Chapter Ten
C hapter T en
G illes tore from the house at a breakneck pace, only hearing half of what Mrs. Corbin had told him, but only needing to hear that half.
Miss Chorley has not returned from the beach, sir.
It was midway through the afternoon at this point, and she had left shortly after breakfast, as he understood it. The tide would be much higher now than it had been then, and if she was still in the cave, it would be flooding at this point. Not entirely flooded, of course, and especially not as the last few days had been dry, but high enough to make wading out of any of the caves difficult, even for those who could walk with ease.
What had he been thinking, sending her there by herself? If she had come to any injury, he would never forgive himself.
He raced to the nearest path to the beach, not caring about its terrain or incline. He barreled down it, feeling his speed increasing with every single step. He probably could have leapt into the sea itself with this sort of additional propulsion, but he wasn’t about to test it. There was only one thought in his mind and one task in his heart.
Getting to Abigail.
Once his feet were on the rocks of the beach, he veered hard to his right, his arms flailing in an almost embarrassing fashion as he sprinted towards the caves.
“ABIGAIL!” he bellowed, unable to stop himself. “Abigail!”
There was no reply, and that was terrifying. Was she unconscious? Were the rising waves drowning her out? Was she trapped so deeply in the caves that she couldn’t hear him, or he couldn’t hear her? Scenario after scenario raced through his mind, each worse than the last.
His chest seized with a burning pressure he’d never felt before, something that robbed him of breath and made him frantic. For just a moment, he did not want to see inside the cave. Did not want to know what awaited him. Did not want to see what had become of Abigail.
Once he knew, everything would change.
He swallowed hard as he reached the first cave.
He wanted everything to change.
Exhaling a short breath, Gilles stepped into the cave, pausing to let his eyes adjust as the sea water slapped around his ankles. “Abigail? Can you hear me?”
“Here.”
His heart surged to his throat with a sharp sting of emotion and Gilles continued forward, his eyes darting around frantically. Her voice was choked, weak, and tear-filled, and he loved and hated it in equal measure. He loved hearing her voice however it came, and he hated the pain he heard in it.
Then he saw her, halfway between the cave entrance and the warm pool, collapsed against the wall.
“Abigail,” he whispered on a ragged exhale. He moved for her at once, his steps slow and sloshing in the water.
Her eyes never left him as he approached, their blue shade dimmed by the shadows. There was a dark weariness to her features, and her fair hair partially streamed from her typically neat plaits. Her dress was torn and filthy, completely soaked and clinging to her skin, but it was the streaks of red along her skirts that gave him most pause.
She made no move towards him when he reached her, and hardly seemed aware of the water pooling around her legs as she sat there.
He crouched before her, putting one hand on her pale, freezing cheek. “Abigail, ma douce, what happened?”
Her mouth tightened into a thin line and her eyes fluttered shut as a tear leaked from one. He was quick to swipe it away with his thumb, but she did not seem to feel it. “I f-fell. So many times. I cannot w-walk anymore, and I could not… I t-tried to pull myself out, but my arms…” She inhaled sharply, broken sobs rippling the sound. “I am not s-strong enough. And I hurt… I h-hurt, Gilles, and…” She looked away, more tears streaming now, her entire body shaking.
“Oh, ma douce,” Gilles murmured, brushing his thumb across her cheek again. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”
Without waiting for her reaction or participation, he reached both arms beneath her and hauled her up, cradling her trembling form.
Abigail turned her face towards his chest, continuing to sob as both of her hands gripped his shirt. He could feel the iciness of her entire body as she curled more fully into him, and it was all he could do not to gasp at the waves of cold it sent through his own. He said nothing as he carried her out of the cave, but her wordless whimpers, choked with the tears that splashed onto his shoulder, were impossible to ignore.
He pulled her closer, his mouth at her ear. “Shh, ma chérie. Tout va bien. Tu es en sécurité maintenant. Je te tiens. Tiens-toi à moi. Je te tiens. Je te tiens. Je ne te laisserai pas partir.”
