She scrambled to her feet again and Giles saw with a pang that she was scrubbing the tears from her face with the back of her hand like a tired child.
‘No.’ His voice sounded oddly remote and he cleared his throat and concentrated on making her attend to him.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said no. You are not travelling through these woods alone on foot.’
‘Giles, I cannot just sit here and do nothing! It is broad daylight, I am unhurt and it is all my fault that you are—’ Her voice cracked and she stumbled to a halt.
‘You do not win battles by sitting around apportioning blame,’ Giles snapped. He hated speaking to her like that, but her chin came up again and he saw she was listening to him. ‘You lost your temper and I…I realised I hadn’t been looking beyond the end of my nose,’ he finished. Joanna looked mystified, but he knew what he meant and he was not about to explain it now.
‘Well, I am going anyway,’ she retorted defiantly, turning on her heel.
‘Stop!’ It was the voice he used in the heat of battle to reach troops around him and it halted her in her tracks. ‘I order you to come back here.’
Their eyes met: implacable pain-filled grey clashed with tear-soaked, anguished hazel. Giles put every ounce of authority he possessed into that look, knowing that he had no hold over her whatsoever beyond that which she chose to let him have. Their eyes clung for a long minute, then,
‘Yes, Giles,’ Joanna said, and came back to sit beside him.
Chapter Nineteen
Joanna sank down beside Giles, feeling as though she had fought a battle, and in some obscure way had managed to both win and lose it. Her every instinct screamed at her to go for help, but the part of her she had tried to train to be the perfect wife for a soldier told her that this was a dangerous situation and that Giles knew what to do far better than she.
The struggle of wills seemed to have exhausted him and he lay back awkwardly, his eyes closed. Joanna wriggled round until she could take his head and shoulders into her lap and cradle them in the deep folds of her habit.
Giles’s eyes opened with a hint of his wicked twinkle in their depths. ‘Now that is nice,’ he remarked.
‘Giles, is there anything I can do?’ she asked, trying to sound practical and down to earth. The last thing he needed to be coping with was a watering pot of a female.
‘No. Hickling saw us leave and he will be on the watch for us returning. If Moonstone gets back to the stables he will be alerted at once, if not, I am sure he will go to Alex by midday.’
‘How will they find us?’
‘The ground is soft—I was able to track you easily. Given the size of Cat’s feet, they will have no trouble following us.’ He was speaking calmly to her and she recognised that he was deliberately pitching his tone to reassure her. How many frightened young subalterns had he spoken to in just such tones before now?
He moved slightly and Joanna felt the shock of pain that went through his body. Her hands tightened on his shoulders and she bent over him, desperate to do something, anything to stop this torture. Watching his pain, his efforts not to show it, was an agony in itself and one she suddenly felt she could not bear. Then the vein of reality and self-knowledge that ran deep through her came to her aid. If he can bear it, and he has no choice, then I can certainly bear it, she told herself grimly.
‘Talk to me,’ he said, eyes closed.
‘Of course. What about?’
‘Tell me about this man you love so much that losing him has left you with nowhere to go, no direction to take.’
Joanna hesitated, her heart thudding. The need to talk, to confide, was an almost physical thing. Yet how could she do so to the very man concerned? ‘I will not tell you his name,’ she said at last.
‘Very well.’ Giles’s eyes were shut. She could sense through every quivering nerve in her body responding to his that he was husbanding his energy to withstand what was happening.
‘I…met him when I was…before I came out. I fell in love with him almost at once.’
‘Why?’
The stark question took her aback. Why did she love Giles? Had she ever thought about it, analysed it?
‘Because he has the power to inspire devotion,’ she managed at last.
‘Hmm.’ Giles murmured. ‘I distrust that.’
‘What? An officer distrust leadership?’
‘Ah, now that is different. You do not have to inspire devotion in order to lead. Sometimes you have to be hated, but they must still follow you.’
Joanna pondered this. Was what she felt for Giles devotion, or a response to a natural power to lead? Just now she had subdued every instinct in order to obey him. No, she had done as he had asked—as he had commanded—because deep down she trusted him.
