A Christmas Courtship (23 page)

Blanche and Deborah stood frozen with dismay by the porch watching as Jonathan and the colonel knelt in the snow to attend to Sir Edmund. The soldiers continued to pursue the curricle, but it was drawing farther and farther away, and after a while they gave up the chase.

At last Blanche’s shocked immobility lifted, and followed by Deborah, she gathered her skirts to hurry after the soldiers toward where Sir Edmund lay, with Jonathan and the colonel still kneeling by him.

Seeing her distraught face as she reached them, Jonathan put up a warning hand. ‘He’s only unconscious, Sis.’ She gazed down at Sir Edmund’s pale, still face. His eyes were closed, and there wasn’t even the smallest flicker of movement. It was as if he were dead. Fear raced through her. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, Miss Amberley, for there is a pulse,’ replied Colonel Cummings, getting up and gazing after the fleeing curricle. ‘Damn it, we’ve lost the blackguard now.’

Blanche followed his gaze, and a sudden thought struck her. ‘Jonathan, if you and the colonel cut across the park to the postern gate into the lane, you may be able to reach the fork in the road before he does. He’s bound to go the Gloucester way, for the other way leads nowhere, which means he has to drive past the fork!’

Jonathan rose slowly to his feet, his eyes quick with hope. ‘You’re right, Sis!’ He turned swiftly to the colonel. ‘Sir, we may still be able to catch him. There’s a short cut across the park.’

Colonel Cummings needed no second bidding. ‘Lead the way, man!’

They began to run back toward the house, the soldiers
following
, and Blanche heard Jonathan shout to Deborah to have Evans send someone for Doctor Paulet, and to have two men carry Sir Edmund inside.

As Deborah hurried back to the house again, Blanche sank to her knees by Sir Edmund’s head, taking it tenderly in her lap and smoothing the tangled dark hair back from his pale
forehead
. Tears stung her eyes as she willed his eyes to open, but they remained closed, his lashes black against his ashen cheek.

She had no thought of Athena, who’d remained nearby throughout, but a movement in the snow made her look up as Athena came toward her.

The two women met each other’s eyes, and Athena gave a thin smile. Her feline glance flickered toward Sir Edmund’s face, and the tender way Blanche cradled him close. ‘So, I was right, Miss Amberley, you aren’t the retiring little mouse, the innocent with no thought of passion.’

‘And how innocent have you been, my lady? What of your dealings with the Earl of Mordene?’ Blanche looked desperately past her toward the house. Why didn’t they come to carry him into the warmth?

‘You don’t believe all that, do you? My, my, what a gull you are, to be sure, far too rustic and inexperienced for the heat of London drawing rooms. The ways of high society are evidently totally unknown to you, otherwise you would under-stand more how people like Edmund and I go on. I would never be foolish enough to think I had sole claim to his bed, my dear; indeed, I’d have been amazed if I had. There were others before you, and there’ll be others after you, for you are simply a passing
diversion
. Did you know that you were the subject of a wager? He said that you would not succumb to his advances until the new year, but I was sure you’d surrender before Christmas. Was I right? Yes, I rather think I was, for your actions now aren’t those of a chaste young thing, are they? Do you love him, Miss Amberley?’

Hot color rushed into Blanche’s cheeks, and she didn’t reply.

Athena gave a cool smile. ‘Enjoy him while you can, my dear, but I fear that your dream of securing both the man and the
house are doomed to be dashed. He really is simply amusing himself with you, for you are too inconsequential a little drab to hold him for long. He’ll discard you and move on to the next dalliance, and you will have ruined yourself for nothing.’

‘Why don’t you just leave?’ cried Blanche. ‘Haven’t you done enough?’

‘Exactly what have I done, my dear? I was a loyal and loving sister, which is a role you’ve taken on yourself, have you not?’ Athena turned suddenly as the sound of hooves drummed through the night. Jonathan, Colonel Cummings, and the soldiers were riding out of the stableyard behind the house, and making across the park to intercept Roderick at the fork in the lane. Athena looked sharply in the other direction, where her brother’s curricle lamps had now vanished among the trees.

‘He isn’t free yet, my lady,’ said Blanche quietly.

‘No one drives as he does, my dear. He’ll give them the slip, make no mistake of that.’

