The Perfect Princess (17 page)

She had to repress the urge to jump out of bed and set to work dressing his wound. This was Maitland! She was
his prisoner! She couldn’t give up her best chance of escape.

When she slipped from the bed, he moaned, but he did not waken. She had to clasp her hands together to prevent herself from feeling his brow. But her mind was telling her that there was more to Maitland’s condition than exhaustion. He was feverish. She should check the dressing. She should get him to drink. She should—

Don’t start that!
she told herself irritably. If she wakened him, he would only find a way of restraining her, and she would never get away.

She wasn’t heartless, though. She’d ride to the nearest village, she decided, and send a doctor to him. Of course, she’d have to come up with a good story so that no one would know who Maitland was. She didn’t want him to be taken into custody. She just wanted to get away. And she would never tell another soul about this house, not even her own father. More than that, she could not, would not, do.

Her mind firmly made up, she turned to leave, and caught sight of herself in the cheval mirror. It was the first time she’d seen herself in a full-length looking glass dressed as she was in men’s clothing. It gave her quite a jolt. She hardly recognized herself, in more ways than one.

Was it only three days ago, she asked herself, that she was dressed in the height of fashion and smelled faintly of gardenia? Now she looked a fright and stank of horses.

Her reflection should have repelled her, but it didn’t. In fact, it did the opposite. Rosamund swallowed hard as she tried to make sense of what she was feeling. She was the same girl she’d been three days ago, yet she was different. It wasn’t just her appearance; it was something more profound. On the outside, she looked a fright; on the inside, she felt . . . she felt . . .

She wondered what her mother would think of her if she could see her now.

When Maitland moved, she jammed on her hat. It was time to go.

She was curious about the house, of course. It was much smaller than Twickenham House, but built along the same lines. At any other time, she would have been interested in exploring it, but not now, not when freedom was within her grasp. All the same, as she crept on her toes across the marble-floored hallway to the front door, she took everything in—the intricately stuccoed ceiling; the niches in the walls, with marble statues; the grand staircase with hanging oil lamps. This house could only belong to a rich man.

Then what was Maitland’s connection to it?

Outside, on the entrance courtyard, she paused to take her bearings. The stable block was to her left. She lost no time in crossing to it. The horses were in their stalls, as Maitland had left them the night before, with fresh water and feed.

The care he’d obviously lavished on these poor dumb beasts gave her quite a pang. Her own father always maintained that one could tell a great deal about a man’s character just by observing how he treated his cattle. And last night, while she had forgotten that the horses existed, Maitland had unsaddled them, fed them, watered them, and in all likelihood rubbed them down.

The man wasn’t all bad.

She was becoming alarmed at the direction her thoughts were taking. She mustn’t soften toward him! The truth of the matter was, he’d taken better care of the horses than he had of her.

She tried not to think of Maitland as she saddled her horse, but everything always seemed to lead straight back to him. He thought she was useless, and maybe she was in some things. But there wasn’t much she didn’t
know about horses. She could never be a lady’s maid, but in a pinch, she could take the place of her father’s head groom, and His Grace would never notice the difference.

Except that last night, it was Maitland who had taken care of the horses, and he must have been on the point of collapse even then.

“Go away!” she said angrily, as though he were standing right in front of her.

She led her horse out of the stable, mounted up, and flicked her heels to her mount’s flanks. In one bounding leap, they were off.

She’d left him a horse. What more could he ask of her?

I’m free, free, free
, she sang inside her head. And how glorious it was to be wearing men’s clothes and riding astride. Maitland didn’t know how lucky he was! If he had to dress in woman’s clothes, he wouldn’t manage to dress and undress himself any better than she.

Maitland again!
What was the matter with her?

At the top of a rise, she reined in and wheeled her mount around. The house was nestled in a forest of trees, brilliant now in their autumn colors. Behind the house, the ground rose steeply. There were no trees here, only a vast stretch of sward with clusters of sheep grazing on it.

Now she knew where she was. This must be the Berkshire downs. There would be few farms here, with few people, and the nearest village could be miles away.

She turned her head as she scanned the horizon. There were no farms and no fields of ripened corn, only the wilderness of the downs, and way off in the distance, the steeple of a church to mark the nearest village.

Once she reached the village, there would be no going back. She had to come up with a plausible story that would get help for Maitland without betraying his
identity. But every picture that formed in her mind ended in disaster for Maitland.

It was impossible.

She looked back at the house. Even now, he could be bleeding to death. He had a fever.

Someone had to look after him.

She had to go back.

She marched into the house and made straight for the bedchamber with a step that would have warned her father to watch his own step. When she saw Maitland, she halted. He’d removed his jacket and was now curled up in a ball of pain.

She crossed to him quickly and, with a great deal of heaving on her part and groaning on his, managed to get him on his back. She couldn’t pull the shirt over his head so she tore it from throat to hem and pushed the edges aside. The dressing had slipped and his wound had started to bleed again, though not profusely. But it was inflamed around the edges, and that worried her. As she’d done before, she put her nose close to the wound and sniffed. Thankfully there was no smell of putrefaction.

She let out a shaken breath and looked around for the saddlebags. They were on the floor, beside the bed, where Maitland must have dropped them last night before sinking into an exhausted sleep. She found what she was looking for in the first bag she opened. On returning to her patient, she set to work at once, moving the binding out of the way and loosening the crusts of dried blood with a rag doused in brandy. She tried to be gentle, but Maitland suddenly moved, jostling her arm, and the brandy flask tipped, splashing the wound. He let out a yell, made an effort to sit up, then fell back against the pillows.