‘Trust then,’ she amended. ‘He inspires trust.’
‘Very well, I will accept trustworthiness. But was that all?’
‘He is very good looking, very…male,’ she confessed, blushing.
‘So, what then?’
‘I knew he would not think twice about me,’ she said ruefully. ‘I was a harum-scarum schoolroom miss. But I knew what I had to do if I was to be the perfect wife for him. I applied myself to every lesson in manners and deportment, I practised my languages, I studied to please anyone of any rank and influence. I read everything I could about…about his profession.’ She paused to pull a handkerchief from her pocket and gently wiped the sweat from his forehead.
‘He was destined for very great things, all I could do was to make sure I was as fitted as possible to support him.’
Giles stiffened in her arms. ‘Listen!’
Joanna strained her ears to catch the distant sounds. ‘Deer, perhaps, not horses, I think.’
‘Go on.’
‘I was such an innocent fool,’ Joanna said abruptly. ‘He was gone for thr…years. Every day I studied the announcements and felt myself safe because there was no notice of his engagement. It never occurred to me that he was living his own life, finding his own love.’
‘When did you realise it?’ Giles was sounding increasingly distant. Joanna willed him to give up and to slip into merciful unconsciousness until rescue came.
‘I realised when I saw him with the woman he loves at the Duchess of Bridlington’s ball. I did not face up to just what an idiot I had been all that time until after I had run away and had time to think about it.’
‘Tell me about the ball…what…?’ Joanna felt Giles’s tense body relax into her arms and let out a deep, answering, sigh of relief. He had gone at last. But now she had begun to talk it was difficult to stop. Anxiously she studied his unconscious face. The traces of pain still marked it, a thin line of blood at the corner of his mouth marked where his teeth had closed in agony on his lip. But his breathing was deep and regular and the strong torso in her arms had the weight of oblivion.
Reassured she continued speaking as though by telling herself the story she could staunch the wounds that evening had left.
‘I went to the Duchess’s ball, even though I was in disgrace with Mama and Papa for not receiving Lord Clifton. I had no expectation of seeing…seeing him there: after all, I had looked for him night after night, day after day for three years.
‘But he was there, like some wonderful, inevitable miracle and I started to make my way up the ballroom to meet him. It was going to be perfect, I knew it. Then he went into a retiring room. I never even thought to wonder why, I simply followed him and there she was in his arms, that beautiful, eligible young lady. And he was telling her he was going to speak to her father, telling her she was his first and only love. I saw his face: I could not doubt him. His eyes betrayed just what he felt.’
Joanna was hardly aware she was speaking aloud. Her arms cradled Giles, rocking his body against herself in a gesture as old as time. ‘I got away somehow, and then you came and looked after me. Nothing mattered after that. What was I to do? Not marry some man I detested, that was all I was cert
ain of. I had to get away, and you know the rest.’
The soft sigh of his breathing was all the answer she received. Joanna bent her head silently to study every line of Giles’s face and set herself to wait.
How much later it was before she heard the sounds of hooves approaching, then the blessed sound of voices raised and calling, Joanna had no idea. The sun had moved almost overhead, her mouth was dry and her stomach grumbled at her.
‘Giles! Giles, they are here!’ She shook him gently by the shoulder, then raised her voice and shouted, ‘Here! Help! Help, down here!’
It seemed like dozens of men who came crashing down the slope as she arched protectively over Giles’s body. Then it resolved itself into Alex, his face like thunder, Hickling and three grooms.
Alex fell to his knees beside Giles, his eyes appalled as they took in the bloodied and mangled leg and the cruel trap around it. He reached out one hand and pressed his friend’s shoulder, then snapped at Joanna, ‘Get away from here.’
