Anne Barbour (25 page)

“But, David, I don’t think ...”

His hand reached to stroke a few tendrils of bright hair curving along her cheek.

“Don’t you see, Kate? I must do this—I cannot continue any longer as a worthless cripple, unable to ride at more than a sedate walk—powerless to clamber through my own fields and woodlots. Lord, I can’t even climb into a hayloft—and here’s harvest coming soon.”

Kate sat silent for several moments before lifting her eyes to David’s.

“If that’s what you want to do,” she said slowly and with painful effort. “I’ll help in any way I can.”

David uttered a pent-up sigh.

“Good girl. Perhaps you could start by relieving me of Regina’s motherly solicitude. On the other hand, perhaps that won’t be necessary. I’m sure she is against my little project merely because it’s something I want to do.”

His laugh was cut short by a knock on the door, followed by the appearance of Curle.

“The doctor’s ‘ere, me lord,” he announced austerely.

Two hours later, Kate sat in a chair in the corner of David’s bedchamber, utterly drained. She watched the figure on the bed, motionless beneath the bedcovers, and listened to the stertorous breathing of his laudanum-induced sleep. Dear Lord, had they done the right thing?

To her horror, David had announced on Dr. Craven’s arrival his intention of having the surgery performed immediately. The doctor must have surmised the reason for David’s summons, for he had brought everything with him necessary for the operation. He had begun bustling Kate and Regina out of the room, stating that he had need of Curle and Lucius to hold his patient down.

Sickened as she was by these words, she had refused to leave, and in the end Dr. Craven, who had worked with her before on setting bones and stitching the cuts of estate workers, allowed her to stay. It would be her job to hand him his instruments.

As they readied David, he lay quiet, only his eyes alive and dark in the pallor of his face. He did not look at Kate, but his fingers wound tightly around hers until the laudanum began its work. It was not long before his eyelids drooped and his hand loosed its grip.

Kate’s breathing quickened at the first incision, but she had, after all, seen blood before. It was only when the flesh was peeled back to reveal the throbbing tissue beneath it that she was forced to bite her lip to fight off the dizziness that threatened to overpower her. Dear God, this was David to whom Dr. Craven was doing unspeakable things! Curle and Lucius were not obliged to hold him down, after all. Kate sensed that he was aware of the outrage being perpetrated on him, but the blessed laudanum kept most of the pain at bay.

As the surgery progressed, she was able to focus her mind and energies on her duties. She mopped blood and fluid when ordered, and passed over the shining instruments, trying not to think of their purpose. Finally, the doctor pulled from David’s bleeding body, a small metal pellet. Kate stared at it. So seemingly blameless—how could it have caused such suffering?

At last, a weary Doctor Craven sewed the incision closed, so that it resembled the others that lay near the web of former surgery scars to form an obscene tapestry.

Now, they had all gone. She had had a difficult time overcoming the objections of Lucius and Curle, but she had finally prevailed upon them to go down to dinner. She would take first watch, she said, and would send down when David awoke. Why it meant so much to be alone with him when he opened his eyes, she was unwilling to contemplate, but after calling for candles to be
lit against the deepening twilight, she had drawn her chair close to the huge bed to watch in fascination the slow rise and fall of the chest of the man who lay there.

She reached to smooth the lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead like a smear of ink. In sleep, the deep lines in his face had been smoothed and an awaiting innocence lay on his features.

Unthinking, she rose from her chair and seated herself on the bed. Her hand seemed to lift of its own volition to trace the roughly chiseled planes of his face. She searched for traces of his island ancestry, but aside from the crow’s-wing black of his hair, she could find none.

How often, she mused, had she pictured his face during the years he had been gone? Every line, every curve formed an achingly familiar landscape for her mind to explore and her heart to dream over.

Her fingers drifted over his lips, and it seemed to her that a faint smile lifted them. On an impulse she bent to press her mouth lightly against his and for one shocking instant, allowed the tip of her tongue to caress those firm contours. The next moment, she sat bolt upright as an abrupt change in David’s breathing pattern indicated his imminent return to consciousness.

As she watched, his eyes opened and his gaze swiveled to hers in an unfocused stare. Almost immediately, recognition and awareness grew in them.

