The Fall
Frederick had not slept.
He had arrived at Carthedge Hall well past midnight, delivered his horse to a bleary-eyed groom, and proceeded directly to his chambers with every intention of collapsing into bed and not emerging until the Ashworths demanded his presence at breakfast.
Instead, he had stared at the canopy above his bed and thought about golden hair tumbling below a woman's waist, about bare feet in wet grass, about a kiss in a stable nine years ago that he had never quite managed to forget.
By dawn, he had given up the pretence of rest. He dressed without summoning his valet—a habit from the war that had never quite left him—and made his way to the stables. A ride would clear his head. A ride would exhaust his body into compliance.
The road between Carthedge and Ashbourne was familiar ground.
He had ridden it a thousand times as a boy, racing Jon Ashbourne to the boundary stone and back.
He had ridden it as a young man, calling on the family with the thin excuse of visiting his friend whilst stealing glances at Jon's youngest sister.
He had not ridden it since the war.
The estates shared a border—a fact he had been trying very hard not to think about when he agreed to host his engagement party at Carthedge rather than London.
Ashbourne House would be empty. The family had scattered years ago: Jon to America, the sisters to marriages and court positions.
No one remained to remind him of stable kisses and scientific experiments and one hundred and seven reasons that had not been sufficient.
The morning mist clung to the fields as he urged his horse into a canter. The air was cool, damp, green with spring growth and turned earth.
The riderless horse appeared around the next bend.
Frederick reined in hard, his mount dancing beneath him as his mind registered what he was seeing. A bay mare, saddled but without a rider, cropping grass at the edge of the road. Her reins dragged in the mud. A scrape along her flank suggested a fall.
He was off his horse before he could think, scanning the roadside, the ditches, the stretch of path disappearing around the curve. A rider thrown. A rider injured. A rider who might be—
He saw the blue of her riding habit before he saw her face.
She lay crumpled at the base of a stone wall, one arm flung out as though she had tried to catch herself. Her golden hair had come loose from its pins, spilling across the grass in a wild mass of mud and morning dew. She was not moving.
Florinda.
He ran.
Later, he would not remember crossing the ground between them.
He would remember only the sick lurch of terror, the prayer that was not quite a prayer repeating in his skull—not her, not her, please God not her—and then he was on his knees beside her, his hands hovering over her body, afraid to touch, afraid not to.
"Lady Florinda." His voice came out rough, cracked. "Florinda. Can you hear me?"
No response. Her face was pale—not merely pale but grey, the colour of ash, of old snow. Her lips had gone bloodless. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths. Alive. She was alive.
Then he saw her leg.
The angle was wrong. The angle was horrifyingly, impossibly wrong—bent where no leg should bend, the fabric of her riding habit taut over a shape that made his stomach revolt. A compound fracture, or near enough. She needed a surgeon. She needed one now.
Carthedge Hall was a mile and a half distant. The nearest farmhouse was farther. He could ride for help, but that would mean leaving her here—unconscious, injured, alone on a road where anyone might find her or no one might for hours.
He could not leave her.
The decision was not a decision at all. He stripped off his coat, wrapped it around her as gently as he could manage, and gathered her into his arms.
She screamed.
The sound tore through the quiet morning—raw, animal, a noise he had heard on battlefields from men whose bodies had been shattered by cannon fire. Her eyes flew open, wild and unseeing, and her hands clawed at his chest as her broken leg shifted.
"I know." He kept his voice steady through sheer force of will. "I know it hurts. I have to move you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Her scream dissolved into a moan, then into ragged, gasping breaths. Her fingers dug into his waistcoat hard enough to tear the fabric. She was shaking—great, convulsive tremors that had nothing to do with cold and everything to do with the body's desperate response to catastrophic injury.
Shock. She was going into shock.
Frederick stood, adjusting his hold to support her leg as best he could, and began to walk.
He did not count his steps. He could not afford the distraction. Every fragment of his attention was fixed on the path ahead, on the woman in his arms, on the terrible mathematics of distance and time and blood loss.
She whimpered with each jarring motion, small sounds of agony that she could not quite suppress.
Twice she cried out when his boot caught on a rut and the movement jolted her leg.
Each sound carved itself into his memory, another debt he owed the universe for putting her on this road at this hour on this particular morning.
"Stay with me," he said, though he was not certain she could hear him. "Florinda. Stay with me."
Her head lolled against his shoulder. Her breathing had gone shallow, too fast, the desperate panting of a body trying to outrun its own collapse. The shaking had not stopped.
"Frederick?"
His stride faltered. She had not called him Frederick since the stable. Not once in nine years.
"Yes." His voice had gone strange. "It's me. You're going to be all right."
"Hurts." The word was barely audible. "Everything hurts."
"I know. I know it does. We're almost there."
