Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ARTHFORD FELT MORE vulnerable half dressed while she cleaned the wound in his side than he ever had when he was entirely naked and in her bed. It was something about being laid bare and weak and destructible, he thought.
He had wanted to be something else for her, maybe that thing his father had tried to turn him into, the soldier of antiquity who was so strong that all of his humanity had been burned away. But in the end, he was exposed to her here as only human, only skin, frightfully frail.
He trembled whenever her fingers touched his skin. He’d tried to insist on the help of a servant, but she stoutly refused to put any of them out, and it was true that she’d dismissed them all for the night, and a good mistress would not take back her word on something like that. He respected that about her.
“I think I’ve had it wrong,” she said softly. “It isn’t about need.”
“What isn’t about need?” he said, and he was horrified because his voice trembled too.
She jerked back. “Am I hurting you?”
“ No. ” He sounded like Rutchester, sulky and defensive. Lord. He groaned. “I can well handle this, for the sake of the devil. Keep at it.”
She hesitated.
“Marjorie, just give it to me.” He held out a hand for the rag she was using to clean his wound. “I shall do it myself.”
She handed it to him, ducking her chin down to her chest.
Now, he felt even more awful. He groaned again. “You were saying something.”
“I…” She shook her head. “It’s not the time for such a discussion, it seems. We shall have it later, when you are not in so much pain.”
“I’m not in that much pain. I know that I am worthless to you, that is all, and I wish I weren’t.”
She wrenched the rag back from his hand. “I know when you left me before, you said you weren’t important at all, and I’m sorry I didn’t stop you or argue harder with you. You are important, and you are not worthless. I had forgotten, I suppose, that you have feelings too, that I could wound you.”
“Yes, but I don’t wish to be wounded.” He tried to reach for it again, but it hurt too much, and he winced and stopped, uttering an oath.
“None of us do,” she said quietly. “It is, perhaps, an honor that you let me in enough that I could do any damage. I did not take the responsibility well, I see. I’m ashamed of myself.”
He shook his head back and forth, quite quickly, at a loss for words.
“Let me dress this, if you please. We shall talk later.”
He sighed heavily, but then, what was there to do? He surrendered. He was wounded. He had been stabbed, and he was frail, and there was nothing for it. He let her clean and bind the wound, and then they went to seek Lilsbin, who had been hitching the horses to the carriage all on his own.
Marjorie yelled at him that he must not be doing that, that he was hurt, and—indeed—Lilsbin seemed to be clutching at the spot where she had gotten him with the hammer overmuch. He was coughing, too, from time to time, a rattling sort of cough.
He let her take over the task without any argument.
Arthford assisted her as best he could, trying to speak to her about how she, too, was hurt, and trying to get some assessment of what had happened to her. But she said her wounds were only bruises, that she was all right, in the best shape of all of them, and he didn’t think that was true.
Then came the discussion of who was going to drive the carriage, for there were no servants to do so.
They all seemed to think that each of them were the most capable, and they went at that for some time, snapping at each other.
Finally, he said they must compromise and take it in shifts. Since they could not decide who would go first either, they drew straws, and he got the first straw.
They set off.
He wasn’t exactly skilled at driving a carriage. He’d done it before, sort of, but not for long distances. However, he knew the basic movements that one must make with the reins to communicate with the horses, and he did an adequate job, he supposed, but he had to admit he wasn’t doing very well at steering around holes and stones in the road. It was probably a bumpy ride inside.
They’d been on their way for only about half of his shift, perhaps twenty minutes, when there came a frantic banging from inside the carriage, and he heard the muffled sounds of Marjorie’s voice, very worried and upset, though he couldn’t make out what she was saying.
Immediately, he thought that Lilsbin was, in fact, all claims to the contrary, attempting to assault her.
He stopped the carriage in a blind rage and hopped down, ready to yank Lilsbin out of the carriage and beat the living daylights out of the blackguard.
But Marjorie already had the door open and she was babbling about how something had happened when they went over a stone in the road, how Lilsbin had shrieked in pain, and then he’d started coughing up blood and now…
He looked into the carriage to see that Lilsbin wasn’t moving.
He was doubled over in the corner.
Marjorie was sobbing, tears running freely down her face. She was saying something else, but she was crying too hard for him to understand that either.
He climbed into the carriage and pushed Lilsbin into an upright seated position.
The man’s face was ashen. There was blood all over his chin and down the front of his clothing. There was a bubble of blood at his lips.
“I think I killed him,” said Marjorie. “Not now, but before.”
Arthford put his fingers to Lilsbin’s neck. No pulse. He felt around at the man’s wrists. Nothing.
Lilsbin wasn’t breathing.
“I think I must have cracked one of his ribs,” she said. “It wasn’t bad at first, perhaps, because he was up and moving, but then he, I don’t know, he moved around too much, or the carriage jostled him or…”
“Broke off freely and punctured his lung,” whispered Arthford. “Maybe it happened when he was hooking the horses up to the carriage. You heard that cough of his, didn’t you? He was bad off, then.”
