“The hedge is coming up,” Willoughby shouted over his shoulder.“You go first.Loosen the reins, get up into two-point early.Keep her at a steady canter.Stay in control.”
“Easy for you to say!”
A fork of lightning split the sky.Oh Christ, that was all he needed.Sapphire let out a panicked whinny, tossing her head.Rollo patted his mount’s bedraggled mane, crooning reassuring, soothing babble.His heart thumped.
“You’ll be fine, Rolly.You’ve done jumps bigger than this on a rocking horse.Picture that hot bath.With your bloody Fitz naked in it!”
Rollo took the jump, squealing with terror.He was not ashamed to admit to it.Nor that he prayed, eyes screwed shut, to every god he could think of, including Poseidon and a few other false idols he made up on the spot.For an agonising second, as all four of Sapphire’s hooves left the ground, Rollo was suspended weightless in mid-air, holding his breath and with his stomach plunged into his riding boots.
And then all four hooves were down with a lurch, which nearly unseated him.He was safely over.Sapphire resumed her miserable plod through the mire, and his belly climbed back to its rightful place.With his feeble thighs quivering and his heart pumping out of his chest, Rollo brought his mount to a halt.Still gasping, he twisted to watch his twin demonstrate how a true horseman navigated such a trifling little hedge.
At a brisk canter, Willoughby set off down the last part of the slope.Rollo couldn’t hear his shout of joy over the thrumming of the rain.But he could see his grin, even from this distance, brilliant white, glinting like freshly driven snow in the morning sunshine.High out of the saddle, Willoughby approached the jump at a gallop, his slight frame hunched over Bunty’s flying mane.Even a zig-zagging flash of lightning directly above their heads didn’t faze either the charging horse or rider one bit.A few strides before take-off, Willoughby sank low, sending Bunty soaring into the air.Rollo shook his head at the beauty of it.Forget penning love odes, his twin should write verse about himself.Willoughby and that prized horse of his were veritable poetry in motion.
A crack of thunder rent the still air, clashing like a mighty gong.For a second, the whole copse seemed to vibrate with it.Startled, Bunty’s front hooves slammed into the mire.Her back ones followed, sending Willoughby reeling forward in the saddle and scrabbling at her mane.At a second almighty, bowel-shaking crash, Bunty’s head whipped up, and in blind panic, she bucked her rear end, kicking Willoughby out of the saddle altogether.Abruptly, he was airborne and somersaulting violently over the horse’s lashing head.Time froze as he hung there, neither attached to his horse nor attached to the ground.And then, like an angry Zeus himself had ordained it, Rollo’s twin’s fragile, precious body came hurtling back down to earth.With a different sort of sickening sharp crack.
And then everything went deathly quiet.
Chapter Twenty-Two
My darling Fitz.How I wish that you were with me now, more than ever.Goule is so far that when we gaze up at the sky, can we even see the same clouds?
An accident has occurred here at Rossingley.One so terrible that, as I pen this, my ink mingles with my tears.Dearest Willoughby, the most exquisite brother a man could ever wish for, has been thrown from his horse.He lives, praise God, though he is black and blue all over and hardly wakes.His thigh bone pierced his flesh and is broken in two places.The finest surgeon money can buy has set it straight and put him in a traction device.He is being attended daily by the most distinguished physician in the land.Everything has been done.Now we wait and hope and pray that infection is not also set within.
I will travel to Goule as soon as I am able—we have a lifetime of love ahead of us!But even for you, my dearest lover, I cannot leave Willoughby in his hour of need.I would never forgive myself.
It will be several weeks until he is out of the woods.I shall write daily.I carry our precious love in my heart, my darling, until we meet again.
Your faithful pup, Rollo.
SEVEN DAYS ANDseven nights later, Rollo still heard that blood-curdling whip crack of snapping bone in a door slam, a serving dish set down heavily, the sudden spit of a log in the hearth.
He hardly left Willoughby’s side, dozing fitfully in a chair next to his bed.Servants attended to him, of course, a rolling roster of housemaids, and all of them kindly.But it was Rollo who mopped his fevered brow, who coaxed willow bark through his parched lips, who fed him laudanum when his screams woke him from his opium-addled dreams.The surgeon visited daily, sweeping in and out of the bedchamber with the sole purpose, in Rollo’s opinion, of self-congratulation.Most days the puffed-up physician accompanied him, and they prodded and poked poor Willoughby as if he were a tailor’s mannequin.
Even darker hours came and went.Hours when Rollo knelt on the hard floor next to the bed, clasped his hand in Willoughby’s, and bent his head in silent prayer.Hours when the next world lusted for his twin’s thin broken body like a lovelorn youth lusting for his first kiss.Nearly snared him too.Dank, yellow pus seeped from the wound, and many a night, Rollo clung to Papa, counting each and every one of his brother’s tortured, shallow breaths.Yet Willoughby held on.
“There is no room for doubt, Rollo,” asserted Papa when he tearfully voiced his fears.“Not in this bedchamber.I shan’t allow it.”He’d barely left the bedside either, his long, bony fingers twisted around his pearls, his striking features tense and drawn.“Willoughby will be fine.He is strong.The doctors say he will recover.”
“I should never have let him jump.I knew it was too dangerous.Should have insisted harder.”
“He’s a daredevil on horseback.There’s no stopping him.”Papa’s pearls twisted into a tighter knot.“And he will be again.You’ll see.”
And so it went on, whilst outside the sick chamber, the rains came down, the wind blew, and the storms mocked them, reminding them of their infinite power.More than anything, Rollo wished he had Fitz by his side.
*
“FRIGHTFUL WEATHER WE’REhaving,” commented Kit from behind his newspaper.
Papa had coaxed Rollo to join them for breakfast with a promise that Pritchard would not move from Willoughby’s side until Rollo returned.Miserably, he pushed the food around his plate as Papa and Kit attempted a semblance of normality.
“The water-logged roads between here and Winchester are treacherous,” Kit continued.He tapped on a page, shaking his head.“Impassable for over a week.It says here that a mail coach driver has been seriously injured and one of the horses succumbed.”
“Gosh, somebody must have penned some truly atrocious missives,” Rollo’s father murmured.“Even Willoughby’s poems don’t directly kill.”
Kit lowered the newspaper, his lips twitching.“The rear axle broke going over the flooded bridge at Hempton.The chap took a blow to the head when the horses bolted.The remnants of the coach and its contents were last seen floating towards Guildford.Terrible business.”
“Quite,” agreed Papa, nibbling on a slice of buttered toast.“Reminding us we should count our blessings, however meagre they may feel at the moment.”
White-faced, Rollo pushed his coddled eggs to one side.Willoughby’s fever had broken in the early hours.For the first time in over a sennight, he’d seemed lucid when he briefly woke and asked for a glass of cold water.
