Joan Wolf (34 page)

Stephen’s eyes met mine. His were so dilated that there was scarcely any blue showing, and the skin around the sockets looked bruised. I forced myself to smile. “There seems to be a conspiracy abroad to scramble your brains, Stephen,” I said as I crossed the room to him.

“That’s true,” he replied. He sounded as if he were drunk.

Jem stood up with Stephen’s two boots and went to put them against the wall. Aunt Fanny moved in with her bowl and her towel and began to explore the top of his head for the source of all the blood. I went to stand on Stephen’s other side and gently tilted his head until my breast was supporting it.

“You’re likely gonna need to shave some of his hair to get at that injury,” Jem said. “There was a good-size branch lyin’ crost the road right next to his head.”

I felt a faint flicker of relief. A branch was not as bad as rock.

I looked at Jem over the dark, bloodstained head I was cradling against my breast. No one had thought to offer him a shirt, and his well-muscled torso looked almost as brown as Stephen’s in the light from the window. He was looking at Stephen with an extremely worried look in his deep-set eyes. “Do you remember what happened, Stephen?” he asked gruffly.

Stephen’s head moved restlessly on my breast. “I remember hearing a sound in the woods, like a puppy crying,” he said. “I got off, tied Magpie, and went to investigate. I didn’t find anything. I remember getting back to Magpie and untying him, and after that I don’t remember anything at all.” Once more his head moved fretfully.

“It’s all right,” I said softly, and heedless of the watching eyes, I bent my head and touched my lips to his ear. “If you can’t remember, don’t worry about it.”

“You gentlemen may leave now,” Aunt Fanny said pleasantly.

“All right, we’ll get out of your way,” Jack replied. “Come along, Jem, and I’ll lend you a shirt. All the local lasses will swoon if we allow them to catch a glimpse of those manly muscles.”

The two men started for the door, and Aunt Fanny put down her bloodstained bowl and towel and picked up a pair of small embroidery scissors. Jem turned in the doorway and said abruptly, “Stephen, do you remember loosenin’ your horse’s girth afore you went lookin’ for that puppy?”

“No,” Stephen said. “I don’t remember doing that.”

Jem’s lips folded together in a thin line. He turned to follow Jack out of the door, and Stephen lifted his head and called after him, “Why, Jem? Was Magpie’s girth loose?”

“Will you please remain still, Stephen?” Aunt Fanny said sternly. “I don’t want to stab you with these scissors.”

I nodded to Jem to go and answered Stephen myself as I guided his head back to where it should be. “He came racing into the stableyard with the saddle hanging under his belly. Apparently the girth was too loose. The saddle must have
slipped as you got on and panicked Magpie into a fit of bucking to try to get rid of it.”

“I don’t remember loosening the girth,” Stephen said. “But perhaps I did.”

I didn’t think so. It was not something one would ordinarily do if one was planning to remount immediately. But I didn’t want to worry him just now, so I said, “Perhaps.”

By now Aunt Fanny had exposed the wound on Stephen’s scalp. It had certainly bled a lot, but it didn’t look too serious. What was serious, however, was the bruise on his temple and the evident shock his brain had suffered as the result of receiving two blows in such a short period of time.

Aunt Fanny and I decided to leave the wound unbandaged until the doctor arrived. The ice came up from the kitchen, and I wrapped it in a towel and applied it to Stephen’s temple. He winced uncontrollably when I touched the sore area.

“Cold is good for the swelling,” I said. I always stuck my horses’ feet in a bucket of cold water if they came up lame.

Stephen’s head grew heavier and heavier against my breast. Aunt Fanny and I decided to put him to bed and sent for his valet to come and undress him. Before Matthews arrived, however, Dr. Montrose came into the room, wheezing slightly from his climb up the stairs.

I said Stephen’s name in his ear to wake him up.

“What are you trying to do to yourself, young feller?” Dr. Montrose said as he came over to stand in front of Stephen’s chair.

Stephen tried to smile, but he couldn’t quite manage it.

The doctor looked closely at the wound and said, “Very neat work, Fanny. You’ve got it cleaned up beautifully. I’ll just put a plaster over it to hide the bald spot.”

Aunt Fanny said, “I took off as little hair as I could.”

“It’s a good thing I’m not vain,” Stephen said thickly.

