During the rest of the afternoon Harriet managed to maintain an outward demeanor that belied the inner turmoil wrought by that kiss. She teased and cuddled the youngest and played games with the older children and adults. Yet always in forefront of thought and emotion was the sensation of Quint’s lips against hers. Whenever their eyes chanced to meet, there was a glint of knowledge, a twinkle of warmth that told her he also remembered.
She admonished herself repeatedly for such foolishness. After all, she was no green girl fresh from the schoolroom. She had had her share of kisses and caresses. But, Lord, none like this. Nor had her response ever, ever been so immediate and so intense.…
The sun was beginning to set by the time the picnic was truly over. Back in the stable yard when both carriages had been emptied of passengers, Harriet pulled Phillip aside for a quiet word, whereupon the boy quickly gathered Maria, Sarah, and the twins, and approached their uncle and grandmother.
“Uncle Quint, Grandmother, we should like to thank you for a most enjoyable day,” he said with a very correct bow.
“How sweet,” the dowager said.
“You are most welcome,” Quint said with a meaningful glance at Harriet. “I’m sure I enjoyed this day quite as much as any in recent memory.”
She smothered a full-blown smile in response, but did not turn away from his gaze.
Later she did smile fondly to see that even the usually exuberant twins had been so “played out” this day that they did not object to the early supper and only one chapter of the current story being shared at bedtime. Having seen the children tucked into their respective beds, Harriet gathered up a bit of needlework and, joining the other adults in the drawing room below, waved Quint and Chet back to their seats at a chess table, and took a chair nearby.
“So—” The dowager was obviously continuing an interrupted line of discussion. “I was right: a picnic will be a perfect form of entertainment for my houseguests. We shall have it early on, though, while the weather is most likely to hold. My goodness! It is less than three weeks away! Are you sure we are prepared, Quinton dear?”
“Yes, Mother.” He sounded more resigned than enthusiastic, Harriet thought. “The guns have been cleaned and the gamekeeper assures me there are sufficient grouse in the woods.”
The dowager, occupying her favorite gold plush upholstered chair, clasped her hands in approval. “And next week all the guest rooms will be aired and the ballroom will be dusted and shined to a fare-thee-well—such as Sedwick has not seen in years! Oh, how I do love a house party.”
“Yours were always such a delight, Lady Margaret,” Sylvia Hartley said, as if on cue. “You gave one attended by the Prince Regent himself, did you not?”
“Why, yes, I did,” Lady Margaret replied, “though he was not yet the Regent in those days.”
“Nevertheless, he managed to put a serious dent in Grandfather’s supply of port,” Quint offered in an aside to Chet.
“Quinton Burnes.” The dowager addressed her son in the mock tone of a mother admonishing a child. “You will not speak so of a member of the royal family.”
“Just repeating what was said, ma’am.”
“Even so—”
“The prince is said to have a taste for fine wine,” Mrs. Hartley said.
“Well, you may rest easy, Quinton dear,” his mother said, “Prince George is not on my guest list this year.”
“Good.” He stood and went to the sideboard, where he replenished his own and Chet’s brandy drinks and poured one for Harriet after lifting the decanter with a silent question in her direction. The older ladies were drinking tea. “We shall drink to George’s absence. And,” he added with a quick wink at Harriet, “to the especially fine day we’ve just had.”
She nearly choked on the first sip of brandy, covered nicely, and rolled her eyes at him—which brought forth a grin.
“Did I miss something?” Chet asked.
“Nothing important,” Harriet said. Quint raised an eyebrow.
Feeling that she had interrupted the men at their game and the ladies at their conversation, Harriet finished her drink and excused herself with the plea that she was working on the final copy of an article and wished to get it to her editor in the next mail. She slept fitfully that night and later than usual the next morning.
She stood near the long work table in the middle of the kitchen stuffing the pockets of her riding habit with carrots for Miss Priss when a young groom from the stable came rushing in through the outer door.
“Beggin’ pardon, Miss Mayfield, Mrs. Hodges,” he said excitedly. “Dolan sent me for his lordship—for the colonel. He’s needed—real quick like.”
