by Anita Mills
“Hit ain’t far, milord,” one of the men assured him.
Despite the storm that tore at them and the slippery mud beneath their feet, they managed to carry him the short distance to her cottage. Soaked to the skin and cold beyond bearing, she trudged ahead of them to open her door.
“You can put him in the chair by the hearth,” she said, removing her dripping cloak. Leaning over, she wrung out her hair, then pushed it back, where it clung to her face and neck. “You’d best get him out of his wet coat while I prepare the bed.”
“Aye.”
Picking up her two cruzie lamps, she carried them to the fire, where she handed one to Beggs. “There’s enough wick left, I think, but there’s not much oil. I hope it will last until we are done.” Lighting the other one herself, she took it with her into the small bedchamber. “I shall be out in a trice,” she promised as she closed the door.
She undressed quickly and found dry clothes. Her teeth chattering, her body shivering from nerves as well as cold, she managed to pull them over her head. As she dragged a comb through her dripping hair, her stomach growled, reminding her that she’d still not eaten. But there was no help for that, at least not until Lord Rexford was gotten to bed and Dr. Alstead summoned. As the last button was fastened, she turned her attention to the room.
He was going to bleed onto the bed, she knew, and yet there was nowhere else to put him. Pulling off the coverlet, she removed her sheets and replaced them with old, worn blankets.
The room was too cold. He would have to have a brick heated for his feet, else he’d never get warm. How humble everything was, she thought as she surveyed the plain bedstead, the small table, the cabinet that served for her wardrobe, and the flat wooden box where she stored everything else. Definitely not fit for a man of Rexford’s means. Picking up the lamp, she went back to the main room.
The earl was leaning back, his eyes closed, his teeth clenched, his face ashen beneath his wet, wavy hair. She moved closer, drawn as much by curiosity as by memory. And as the lamplight caught the glint of silver amongst the black at his temples, the faint lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, she realized with a start that he was no longer the grand buck of her youth, but rather a man close to forty. It just didn’t seem possible, for she’d always remembered him as being boyishly handsome. She’d always remembered him as he’d been that night at Lady Conniston’s ball.
Beggs looked at him and shook his head. “Gor, but he’s a bloody mess, ain’t he?” he murmured, breaking into her thoughts.
“What? Oh…yes…yes, he is,” she managed.
The earl’s eyes opened, and as he stared upward she was struck by the same brilliant blue. In that at least her memory had not failed. Looking into those eyes, she felt anew the pang beneath her breastbone. Would he even remember her at all, she dared to wonder.
“How bad is it?” he croaked.
She fought the urge to lie to him. “Well,” she answered cautiously, “I daresay it must be better than it looks just now. I expect we shall know a great deal more when you are cleaned up, and when Dr. Alstead sees your leg, of course.”
“The ball…”
“Ball’s out, milord,” Beggs reminded him. “Ye ain’t in Spain no more.”
“Hurts like the devil.” As he spoke, he clenched his jaw, biting down hard against the pain. “Don’t want to lose the limb.”
“Hit’s just broke,” Tittle reassured him.
But Charlotte was by no means certain that the leg could be saved after being snapped like a stick. Exhaling, she forced herself to take charge again. “As it is some distance to Dr. Alstead’s, if we do not clean your wounds ere he gets here, they will fester,” she stated matter-of-factly. “And my father used to say there was nothing worse than a bone infection.”
He’d closed his eyes again. “Was he a doctor?”
“No. But we raised sheep and horses at Buckley, and he was forever treating them for nearly everything. I think Papa once wished to be a surgeon, but his father felt it quite beneath a Winslow.” She looked down, hoping for a glimmer of recognition, but there was none. Hiding her disappointment, she asked, “Do you wish for more laudanum? If you take it now, it ought to work before the doctor gets here.” As she spoke, she lifted the wet blanket up to examine the leg.
“No.” As he felt her fingers touch him, he forced himself to look first at her, then down to where the sharp edge of his displaced bone broke through his muddy, blood-soaked breeches. He didn’t have to be told now, he’d seen enough on the battlefield to know he’d be damned fortunate to keep anything beneath the knee. “All right,” he decided.