His attempt at humor heartened me considerably. He had
been so quiet and docile under our ministrations that I had begun to be seriously frightened.

Dr. Montrose looked at the ugly bruise on Stephen’s temple. “Same place as the last time,” he said in a noncommittal tone.

“Yes,” I said.

He tilted up Stephen’s chin and looked into his eyes. “Hmm,” he said. “Was he knocked unconscious at all, Annabelle?”

“Yes. Jem Washburn said he was unconscious for about fifteen minutes.”

“How does your head feel, Stephen?” Dr. Montrose asked.

“It hurts like hell,” Stephen said. “And I’ve got this ringing sound in my ears.”

The doctor held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Stephen squinted at them. “Four?” he said tentatively.

Dr. Montrose looked at me. “Definitely a concussion. Put him to bed, Annabelle, and keep him there for at least three days.”

Stephen was outraged. “I can’t go to bed for three days!”

“You can and you will,” I replied firmly.

“How serious is a concussion, Martin?” Aunt Fanny asked.

“It’s very serious if it is ignored,” Dr. Montrose replied. “Ask Annabelle. She knows what happened to Henry Marfield.”

“Who is Henry Marfield? “ Aunt Fanny said to me.

“A friend of Sir Matthew’s who used to hunt with us a few years ago,” I replied. “He tried to jump a tree trunk in the woods, came off, hit his head on another tree when he landed, and was unconscious for a while. Just like Stephen. Dr. Montrose told him to go to bed, but he wouldn’t listen. He died while he was driving home from Stanhope two days later. Just dropped dead on the seat of his phaeton.”

“Apoplexy of the brain,” Dr. Montrose said.

“What an encouraging example,” Stephen murmured.

“Yes, well, that is why you are going to stay in bed for three days,” I said.

A voice from the doorway said deferentially, “Excuse me, my lady, but do you still need me?”

“We certainly do, Matthews,” I said to Stephen’s valet. “Come in. I want you to undress Mr. Stephen and put him to bed.”

“Come and have a glass of port before you drive home, Martin,” Aunt Fanny said.

“I can’t, Fanny. I have a few other patients I must attend to before I can afford to relax with a glass of port,”

“Some tea, then,” Aunt Fanny said.

“Tea would be welcome,” Dr. Montrose conceded.

The two of them began to walk toward the door, but before she went out, Aunt Fanny turned to me. “Will you join us, my dear Annabelle? “

“I will be with you shortly,” I said. “Will you be in the morning room? “

“Yes,” said Aunt Fanny, and she and Dr. Montrose went out and closed the door behind them.

“After you put Mr. Stephen to bed, I want you to stay in this room,” I said to Matthews. “Under no circumstances are you to leave Mr. Stephen alone.”

Matthews’s prominent blue gray eyes bulged, giving him the distinct look of a fish. “Yes, my lady,” he said.

“I hardly think that is necessary, Annabelle,” Stephen mumbled.

“I will be the judge of that,” I returned.

He frowned. He looked so ill that all my fears came rushing back. I returned to his chair and cupped his face gently between my palms. “Will you please just rest?” I said. “Don’t try to think about anything. Just rest.”

His almost black eyes lifted to mine. He was still frowning.

“It will make me feel so much more comfortable if Matthews stays,” I said. “Please, Stephen?”

His eyes drifted away
from
mine as if he couldn’t keep them focused for any length of time. “All right,” he said wearily.

I bent and touched my mouth to his. “I love you,” I said, too softly to reach the ears of the waiting valet.

The corners of Stephen’s mouth quirked as he tried to smile.

Downstairs, in the back passageway, I spied Jem Washburn, now garbed respectably in one of Jack’s shirts. He was in the process of opening the back door when I called out his name. His hand fell away from the latch and he turned to face me, a distinctly wary expression on his bony face.

I stopped perhaps three feet away from where he stood in front of the door and surveyed the man from the top of his untidy black head to the tips of his decently polished boots. I crossed my arms. “I should like to know what you were doing on that particular path this morning, Jem,” I said in a voice that I meant to sound pleasant but didn’t come out that way.

Jem’s mouth tightened. “I was by way of paying a visit to Marietta Adams.” The hostility in his voice exactly matched the hostility in mine. “We are to be married, in case Your Ladyship has not heard.”