“He was drowning on his own blood,” she moaned. She let out a wrenching sob. “Oh, God, Simon, I killed him.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said, trying again to find the man’s pulse.
“I hit him with a hammer .”
“Yes, but he… if he were this hurt, he should have known it, should not have—” He broke off, because had he been any better at accepting his limits due to wounds? Had Marjorie? Had any of them? What was wrong with the lot of them, that they were all in such ecstasies to prove that they were capable of withstanding pain?
“I k-killed him,” she said again, and she was crying, the sound so broken that it made him wish to cry as well.
He got out of the carriage and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “It’s all right.”
“It’s not, it’s not, it’s not,” she gasped, but she burrowed into him, allowing him to hold her.
“I killed him,” he told her, rubbing his hand reassuringly up and down her spine. “I made the carriage jostle. I did it.”
“No, no, I wounded him,” she moaned.
“Well, he did it to himself to some degree, by not resting,” he said. “Let us not do this. It doesn’t matter. He does seem to be dead, and nothing we do can bring him back to life.”
Champeraigne wins, he thought. Just by chance, not by any real design, but just by chance, Champeraigne wins. He always wins.
They left Lilsbin in the carriage, and she rode up with him at the front of the carriage, both of them wrapped in a blanket and huddled close.
They rode for Bluebelle Grange, and they didn’t speak, and she cried and he wanted to cry, and everything seemed bleak.
At some point, a rider appeared on the road, and he hunched down, not trying to make eye contact. It was late, and there was no reason to interact with anyone. He certainly didn’t wish to explain that there was a dead body in the carriage.
But as the rider grew closer, he recognized him as Rutchester, and he straightened up and called out to the other man.
Rutchester reined his horse in. “Well, here you are. Dare I ask what’s happened?”
“You’d likely rather not know, I imagine,” he said darkly, stopping the carriage as well.
“I wasted time with messages back and forth with Dunrose. He is even now at the Grange. I was on my way to Briar Abbey.”
“No reason to go there,” said Arthford. “We are going back to the Grange.”
“Lilsbin? Did you kill him?” said Rutchester. “We both thought you would.”
At this, Marjorie broke into fresh sobs.
“Oh, Dunrose thought so? I had thought perhaps he wouldn’t put it together,” said Arthford.
“Took him too long, I suppose,” said Rutchester. “He regretted sending you the letter. He left and was on his way to try to stop you, but he was too late. I told him to go to Bluebelle Grange on the off chance you were there. I take it the answer is yes.”
“It was me,” cried out Marjorie from next to him. “It was me . I did it.”
“Hush,” he murmured to her, pulling her in close.
“I see,” said Rutchester.
“Oh, it’s all more complicated and tragic than you can possibly imagine,” said Arthford. But with Rutchester here, he began to think through what should be done to smooth this over. He planted a kiss on Marjorie’s forehead. “Can you ride?” he whispered to her.
She looked up at him. “What?”
“Give me a moment.” Arthford handed her the reins and climbed down to speak to Rutchester, who dismounted as well.
He explained everything as quickly as he could, giving all the ins and outs of the situation.
Rutchester let out several surprised noises and tried to interject and speak, but Arthford overrode him and kept going until he had quite finished the tale. “Anyway, I think it would be best if he were simply found somewhere,” he said. “We could make it look as if he’d been thrown from his horse here on the road. We could say that the riderless horse appeared at Briar Abbey, I think, and then that we sought him out and found him here. There could be some kind of search, perhaps, and eventually, with any luck, by the time his remains are found, the vultures will have been at him and no one will quite know what became of him.”
“You wish my help with this?” said Rutchester.
“We have experience with this sort of thing, don’t we?” said Arthford.
Rutchester nodded, sighing. “Yes, we do.”
“Marjorie can take your horse and go to the Grange. We shall ride off ourselves on horses from Briar Abbey and meet her there when we’ve finished what we need to do.”
“Are you in any shape to do this?” said Rutchester. “What with your wound?”
“I might need you to do most of the lifting,” said Arthford with a sigh.
Rutchester nodded. “All right. Let’s clean this up.”
He climbed back up to explain the plan to Marjorie.
“Shouldn’t I simply go back to Briar Abbey?” she said.
“No, no, I want someone to see to you,” he said. “You go straight to the Grange, do you understand?”
“You are covering up my murder for me,” she said in an agonized voice. “And I could not repay such a thing, not in any life.”
“Are we still here, with everything about being about repayment and debt?” he whispered, looking into her eyes. “Is that what things are between us, Marjorie?”
She shook her head, tears squeezing out of her eyes. “No, no, Simon, I don’t think they are.”
He kissed her.
She rested her forehead against his. “All right,” she said. “But you promise Rutchester is going to do the strenuous work?”
“I swear it,” he said.