“Why? Is something wrong?” Harriet asked, alarmed.
“It’s the young lord. Lord Sedwick.” The young man’s voice rose an octave in a stage of panic.
At that moment Quint, with Chet right behind him, entered the kitchen, apparently on the same mission that had originally drawn Harriet here.
“Sedwick?” Quint’s alarm reflected Harriet’s. “What is going on with Sedwick?”
The young groom turned wide eyes on Quint. “D-Dolan sent me for you, sir! Lord Phillip—he come out and ordered mounts for you an’ him an’ Mr. Gibbons, jus’ like usual. We brung ’em out an’ got ’em ready, an’—an’ afore we could stop ’im, the young lord, he—he jumped onto your horse—right onto Lucifer’s saddle and kicked him into a furious run. Man! Can that horse go! Caught us all by surprise, sir. We jus’ didn’t know what to do for a minute or so. Then Dolan yelled at me to come get you and he jumped on Etna and went after Lucifer an’ his lordship. Others is gettin’ more mounts ready.”
“Let’s go,” Quint said.
“I am coming too,” Harriet said.
“That won’t be necessary,” Quint said.
She ignored him and rushed out the door behind him and Chet. By the time she reached the stable, the men were already off on the mounts that had been previously saddled. By the time hers was prepared, and she and a groom were on their way in pursuit, she was considerably behind—and very worried. What in the world would have possessed Phillip to take out that devil-driven horse of his father’s?
She could see the men a dismaying distance in front of her, and that they were frighteningly close to the cliff over the river! She just hoped they knew what they were about. This was a favorite riding trail, but was one leading directly to the cliffs. And that is exactly where they were when she saw Quint and Chet jump from their mounts to join the groom Dolan bent over an inert form on the ground. The black stallion, its reins hanging loose, stamped around quietly at the edge of the scene.
“No. No. No-o-o,” she cried, urging her mare to an even faster pace. Cursing at the awkwardness of unhooking her leg from the tree of the side-saddle, she hastily slid to the ground and rushed over to peer down at the still form of her nephew. She knelt beside him, her gaze immediately locking with Quint’s. “Is he—?”
“He’s alive. Unconscious, but alive.” Quint squatted at the boy’s waist on the same side of the prone figure as she; he pointed at Phillip’s left leg, which lay at an odd angle. “It looks as though he may have broken that leg.”
“His head is bleeding!” she cried in alarm, and began fishing for her handkerchief to press against the wound.
“Dolan thinks he hit that stone when he fell.” Quint jerked his head toward a boulder about the size of a small keg. He reached to raise Phillip’s head gently to allow her more efficient access to the wound, then handed her his own larger handkerchief.
“Hold this, please,” she said, covering her own panic at seeing so much of Phillip’s blood soak into the white cloth. She took Phillip’s own neckcloth to tie the pad in place.
“Well done, Madam Doctor Mayfield. I sent Hankins—he came out here with Dolan—back for a wagon and to go for the doctor.”
“Shouldn’t we move Phillip to that grassy plot? H-he looks so vulnerable just lying there.” Her voice caught.
Quint shifted in his crouching position to slip an arm around her waist. “Shh. Try not to think the worst.” She felt his lips moving against her temple, but it was his baritone voice more than the reassuring words that brought her comfort. “Chet has been looking him over head to toe. Chet was as good as any of McGrigor’s men at spotting how badly a man might be wounded. What say you, Mr. Gibbons?”
Chet, who had been kneeling at Phillip’s feet on his other side, stood and came to stand near Quint and Harriet, his blue eyes full of worry and sympathy.
“The lad’s suffered a broken leg, as you can clearly see. Probably a concussion from that blow to the head. Best see if we can bring him ’round. Head wounds can be tricky.”
“Oh, poor Phillip.” Harriet felt her shoulders slump, but she appreciated the unspoken support of these two men. Three. For Dolan, who had dutifully seen to the immediate care of the animals, was also deeply concerned about the fate of this man-child on whose fate all of the Sedwick earldom ultimately depended.
