Chapter Seven

Kate awoke very early one morning. She slid out of bed, padded across the chilly floor and peered outside. It was almost dawn, faint shards of morning light dimming the last of the stars. Winter had begun—outside it looked cold, but inviting. For the last week she had worked unceasingly indoors, and she was feeling stale and housebound. A good brisk walk was what she needed.

The house seemed deserted as she slipped out of the back door. Her boots crunched across the frosted grass. As the pure, cold air bit into her lungs, Kate felt a surge of exhilaration. The rich earthy scent of rotting leaves and the sharp contrast of pine was in the air and it felt good to be alive. Suddenly she felt free of all the constraints of her life—her poverty, her past, her concerns about the future, her problems with Jack Carstairs.

It had been more difficult than she’d expected, working in such close proximity, feeling as she did about him. Such shameless, entirely inappropriate feelings, too. Every night. Sometimes even during the day. It was dreadful. Kate had done her best to fight them with passages from the Bible, but even that failed to eradicate the problem. It was very lowering to discover how steeped in depravity she had become.

She told herself a thousand times a day that such dreams were foolish, as well as wicked. She was a disgraced woman. She could never enter his world. He would be disgusted if he ever found out about Henri.

Such dreams were impractical, too—even had she been as pure as the day she was born, she was still poor and Jack needed to marry an heiress to make up for the fortune he had lost when his father had disinherited him.

In fact, she told herself severely, Kate Farleigh had no business to be thinking anything at all about Jack Carstairs except what she would cook him for dinner. She knew the correct behaviour for a woman in her position and, even if she couldn’t make her feelings behave, she could try.

So she’d tried to keep out of his way, tried to keep a formal barrier between them, tried to follow Lady Cahill’s instructions to ensure her grandson lived in a civilised fashion, tried in all ways to be the perfect, invisible housekeeper.

But all her good resolutions had been ruthlessly undermined by Jack Carstairs himself. He always seemed to be watching her—appearing from nowhere, opening doors, seating her at table as if she were a fine lady. Glaring gimlet-eyed if he found her doing anything he deemed “inappropriate”, storming off in a temper when she pointed out in the most reasonable of tones that she knew what she was doing.

And she’d tried, so very hard, to resent it.

He was being ridiculous, she’d told herself. What did a man know about housekeeping anyway? He had no business interfering with things which were none of his domain. He was a bossy, meddlesome, arrogant pest!

But it was more difficult than she’d imagined. Her strength of mind was weakened by the realisation that he was concerned for her welfare, that he cared whether she was comfortable, that he wished to shelter her from the harshness of her everyday life. Even if he was just being gentlemanly and polite, even if he treated all his housekeepers like this, it was still very…weakening.

And that, combined with her own wanton tendencies, made life with Jack Carstairs very dangerous.

Kate sighed, then rallied herself—listing his character defects was a useful strategy. She did so as she marched down the garden path, enjoying the cold air, the droplets of dew still shivering on the plants as she passed. He was frightfully bossy, even for a major in His Majesty’s Coldstream Guards. And arrogant. Stubborn. Yes, indeed—worse than any mule she had wrangled with on the Peninsula. And infuriating, especially when he had trapped her in some misdeed, then laughed at her with those wicked blue eyes.

And moody. Some days he would be warm and friendly, then, from out of nowhere, a blaze of intensity would emanate from him. His blue gaze would seem to burn right into her, then just as suddenly he’d turn away and storm out of the room in cold, bitter withdrawal.

Mornings were the worst; he usually slammed into the kitchen from outside, flinging himself down at the table, surly and uncommunicative for some time, drinking cup after cup of her coffee. Sometimes he would refuse to eat the breakfast she’d cooked, and limp straight through the kitchen, grey-faced and grim. On those days he would retire upstairs to his private parlour where, Kate gathered, he quietly drank himself into oblivion, preferring to drown his demons rather than face them.

On those days his unhappiness ate away at her, burning away all her good resolutions like acid. On those days it was hardest of all to remember that she was only his housekeeper, there on sufferance…she wanted to be so much more…She longed to have the right to put her arms around him, to comfort him and to coax and tease him out of his black depressions. But she had no right.