She took the laudanum bottle and poured the rest into a cup. As she went to dip from the water bucket to dilute the opiate, Beggs spoke up. “’Is lordship was dec’rated by the Regent, ye know.”
“Oh?” she murmured politely.
“Aye. ’E fought th’ Frogs, ’e did, until ’e was wounded at Salamanca,” the man declared proudly.
“Most noblemen of my limited acquaintance stayed home, I’m afraid.”
“Guess ye know the neighborin’ Quality, eh?”
She started to retort that she’d had her moment amongst the ton, then bit the words back. It didn’t matter anymore, anyway. It didn’t even matter if Rexford didn’t remember her. Indeed, it would be less humiliating if he did not, she told herself resolutely, for the last thing she would want of him would be his pity.
Bringing the cup back, she held it for the earl. “Go on, drink,” she urged him. “None of this is going to be pleasant, I’m afraid.”
He opened those blue eyes again, nearly unnerving her. “I know.” He swallowed half of it, then pushed it away, grimacing. “Enough. ’Tis enough.”
She put the empty vessel on the table, then reached beneath the battered cupboard to retrieve the dishpan, a cake of strong lye soap, a clean cloth, and her sharpest knife. The cat rubbed against her leg and looked up at her reproachfully, making it plain that he resented company. She stopped to pour a saucer of milk and set it on the floor before she carried her supplies to the water bucket. Ladling another dipper of cool water into the washpan, she told herself that no matter how inclined she might be to retch, she must not give over to the weakness.
Taking care not to spill it, she brought the pan back to the fire, where she added steaming water from her teapot. She swished it around, then tested the temperature.
“Lean him forward, and hold him lest he faints,” she ordered Beggs. “The laudanum has not taken full effect yet, so he is going to feel this.”
“’E ain’t no man-milliner, I’ll be bound ’e ain’t. Tough as the Iron Duke ’imself, ’e is.”
But contrary to Beggs’s belief in him, Rexford felt utterly sick. The last laudanum had hit the pit of his stomach, and on top of the mixture he’d had before, he was having to swallow to keep it down. He was dizzy, far too dizzy, and everything in the room was moving while he struggled to keep what little dignity he had left. He bent his shoulders and held his head with both hands, trying to fight each new wave of nausea.
Charlotte wrung out the cloth and began washing the matted, sticky hair above his nape, revealing the nasty gash she’d suspected. His wet, muddy shoulders shuddered as she touched the raw scalp.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “If you feel the need, go ahead and curse, or whatever you wish. I assure you I am not missish in the least.”
“If I wished to curse, I would,” he gritted out.
She tried to be matter-of-fact, but for all her appearance of assurance, she’d never been closer than a country dance to him or any other man before she’d brazenly felt of his body in the road. She rinsed out the bloody cloth. “This ought to be stitched,” she murmured, “but having no experience beyond watching Papa sew up a lamb torn by the miller’s dog, I shall not attempt it. Besides, the leg is in greater need of attention.”
Working intently now, she poured out the contents of the pan, then refilled it. Picking up the knife,
she sought the seam of the expensively tailored, close-fitting breeches. “At least there is no boot to remove, which is a blessing, for your leg is already quite swollen.” Taking care not to cut him, she used the tip of the blade to rip the seam open, exposing his shin.
“Gor blimey!” Beggs gasped, turning away. “Tom, ye got ter ’old ’im, fer I ain’t up ter it.”
Charlotte’s stomach knotted as she looked upon the jagged bone that punctured the skin. Where the bone had snapped, thick, congealing blood seeped from the marrow. Afraid to actually touch it, she hesitated.
“Go on.” As he spoke, the earl closed his eyes yet again to stop the spinning room. “Do what you have to, and get it over and done.”
“I’m…I’m going to pour water over it, then leave it to Dr. Alstead,” she answered. “After that, we’ll get you out of your wet clothes and into bed.”
