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She wanted to tell him that she couldn’t, but her fear clamped down on her pain, and she began running, like an awkward lame duck, dragging her leg, forcing it to move. She could feel tears stinging the back of her eyes, could feel the salty liquid coursing down her cheeks. She didn’t slow until she’d grabbed Damaris, tucked her under one arm, and run once again toward the fence. She heaved the child through the narrow rails, then dropped like a stone to her kne
es. A searing pain lanced through her. She was too large to squeeze through the rails and there wasn’t a chance in the world that she could climb over the fence. She sat there helpless and watched Rafael distract Sir James’s prize bull.
Finally the bull backed away from the man and horse, turned, and ambled toward a huge elm tree, tail swishing.
Rafael turned Gadfly about and rode him toward the fence. He let the stallion take the fence at his own pace, then immediately pulled him up and dismounted. He dropped to his knees beside Damaris. He looked her over carefully, clasped her small shoulders, and said, “You will stay right here. If you move, I will spank your backside until you are yelling all the way to Truro. What you have done is more stupid than I can say. Don’t move. Do you understand me, Damaris?”
Two huge tears fell down the child’s cheeks.
“Do you understand?”
“Y-yes, Uncle.”
“Don’t move.”
He climbed over the fence and dropped beside Victoria on the other side.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice calm, dreadfully so.
“Yes.”
But she wasn’t. He saw the tears on her cheeks, saw the pain in her eyes. “Where did you hurt yourself, Victoria?”
“No place new,” she said, and let herself lean toward him. He put his arms around her. He held her, saying nothing, until he became aware that she was rubbing her leg. He frowned.
“No place new,” he repeated. Slowly he eased her against a fencepost. “Don’t move,” he said. He pushed her hand away, then began to pull up her riding skirt.
“No, please, Rafael—”
“Shut up, damn you.”
There was no hope for it now. She closed her eyes against the awful pain and the censure and revulsion she was certain she would see in his eyes once he bared that leg.
She heard the rip of her underthings. She heard him suck in his breath.
“Oh, my God.”
20
What cannot be altered must be borne.
—THOMAS FULLER
The pain of his words cut more deeply than the pain in her thigh. His shock, his disbelief, and now his silence. Victoria didn’t speak. She was beyond words. She turned her head away from him, tightly closing her eyes. He would do what he would do and there was nothing she could say to change things. She waited.
Rafael saw the tensing of her shoulders, saw her flinch, and recognized pain in those silent, rippling shudders. Slowly he eased down beside her. She whimpered softly, trying to pull away, but he merely eased her gently onto his legs and supported her against his chest. He held her still with one arm and with the other bared her thigh completely. Her hand raised, a defeated gesture for him to stop, then dropped limply back to her lap. Slowly he began kneading and massaging the convulsed and knotting muscles.
He heard her suck in her breath, but he didn’t stop. He kept to his rhythm, his strong fingers probing deeply at the protesting muscles. He turned once to see that Damaris was still where he’d left her. The child, bless her heart, hadn’t moved an inch.
It was many minutes before he felt Victoria begin to relax, felt her pain begin to ease. He paused a moment, studying the jagged red scar against her pale flesh. The muscles were no longer knotting, no longer rippling beneath that scar.
He continued to knead her thigh, but more gently now, his rhythm slower. “Is that better?”
The sound of his voice after the endless minutes of silence made her jump. She forced herself to nod against his shoulder. The awful tearing pain was under control now, the spasms had lessened to small wayward ripples beneath her flesh. As the pain had receded, she’d found that she hadn’t known what to think, that, indeed, she was afraid to say anything to him, afraid to hear what he would say back to her.
“If I help you, can you ride Gadfly?”
“Yes.” Was that her voice, that thin, thready, weak sound?