On those days she threw herself into the jobs she hated most, the hard, dirty, filthy jobs—rendering mutton fat, cleaning and black-leading the grates, sifting wood ash and boiling it up to make lye. Boiling the cottons and linens in a big copper boiler, filling the laundry with steam. Tossing other clothes in flour and then beating them until clouds of flour flew, leaving them clean and sweet-smelling but her hair and nostrils clogged.

In spite of it all, Kate found herself dreaming about him day and night—even when making soap, when the stink of the sheep fat and home-made lye made her eyes water! He was so impossibly attractive, particularly when he looked at her with that smile lurking wickedly in his eyes, inviting her to share his amusement. And when his voice deepened and took on that low resonance it shivered though her bones, turning them to honey…

Kate headed towards the forest. It was magical. Dawn was stealing over the hushed landscape, highlighting the purity of the bare, frost-etched branches. Her breath escaped in misty tendrils and hung in the motionless chill. Far away she could hear a cockerel crowing, and beyond that a dog barking. It was as if she was the only person astir in the world. Kate hugged the delightful sensation to her and strode on.

Suddenly she heard the sound of rapid hoofbeats close behind her—too close. She dived off the narrow pathway just as a riderless horse pounded past her, reins dangling free, stirrups flapping.

Shaken, she clambered out of the tangled underbrush, smoothing her skirts and brushing mud from her hands. Someone had had an accident—a rider had been thrown. Should she go back and see if they were all right, or should she try to catch the horse first? If its reins got tangled or caught, it could injure itself. She ran along the path and came to a stile, where a large roan stallion stood, snorting and tossing his head, unable to go any further. Calmly Kate approached, talking quietly and coaxingly, while he watched her in suspicion, poised for flight.

It was one of Jack’s horses, she was sure, though why he should keep so many horses when he couldn’t ride was beyond her comprehension. It was the same horse she’d seen on her first morning at Sevenoakes. Clearly he was a rogue, and one in need of more exercise than he was currently receiving. She had seen him running free several times before, Carlos in hot pursuit.

Had a thief tried to ride it? If so, he’d made a big mistake—that particular horse had only ever been ridden by Jack, according to Carlos. Jack had bred the horse himself, broken him to bridle and trained him to do his every bidding. He’d even taken the horse to war with him. And now no one rode him at all. Jack should have sold the horse, she thought, not kept it here, under his eye, where every sight of it was a bitter, festering reminder that he could no longer ride.

“Come on, there…good boy…there, there…” she murmured, wishing she’d brought an apple with her. She held out her hand as if offering something and continued slowly and deliberately to approach the horse. Curiously, it thrust out its neck, sniffing to see what titbit she was holding. Kate deftly and calmly took hold of the dangling reins.

The big horse tried to jerk away, but she held him firmly, soothing him with murmured endearments and steady hands. She’d always loved horses, and they seemed to know it. Jack’s roan was no exception—under Kate’s calming influence he stopped his nervous trembling, and was soon blowing affectionate snuffles into the front of her dress. She quickly checked him over, running experienced hands down his legs, and was relieved to find no sign of damage. Now to see if he would accept her on his back.

With some difficulty, for he was still nervous of any other rider, and she was hampered by her long skirts, Kate managed to mount the big horse, using the stile as a mounting block. He reared up and snorted in fear at first, but Kate clung on tightly, and her firm hands and low, soothing voice soon had him under control again. Then, sidling and dancing under her unaccustomed light weight, the roan headed back down the narrow pathway at a brisk trot, shying skittishly at every falling leaf or shifting shadow.

For the first few moments, Kate was wholly engrossed in controlling her mount, then, as it became clear that the stallion accepted her mastery, pleasure filled her—it was so long since she had ridden a horse. And this was such a fine horse. She could understand why Jack had been unable to bring himself to sell the animal. The thought occurred to her that perhaps she could ask if she might exercise him. He certainly needed it.

As the path opened out, she saw a trail of hoofprints crossing the field nearest the house, and remembered her task. Someone might be hurt, even if it was a thief who deserved punishment! Castigating herself at her selfish pleasure in the ride, she urged the stallion into a canter. Rounding the back of the stable, she saw a prone figure lying on the frozen ground.