She continued to shiver against him, but her cries softened the more he murmured. He couldn’t even be sure what he was telling her, as the words simply tumbled from his lips. He was saying anything and everything to soothe her, and if it worked, he would keep saying it.
The path back up to his lands was more difficult with Abigail in his arms, but she was light enough that it was only awkward, not strenuous. And he didn’t dare take the longer path, even if it would be easier on him. No, he needed to get her back to the house as soon as possible, and he would have climbed up a mountain with her in his arms if he had to.
Abigail began to shake again, this time more viciously than a simple series of shivers from cold. This was a full body trembling, and that frightened him more than anything yet. He hefted her a little closer, letting her brow touch his neck and immediately hissing at the warmth he felt there.
Where all the rest of her skin was cold and clammy, her brow could have seared him by comparison.
He crested the top of the path and started running towards Coutanche as fast as he could without jostling Abigail too badly. “Mrs. Corbin! Mrs. Corbin!” he bellowed as he ran.
Abigail moaned softly, her grip on his shirt loosening almost entirely, her still-trembling body going almost completely lifeless in his arms.
He pressed his lips to her brow as his heart thundered in his ears. “Hold on, ma douce. Hold on.”
There was no response.
Mrs. Corbin met him at the door, her eyes going round as she took in Abigail in his arms. “Miss Chorley? What happened, sir?”
“I don’t know yet,” Gilles huffed as she stepped back to let him through. “She said something about falling and she couldn’t stand, and the cave was flooding…” He met the housekeeper’s eyes. “She’s burning up and her body is freezing, and she won’t stop shaking.”
That seemed to break through Mrs. Corbin’s shock. “Right, then. To her rooms.” She turned on her heel and started striding down the corridor ahead of him. “Sally! Send for Dr. Bisset!”
Gilles followed hard on her heels, feeling as though Abigail might turn into ice in his arms.
Mrs. Corbin barked further orders at the few maids they had, instructing one to have the fire stoked up in Abigail’s room, to have toweling and linens warmed, to have extra blankets brought into her room. Order after order that whipped by his ears without actually sinking into his mind. He thought he heard something about keeping his daughters in the nursery, but that might have only been an idea in his mind that sounded like Mrs. Corbin’s authoritative voice.
They entered Abigail’s rooms, and one of the maids on the receiving end of Mrs. Corbin’s bellowing was hard at work stoking up the fire. Gilles deposited Abigail on the bed, brushing her hair back from her face. She still trembled, but her eyes remained closed, and she made no sound but for the insensible whimpers from somewhere deep within her.
“Sir.”
Cieux, but she was beautiful. He hated to see her like this, so fragile and lifeless, but everything about her was exquisite. He could barely breathe for the thundering of his heart right now, his panic vanishing into a bath of fire as he looked at her now.
“Sir.”
Why hadn’t he taken the time to really look at her before? He’d seen the woman sitting with his daughters in the library only days ago, the one with an impish light in her brilliant eyes. The one who could make his girls giggle with such ease and light. The one who could laugh with him over trivial points in The Odyssey . The one who seemed to actually see him.
She saw him.
No one had really seen him since Heloise, and he wanted…
He wanted…
“MR. BICHARD.”
Gilles blinked and looked at Mrs. Corbin across the bed. “What?”
She jerked her head towards the door.
“No,” he ground out. “I am not leaving her.”
Mrs. Corbin exhaled very shortly. “Sir, we need to strip her out of these wet things and get her into some fresh and warm things. Unless you would like to embarrass the girl while she’s insensible like this, which I will not permit, either turn your back or leave the room.”
He stood there uncertainly, still adamant that he could not leave her, but certainly not wanting to do anything he would have to explain later. Anything to mortify her or make her feel more vulnerable than she already had been in the caves. But how could he…? How could he…?
He looked at Abigail’s unconscious, shaking, freezing form, swallowing hard and wondering where these tears on his cheeks had come from. He looked back at Mrs. Corbin, feeling as helpless as a child.
Her expression softened as she looked at him, and she tsked softly. “You can come back in as soon as she’s decent. Go change out of your own wet things. Knock first and wait for me to answer.” Her look was severe, but he saw her own eyes misting and her throat bobbing.
