AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Except your brain, perhaps,” she said. “That was a singularly foolhardy thing to do, running into the field like that. Not that I am ungrateful, of course, but you could have been killed, sir!”
He grinned at her. “But I was not!” Jumping to his feet, he held out a hand to her. “Up you come, Miss Fletcher. It is too cold to be lolling about on the ground. Let us find a blazing fire, get warm again and recover our composure.”
She took his hand, and he pulled her up, but she winced.
“You are injured!” he said, instantly contrite.
“My leg… the ankle. I must have scraped it. Oh dear!” Bending down and lifting her skirt, she displayed mud and blood mingled, and a badly torn stocking.
“Does it hurt?”
“Oh no, nothing to speak of! Nothing is broken, I think, merely banged against something… the tree or the gate, who knows. I can easily walk home.”
“The rectory is closer, and I have ointments and bandages. I should not like you to return home in such a state.”
She made no protest, so he led her to a narrow track, and thence the short distance to the road through the village. She limped along gamely beside him, refusing his arm to lean upon, but even so, he wondered whether Mrs Reynell was watching from her house across the road as they turned onto the rectory drive.
Opening the front door, he ushered her into the hall. She looked around her with undisguised curiosity. It was the first time she had entered his house, and he felt a rush of excitement at the thought. One day this would be her home, too, and as familiar to her as the Park. What would she make of it? Would she like it, or despise its shabbiness?
Even so early in the afternoon the hall was gloomy, so he lit a candelabrum, its flickering light leading the way to the kitchen. When she saw it, she laughed out loud.
“Oh, this reminds me so much of home!” she cried turning slowly round. “Not like the Park — that’s so big and… andcold.If I go into the kitchens there, they look down their noses at me and tell me I shouldn’t be there. Isn’t that silly? As if I can’t go anywhere I like. But the Fullers Road house always felt warm and comfortable and welcoming. I could go to the kitchens there and Mrs Black would always have something just out of the oven for me to try, and the kettle was permanently on the fire. But where is your cook? Don’t you have any servants?”
“We have Mrs Pound and her daughter Janet, who come in every day except Sunday to keep us straight. They are usually gone by early afternoon, except on laundry days, but they prepare a dinner before they go. You see those pots over there? We just need to put them to heat up, andvoilà!Dinner is served. Lightwood, my valet, usually does that. He is the only servant who lives in, although he has gone to Ware today. Will you sit? I shall heat some water and find bandages and so on.”
She perched on one of the battered chairs at the kitchen table while he poked life into the fire and set the kettle to heat up. Then he searched around for cloths, a bowl, some strips of linen for bandages and a jar of ointment. It was a long time since he had needed most of these things, so it took some searching to track everything down. By the time all these supplies were laid out on the kitchen table, the kettle was steaming.
Filling the bowl, he dipped a cloth into the warm water and sat down beside her. “You have a scratch on one cheek. May I clean it for you?”
“Thank you.”
She closed her eyes as he dabbed gently, and he wondered if she were feeling awkward at such intimacy. He felt rather breathless himself, and oddly shy to be so close to her.
“Miss Fletcher,” he said tentatively, when he had washed and dried her cheek, “it is one thing to clean your face, but I am tolerably certain your parents would look askance at me if I were to tend to your injured leg.”
“But you’re a clergyman!”
“I am also a single man, and it would be most inappropriate for me to remove your stocking, as I should need to do.”
“Oh. I suppose it would. I can do it myself.”
“Excellent. When you have tended the wound, would you like some toasted cheese?”
Her face lit up. “Ooh, yes, please! Running away from bulls is hungry work, isn’t it?”
He laughed, and rose, saying, “I shall go and investigate the cheese store. I shall be gone for… shall we say ten minutes? Will that be enough time, do you think?”
She agreed, and was already bending down to lift her skirts as he lit a candle and hastened from the room. She was such an innocent, of course. Removing her stocking, even to tend to an injury, was quite outside the bounds of decorum, but they should not be alone together at all, if he were being honest. Still, it hardly mattered, for he planned to marry her.
The very thought of it made him smile inside as he loitered in the cheese room. His wife! Julia was a strange creature, so brave and bold and straightforward, without an ounce of malice or deception in her, but he would never, ever be bored with her. She would light up his life and provide some purpose to it, driving away the dreariness for good. He had been drifting along for far too long, but now he fizzed with energy, excitement crackling in him like sparks of lightning. He laughed out loud as he imagined her arriving at church for her wedding, bonnet askew and sleeve torn.
But he was moving along rather fast in his mind, maybe too fast, for he was sure she had not the least idea that she was an object of romantic interest to him. She saw him as a friend, no doubt, a comfortable and, he hoped, an agreeable friend, somewhat akin to a brother, perhaps. It was time to give her a broader hint of his plans.
He must have been too impatient, for when he returned to the kitchen she was still busy with her ministrations, her bare leg resting on the chair where he had sat just minutes earlier. She had her back towards him, so he stood, trying to catch his breath, watching her as she rubbed in the ointment, then wound the bandage haphazardly around, tore the end and tied a knot. Picking up the stocking, with a shrug she stuffed it into her muddy reticule, then jammed her boot back on.
Some sound of his alerted her, for she turned round with a smile, lowering the injured limb to the ground so that her skirts covered it. “There you are! It’s safe to come in, for I’m modestly covered once more.”
Modestly covered, to be sure, but oh, that smile! A man could throw himself at her feet for a smile like that. And then he laughed at himself for harbouring such grandiose sentiments.