Kate’s heart missed a beat. No, surely not. She urged the horse closer, then flung herself off, retaining just enough presence of mind to tie it to a nearby bush. The figure on the ground was ominously still.

Breathing hard, she fell on her knees beside him, heedless of the cold, wet mud, and gently turned him over. Dear Lord, she prayed, let him not be badly hurt!

“Jack. Are you all right?” There was no answer. She laid her cheek to his chest. His heart was beating steadily. Thank God! Swiftly she ran her hands over his limbs. Nothing was broken. She gently examined his head but could find no extraordinary bump or cut. He was as white as a corpse, and almost as cold.

Kate whipped off her pelisse and tucked it around him, then eased his head and shoulders into her lap, abandoning all modesty, surrounding his body with her legs. She would ensure his warmth, at least. Later, if he did not regain consciousness, she would have to leave him and go for help. But while he was so pale and frozen and helpless she could not leave him.

She held him close, praying silently that he would be all right and that someone would come soon to help them. One hand cupped his rough, stubbled chin, tenderly cradling his head against her breast, the other smoothed his hair back off his forehead. She murmured soothing words in his ear, her breath mingling with his in the crispy air.

She was just deciding reluctantly that she might have to leave him to fetch help when Jack’s eyes flickered open. He stared up at her blankly for a moment or two and muttered, “You?” in a tone of bemusement, then closed his eyes again.

“How do you feel?” Kate asked softly, his head still against her breast.

“Bloody,” he muttered, still with his eyes closed.

“Oh, no, there is no blood,” she assured him.

One blue eye opened and regarded her sardonically. “Good.” He lay heavily against her for another few moments, then, seeming to become aware of just how intimately he was lying against her, he sat up, groaning. He swore as a sudden wave of pain shot through his leg, and he stilled his movements suddenly, bending to examine his leg more closely.

“You haven’t broken anything either,” Kate said reassuringly.

“And you’d know, I suppose,” he said.

Kate didn’t allow herself to rise to his bait. “Well, yes, I would know, but I don’t expect you to believe me. Now, it’s extremely cold on this ground and you’d better move if it’s at all possible.”

He glanced at her again, and a frown darkened his forehead as he noticed that she was shivering. Then his eyes fell to her pelisse, tucked securely around him. He swore, dragging it off him and almost angrily thrusting it at her. “Put that on at once, you little fool! Do you want to catch your death?”

Kate ignored him. “Do you think you can stand up?”

Jack moved his bad leg a little and groaned. “I think I can manage to walk, but the question is, can your ears bear the bad language that will doubtless result from the effort?”

Kate laughed aloud at this. As if he did not already curse with almost every breath he took! “Here, put your arm across my shoulder and see if you can stand.”

He sat up and she wedged her shoulder under his armpit. Using his good leg and herself as a lever, he slowly rose to his feet. His lips were tightly compressed, but he did not utter a word. By the time he was upright, he looked exhausted. White lines around his mouth told Kate he was in considerable pain.

“Do you really think you should be trying to walk on your bad leg?” said Kate hesitantly. “I could easily run for help and fetch someone to carry you on a litter.”

“I’ll be damned if I’ll let the blasted thing make me a cripple,” he muttered bitterly.

“Oh, well, that’s a relief,” murmured Kate provocatively.

He shot her a look of hard enquiry.

Her lips twitched with amusement. “I feared the strain would be too much for you.”

“I fail to understand what you find to amuse you in this situation,” he grated.

“Oh, nothing, to be sure, sir,” she said. “Only that I feared that your effort to refrain from cursing would be too much for you. However, I perceive that your tongue is in its usual fine form, so I need feel no anxiety on your behalf.”

He stared for a few seconds and then recalled his use of the word “damned’. Despite himself, his lips twitched. Leaning heavily on her, he began to move slowly towards the house. After a few minutes he glanced down at her. “You really are the oddest girl.”

“What makes you say so?”

“Ninety-nine women out of a hundred would be turning this into a major dramatic occasion, weeping and having hysterics over me, and here you are, having the audacity to tease me about bad language.”

“Would you prefer me to have hysterics, then, sir?” Kate pretended to consider it seriously. “I must confess that I haven’t had a great deal of experience in the matter, but if it would make you more comfortable, then I’m sure that I could undertake to stage a very convincing bout of hysterics. If you prefer it, that is.” Her eyes danced mischievously, but all the time she urged him onward, hoping her nonsense would distract him from the pain.