Some footmen, led by Evans, were hastening at last from the house toward them, and Athena gave Blanche a final cool glance. ‘Good-bye, Miss Amberley. We won’t meet again, for you will soon sink without trace. Don’t imagine that you’ve won him, for if you think that, you’re more of a fool than I already take you for.’

She walked away just as Evans and the footmen ran up. The butler looked down anxiously at Sir Edmund. ‘I’ve sent a man for the doctor, Miss Amberley. Is Sir Edmund still completely unconscious?’

‘Yes, Evans, I fear he is.’

He nodded at the men. ‘Pick him up very carefully, now, for he may have a broken bone.’

Blanche relinquished him as they bent to carry him back to the house. As she got up out of the snow, she saw Athena take her white fur cloak from another footman by the porch and then climb into the waiting carriage. The coachman cracked his whip, and the four bays strained forward, taking the gleaming black carriage swiftly away from the house. as it drove past Blanche, Athena did not look out at her, but gazed ahead.

The cold winter air seemed suddenly to touch Blanche, and
she shivered as she walked slowly back toward the house. Deborah came out to meet her.

‘Are you all right, Blanche?’

‘Yes.’

Deborah looked anxiously at her. ‘The doctor will be here soon. I’m sure Sir Edmund….’

‘I love him so very much, Deborah,’ broke in Blanche, her voice catching.

‘I know,’ replied Deborah gently, taking her arm.

‘You-you know?’

‘Blanche, I can see it in your eyes every time you look at him, just as I can see it in his eyes when he looks at you.’

Blanche halted. ‘In
his
eyes?’ she whispered.

‘He loves you, Blanche, I know he does.’

‘I wish I could believe that,’ murmured Blanche, turning to look back at the lights of Athena’s carriage.

‘What has she been saying to you?’ asked Deborah quickly, perceiving the glance.

‘Nothing of importance,’ replied Blanche softly.

‘She’s a spiteful, vindictive
chienne
, Blanche, and you mustn’t believe anything she says.’

Blanche shivered again. ‘Let’s go inside,’ she said quietly.

Doctor Paulet came with every haste, and Blanche and Deborah waited with Evans and Sir Edmund’s anxious valet in the passage while the doctor carried out the examination in Sir Edmund’s bedchamber.

It was a fine chamber at the rear of the house, above the oriel window of the grand chamber. The fire blazed in the hearth and all the candles had been lit, so that the room was warm and bright. Its walls were paneled with rich dark oak, and hung with fine Arras tapestries. The four-poster bed dominated the room, for it was an immense piece of furniture with curtains and a canopy made of the richest dove-gray brocade. Sir Edmund lay unconscious, and had still made no movement when the doctor completed the examination and drew the coverlet over him before going to admit those who were waiting outside.

He addressed Blanche, whom he knew well, and whom he could not help still regarding as the mistress of Amberley Court.
‘I cannot find any broken limb or sign of other internal damage, Miss Amberley, except, of course, for the wounds sustained at Vimiero during the summer. I have already attended him since his arrival here, and know those wounds precisely, so that I can state quite categorically that no further damage has been sustained to them.’

Blanche closed her eyes with relief, for that had been her greatest fear. ‘Are you quite sure, Doctor?’ she asked.

‘Beyond all doubt, Miss Amberley.’ He looked at Sir Edmund again. ‘There is a bruise on the side of his head, caused, I have to believe, by being knocked down by the curricle. It has rendered him temporarily unconscious, but he will soon recover, I’m certain. I will dress the bruise and leave instructions, then I will leave, for there is nothing more I can do. I will call again in the morning to see how he has progressed.’

‘Very well, Doctor Paulet.’

As the doctor took some bandages and a jar of ointment from his bag, Deborah suddenly heard something from the park outside. She opened the casement and looked out.

Blanche turned as well, for the distinct sound of hooves and wheels drifted in on the cold air. She gazed out across the park toward the postern gate, and her heart almost stopped as she saw Roderick Neville’s curricle driving slowly through the snow, the team of two kicking up clouds of white as they went.

They both stared in unutterable dismay, but then Deborah gave a small cry of excitement. ‘It isn’t Mr Neville, Blanche, it’s Jonathan!’ Turning, she gathered her skirts and flew from the room.

Doctor Paulet finished attending to Sir Edmund’s head wound, and then closed his bag. ‘There is nothing more I can do, Miss Amberley.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’

‘Not at all.’ Inclining his head, he picked up the bag and went out, closing the door softly behind him.