Whether from the opiate or from the combination of it and the rum, he felt almost detached despite the intense, hot ache of his broken bone. Until she poured the soapy water over it. Every nerve between his hip and his foot was on fire. He jerked in reflex, then everything went black.
“Damme if he ain’t swooned!” Tom Tittle exclaimed.
“If he has, it is a blessing,” Charlotte murmured.
As cold as she still was, she could feel the perspiration on her forehead. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, then went back to work, flushing the wound until she was satisfied that it was as clean as she could make it. When she was done, she rose, shaking, and went again into the area that served as her kitchen to find a cloth. Tearing it into strips, she came back and wrapped it lightly over the break. Standing again, she exhaled her relief. She looked into the admiring gaze of the nearest coachman.
“Ye got the ’ealing gift, missus,” Beggs declared.
“You’ll have to get his wet clothes off and put him to bed,” she said wearily. Handing over the knife, she added, “Use this to cut what does not come off easily, and when you are done, see that he is between the blankets. In the meantime, I shall warm a brick for his feet and write a note to the doctor.”
She waited until they had taken him into her bedchamber, then she found her writing supplies, carried them to her eating table, and sharpened a pen. Dipping it into her ink, she composed a plea to Alstead, telling of the accident, adding, “As I doubt he can be moved, his lordship will be needing whatsoever nightshirts and other clothing you may spare,” before signing it, “Your obedient, etc., Charlotte Winslow.”
While the hastily fetched physician examined the earl in the other room, Charlotte sat staring absently over her scarce-touched stew, while the marmalade cat curled contentedly at her feet. No, it did not seem possible that she was seeing Rexford again, that he was actually in her cottage. Not after the passage of fifteen years. If she couldn’t see the remainder of blood spots on her floor, she’d be inclined to believe she was merely dreaming.
Not that she hadn’t tried to follow what little gossip and news there’d been of him. She’d known when he’d wed. Indeed, she could still feel the pain that had cut through her breastbone like a knife when she’d read the announcement in the Gazette. As she recalled them, the words seemed to echo in her ears. “Henry, Duke of Fairfax, announces the betrothal of his daughter, Lady Helena Heversham, to Richard, Earl of Rexford. A spring wedding at Heversham Park is intended.”
And she’d known that after Lady Helena died in childbed, Rexford had demonstrated his grief by going off to war, where he’d distinguished himself in the peninsular campaigns. The gossips had speculated that without his beautiful wife, he no longer wished to live, but that was a hoax if she’d ever heard one, for he’d fought against Boney nearly ten years before coming home.
Still, upon seeing him now, Charlotte was stunned by the changes aging had wrought. For a moment, she stared into the hearth, seeing him as she so often had, a young man famed nearly as much for his address as for his handsome face. Perhaps ’twas her memory that was faulty, she conceded.
On impulse, she rose to rummage in her sketch boxes, taking out a yellowed folder of pictures she’d drawn in what now seemed another age. Carrying it back to the table, she opened it gingerly. Shuffling through her drawings, she came to those of him, and for a long time she studied her favorite one as though she willed him to come to life again for her.
Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to think back, to see again the pretty young girl smiling at her from her mirror. And now it seemed as though Lady Conniston’s ball had been but yesterday, as though she could still smell the clean scent of the Hungary water he’d worn that night. Just as he was in the picture she’d done of him, he’d been so very handsome, and his bright blue eyes had been so warm, so filled with admiration then.
Though he’d signed her dance card at other affairs, that night his manner had been different. He’d actually singled her out, dancing not once but twice with her, taking her into supper on his arm while the tabbies had watched and speculated between themselves as to the significance of every smile he gave her.
And from somewhere behind the potted ferns, she’d heard Lady Leffingwell titter, “’Twould seem that Rexford means to fix his interest with the country chit. How vexing for all those who have cast such lures at him.” “Why, she is but a nobody,” someone had replied. To which Lady Lavinia had countered, “Pish and nonsense. There is good breeding on her mother’s side, and Rexford certainly does not have to catch himself an heiress. Why”—Lavinia Leffingwell’s voice had lowered, and Charlotte had strained shamelessly to hear the rest of it—“why, Arthur tells me all the Lindens cut up warm, and Richard’s father was no different from the rest of them—left more than seventy-five thousand pounds to his only heir, not to mention all those houses. Though why he has let Beatrice remain at Durham, I am sure I don’t know, for dowagers always amuse themselves by meddling. I ought to know, for I am one myself,” she added definitely.