He threw back his head and laughed outright at that. “Good God, no! Heaven preserve me from hysterical females!”

They continued their laboured progress for a few more minutes, then stopped for a brief respite.

“You have no idea how refreshing it is to have a sensible female to deal with,” he said earnestly.

At this Kate was forced to lower her head and compress her lips to prevent herself laughing out loud.

He noticed, however. “What is it now?” he asked and, when she did not respond, he put a hand under her chin and turned her face up to his. Finding it brimful of suppressed merriment, he frowned in suspicion.

“Well, what have I said to cause this?” With a light finger he flicked at the dimple which peeped elusively out.

Her eyes danced irrepressibly. “For weeks now you have been calling me ‘the stubbornest, most infuriating female it has ever been my misfortune to meet’!” she growled in a deep gruff voice. Then she allowed her mouth to droop mournfully. “And now, when you call me a sensible female, alas, there are no witnesses!”

His lips twitched. “Well, most of the time…” he began.

Kate burst into peals of infectious laughter and reluctantly he joined in. As they laughed, she met his eye and felt the jolt of warm good humour pass through her. Slowly the laughter died in his eyes and she felt his gaze intensify. Suddenly Kate became hotly aware of the intimacy of their position, her body held tightly under his arm, wedged firmly against his hard, warm body, his mouth only inches away from hers. For a moment they stood there, their eyes locked, then she felt, rather than saw, his mouth moving down towards hers. Abruptly she turned her head away, her heart racing, her mouth dry.

“Come on now,” she murmured. “We’d best keep moving and get you in out of this chilly morning. Your leg will need to be examined by the doctor.” She felt him withdraw as they moved off.

“I’m not having any damned leech or sawbones maul me around any more. I had enough of them to serve me a lifetime on the Peninsula.”

“Oh, but surely you cannot compare the physicians we have here in England with some of the butchers that passed for surgeons during wartime?” Kate said incautiously.

Jack stopped and looked at her in surprise. “Do you know, you’re the first person in England that I’ve ever heard with an accurate notion of some of those bloody devils? Apart from anyone who was there, I mean. You sound as if you actually have an inkling of what it was like.”

Kate smiled slightly. “Do I, indeed?” Her face sobered. “Well, I did have two brothers and a father who died there. Now, have you had enough of a rest to continue, or do you wish to rest a moment or two more?”

That got him moving again. Kate was relieved, but, more than that, he’d given her the opening she’d wanted. “Not all doctors are butchers, you know,” she said after a time.

He snorted.

“It’s true,” she insisted. “I once met the most wonderful physician, descended from a long line of physicians, right back to the Moors, who used methods of treatment that enabled some terrible wounds to heal almost like new.”

“Humph!”

“For instance, with a bad leg like yours,” she persisted, “where the wound had healed, but the muscles had lost their strength, he would order that the leg be massaged three times daily with hot oils, the oil being rubbed well in and each part of the leg stretched and pummelled.”

“Ah…” he said ironically. “A torturer. I have heard that some of those oriental types have the most subtle and fiendish methods.”

“I know it sounds like that, but it is truly efficacious, though it is not at all comfortable at first.” Kate remembered the groans of anguish that her brother Jemmy had uttered when the treatment first began, and how it had taken all her will-power to continue the treatment.

“After a few short weeks, the limb begins to strengthen and, with added exercise, I believe that almost full power can be returned in some cases.”

“Rubbish!” he snapped curtly. “Unscrupulous leeches preying on credulous fools.”

Kate understood his hostility. Hope could be very painful.

“Possibly,” she said quietly. “I suppose it depends on the wound, but this treatment had my brother walking after our English doctors had told him he would never be without crutches again.”

She paused to let that sink in. “And his wound was very bad, enough to have them planning to amputate.”

Kate would never forget frantically clinging to the surgeon’s arm, begging him to wait for another opinion, and then the final relief when her father had burst into the tent and wrested the saw from the man’s drunken hand.

“Perhaps the method may help your leg.”

“I doubt it!”

“It could not hurt to try, surely?” she coaxed.