“Far as I can see,” Chet announced, “that blow to his head and the broken leg are the worst of it, though he winced some when I touched that right ankle. It might be sprained.”
“Dear God. Both legs injured,” Harriet said.
“It might not be so very bad,” Quint said. “But what in the world possessed him to take out Lucifer? Dolan? What happened?”
Dolan shook a head of reddish-brown hair in confusion and gave Quint a bleak look. “I really don’t know, sir. The young earl—he come out earlier than usual, said you and Mr. Gibbons was comin’ right soon, an’ we should saddle the usual mounts—which we did. The horses to be rode was all tied at the rail proper like an’ Tucker an’ me stepped into the tack room. ’Twasn’t more ’n a few seconds, I swear. The lad knows them horses well enough! The next thing we know Lord Sedwick, he jumped onto Lucifer’s saddle and jus’ took off! Shouting and kicking to make him go faster—as though Lucifer ever needed much encouragement to go faster. The other horses were straining at their tethers and bellering their objections. It were right chaotic here. I sent Tommy up to the Hall to notify you an’ Tucker an’ me went after these two.”
“Quite right,” Quint reassured him, even as they heard a wagon and another vehicle as well as a couple of riders approaching. The other vehicle turned out to be a gig driven by Herbert Babcock, a man of middle years who had served as the local doctor for as long as Harriet could remember. Spry for a man of his years, he quickly brought his horse to a halt and jumped down, bag in hand, ready to render service to his patient. “What have we here?”
Quint and Chet filled him in as the doctor made his own hurried assessment that mostly concurred with theirs. Phillip began to regain consciousness and to thrash around a bit, but any movement of his leg brought a cry of pain.
Harriet still knelt at his head and placed a comforting hand on his brow. “Shh, Phillip. Try to be quiet, dear. We know it hurts. Dr. Babcock is here.”
“Mmmm.”
As the doctor directed, a heavy blanket was spread on top of a crude patchwork quilt of course fabrics and mismatched colors. With Dolan’s help, Quint and Chet slowly and gently transferred the injured youth to the blanket. Harriet fought against tears of her own at seeing Phillip wage a battle against weeping in front of his uncle and the other men. The tight clench of his jaw said volumes about his pain. As soon as they had Phillip arranged in the wagon, Harriet, having already turned over care of her mare to one of the grooms, was handed in to sit next to Phillip, managing to fashion a pillow of sorts for his head by turning under the corner of the blanket-quilt. Quint and the doctor also climbed onto the bed of the wagon, both taking care to joggle the vehicle as little as possible as they did so. Quint sat at the boy’s waist on the same side as Harriet, opposite the doctor. When she could spare a glance for the two men, she tried not to be further worried by the solemn looks on their faces.
The wagon began to move. Harriet cast a startled glance from Phillip to Quint and the doctor, then raised her gaze to see that Chet, Dolan, and other grooms were in place to accompany them. She was also slightly startled when she felt Quint’s reassuring grip on her hand.
“He will be all right. He has to be.”
“Yes,” she whispered, holding his gaze.
The wagon jerked across a large stone and Phillip screamed in pain.
“There, there, son,” Doctor Babcock said. “Hold on now. I am not about to lose you—or any part of you—thirteen years after helping your dear mama introduce you to what the poets call ‘this veil of tears.’”
“Especially when we have the ever-cheerful bedside manner of one Herbert Babcock to see us through it, eh?” Quint asked.
Babcock merely shrugged and fussed with the lighter blanket covering the patient.
The distance back to the Hall was only a matter of about four miles, but Harriet thought it would never end. She thought they felt every single pebble the iron wheels touched. Anything larger earned superlatives in description and brought forth cries from others besides injured boy.
“Any idea why the boy was out on that wild beast hardly anybody ever dared ride but his father?” Babcock asked. Harriet thought Phillip cringed at the question; he closed his eyes tightly and seemed to be trying to shrink his whole body into itself.
She felt Quint glance at her before responding to the doctor. “No. Not really. He mentioned maybe riding Lucifer someday, but it was always someday—in the future. The distant future. Who knew the future was now?”