That gave him more direction than anything else.
With a final brush of his fingers against Abigail’s icy cheek, Gilles turned from the bed and stalked out of the room, his hands quickly forming fists at his sides. His mind—determined to torment him—replayed every aching moment from the cave. The sound of Abigail’s response to him, like heavenly music after the fearful silence and yet raking his soul across imaginary coals. The haunted, glazed look in her eyes that meant she didn’t seem to actually see him. Or anything at all. The blood…
Gilles cursed as he entered his rooms and began to strip off his own clothing. What kind of injury would a woman like Abigail have to endure in order to be entirely incapable of walking? He knew how strong she was, limp or no limp. He had seen how she managed from day to day, and there was nothing fragile or delicate about her. Anyone with half of a brain and a single functioning eye could tell she had remarkable inner strength and perseverance, as well as a willpower to rival any in the world. Her ability to endure pain was evident the moment one learned of what she had already been through, and yet she had never complained of daily pain, though she must have had it. The only indication he’d ever had of pain from her was the day the girls climbed on her legs.
That was it. There was never any other discussion of pain, discomfort, or required adjustments. Aside from his witnessing her trouble with the path to the beach that day, there was never anything else.
To see that woman brought so low. So vulnerable. So desperate. So lifeless.
It was harrowing, horrifying, and humbling.
And now he was beginning to shake in a way that had nothing to do with damp clothing.
Half dressed in dry clothing, Gilles sank onto his bed, his face going into his hands as shudders raced up and down his spine at the speed of lightning. He wasn’t sure what he felt for Abigail, but it was a hell of a lot more than he’d ever expected to feel for any woman ever again. Worst of all, there wasn’t any vengeance to claim in this. There was no person to blame, no creature to shake his fist at, and not a single way to make any of it better.
Just as it had been with Heloise.
There was only the overwhelming feeling of helplessness.
He didn’t love Abigail, that much he knew. Not yet.
But he wanted to. And he was fairly certain he was going to.
Which was exhilarating and terrifying.
And it made seeing her in this weakened, diminished capacity even more difficult. He couldn’t leave her alone for long. He would not.
Pushing himself off his bed once more, he hurried into a clean linen shirt, shoving it into his trousers as he moved out of his room. He didn’t even bother with footwear or a weskit, let alone a cravat. He was decently dressed for his own house and to look in on the woman he was going to love while she was injured and unwell. He didn’t care about anything else.
He knocked at the door firmly, holding his breath.
“Not yet, sir,” Mrs. Corbin called back. “Almost. If you could see if the doctor has arrived, it would be most helpful.”
Gilles grumbled under his breath, cursing in French at the impossibility of waiting longer to sit by Abigail’s bedside. Surely, he could hold her hand while the others did useful things. But no, he was going to make sure the doctor knew where to go instead of leaving one of the maids to do it. And in order to receive the doctor, he would, in fact, require footwear.
He shook his head as he retreated to his room for those items, then obediently went down to the main floor to await Dr. Bisset. Of course, the man had not yet arrived, so Gilles was left to pace almost absently in the interim. Maddening, being separated from Abigail by an entire floor of the house because his housekeeper had determined another course of action for him. She would have her reasons, and he would likely find them perfectly reasonable when he viewed them in retrospect, but for the present, it was nothing short of irritating.
He should have checked Abigail for a head injury. She had mentioned falling, and her weakness had been apparent from almost the first moment he’d seen her. An injury to the head could prove fatal at times. What if he’d missed that?
No, wait, his clothing had not held any blood from the vicinity of where her head had been. There would probably have been blood from a head injury, would there not? He had so little experience with great injuries to the head, only minor ones, which seemed to bleed a great deal.
But her legs… There had certainly been blood on her legs, and quite a bit of it. Why had he not checked her legs before getting her out?
He shook his head at himself, the scolding hot on the action’s heels. He hadn’t checked her legs because she had been distressed and the cave flooding. He’d needed to get her out, and he had done so. That had been the priority. He hadn’t considered blood loss or fever at the time, only safety.