“Dammit! You know nothing about it, girl! I have been mauled enough by incompetents from the medical fraternity and I will have nothing to do with any more quack cures, especially those dreamed up by mysterious oriental fakirs!”

Kate felt a wave of frustration surge through her. It was perfectly obvious to her that he had been attempting to ride his horse in defiance of the medical prognosis he had been given and despite the pain his leg was so clearly giving him. It was sheer insanity to attempt to use a barely healed limb for strenuous exercise.

“Don’t be so stupid. You cannot simply ignore damage done to muscles and sinews and ride by will-power alone. You are just a man, with a man’s body. You were dreadfully injured and I am sorry for it, but you must face the fact of your injury, instead of pretending it does not exist.”

“What the devil would you know about it? I’m damned if I’ll give in to it,” he growled, attempting to thrust her away.

Kate glared right back at him. “And who said you should give in to it?” she demanded. “Not I—I said face facts, not give in.”

“Dammit, girl, you go too far. This is none of your concern!”

“Well, if you wish to ride that horse instead of falling off it all the time, you will have to do something differently,” Kate said furiously. “You may be able to walk on that leg, but it is so stiff and weak you cannot grip on to a horse. And if you keep doing what you are doing you will end up giving yourself a much more serious injury. You need to retrain your muscles and exercise them. The treatment I spoke of is specifically aimed to restore flexibility and muscle strength…”

The words died on her tongue. Jack was staring at her with such a mixture of humiliation, outraged pride and sheer fury that she recoiled, thinking for a moment that he might strike her.

“Damn you to hell and back, girl! Mind your own blasted business!” he exploded. “I don’t need your damned unwanted advice, I don’t need your blasted quack miracle cures and I don’t need your damned assistance. I can make my own way to the house!”

Kate knew she should stop, but she had to have one last try, using an analogy he might accept. “What would you think of a trainer, who, after a horse had fallen and injured itself, put it straight at the highest jump, and expected it to succeed? Would you not think him a fool?”

He was silent. Not knowing whether to feel encouraged or not, Kate continued, “A man who wants such a horse to jump again would surely walk it over low jumps, gradually raising them until it is strong enough and confident enough to jump anything. Well, wouldn’t he? Think about it, Mr Carstairs.”

He stared at her, and for a moment Kate thought her argument might have reached him. But, gritting his teeth against the pain, Jack pushed her roughly away and began to stump painfully towards the house.

“You stupid stubborn man!” raged Kate, going after him and inserting her shoulder under his again. “If you don’t want to listen to what I say, well, of course, that is your right, short-sighted as it may be…No, I won’t be pushed away! How ridiculously…” she cast around for an adequate adjective “…manlike…to reject my practical assistance when you know you need it.”

Jack stopped and glared furiously down at her, his fingers biting into her shoulder.

“All right,” she said hastily, meeting that fiery blue gaze. “I have said my piece now and I promise you I will say nothing more on the subject.” She began to head once more towards the house, forcing him to move too.

They made slow, painful progress to the house, Kate silently cursing her runaway tongue. For the first time ever, they’d been completely easy with each other, even joking and laughing, despite his awkwardness at being discovered, helpless on the ground. And then she’d ruined it. Knowing what she knew.

As she’d sat on the cold ground, cradling his head against her, the whole picture had come together—the sound of a galloping horse when she first arrived, hoofprints on frosted grass, day after day, his early morning bad temper, white lines of pain around his mouth.

He’d been doing this for weeks, sneaking out before dawn to try and learn to ride again. His mental anguish, the desperation that drove him to try to ride, secretly, day after day, knowing he would fall—Kate’s heart contracted at the thought. It had taken courage—mad, proud, stubborn courage. But without treatment he would never be able to do it. And sooner or later he was bound to do himself a grave injury.

It need not be that way, she was sure of it, and so she had spoken—too much. Offending the very pride she admired. He would never listen to her now, never forgive her. She was only his housekeeper, existing, not to put too fine a point on it, on the goodwill of his family. When would she learn to accept it?

Finally they reached the house and she helped him to a chair in the kitchen. “I’ll fetch Carlos,” she said quietly, and moved towards the door.

He did not acknowledge her; he just sat there, his face a white and bitter mask.