Just then they all felt the wagon hit a particularly hard bump and the patient let out a cry. Harriet bent over him, patting his shoulder. “We are almost there, Phillip. Hold on, sweetheart. You can do this.”
“We Englishmen have to keep that ‘stiff upper lip’ in front of this Scot, you know,” Quint said with a gesture at Chet, who rode beside the wagon directly within Phillip’s line of vision. Harriet saw the boy give the two men a weak grin as the entourage made its way into the stable yard.
Four of the biggest, tallest footmen gently carried their young lord up to his room, which, by his own request, remained his old room in the nursery suite. For a fleeting moment and with a touch of amusement, Harriet also recalled why this room in the nursery room was still his lordship’s bed chamber of choice. Some two months after the accident that had robbed the earldom of the sixth holder of the Sedwick title—and while the man who should have been in charge of the entire estate still lay in France recovering from wounds—the dowager countess had simply taken it upon herself to have herself and her companion moved into the main Hall. In essence, she took over as the countess she had once been.…
At the time, Harriet had wondered at the woman’s audacity, but in truth it was simply none of her business, was it? And then had come that business of Phillip’s room. Harriet had joined the children that day. They were all having lunch together in the nursery. The dowager, who rarely visited the nursery rooms, chose to appear just as the maids were clearing the table. Phillip stood at his grandmother’s entrance, and, at his urging, so did the twins. Harriet motioned for a maid to draw up a chair for Lady Margaret next to Phillip at the large round table.
“Phillip, dear,” the dowager said in that voice adults use when trying to convince young people they are on the same level, “now that you are the earl and have the order of everything, do you not think it time you took your proper position and moved into the earl’s chambers?”
Phillip stared at her, shocked. “Wha-at? You are saying I sh-should move into F-Father’s room? But that room is Father’s!”
“Phillip—dear boy.” His grandmother was talking down to him now. “It is the earl’s room. And you are the earl now.”
Phillip gave his grandmother a speculative look. “Did you not say I now have the ordering of everything?”
“Within reason—until your Uncle Quinton arrives to take over his duties as your guardian,” she said, almost agreeably.
“Good. I order that I shall stay where I am. My present accommodations suit me very well.” He stood. “Now, was there anything else, Grandmother?”
“Why—uh—no, dear.”
* * * *
Quint admired Phillip’s fortitude. The boy had allowed himself few outcries of pain, only a moan or a grunt now and then. Nurse Tavenner quickly produced a nightshirt, then she disappeared along with one of the footmen. Presently, the footman returned with two large buckets of hot water and Tavenner came back with wooden slats for a brace, towels, and cloths for bandages.
“Just ring us if you need anything else,” she said.
Quint had not remembered Babcock as being quite such a chatty fellow, but he was grateful to the man for a running monologue, explaining to the patient and bystanders what he was doing and why. “Ready, lad? With your uncle’s help, we shall put that bone back in place, then strap some wooden slats next to it to hold it in place. Now, I’m not going to stand here and lie to you and tell you it won’t hurt. It will. Something terrible. So—do as the Bard says, lad, and ‘screw your courage to the sticking place.’”
Phillip grimaced. “H-he—I mean she—was talking about murder.”
“Eh? Why, so she was.” Babcock look up at Quint. “Smart lad.”
“Doc?” Phillip asked.
“Yes, my lord?”
“Would you mind allowing my Aunt Harriet to be here?”
The doctor raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Miss Mayfield? Well—’tis not common—usually we try to protect our ladies from such, don’t you know?” Babcock shot Quint an inquiring glance.
“Well—whatever Aunt Harriet wishes,” Phillip said weakly.
Quint turned toward the door. “I will ask her. I am sure she is hovering right outside.”
And so she was. Not “hovering” exactly, but anxiously awaiting word, pacing from one window to the next. It was still fairly early in the afternoon. Mid-September sunshine appeared warmer than it was, but the golden light outside Sedwick Hall belied the atmosphere of concern and apprehension that now pervaded within. Chet sat on a chair nearby. Catching a snatch of their conversation, Quint gathered that they, too, were preoccupied by the overwhelming question of why?