‘No! Why…?’ She was hauled to her feet and dragged to one side, still protesting. ‘Giles needs…’
‘Giles would not be in this state if it were not for you.’ Alex’s face was drawn and furious. ‘When we release the pressure of those jaws the pain is going to be infinitely worse than it is now as the blood begins to flow again. He is going to want to swear or throw up or faint—or all three—and he does not need to have you hovering around clucking and making him feel he cannot do any of those things in front of a lady.
‘Now get out of here and find Peter. He’ll take you up and you can ride with him back to the Hall. Tell the doctor what has happened and get Giles’s room ready.’
‘The doctor? The doctor is at Tasborough?’ Joanna pushed Alex’s angry, hurtful words to the back of her mind and clutched at the one thing that mattered.
‘Hebe went into labour after breakfast,’ Alex said grimly.
‘She is all right?’
‘How the hell would I know? The last person they tell is the father. It all seems to be taking a damn long time.’
No wonder he was so angry with her! Joanna reached out and gave Alex a swift, hard hug. ‘She will be fine, Alex. Now, look after Giles. I will go and do just as you say.’
Resolutely she pushed the thought of what was happening in the dell out of her mind and ran to the ride where one of the undergrooms was waiting with a farm cart and three horses. Black Cat, his off-hind cocked up, was standing dolefully, nose to nose with one of his stablemates.
‘Peter? His lordship said that you are to take me up and we are to return to the hall to alert the doctor. The Colonel has been hurt.’
The ride back, clinging to Peter’s rough jacket, was little more than a lurching blur. As they reached the steps Joanna slid from the horse and ran for the front door which opened as she reached it.
‘Miss Joanna! What has happened?’ It was Starling, shaken right out of his usual imperturbability.
The ride back had given her enough time to order her story and what she must do. ‘The Colonel has been caught by a mantrap and his leg is badly injured. His lordship is bringing him back in the wagon. We must tell the doctor and make the Colonel’s room ready.’ She was already running up the stairs towards Hebe’s chamber. ‘We will need hot water and bandages,’ she tossed back over her shoulder.
She got no further than the dressing room before being firmly turned away by the housekeeper. ‘You cannot go in there, Miss Joanna!’ she said, scandalised.
‘I do not want to,’ Joanna managed to pant out. ‘I need the doctor for Colonel Gregory. How is her ladyship?’
‘As well as might be expected, considering, miss.’
Considering what? No wonder Alex was getting so agitated! ‘May I speak to the doctor?’
Eventually that harassed gentleman put his head round the door long enough to listen to Joanna’s tale. ‘Hmm. Let me know when the Colonel arrives: it will definitely need seeing to at once and nothing is moving at any speed here, that is for sure.’
Joanna retreated to hover at the head of the stairs, giving orders to a distracted butler and harassing the maids who she sent scurrying for bandages, basilicum powder and extra pillows. At the sound of the arriving wagon she hastened for the doctor, only to find herself put very firmly outside the door as Giles was carried in on a hurdle.
Starling appeared with a sandwich and a glass of wine, which he insisted she ate. It tasted of straw, but she sensed that looking after her was all that Starling was able to do at the moment and so she ate it to please him.
It seemed an age before the doctor reappeared, wiping his hands on a towel. After a sharp look at her white face he took pity on her and stopped long enough for a rapid bulletin. ‘He won’t lose the leg and nothing’s broken. But the muscle is severely crushed and bruised: he’ll be in a lot of pain for some days and then will need careful exercise to get the strength back in it.’
He strode off to his other patient, leaving Joanna leaning against the panelling too relieved even to cry. Eventually she pulled herself together sufficiently to open the bedchamber door and look in.
Giles was alone in the room, stretched out on the big bed under a single sheet. He looked alarmingly still, but as Joanna tiptoed forward he opened his eyes and smiled at her. She smiled back, opened her mouth to speak, then found her throat was too tight.
‘Stay with me?’ He turned his head on the pillow and glanced towards the armchair standing beside the empty grate. Joanna went to pull it over to the bedside, but when she had it in position and looked back to the bed he was asleep again.
