bandage, she rearranged the sheet to cover his leg and leaned forward to examine the small cut on his forehead. The blowing snow had cleaned it well enough, but she dabbed a little brandy over the scratch before he had time to object.

  “Who employed you before Lady Swann?” he inquired acidly. “The Spanish Inquisition?”

  “How did you guess?” She began to run her fingers through his thick hair in search of a scalp wound. “Oh, my word. Such a lump! But no bleeding, you will be pleased to hear, so I shall cease tormenting you. For the time being,” she added in strictest honesty. “The bandage on your leg may require to be changed, and I’ll reserve some of the brandy in case it is needed later. You may have the rest, I suppose, although a man with a head injury ought not to be drinking spirits.”

  “On the contrary, Torquemada. My head is bound to hurt anyway. I prefer to numb myself now and confront the consequences tomorrow, if you don’t mind.”

  “How should I?” She piled brandy-soaked towels and basins on the tray. “So long as you are sober when we set out for the inn, of course. I doubt I could heave your soused body onto the horse, Lord Fallon. At some point, you will have to fend for yourself.”

  Wretched, magnificent female, he thought as she left the room with a tray that ought to be too heavy for her. But she carried it with ease, the same way she had so handily dealt with every obstacle she’d faced since the curricle accident.

  Where had she come from? And how had she got to be what she was? He had met a great many fascinating individuals over the years, but none captured his interest quite so much as Miss Jane Ryder. Although she wasn’t the least bit beautiful, he felt a strong attraction to her. If he had met her in India, he would certainly have tried to seduce her. Hell, he wanted to seduce her now.

  She was a vast mystery to him, this slender, iron-willed female, and one he meant to solve before they parted.

  He reached for the bottle of brandy, which she’d cleverly placed a few inches beyond his grasp as if to make him consider how badly he wanted it. Badly enough to swing his legs over the couch and bend double to get at it, he decided, groaning under his breath with every move.

  Why the devil shouldn’t he get drunk? He was in pain from head to toe, snowbound, virtually helpless, and frustrated past good sense. One hour at Wolvercote had set memories tumbling one over the other in his mind, none of them good. Ahead of him loomed the future he’d worked for twenty years to achieve, but now, contrarily, he found himself dreading it.

  He settled back on the pillows, bottle in hand, staring at the fire. Not very drunk, he told himself. When it came time to mount his horse and find a way back to the Black Dove, Miss Ryder would have no reason to be disappointed in him.

  She bustled in with another tray, a pair of fire pokers precariously balanced atop it, and gave him a wide, dimpled smile that made his toes curl.

  He had been mistaken. When Jane Ryder smiled, she was beautiful indeed.

  “Dinner is served, m’lord.” She set the tray on the hearth with a thump and dropped to her knees. “We shall begin our feast with slices of dried apples, accompanied by stale
but reasonably tasty crackers. There are mugs of cool water, too, but I see that you prefer brandy. When you hear me muttering under my breath in the morning, be sure I am saying I told you so.”

  He watched her thread two small, withered potatoes onto the pokers and prop them against the firedogs to roast. She’d finally removed her bonnet, and tendrils of long brown hair had pulled loose from the tight knot just above her slender, rather elegant neck. They drifted over her cheeks as she leaned forward to add chair legs to the fire, and certain portions of his anatomy that hadn’t hurt until this very moment began to throb.

  He looked away, staring instead at a portrait on the wall that seemed vaguely familiar. Another ancestor, he supposed, one who met with his grandmother’s approval. She had lived most of her life in the dower house, welcoming him to stay with her during school holidays. Grandmama must have died sometime after he went out to India, although no one had bothered to inform him. He wondered where she was buried.

  “My lord?”

  He looked up to see Jane holding out a small plate.

  “The potatoes will take awhile to roast, I’m afraid. I should have got them started earlier, but I didn’t think of it.” She swept his discarded breeches from the floor and disappeared into the passageway before he could muster a response.

  Bemused, he made quick work of the dried apples and crackers. They tasted wonderful, especially with the vintage brandy to wash them down. The smell of roasting potatoes tickled at his nostrils, and he could hardly wait until they were done cooking.

  Small pleasures were the best, he thought. What were grand dreams and lofty goals compared to the crackle of a potato skin over a fire and the dimpled smile of a remarkable female? And why had she made off with his trousers, he wondered?

  An hour later, after devouring all but a few of the crackers, most of the apples, and half of Jane’s potato, he got his answer. When she had carried away the tray of dishes, she settled on a chair near the hearth, his wet, torn breeches in hand, and asked for the use of his knife.