Barbara rode up to the farmhouse to find the sound of her frantic arrival had already provoked a gathering. Her uncle stormed over in the next moment, his face a mixture of fury and fear.
“What have you done? Whose horse is that? How did you come by it?” he demanded, making her all too aware of every time she’d thoughtlessly began something that led to disaster, often taking others with her.
He paled as she swung down, clearly having caught sight of the blood still marking her. “My daughters. Where are they?”
She put a hand against his chest to stop him long enough to catch her breath.
He stepped aside, avoiding her touch.
“My cousins are fine, but we need your help. Charlotte and the others are tending him as best they can. We need to bring a wagon and make a sling to bring him up the slope.”
Her words eased the fear, but his anger remained visible in the pounding vein on his forehead. “Who is he?”
His gaze passed from her to the horse and back again, his jaw firming as he made the connection. “I told you to leave that be else trouble come to you, and to my family.”
Barbara’s eyes itched with tears, but she blinked them away. “I know you did. You were wiser than I am, but there’s no time. The blood is his. He needs a doctor’s care and fast.”
Uncle Ferrier grew still for a heartbeat only before he turned away to set things in motion.
“Peter, get the wagon. Kevin, grab a pallet from the servant quarters and several lengths of rope. Come on, boys. Hurry now. A man’s life is at stake.”
Barbara released her breath on a shaky sigh. She reached for the reins, knowing the horse already worn out, but what choice did she have?
Her uncle closed his hand around hers and plucked the treated leather from her fingers. “He’s worked hard enough for this already. John will have the tending of him.”
She nodded, stepping aside as one of the stable boys came to take the exhausted horse. On a fresh horse, she’d be able to ride ahead and tell the girls their father came with help.
A hand came down hard on her shoulder when she turned to the stables.
“You have no need to be in there,” her uncle said, his voice deep and rough. “You are going nowhere except to your room. I will take the nobleman to the manor where he belongs. You will stay here and consider your actions while in my care.”
“You’ll need me to find him.” She saw no value in reminding him she too held noble blood from her father.
“Unlike a foolish nobleman and girl, I know these forests, as do my men. I know where my daughter goes hunting the wild strawberries, and doubt not I’ll find one of my daughters waiting to take me the rest of the way.”
His answer made it clear where the fault lay. His daughters were too clever to have done something this foolish.
Barbara wanted to protest her exclusion, wanted to see Aubrey to safety herself, but her hands started shaking now that the crisis had been taken from them. She could not claim innocence in this. Even had he not followed her, she’d risked herself and done no good service to her borrowed clothes either. Anything she said would only make her uncle’s opinion sink lower.
He stared down at her with a harsh gaze until she gave a nod and turned toward the farmhouse. He had no need to tell her how she’d caused this injury. She could think of nothing else. If his opinion of her hung low, her own stood no higher.
She lingered at the doorway until they headed out, two on horseback to ride ahead. A heartfelt prayer for Aubrey’s health when they found him seemed little enough penance for her hand in all of this.
When her parents sent her to the farm, she’d thought their opinion of her nature untrue, but here she’d proven them right more than wrong. They’d warned her against playing with a man’s feelings, leading him on, and having little regard for the pain she caused.
That was exactly what she’d done with Aubrey, all the while keeping her true identity a secret to use as a bludgeon against him. And now, when her conscience finally awoke to the wrong she did to him and herself as well, her need to cling to her game, to hold on for just one more day, may have cost him not just the day, but every one to follow.
The realization proved too hard to bear.
She twisted away from the sight of his rescue party and raced through the farmhouse to throw herself down on the bed she had shared with her friend until her unruly tongue drove Sarah away. Whatever control she held over her tears broke, and Barbara cried until she thought she’d pour every drop of liquid from her body and become a dry husk.
At some point, Sarah appeared to rub Barbara’s back as though the break between them never occurred. She didn’t ask what had caused this outburst, nor could Barbara marshal the strength to tell her as she twisted to throw herself into Sarah’s open arms and cry some more as though her heart had broken.
She’d believed life lived separate from Aubrey could not grow more painful. How foolish that seemed now with the chance of a life lived without Aubrey even on the earth.
IN THE LONG HOURS BEFORE her uncle returned, Barbara told Sarah the whole story, about how her friend had been right from the start, how she’d stolen just one more day before confessing the truth, and then how the kiss had broken through her control and sent her running off into the forest where Aubrey got hurt.
“You truly love him, don’t you?” Sarah said, her face filled with none of the elation the words should have offered.