How heady it had been just to hear her name linked with Rexford’s. Her fanciful mind had taken to the notion, going so far as to consider how Charlotte Caroline Maria Winslow Linden, Countess of Rexford, might sound. It had seemed impossible even then.
And once again she felt that ache, the yearning that came with memories of what might have been. Usually, she forced her thoughts away, telling herself she had much for which to be grateful. But just now she had not the will.
She’d had every green girl’s dreams then, daring to believe that a man of wealth and title could throw his hat over the windmill for her. As much as she’d wanted to hope Lady Leffingwell had been right, in the end she’d had to concede what she’d mistaken for interest had merely been kindness. She’d been so easily swept off her feet because she’d encountered far too few kind gentlemen amongst the ton. Most were too concerned with the cut of their coats, too filled with their own conceit to care for anything beyond themselves.
Anyway, none of it mattered anymore, for the green girl was long gone, her dreams dead, dashed upon the shoals of a grim reality. Instead of presiding over Rexford’s table, she lived scandalously alone, far removed from the gilded, glittering ballrooms of his world. And by passing herself off as Charles Winslow to her clients, she earned everything from the roof over her head to the food on her table, something no respectable female would dare to admit.
But for one enchanted evening at Lady Conniston’s ball, the most sought-after buck in all of London had singled her out for two dances. And beyond that, he’d asked her mother’s permission to “take Miss Charlotte for a turn about Hyde Park tomorrow at five o’clock.” How everyone had envied her that night. She swallowed, remembering her mama’s excited chatter on the way home.
“Oh, I vow I am in alt, dearest! I must tell William that the economies we have practiced to bring you out have paid off most handsomely! Now I should have been content with a plain mister of substance, of course, but ’tis Rexford! Who could have thought it—Rexford! Mark my words, Charlotte, he means to make you his countess!”
How very wide of the mark her mama had been, she recalled regretfully. That night had proven to be the most fateful of her life, but for a very different reason. And if she lived to be one hundred, she’d never forget the subdued manners of the servants or the stricken look on her mother’s face when Dr. Crowe had said her papa was dead of heart failure at forty-seven.
And so had ended her only London Season. They’d withdrawn to Buckley Hall to bury her father, then remained there to mourn him for the requisite year. But within a week the awful truth had come out in a visit from her father’s solicitor.
“Mr. Winslow has made some rather unfortunate investments, I’m afraid,” he’d explained apologetically. “He gamed excessively, you mean,” had been her mother’s acerbic retort. But it was worse than Mama or Charlotte or the younger girls could ever have imagined—Buckley Hall itself had needed to be sold, and the extent of debts to be satisfied had been utterly overwhelming, ending any thought of their ever returning to London.
She’d written Rexford, of course, apologizing for missing the turn about the park, explaining her abrupt departure. But she’d not been quite able to tell him all of it, for she’d not wanted his pity. And it was just as well, she supposed. After all, for all her hopes of him, he’d never so much as bothered to answer. To add to the pain, it had taken him but a year and a half to wed another. Miss March, who’d actually seen his countess, confided to Charlotte’s sister Sarah that Lady Helena had been that year’s reigning beauty. And so she’d had to put away her dreams of him and go on.
Once the proceeds of Buckley Hall had partially settled William Winslow’s staggering debts, his destitute family had gone to live with one of his wife’s brothers, who had seemed to begrudge them every pea they ate. Finally, in the end, Mama’s spirit had failed, and she died the year Charlotte turned twenty-one. Uncle Henry, under the guise of being helpful, had secured Charlotte a position as companion to a spiteful, ill-tempered elderly female. It had lasted a week.
