Chapter Twenty-Seven
When Ava woke in the morning, her bed was empty, she assumed Jerome had risen early to attend his race.
She worried that he must be tired. She was tired, and yesterday he had been subjected to shock after shock. But Jerome was a consummate driver. She supposed she would have to trust his innate abilities to shine through, no matter the circumstances.
Even so, she spent an uneasy morning waiting for his return.
She didn’t expect him back realistically before two, given that the duration of the race would be at least an hour and there would then be celebrations to be had among the spectators before the combatants and their compatriots returned to London.
*
Jerome arrived at the meeting place for the race with a headache and gritty eyes from lack of sleep, compounded by a heaviness in his heart from yesterday’s revelations and insights.
His internal turmoil he hid behind a smile and a wave to the crowd of people who had gathered to see the start of the race and broke into spontaneous applause upon his arrival.
He shook his opponent’s hand. Peyton appeared as fresh as a nosegay. Grinning, he shook Jerome’s hand vigorously and said, “This is something like, eh? We will give ’em a show.”
“We will!” Jerome returned with a smile that felt tight across his cheekbones. “I’ll be waiting for you at the finish line!” he said loud enough for the crowd to hear as both men turned to climb into their vehicles once more and proceed to the starting line.
“Ha!” returned Peyton good-naturedly. “We’ll see about that, my lord!”
Jerome was conscious as he waited for the starting signal, holding his restive horses in line, of an unaccustomed anxiety that made his pulse beat erratically.
Normally he relished these sorts of competitions, confident in his own ability to best all commers.
But the events of yesterday played on his mind.
His insight about his competitive nature undermined his confidence. He wasn’t at his best, and he knew it.
The adjudicator called a countdown of three and dropped a handkerchief to signal the start of the race, and his horses leaped forward as he let out the reins.
The traffic was heavy in this part of London, and it was some time before he and his opponent could get a clear enough run to put on any show of speed.
But as the carts, carriages, and horses thinned, and the houses fell away, he was able to urge his team into a trot and then a canter.
Settling into the rhythm of the race, his nerves steadied, and he began to gain a slight edge over Peyton.
The road was wide enough at this point for them to drive abreast for the moment, as there were no vehicles coming the other way.
But there was a bend coming up and one of them would have to give ground to the other.
He coaxed his team to a burst of speed to take the lead and force Peyton to drop back as he feather-edged the corner, with a coach coming the other way.
His curricle’s wheels came within inches of scraping the coach’s and the driver swore at him.
Jerome grinned. He was getting his eye in and his confidence lifted.
I can do this! He urged the team faster into the straight ahead and established a comfortable lead.
Another bend in the road forced him to slow a trifle, but he was still going at quite a clip when he rounded the bend and found a lumbering coach just pulling back onto the road.
He was going too fast to pull up behind it and was forced to go around.
Which pushed him onto the other side of the road.
The wheels hit a rut and jerked the whole vehicle sideways.
The horses panicked and took off, and before he could pull them back, he found himself suddenly airborne, headed for a thicket of brambles.
He expected a prickly and unpleasant landing.
What he got was searing pain as his body landed with force on something hard and jagged. His head bounced and he knew no more.
*
Ava was startled when a commotion in the front hall just after twelve brought her out of the first-floor parlor to the sight of a bloodied and broken body on a stretcher being borne into the house by two men.
Her head swam, and she clutched the banister, a cry caught in her throat.
“Jerome!” She tumbled down the stairs toward the tableaux, only to be swept aside as the men prepared to carry her husband up the stairs to his bedchamber, escorted by a footman.
“What happened?” she asked, bewildered. “Has a doctor been sent for? Skelton?” she turned the butler.
“Yes, my lady, I sent one of the footmen straightaway.”
A dapper man stepped forward at this point and introduced himself with a bow. “Lady Ava, my deepest sympathies for this shock. I am Sir Henry Peyton.”
“Yes, I know who you are,” she said through numb lips. “What happened?”
“I didn’t see the accident occur, my lady.
I was a few lengths behind your husband’s curricle and a bend in the road obscured it from my sight.