“Maitland,” she said urgently.

No response.

She put down the flask and felt for his pulse. It was accelerated but quite strong. She put a hand to his brow. Feverish. This was more than a faint. But it wasn’t a concussion. She would have known if he’d fallen and knocked his head, wouldn’t she? The answer was no, she wouldn’t. She’d been too wrapped up in her own misery last night to be aware of his.

It gave her the oddest feeling to comb her fingers through his hair as she searched for some sign that he’d injured his head. When she felt the stickiness on her fingers, she sat back. Blood.

This posed a dilemma, because she had no experience in treating a concussion. But the cut didn’t appear to be serious. She couldn’t afford to worry about it, she told herself. Maitland had the stamina of an ox. A bump on the head wasn’t going to slow him down for long. It was the knife wound that was critical.

There was no washstand in the room, but a door on one side of the bed was open. Just as she thought, the door led to a bathing room, complete with copper bath, a thronelike commode, and a handsome mahogany washstand. There was a room just like it off her own bedchamber in Twickenham. The elegance of this room, however, was spoiled by a man’s crumpled jacket on the floor, together with a bloodstained towel. While she was gone, Maitland, evidently, had tried to doctor himself. So she was right. The concussion couldn’t be serious, or he wouldn’t have managed to get out of bed.

She snatched up two of the towels and rushed back to his side. She’d never lost a horse yet, and she had no intention of losing this exasperating man.

She positioned a folded towel over the wound and eased the binding over it to keep it in place. This was only a temporary measure until she’d assembled what she needed to make a poultice for the inflammation.
Her next order of business was to clean the gash on his head. Finally, she began to remove his clothes, which were still damp from the rain. Her hands stilled. Why were his garments still damp while her own were bonedry? The answer came swiftly. While he had found shelter for her from the rain, he’d taken care of the horses and she didn’t know what else. He was always the last to come in out of the rain, the last to eat, the last to rest, and the first to be up and doing. On every stop on that exhausting journey, it was the same story.

She was wrong to think he’d taken better care of the horses than he had of her. It was himself he had neglected.

Shaking her head, she set to work again, heaving and puffing as she adjusted his weight to get the job done. She must have hurt him, because he started to fight her. At this rate, he’d open the wound again and bleed to death. She subdued him by falling on top of him.

He stopped struggling. “Harper?” he said. Then more urgently when she didn’t reply, “Harper?”

“Aye.”

That one softly spoken word seemed to soothe him. There was no more struggling as she removed his boots, then his trousers. She hesitated a moment or two over the drawers, but reasoned that if she was to bring his fever down, she’d have to bathe him with cold water. The drawers would only get in the way, so off they came.

When she realized that her cheeks were burning hot, she became impatient with herself. She was no novice to male nudity. She’d caught glimpses of her brothers often enough cavorting nude in the shallows of the man-made lake at Twickenham House, and she’d never turned a hair. She wasn’t going to turn missish now.

Anyway, it wasn’t his nudity that made her stare, but the silvery scars that embellished his chest, and one longer scar that ran across his belly and dipped toward his groin.

He was a warrior, only now he was a fallen warrior, helpless to help himself. All that stood between him and his enemies was herself, and she was no warrior at all.

Maybe she wasn’t a warrior, but she made up her mind there and then that she would not desert him until he was on his feet again.

When she got him settled between the sheets, she took a step back. She didn’t try to analyze what she was feeling. There was too much to do and her mind was racing ahead. She had to make a warm bran poultice for the inflammation; she had to bring down his fever and make sure he drank plenty of liquids; she had to dress the gash on his head; she had to make sure he didn’t move and start the bleeding again.

The poultice first, she decided.

The kitchen was easy to find. One of the doors in the bedchamber gave onto the servants’ staircase, and at the bottom of the stairs were the domestic quarters. The kitchen was right next to the still room. It came as no surprise to find that the larder was well stocked with provisions. Though there were no servants or resident caretakers, the house was well looked after. So, where were the servants now?

She’d get to that later. She concentrated on the innocent-looking tinderbox that was sitting on the mantel of the huge, blackened stone fireplace.

She approached it with the same resolute step as when she’d entered the house. This was one battle she couldn’t afford to lose.

H
e had a way with women. It wasn’t something he cultivated, but something he’d been born with. As a child, all he’d had to do was look crestfallen and he could wrap his mother around his little finger. So, it came as no surprise when Richard Maitland’s landlady agreed to show him her tenant’s rooms on the understanding that he might be willing to take them over.

“Mr. Withers, is it?”

“George Withers,” he replied.

He saw no point in giving a false name. If he was found out in a lie, people might take a closer look at him and start asking awkward questions. He’d learned to stick to the truth unless he had a compelling reason not to. In this instance, he had a plausible reason for being here. His rooms in Bond Street were too cramped. He was looking for something bigger.

Mrs. Everett straightened her mobcap, smiled coyly, and led the way upstairs. “I don’t know that I ought to
show you the rooms,” she said. “Mr. Maitland is paid up to the end of September. He paid quarterly, you know. Such a quiet gentleman. But it’s always the quiet ones who bear watching, isn’t it? Do you know, there was something about him I never liked? Cold and distant, he was. Not what you would call friendly. But murder! I never thought it would come to that.”