Barbara gave a sad smile. “Had I any thought to how my feelings would deepen, I would never have hesitated in London. I wanted everything to be perfect when I met him only to learn he wasn’t perfect himself.”
“No one is perfect.”
“I know that now. Certainly not myself. It shouldn’t have taken a risk to his life to figure it out though.”
Sarah laughed softly. “Consider that part of your own imperfections. And without them, you’d be intolerable.”
Barbara threw her arms around her friend and gave Sarah a tight hug. “I’ve been almost so anyway. You could see what I could not. You tried to warn me, but I was too arrogant to listen.”
Sarah pulled away, not in rejection but so she could meet Barbara’s gaze with a steady look. “Love, not arrogance, drove you to deny the truth. And before you take all the blame, remember the revenge came first from my lips, not yours. It’s what you do now that counts.”
Barbara gave a stiff nod.
She already knew exactly what she had to do. She’d been offered a gift, and in her thoughtlessness, she’d broken it beyond repair. She had no choice except to carry out her plan to leave, but not until she knew him to be all right.
The sounds of the returning wagon broke through the silence that had fallen between them. They turned to the window, but their room faced the fields rather than the yard.
“Go to the wagon,” Sarah urged. “You’ll have no peace until you learn what has befallen your love.”
Uncle Ferrier gave Barbara a dark look when she emerged from the house, but he said nothing about his directive, perhaps reading in her expression she’d done as he’d asked and pondered her fault in everything that had occurred.
“We found him where you said. Charlotte did what she could for him, but he still had not woken when we delivered him to the manor.” He didn’t even wait for her to ask the question. “Lord Pendleton has called for a doctor. Your nobleman will be in as best care as can be acquired.”
She didn’t know whether to be relieved or more upset at this news, having never been around anyone with a serious injury before in her life.
Uncle Ferrier caught her arm. “I’m sorely disappointed in your behavior. You had no business running about in the woods with an unattached man, ignoring that I’d specifically forbade you to seek him out. Charlotte and the girls say I should go gently, that you could hardly have cast him out of the field when he came, but your parents will be told exactly what a wild child they have, mark my words.” He shook her hard. “Your foolishness may have cost the man his life.”
Her skin all of a sudden felt too tight against her face and the world seemed to spin violently. Only her uncle’s grip kept her upright.
“Hold now, Barbara. More likely than not he’ll recover fully.”
Whatever caused him to soften, she didn’t need to be coddled. She needed the truth.
“There was so much blood,” Barbara murmured, mindful of how she had failed to change out of her bloodstained and torn clothing.
“Head injuries bleed profusely. It’s that he’s still unconscious which provides the worry.”
He used his hold to pull her through the farmhouse to his study. There, he pressed her to sit while he leaned against his desk to loom over her.
“Barbara, you did what you could in getting help. He’s in a doctor’s hands. What happens from now on is none of your concern.”
“But —”
He shook his head. “No. No exceptions. You must put this nobleman from your mind. You must never see him again. Neither of you is innocent in these events, and what came before them. If you’re to preserve your reputation and not bring shame down on your mother’s head, you must listen to me. You must obey no matter what.”
Barbara could not bear to meet his gaze for another moment. She stared down at her twisted fingers, wanting to protest, to argue more than anything, but she knew he was right. She’d already decided the same for herself.
Even if he knew her true standing and forgave her the deceit, she’d proved nothing but trouble and a danger to him. He’d been right in his earliest judgment. Had Aubrey only recognized her that first day in the fields, he would have kept his distance. He would not now be lying unconscious and fighting for his very life.
Her uncle caught her chin and raised it until he could see her eyes once again. He said nothing, but she understood what he waited for.
“Yes, Uncle. I promise. I will not seek him out, nor will I let him do the same when he’s able.”
He gave her a gentle smile. “I know this seems harsh, child, but some day you’ll understand. It’s the way of the land. Your reputation is all that stands between you and ruin. I’ll not have my sister lay the blame at my feet when I should have kept a closer eye on you. Sometimes the best way to work the wild out of a horse is to let him run.” Her uncle gave a sharp laugh at her expression. “From your look, I think maybe you were much the same and had to learn your lesson the hard way. Sheltering you only made the costs higher when you were set out on your own.”
As much as she knew she should take this moment to beg him to send her back, Barbara couldn’t find the strength. She felt as though she had run from the field with her own two feet. Every bit of her ached and felt drained from the experience. There would be time enough to ask. For now, she would prove to her uncle that she could listen. She would hold to his strictures as rigidly as any found in London society and do whatever he told her to do.