“Just hard to tell what gets into a lad’s head at that age,” Chet was saying. “Trying to prove oneself a man. Not quite knowing how.”
“That is one explanation at least,” Quint said, stepping closer to Harriet. He laid a hand on her arm, wishing he could enfold her in his arms and offer the comfort her gaze told him they both needed. “Phillip has asked for you.”
“Of course.” She turned immediately toward Phillip’s door.
“Just a moment. We have not set the leg yet, nor tended the head injury. Are you quite sure about this? I’ve seen grown men faint at the sight of a little blood.”
“You did not see me do so, did you?”
“No, but—”
“I promise to maintain proper decorum, Colonel,” she said primly.
“As you wish. Chet, you come along too. I suspect you and I have had far more experience in this line than any of Sedwick’s footmen.”
“Aye, aye, Colonel, sir.”
In Phillip’s room, Quint dismissed the footmen, drew up a chair for Harriet near Phillip’s head, and placed himself and Chet at the doctor’s disposal. Babcock took up his running monologue as he laid out the tools he would use to set the leg. Quint could see that the doctor’s calm tone and straightforward explanation were effective in calming the patient. That—and the fact that the patient had a tight grip on his aunt’s hand.
Reclining against three large pillows, Phillip endured the setting of the leg with a kind of quiet stoicism that Quint would have found remarkable in a soldier on a field of battle. There was something—well—weird—about seeing it in one so very young. He gave himself a mental shake. After all, many soldiers—of all ranks—were but youngsters Phillip’s age. Some younger even.
“I am very proud of you, Phillip,” Harriet said softly, brushing the boy’s hair off his forehead as the doctor tied the last piece of the brace into place. “Your parents would have been pleased too. You handled this well.”
Phillip gave her a bleak look and, with the hand she was not holding, he pointed at his bandaged leg. “Aunt Harriet! This was my fault. Nothing I try to do turns out right.”
“It will, my dear.” She caressed the hand she still held. “It will. You must simply give it time. Trust me.”
He jerked away from her, then yelped at the sudden pain this brought to his leg.
“Here, here, my lord,” the doctor protested. “Do not be about undoing my work now, will you, Lord Sedwick?”
“Not good form, my lad,” Quint admonished.
“Sorry,” Phillip muttered.
“Let us see to that head wound,” the doctor said. Once again, he kept up a running commentary as he worked. “Hmm. Not bad. Not so very bad,” he murmured when he was in position for a thorough examination. “I shall not lie to you, my lord. When I clean this wound, it is going to sting like the very devil. Feel free to scream at me or curse me if you wish. I’ve had men three times your size faint dead away on me when they were getting bits of their flesh sewn back together. Again—feel free to send me to Hades ’til this is over.”
Phillip gave him a weak grin. “Th-thank you, Doc.”
In the event, Phillip screamed, Quint and Chet winced, and Harriet silently wept. But soon enough it was over. The doctor was putting the finishing touches on the bandage, and then Quint and Chet restored the room to some semblance of its previous appearance, taking care not to joggle the patient around in his bed.
“I will leave you something for the pain, but unfortunately, you cannot use it for several hours yet,” the doctor said, handing Quint a vial. “We must be careful about allowing patients with head injuries to sleep too soon.”
“We shall take good care of him, Doc,” Quint assured the medical man. “Can’t let your good work come to naught.” He shot a penetrating glance at his nephew. “Are you all right, Phillip?”
“Yes, sir. I mean, I-I think so. My leg hurts. So does my head. But I have no doubt I will l-live.”
“That is good news indeed,” Harriet said. “For I have no doubt that four of your six siblings are waiting none too patiently to see for themselves the truth of that statement.”
He grinned feebly. “Maria, Sarah, and the twins.”
She nodded.
“And the other two?”
“They too, but not ’til after their naps.”
Phillip was quiet and seemed to be staring unseeing out the open window. Quint exchanged a brief, quizzical look with Harriet, but, finding her expression hard to read, shifted his attention back to Phillip. For a moment, Quint thought the boy might be about to cry.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Harriet. It was not supposed to end this way, was it?”
“Phillip?” she asked.