“Kate?” He smiled muzzily at her.

“Yes, my dear.” Her hand went back to his cheek, and she returned his smile with a shaky one of her own. “The surgery has been completed; the ball is gone. How do you feel?”

David blinked and began a mental examination of the left side of his body. It hurt like hell, but the discomfort did not seem to emanate from his very bones as it had before. He wriggled tentatively, and was rewarded with a sharp twinge in his hip. But the grinding, stabbing pain was gone! God, was it possible? Was he free of it?

He raised his head and, grasping Kate’s hand, struggled to lift himself to a sitting position. A wave of dizziness forced him back into the pillows, and he pulled Kate down beside him.

“Um—nice,” he whispered into her curls, his voice blurred.

“David!” She pulled away from him with a little gasp. “This isn’t at all...”

But he drew her toward him once more, and placing his arm about her shoulders, settled her against him. “Jus’ for a li’l while,” he murmured. “So nice—jus’ right.”

His eyes closed again, and his breathing deepened. Yes, it did feel just right, she admitted to herself, and ignoring the guilt that tugged at her conscience, she snuggled into the hollow of his shoulder and luxuriated in the feel of him against her, and in the slow, strong beat of his heart against her breast as he slept.

She must have dozed herself, for when she again noticed a change in his breathing, it was as though she had just returned from a long way off. She opened her eyes to find her face close to David’s, and he was gazing down at her with an expression that made her breathless. She jumped to her feet.

This time David’s efforts to right himself were successful. Having heaved himself to a sitting position, he made as though to fling his covers back, but at Kate’s sudden intake of breath, he followed the direction of her gaze to discover that, except for the bandage that covered his hip, he was stark naked. His eyes narrowed in sudden memory of silken curls splayed across his chest, and the feel of warm breath on his skin.

“Nightshirt,” he barked. “Second drawer in that cupboard.”

Kate whirled to follow the direction of his pointing finger, and when he had slipped the garment over his head, he pointed again, “If you’ll look in the large wardrobe, I think you’ll find a pair of crutches stashed way in the back. They’re leftovers from Spain—kept them on Lucius’s advice.”

This time she stopped short and turned to face him. “David, you’re not thinking of getting up!”

“Yes, I am. I’m wide-awake and I do not feel it necessary to stay in bed like a pampered invalid. Will you help me?”

“But you
are
an invalid, David!” Kate cried, appalled. “You just underwent major surgery.”

“Well, I don’t plan on doing somersaults or handstands. I’ll be very careful, and I’ll start with just a tour around the room.”

“I will not be a part of this,” she said firmly. “I shall call Lucius. And Curle. Then we’ll see how you lark about.”

“I told you—there will be no larking about. Will you help? You always used to be a willing partner in crime. Remember the time we stole into Father’s bedcham—into this room—and took all his quizzing glasses to build a telescope?”

“David, this is not a childish prank. You could do yourself irreparable damage—oh, no!”

She hurried around the bedside just as he swung his legs over the side and grasped the bedpost in preparation for lifting himself to a standing position.

“All right, you win. Wait. Just don’t move.” She scurried to the indicated wardrobe and burrowed in its depths, surfacing a few moments later with the crutches. Returning to the bedside, she put her shoulder under David’s, and he clutched at her with one hand, while drawing one of the crutches to him with the other.

His face whitened, and he gave an involuntary groan, but when Kate would have lowered him back to the bed, he shifted impatiently. “No,” he growled, “let’s get on with it.” Slowly, with Kate’s help, he stood, and when he was fully upright, took his arm from about her and thrust both crutches into position. With Kate close beside him, arms outstretched, he took a cautious step forward, swinging his left leg free of the floor. After a few careful paces in this fashion, he allowed more and more weight to fall on his injured hip, and by the time he had circled the chamber once, he was putting almost his full weight on it.

He moved back to the bed in this fashion and paused there, letting the crutches slide to the floor. He turned to face Kate, and his face, though drenched with perspiration, wore such an expression of blinding joy that her breath caught in her throat.

“Kate,” he cried weakly, “he’s done the job! It hurts like hell, but I can tell—it’s not the same. Oh God, Kate, I’m free of it!”