Now that she was safe, it was her health that concerned him most. He knew only too well how quickly one’s health could deteriorate under the right conditions. He could not endure that again, even with someone he… someone whom…
He just could not.
Footsteps sounded from the gravel drive and Gilles whirled on his heel to face the approaching doctor. “Dr. Bisset, thank you for coming so quickly.”
The doctor was a relative neighbor of Coutanche House and had been the one to tend Heloise in her last days, and he had always been kind but forthright. Gilles was counting on exactly the same sort of exchanges with Abigail’s condition.
“Mr. Bichard.” He shook Gilles’s hand and walked with him to the stairs. “Who is unwell?”
“My—our governess,” Gilles corrected quickly. “She was at the cave with the warm pool this morning to exercise her leg, which was damaged badly some years ago. She was delayed returning home, so I went down to the beach to search for her. I found her very injured, wet, cold, weak…” He shook his head, exhaling shortly at the reappearance of the tension in his chest. “It was shocking.”
Dr. Bisset’s high brow creased as he thought, his dark eyes hooded with the motion. “Is she of a delicate constitution?”
Gilles shrugged. “I would not have said so before today, but she felt feverish when I carried her home.”
“She was unable to walk on her own?” Dr. Bisset’s bushy, greying brows shot up, creating more creases.
Nodding, Gilles gestured down the corridor as they reached the top stair. “She said she tried to pull herself out of the cave. I don’t know. I did not get all of the details, I only thought of getting her out of there.”
“With good reason.” Dr. Bisset sighed and gave Gilles’s arm a squeeze. “I will see to it. I take it your girls are fond of her?”
Gilles swallowed with some difficulty. “Very,” he managed to reply, leaving out the detail that he was fond of her as well.
Very.
Dr. Bisset nodded and knocked on the door, entering when Mrs. Corbin’s voice answered affirmatively. Gilles followed silently, a torrent of emotions rocking his core and keeping any one thought or feeling from overriding all the rest.
Abigail was still atop the bedcovers, but she had been changed into a dry, warm nightgown, and she no longer seemed to be shaking. Her hair had been unpinned and brushed out, streaming along the pillows and her shoulders like some sort of halo. Her knees and shins were exposed, reveling angry cuts and abrasions, a few of which still bled from the deep gashes.
And beneath those cuts, abrasions, and blood, Gilles could finally see the scars on her right leg and foot that she had warned him about.
It was worse than he had imagined, and yet not as horrifying as he had feared. The skin of her right leg was uneven and taut in some places, the scars a deeper pink than her natural shade. There was some puckering in certain areas, and various shades of discoloration in her foot as scars crossed most of its surface. It was certainly unsightly, but he would never have called it ugly. Disfiguring, yes, but not disastrous.
It was entirely a testament to what Abigail had survived and endured. Each mark was a witness of her pain and her strength. There was nothing to be ashamed of with them, but he could also understand the desire to keep them covered. The wish to be viewed by others as she had been before. To leave people wondering about the cause of her limp without any indication of her past.
To keep her scars for her eyes alone.
How many times had he been grateful his scars were only on his heart and soul and therefore unseen by anyone else?
Why shouldn’t Abigail have the same privacy?
“These wounds are superficial enough to just be bandaged,” Dr. Bisset was saying as Gilles tuned back in to the conversation. “The ones just above her knees I will stitch, but they ought to be cleaned first. I am sure some of the rocky debris will have gotten in there.”
Mrs. Corbin immediately turned to the maids in the room. “Girls. Bring me a basin of vinegar, water, and some rags. Willow bark tea as well. Go, now.”
Gilles smiled to himself as the maids rushed out of the room with a briskness that any general would have appreciated. There was no one like Mrs. Corbin anywhere.
He caught a similar smile on Dr. Bisset’s face as the doctor moved towards Abigail’s head, his hands going to her face. He checked her eyes, the pulse in her neck, the temperature of her brow. He examined her head, every inch of it, and pressed his fingers gently against the line of her throat on both sides. He listened to her breathing and her heart, felt the pulse in her wrist, checked her mouth.