They were not almost there. They were perhaps halfway, and his arms were burning, and she was still shaking, and he had never in his life felt so helpless—not on the battlefield, not in the surgeon's tent, not in any of the thousand moments when death had brushed past him and moved on to claim someone else.
Her hand moved against his chest—not exploring but clutching, anchoring herself against the waves of pain. "Don't... don't put me down."
"I won't." His throat had closed around the words. "I won't put you down."
Forty-three reasons to find a servant, a farmer, anyone else to carry her the rest of the way.
None of them sufficient.
She fell silent after that, her face pressed against his shoulder, her breath hot and ragged against his neck. He could not tell if she had lost consciousness again or was merely enduring. He kept walking.
The chimneys of Carthedge Hall appeared above the tree line. The gates. The drive. Gravel crunching beneath his boots, and someone was shouting—a groom, a footman, voices rising in alarm as they spotted their master staggering up the path with an unconscious woman in his arms.
"Surgeon!" Frederick's voice tore from his throat. "Send for the surgeon—now!"
Bodies swarmed around him. Hands reached for her—footmen, housemaids, his butler demanding to know what had happened.
"Don't touch her leg." He was moving toward the house, up the steps, through the door. "The blue guest chamber. Fresh linens. Hot water. And someone catch the horses—hers is on the road near the Ashbourne boundary."
He carried her up the stairs himself, aware of every step, aware of the way she had gone limp in his arms, aware that her shaking had subsided into a stillness that frightened him more than her screams had.
Two thousand eight hundred and forty-seven.
That was the number. He had not meant to count, but some part of his mind had tracked every step from the road to this moment—this room, this bed, this woman whose face had gone the colour of candlewax.
He laid her down as gently as he could manage, arranging pillows beneath her shattered leg whilst the housekeeper directed maids and footmen in a controlled flurry of activity. Florinda did not stir. Her chest rose and fell in shallow breaths, but her eyes remained closed, her face slack.
"Your Grace." Mrs. Pritchard's voice was calm, professional. "We have sent for Mr. Harding. He should arrive within the hour."
"An hour." Frederick heard his own voice as though from a great distance. "She cannot wait an hour."
"It is the best we can do, Your Grace. I have set the bone before, in emergencies. I can splint it properly until he arrives, if you will permit me."
"Do it. Do whatever you must."
"Your Grace." Mrs. Pritchard's tone had shifted, gentle but firm. "You cannot be here for this."
He opened his mouth to argue—and closed it.
She was right. He knew she was right. Whatever had driven him to carry Florinda a mile and a half through the countryside, whatever desperate instinct had refused to let anyone else touch her, he could not remain in her bedchamber whilst she lay unconscious and unprotected.
He was not her husband. He was not her family.
He was, in fact, engaged to another woman who was sleeping somewhere in this very house.
His honour demanded he leave.
His honour could go to hell.
But Mrs. Pritchard was watching him with a look that suggested she knew exactly what he was thinking and would physically remove him if necessary. Two housemaids had positioned themselves at the bedside, already cutting away the ruined fabric of Florinda's riding habit with efficient hands.
"I will be outside," he said. His voice did not sound like his own. "I will be directly outside this door. If anything changes—if she wakes—if she—"
"I will inform you immediately, Your Grace."
He made himself turn away. Made himself walk to the door. Made himself step through it and close it behind him, though every instinct screamed that he should stay, should refuse to leave, should—
The door clicked shut.
Frederick stood in the corridor, his arms aching, his shirt soaked with sweat, his mind replaying the sound of her scream, the feel of her fingers digging into his waistcoat, the way she had said his name like it mattered.
Frederick.
Not "Your Grace." Not the formal address she had used at every ball, every dinner, every carefully polite exchange for the past nine years.
Frederick.
As though she knew him. As though, even through the haze of pain and shock, some part of her remembered a stable and a summer afternoon and a kiss that had ruined him for anyone else.
Frederick stood in the corridor, his arms aching, his shirt soaked with sweat.
He would need to send word to Edward. The King's wayward sister-in-law was now under his roof, injured and unconscious, and would require someone from the family to collect her once she was well enough to travel.
He flexed his hands. Opened them. Closed them again.
The tremor in his fingers was merely exertion.
The tightness in his chest was merely the aftermath of carrying a body a mile and a half over rough terrain.
He had seen injuries like hers on the battlefield—compound fractures that had lamed strong men, shattered bones that had ended military careers.
Any gentleman would be shaken by such a sight.
Any decent man would feel the echo of it in his blood.
It had nothing to do with her specifically.
He told himself this as he straightened his waistcoat—torn, he noticed, where her fingers had clutched the fabric.
He told himself this as he turned from her door and walked toward the stairs.
He told himself this as he descended to face his mother and his fiancée and explain why the Duke of Edington had arrived at breakfast covered in mud and sweat with an unconscious woman in his arms.
Two thousand eight hundred and forty-seven steps.
He had not meant to count them. But some part of his mind had tracked every one.