“I heard,” I returned. “I think it is wonderful, Jem, that you should have become so prosperous during the five years that Stephen spent in Jamaica. So prosperous, in fact, that George Adams finds you an acceptable suitor for his daughter’s hand.”

There was a slash of sunlight coming in through the small round window that was set over the back door, and it brightened the vestibule enough for me to see how white Jem had gone under his tan at my words.

“You blame me for Stephen’s bein’ sent to Jamaica, don’t you, Miss Annabelle?” he said, reverting in the emotion of the moment to the name he had always called me.

I took a step closer to him. “Weren’t you to blame?” I demanded.

He went, if possible, even paler. “Yes,” he said in a choked-sounding voice. “I was.”

“You were the one on the path that night, weren’t you?” I said contemptuously. “Stephen was never involved with smugglers.”

“Yes,” he said again. “I was the one on the path.” He tossed his head to get a lock of curly black hair off his forehead, and the gesture vividly brought back to me the boy he had been.

“He was your friend,” I said passionately. “Your
only
friend, Jem. How could you have taken advantage of him like that?”

Jem looked utterly wretched. “He made me,” he said.

I snorted with disbelief.

“Tis true, Miss Annabelle. He may seem soft and mild, but you know what Stephen is like when he makes up his mind. A hundred horses couldn’t move him.”

I had to admit to myself that this was true.

Jem continued, the words spilling out of him as if they had been dammed up for a long time. “He knowed I was involved with the smugglers, and he learned that someone had informed on the shipment of brandy that was coming into the cove that night. He come to meet me in the Ridge woods and told me to get away home on foot, that he would take care of hiding the brandy. I didn’t want to switch places with him, but he kept at me and at me and ... well, I finally let him take my place.”

I had always known that was what had happened.

“Noble of you,” I said scornfully.

“It was a coward’s trick. I don’t need you to tell me that!” Jem flashed back. “But Stephen ... he made it seem so
sensible
like. If I was caught, I would be transported—or even hung—whereas he, being the son of an earl an’ all, would probably get off with nowt but a warning. That is what he said to me, Miss Annabelle, and that is what I believed when I let him take my place on that path. I was that shocked when I learned that he was bein’ sent to Jamaica!”

I moved in closer to him, using my words like a knife. “Not too shocked to step forward and take responsibility for your own actions.”

Jem ran his fingers through his tangled hair, and I noticed he had Stephen’s blood caked under his nails. “You see,” he said, “Stephen smuggled a message t’me by one of the footmen.”

I stared at him in frozen silence. “He smuggled you a letter? “ I finally said.

Jem nodded.

My heart felt scalded. Stephen had sent a message to Jem and not to me. “What did this message say?” I managed to croak.

“He said I was t’lie low and say nowt. If I tried to say I was the smuggler, Stephen would call me a liar. He would say I was only trying to help him out.”

I had to make certain I was hearing correctly. “He sent you this message after he was locked into his room? “

Jem nodded his head.

Stephen had sent a message to Jem and not to me.

“He said they told him that he would only have to stay in Jamaica for one year,” Jem said. His deep-set eyes bored into mine, and his voice took on an accusatory note. “The only reason he stayed away so long was because you went and married his brother.”

I stared at him in horror. “What did you just say?”

“I said the only reason he—”

“No,” I interrupted sharply. “I mean the part about Stephen’s having to remain in Jamaica for only a year.”

“That is what he wrote to me,” Jem said.

“At least five years,” my mother had told me. In my heart, shock began to be replaced by rage.

Jem was hurling words at me. “How could you do it to him, Miss Annabelle? I was his friend, yes, but he
loved
you. I never seen two people what was as close as you and Stephen. How could you have done that to him, Miss Annabelle? How could you?”

“How could you have done this to me, Annabelle?” Stephen had said.

I backed up a few steps. I looked away from Jem’s accusing eyes to the brass umbrella stand that stood beside the door and said unsteadily, “What is between Stephen and me is no business of yours.”

In the ensuing silence I continued to stare at the umbrella stand as if it had a basilisk’s eye and I could not look away.

Jem’s voice said grimly, “You’re not my business, but Stephen is. And I’ll tell you now, Miss Annabelle, I think someone was hiding in them woods waiting for him.”

The spell broke and my head snapped up. “Why do you say that?” I asked sharply.