It was a big old leather-covered chair, deep and sagging comfortably. Joanna curled up in its depths and settled down to watch Giles. At first she was inclined to be anxious that he slept so deeply, then she recognised it for what it was: the utterly relaxed reaction of a strong, fit man whose body knew what it had to do to heal itself.
She closed her eyes, and against the lids saw again his warm, sleepy smile as she had entered the room. Stay with me. That spoke volumes for his trust in her that he should want her with him while he was vulnerable, unconscious. They had become very close over these past days: perhaps these few hours alone with him were all that were left to her of that intimacy before the demands of marriage and Lady Suzanne and his family took him away from her.
Joanna opened her eyes and simply sat looking at him, letting her gaze rove slowly over the long form outlined by the thin sheet, the breadth of his shoulders, bare where the linen folded down, the stubble golden on his skin, the fading scar on his forehead.
She catalogued each characteristic in her memory to last forever. The fact that his hair needed cutting and that where it was overlong at his nape it was beginning to curl. The sweep of his eyelashes, darker than his hair, ridiculously long for such a masculine man. The precise, complex, curl of his ear. The way his neck was strapped with muscle, the firm line of his jaw, determined even in sleep.
And his mouth. Expressive, flexible lips that she knew could firm into anger, part in uninhibited laughter, soften, then harden into a demanding, thrilling kiss. Her fingers curled and flexed with her longing to touch his mouth, to trace the sculpted upper line, the fuller, sensual lower swell.
Time passed and Joanna did not move as the clock in the hall below struck the hour. When it struck again Giles opened his eyes and looked directly into hers. Time stood still as grey met hazel gaze and locked in wordless communication in a language that she did not have the key to.
Then Giles moved slightly and caught his breath at the pain in his leg and the moment shattered.
‘Damn it,’ he muttered, raising himself on his elbows in an effort to sit up. Joanna jumped to her feet and shook the pillows behind him into a pile to support him, stepping back sharply to avoid touching him as he managed to draw himself up the bed and lay back.
‘How does it feel?’ What a stupid question!
‘Sore,’ Giles admitted in what she felt must be a massive understate
ment. He saw her face and grinned at her expression. ‘Truly, not that bad, I’ve had far worse, and far worse conditions to recover in, let me tell you.’
Joanna, reassured, stopped hovering at the bedside and resumed her seat. ‘That wound in your side?’
‘Hmm? I had forgotten you had seen that. Yes, they picked me up, tied my sash round it tightly, slung me over an army mule and carted me back to camp like a sack of potatoes. I then spent two weeks in a flea-infested barn. And no beautiful nurse, only my batman, whose ideas of medical care were, to put it mildly, rough and ready.’
Beautiful. Joanna hugged the word to herself and asked, ‘Is there anything you need? Something to drink?’
‘Yes, please.’ He ran his tongue over his lips. ‘Would you ring for a footman?’
‘I can get what you need.’
Giles cocked an eyebrow. ‘I think I would prefer a footman.’
Joanna opened her mouth to protest, then realised that there might indeed be reasons why he would prefer to be attended by a footman. ‘Oh, yes, of course. I’ll send someone up.’
Starling was pacing distractedly in the hall. Joanna felt a pang of sympathy: he was probably unconsciously echoing the Earl’s own restlessness on the floor above.
‘Could you send a footman to the Colonel, please, Starling? He has woken up and says he is feeling much better.’
Starling hurried off and Joanna was about to go upstairs to see if Alex had any news when she glimpsed the fine array of walking canes in the hall stand. She selected one which looked long enough for Giles and went to find Alex.
To her relief he was at least sitting down and demolishing a pile of sandwiches and a tankard of ale. He gestured Joanna to a chair and pushed the plate towards her.
‘Is there anything to drink?’
In answer he poured ale into a spare tankard and Joanna cautiously tried it. To her surprise it was surprisingly good and she also found her appetite had returned. Goodness knows what Hebe would say if she saw her cousin sitting quaffing ale out of a tankard, elbows on table and ham sandwich in hand.
The Society Catch (Harlequin Historical) Page 21