But I heard it. It appears His Lordship miscalculated when he attempted to overtake a coach.
A rut in the road caused the wheels to go awry, and the whole equipage tipped and fell into quite a deep ditch by the side of the road.
His Lordship’s body was catapulted out of the curricle and into a briar patch containing some hidden rocks.
He received some scratches and bangs, which account for much of the blood on his exposed skin.
But he has also sustained several injuries, I fear, including a nasty jagged tear to the cheek.
I believe he may also have broken several bones.
We kept him as still as possible during the journey back, but the pain was sufficient to keep him unconscious for the duration, which is a kind of mercy, I suppose. ”
“I see. Thank you,” she said. “If you will excuse me, I must attend to him—”
“Of course.” He bowed and stepped away.
She turned to find the housekeeper, Mrs. Grundy, standing by the newel post, her face slack with shock.
“Mrs. Grundy, I require hot water and plenty of bandages, as well as the arnica and spermaceti cream, to His Lordship’s room immediately.” She turned back to Skelton. “Send the doctor up as soon as he arrives.”
“I will, my lady,”
Ava ran up the stairs to her husband’s room where she found Leyton carefully disrobing Jerome’s prone and still unconscious body.
The sight was ghastly, and terror gripped her.
He was covered in blood, and his skin, where it could be seen, was deathly pale.
The wound to his cheek was bleeding still, and she moved immediately to seize the bowl of water on the dresser and dip a cloth into it to clean away the blood from the wound.
She was barely aware that she was muttering things beneath her breath. Mostly “Don’t die, please don’t die!”
By the time the doctor arrived, Leyton and Ava had contrived to disrobe Jerome and remove the worst of the blood from his person, and he had still not regained consciousness.
Ava was so terrified she was shaking. Her magnificent husband had never looked so—reduced!
Pale, vulnerable, broken! His beautiful face ruined.
Her heart ached, and her stomach churned with worry as she waited in silence for the doctor’s verdict.
The man, infuriatingly, took his time examining Jerome thoroughly. Ava wanted to scream at him to tell her that Jerome would be all right. But she kept her impulses in check, clenched her hands tightly together, and waited.
Finally, the portly little balding doctor stood back and said, “My lady, your husband has a number of serious injuries. The first, and I fear the most dangerous, is a severe concussion, suffered by a blow to the head. You see this lump here?” He pointed to the side of Jerome’s head.
She bent and observed a swelling that had turned an ugly purple on his temple. She nodded.
“That is why he has remained unconscious for so long and is the most worrying aspect of all his wounds. We will not know until he comes around how much damage may have been sustained to his brain.”
Ava stifled a whimper and swallowed, nodding her understanding but unable to trust her voice to speak.
“The second most worrisome injury is this nasty gash to his face. It would seem your husband collided with some sharp rocks at considerable speed and slid across their surface, acquiring both the blow to the head and this gash, as well as sundry scratches from some wickedly sharp plant.”
“Yes,” she managed around the lump in her throat. “That is what the gentleman who brought him home said. That he was catapulted from his curricle and landed in a briar patch, which concealed some rocks.”
The doctor nodded with a little smile, clearly pleased with his reconstruction of events from the evidence before him.
“As to his other injuries, I believe he will probably have a cracked rib or two and he has a broken collarbone. His other limbs appear to be intact, although he has suffered some bruising from the force of impact.”
Ava sagged a little in relief at this testimony.
“However, it is possible that there has been internal damage to organs that we cannot see. If there is such injury, symptoms will manifest in the coming days.”
“What symptoms, doctor?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“Blood in the urine, pain, vomiting, difficulties breathing, all of these would be signs of internal bleeding or damage to organs, for which we can do little.”
Ava blinked rapidly, her heart squeezing in panic. She took a breath, trying to calm herself. I can’t afford to give into my terror. Jerome needs me.
“Fortunately, your husband seems to be a fine specimen, in excellent health. Provided his wounds are kept clean and bandages changed daily, he should make a full recovery from those wounds. The question, as I said earlier, is the extent of the damage to his head. And only time will tell that.”
“How—how much time?” she asked shakily.