He gathered her into his arms in a crushing embrace, which she returned with all the strength that was in her, laughing and crying at once. Neither of them heard the brisk knock at the door, and sprang apart only at the sound of a high shrill voice.

“Kate! David! What is going on? Whatever can you be thinking of?”

“Aunt Regina!” Kate gasped, as David collapsed into an awkward heap on the bed.

Chapter Nineteen

“Really, Kate, I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss.” Regina took a sip of coffee and a fastidious mouthful of toast. “I am only asking you to pop into the village for some ribbon. Have you some other pressing engagement for the morning?”

Kate gazed at her aunt in exasperation. It had been five days since Regina’s unfortunate foray into David’s bedchamber, and, while she had seemed to accept David and Kate’s tangled explanation of how they had come to be embracing each other, Kate had intercepted not a few speculative glances from her in the meantime. Kate felt she ought to be denying something— she was not sure what—and had been made uncomfortable by what she assured herself was a perfectly innocent act of solicitude.

“I have no hesitation in running an errand for you, Aunt. It is simply that I prefer to go alone.”

“But that’s nonsense. Lawrence has declared himself most anxious to put himself and his curricle at your disposal for the morning.”

“Anxious, Aunt? That’s coming it a bit strong, don’t you think?”

Regina’s voice sharpened. “Where do you learn such vulgar language, Kate? Yes, anxious. You know how much Lawrence delights in your company.”

Kate burst into laughter. Really this was too much. It was obvious that Lawrence took no more delight in her company than he would have in that of his old tutor. The next moment, however, she became serious. A jaunt in Lawrence’s curricle was obviously to be the latest in a series of incidents engineered by Regina to throw her and her disagreeable cousin together. Yesterday, she had narrowly escaped his company as she rowed across the ornamental lake to the secluded little island at its center.

“Now, then,” the countess continued. “Lawrence said he would have the curricle brought around in less than an hour, so—”

“Aunt Regina,” Kate interrupted. “I do not require Lawrence’s escort on a simple ride to the village, so please do not coerce him into coming with me. Indeed,” she rushed on as Regina opened her mouth to speak, “you know very well that Lawrence no more desires my company than I do his, and I wish you would stop trying to bring us together. I will tell you again, Aunt, I have no intention of marrying Lawrence, even should he bring himself to the point of asking me.”

Regina stiffened and dropped her cordial demeanor. “Then just what are your plans, Kate?” she asked coldly. “Do you think, perhaps, to relegate me to the position of dowager?”

The silence of the room thrummed in Kate’s ears as she regarded her aunt.

“I—I don’t know what you mean,” she whispered through lips suddenly dry.

Regina laughed shortly. “Do you not think I haven’t noticed how your eyes fly to David the minute he walks into a room, and how they cling there as though he were your last hope of salvation?”

“You are mistaken.” Kate’s voice sounded loud in her ears. “David and I are—close—because of our childhood association. There is nothing more between us, I assure you.”

“Oh, yes,” Regina smiled slowly. “I’m sure there is nothing—yet. I am not quite so sure about the future, however. David is in desperate need of funds, as we all know. You, by sheer coincidence are—or will be—in possession of an enticingly large fortune. I should be very much surprised if your old playmate does not soon express an indication that he would like to be so much more to you.”

Kate rose from her seat at the table with such violence that her chair toppled to the floor.

“I will not listen to any more, Aunt Regina! David would not stoop to marrying for money. As for my fortune, it is my intention to use it to live independently as far away from Westerly as possible. Otherwise, I would cheerfully wish it to perdition—particularly it if would spare me Lawrence’s ridiculous attentions!”

She whirled and ran from the room, upsetting her coffee cup as she did so, and leaving her aunt to gape after her.

Blindly, Kate fled down the corridor and through the French doors at its far end. She did not stop until she reached an overgrown bower some distance from the house, where she flung herself down on a stone bench stained with bird droppings and chipped on one corner. This had used to be her favorite hiding place as a child. A retreat where she could ponder the problems of her young life or savor its happy occurrences. She had not been here for a long time, and found to her disappointment, that it no longer had the power of solace.