She looked out of the window again. The curricle had passed out of sight into the stableyard and all was quiet again, so she closed the casement and drew the heavy velvet curtains across.

The fire shifted in the hearth, sending a shower of brilliant
crimson sparks fleeing up the chimney into the night, and she pulled her shawl around her shoulders as she went to stand by the bed, looking down at the face of the man she’d so swiftly come to love with all her heart. She hardly knew him, he’d really only entered her life a few days ago, but in that short time he’d come to mean everything to her.

Unbidden, Athena’s voice echoed in her head.
The ways of high society are evidently totally unknown to you, otherwise you would understand more how people like Edmund and I go on. I would never be foolish enough to think I had sole claim to his bed, dear; indeed, I’d have been amazed if I had. There were others before you, and there’ll be others after you, for you are simply a passing diversion. Did you know that you were the subject of a wager?

The door opened suddenly, and Jonathan came in with Deborah. He came to stand by Blanche, looking down at the bed. ‘There’s no change?’

‘No.’

‘Deborah tells me the doctor says he hasn’t been badly injured, just knocked on the head.’

‘Yes. Jonathan, what happened? Why were you driving the curricle?’

‘Because Neville is now on his way to Cheltenham under guard.’

‘You caught him?’

He drove right into our clutches. In his haste to get away, he actually took the wrong fork in the road, and almost ran us down by the lychgate. If it hadn’t been for that, he’d have gotten away after all, for he was going like the wind itself.’

‘You caught him by the lychgate?’

‘Not exactly. He was going so fast that we scattered before him, and he drove right over the hill and down toward the river, where he suddenly realized he could go no further. He left the curricle and tried to make for the bridge over the creek into the bishop’s land, but some of the soldiers cut him off and so he turned to dash the other way instead, but we’d blocked that escape as well, so he was only left with the fishing house. He didn’t realize that it jutted right over the water nor did he know how decayed and unsafe it is, for he dashed onto the verandah
as if it had been built only yesterday of the sturdiest oak in the land! It gave beneath him, and he fell, but he just managed to cling to the rail. He was ours then, all we had to do was pull him up. The colonel ordered me to drive the curricle back here to tell you what had happened, and then he took Neville under arrest to Cheltenham.’

‘Is it really all over, Jonathan?’ she asked.

He slipped an arm around her, squeezing her tightly. ‘Yes, Sis, my name will soon be fully cleared, Deborah and I are reunited, Mr Jennings’s financial affairs are, thanks to Sir Edmund, about to be more than healthy again, and my army career is set to proceed as I wish.’ He looked down at Sir Edmund. ‘I intend to be an even younger major-general than he, Blanche, and one day I hope to be the brilliant commander that Sir Arthur Wellesley is now. The army is everything to me, Blanche, everything, and if I’d lost it…’ He smiled at her. ‘Who’d have thought it, eh? Jonathan Amberley, one of Gloucestershire’s most eligible young men, without a military thought in his head two years ago, now so engrossed in army life that he’d die if he was denied it.’

She returned the smile. ‘Jonathan, I trust that you’ve inquired if Deborah feels the same way?’

Deborah nodded. ‘Oh, he has, and I’m more than content to be an army wife.’ She came to put a gentle hand on Blanche’s arm. ‘Please come down with us.’

‘I’d rather stay here. I-I know that it isn’t strictly very proper, but….’

Deborah nodded. ‘We understand,’ she said, glancing at Jonathan in a way that defied him to protest. Then she gave him a smile. ‘You go on down, I’ll follow in a moment.’

As the door closed behind him, Deborah turned to Blanche again. ‘Please don’t worry about Sir Edmund, Blanche, for the doctor says he will be all right.’

‘I know, it’s just….’

‘I do understand, you know.’ Deborah smiled at her. ‘If I were you right now, I’d be doing exactly the same.’

‘Would you?’

‘Of course. Here, take this to remind yourself of something important.’ Deborah pressed something into her hand.

Blanche looked down to see a small sprig of holly, four shiny dark green leaves with a cluster of scarlet berries. ‘Remind me of something important?’ she repeated, puzzled.

‘That this is going to be the most wonderful Christmas ever. It will be, you know, for I have no doubt whatsoever that all this is going to untangle as sweetly as any of us could have wished.’ Turning, Deborah slipped quietly from the room and once again the door closed.