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Chapter Eleven
After a peculiar and fitful night, Rafe awoke disorientated, his body aching from head to toe, and his mouth as parched as the interminable Spanish plains in the middle of a baking Mediterranean summer. He touched the strapping around his shoulder to assess the damage beneath for himself and was relieved to discover that he could probe his entire shoulder without hitting the ceiling in agony. It hurt, of course it did, but nowhere near as much as it had last night.
As he gingerly flexed his limbs and stretched his spine before he risked moving it any further, he tried to work out whether he had dreamt of Sophie in a laudanum-induced haze or if she had tended to him in the night. She had definitely been there for the bandaging. He had a vague recollection of that. But after, when he had a feeling it had been she who had mopped his brow and supported his head while she fed him water in between the peculiar nightmares the drug and the pain gave him, he wasn’t entirely certain.
If it had been a dream, it had been a vivid one as he had felt the soft press of her bosom against his body as she had held him. Enjoyed the gentle brush of her fingers through his hair as she had settled him back to sleep. The feel of his hand in hers. Her whisper beside his ear assuring him he was just having a bad dream. The memory—real or conjured—of all those things brought goosebumps to his battered flesh.
‘You are awake then.’ The physician strode in as if he owned the place and began to examine him without asking, pressing his palm against Rafe’s forehead to check his temperature. ‘There are no signs of infection or fever.’ He bent and lifted one of his eyelids to peer into it. ‘Any blurred vision or dizziness?’
Rafe shook his head as Dr Able picked up the hand of his bound arm and began to press down on the tips of each of his fingers. ‘Any numbness? Pins and needles?’
‘None.’
‘Make a fist.’
He did without any issues and the doctor stepped back. ‘I cannot see any signs of concussion or paralysis, so despite half a roof landing on your obstinate skull you’ve managed to emerge relatively unscathed. How do you feel?’
‘As though all of Napoleon’s Grande Armée has marched over me.’
Dr Able smiled. ‘The bruising will be pretty severe for the next few weeks but will abate with time, as will the pain and stiffness. It is imperative you give your shoulder time to heal or you’ll end up back at square one. Your muscles have been through a trauma and must knit themselves back together to keep that joint in place and we don’t want it popping out again.’ He gestured to the nightstand with a flick of his head where a folded square of linen sat alongside an array of bottles. ‘That means you’ll need to wear a sling for at least three weeks to help keep the strain off. After that, gentle exercise and no heavy lifting for another two months while you build your strength up.’
‘Can I still ride?’ Archie would be unbearable if he couldn’t take him out for their daily jaunt.
‘Once the sling is off, I don’t see why not so long as you keep to a sedate pace. Absolutely no mad gallops or jumps which might dislodge it.’ He opened a pot of salve and dabbed it on Rafe’s scratched cheek. ‘And avoid cats as they clearly don’t like you.’
‘Am I consigned to bed for the three weeks too?’ Because that would drive him stark, staring mad.
‘You can fester here if it pleases you, being waited on hand and foot for the duration, or you can get up and move about if you feel up to it so long as you do not push yourself too hard. I often find movement is nature’s own pain relief for most things muscular and you can rest in a chair downstairs just as easily as you can up here. So long as you follow doctor’s orders, I see no reason to confine you to barracks, although I doubt you would listen if I did.’
It was said with good humour and that was how Rafe took it. ‘How is the old lady?’
The doctor’s face clouded. ‘Not quite so hale and hearty, I am afraid. She hasn’t yet regained consciousness and her breathing is still a cause for concern. All we can do now is sit and wait—but at least she has survived the night. After all the time she spent in the smoke, that in itself is a miracle.’
‘And Miss...’
The doctor’s smile was a little too knowing, as if he had been expecting him to ask about her. ‘Sophie is sitting with her despite being dead on her feet and in dire need of some rest herself—but like you, she won’t listen to me and seems determined to block it all out by keeping herself busy.’
‘I think I would do the same.’ It was the only way Rafe had survived the war. ‘When the world is crashing around your ears, it is the practical and mundane that keeps you sane.’
Dr Able shot him a wordless soldier-to-soldier, officer-to-officer glance. ‘Only for so long.’ They had both witnessed and doubtless personally experienced the unspoken emotional breakdowns which were also necessary to keep one sane and knew, from all their battlefield experiences, that sometimes those suppressed emotions ate something alive from within. ‘She has lost her home and all her possessions in one fell swoop and has apparently no other family beyond her aunt who might not make it—yet aside from the fact that she hasn’t allowed herself to stop for a minute since last night, I’ve not witnessed any evidence that she has shed a single tear. Not even in private. She is too matter of fact. Too calm. I worry she is in shock.’ Which now made Rafe worry about her too. People occasionally died of shock. ‘Yet it is obvious she blames herself for what happened.’
‘She shouldn’t.’ His heart bled for the vexing minx. Misplaced guilt was soul destroying. That he knew only too well. ‘Fires happen. Especially at night when a neglected candle melts and topples.’
‘Or somebody neglects their responsibilities.’ An odd answer which sounded a great deal like a superior’s admonishment. But then Dr Able—Colonel Able—had that way about him. ‘Your brother is outside, pacing the landing and beyond eager to see you if you are feeling up to it.’
‘Of course I am.’ Even if he weren’t, he owed it to Archie to pretend to be, so Rafe shuffled to sit higher on the bed so that his brother would see he was in fine fettle. ‘Send him in.’
Archie entered artificially subdued, holding himself back despite his obvious relief at the sight of Rafe sat up in bed rather than on the cusp of snuffing it. ‘You missed breakfast. I wanted to wake you, but Sophie said you needed your sleep, so I ate it with her instead.’
‘Don’t tell me...’ Rafe squeezed closed his eyes and touched his temple as if he was reading his brother’s mind. ‘You had boiled eggs again.’
He giggled. ‘Wrong! I had toast and jam. Sophie made it on the drawing room fire and we washed it down with chocolate. At least I had chocolate. She had tea and no toast, which I could not understand because it was delicious.’
The blasted woman really wasn’t looking after herself at all, yet had the nerve to nag him into following doctor’s orders last night. The classic do-as-I-say-but-not-as-I-do dichotomy that he had always chaffed against in the army.
‘This afternoon, when her aunt wakes up, I am going to help her see if any of her belongings survived the fire and find Socrates because he ran away last night and went to hide in the trees. But Sophie says he wouldn’t have gone far because he’s old and creaky and set in his ways. She reckons he’ll be sat on what is left of the doorstep, waiting to be fed and sulking because she never gave him his breakfast on time. Or his luncheon.’
‘Luncheon?’ Surely Rafe hadn’t slept through the entire morning. ‘What time is it?’ He pointed to his charred and ruined waistcoat on the chair in the corner and Archie fetched his watch.