All without saying much of anything aloud. He muttered all sorts of things to himself, but nothing to Gilles or Mrs. Corbin. He returned his attention to Abigail’s legs, pressing up and down and watching her face, for whatever reason. He felt along her ankles, twisting them this way and that, before looking at her hands, examining her abraded palms carefully.
Gilles was starting to grow irritated with the complete lack of information, but he knew better than to interject while the man was conducting an examination. Mostly because he understood that he would be told the man needed to finish his examination before he had answers. Yet somehow, knowing that did nothing to settle him, and he began to wonder if Dr. Bisset was intentionally extending his examination to either irk him or find more information than was strictly necessary.
Whichever it was, Gilles was reaching the end of his patience, and he hadn’t known there was one of those.
The maids returned with the demanded supplies for Mrs. Corbin, who began working in conjunction with Dr. Bisset to cleanse the deeper wounds on Abigail’s legs. Flushing the area again and again, ridding the tissue of any impurities that could worsen the fever or Abigail’s condition. Then, as though to torment Gilles personally, the doctor began the painstaking process of suturing the wounds. Abigail did not so much as wince throughout the procedure, which frightened Gilles as much as anything else.
Dr. Bisset exhaled loudly as he straightened and turned to them both, smiling gently. “She is feverish and undoubtedly will have quite the dreadful cold when she wakes. As far as I can tell, it is the cold and her exhaustion that rendered her thus. It does not appear that any bones are broken, and her breathing and heart are quite regular. I would suggest getting her fully warmed and tending her wounds and fever for now. Whatever her injury was—whatever her injury is—wounds aside, it is likely soft-tissue related, and I may not have an answer until she is awake and alert enough to tell us what happened and what exactly hurts. Understand me?”
Gilles nodded against a painful swallow even as relief filled him.
“But… but she hasn’t woken, Doctor,” Mrs. Corbin protested in a soft, motherly way.
Dr. Bisset gave her another smile, this one full of understanding. “Exhaustion, Mrs. Corbin, combined with the cold. She will likely sleep the rest of today and through the night. I wouldn’t leave her alone in case she should take a turn with her fever, but as of this moment, I do not see any great reason for concern.”
There was something inherently calming about Dr. Bisset’s manner, Gilles would not deny it, and he found himself relaxing the more he listened, knowing full well the man would have acted swiftly had there been any danger.
It didn’t change the present feeling of helplessness plaguing him, but at least the panic was ebbing away.
Dr. Bisset nodded and turned to him. “Send for me when she’s awake. Truly awake, you understand, not small intervals between sleeping.”
Gilles gave him a quick nod and started to go to the door, but the doctor stopped him, gripping his arm firmly. Gilles looked at his hand, then up into the man’s face.
He nudged his head back towards the bed, his mouth curving in a knowing smile. “I can see myself out, Bichard. It’s fine.” He released his arm, patting it in a friendly manner, then left the room.
Gilles stared after him, wondering what Dr. Bisset had seen in his expression or manner that made him think… that gave him any indication that…
He heard Abigail moan weakly, the sound shaky as it was emitted, and turned quickly towards the bed.
Her body was shaking from head to toe, her jaw and teeth chattering frantically.
“Blankets, girls!” Mrs. Corbin bellowed, the sound making Abigail flinch. “Where are those blasted blankets?”
Gilles did not think, did not wait, and moved onto the bed, lying beside Abigail and pulling her into his arms as he pressed his legs against hers, rubbing his hands up and down her back rapidly. “Ses blessures. Soignez ses blessures,” he insisted, gesturing to her legs. “Clean them. Bandage them. Then warm her feet.”
Mrs. Corbin was nodding as she began to rub the bottom of Abigail’s feet. “Those slow, lazy girls. I should have them both lashed for their tardiness.”
Gilles smiled at her as he continued to try and warm Abigail. He knew full well that his housekeeper would never raise a hand or a lash to anyone at Coutanche, no matter what she threatened. It was her brusque, bristling manner to hide the caring nature of her heart, and everybody knew it.
Together, they would set Abigail to rights. She would be well soon enough, and then Gilles could move forward in whatever direction felt right.
Such as loving her.