Chapter Twenty-Two
My darling Fitz. How I wish that you were with me now, more than ever. Goule is so far that when we gaze up at the sky, can we even see the same clouds?
An accident has occurred here at Rossingley.
One so terrible that, as I pen this, my ink mingles with my tears.
Dearest Willoughby, the most exquisite brother a man could ever wish for, has been thrown from his horse.
He lives, praise God, though he is black and blue all over and hardly wakes.
His thigh bone pierced his flesh and is broken in two places.
The finest surgeon money can buy has set it straight and put him in a traction device.
He is being attended daily by the most distinguished physician in the land.
Everything has been done. Now we wait and hope and pray that infection is not also set within.
I will travel to Goule as soon as I am able—we have a lifetime of love ahead of us! But even for you, my dearest lover, I cannot leave Willoughby in his hour of need. I would never forgive myself.
It will be several weeks until he is out of the woods. I shall write daily. I carry our precious love in my heart, my darling, until we meet again.
Your faithful pup, Rollo.
SEVEN DAYS AND seven nights later, Rollo still heard that blood-curdling whip crack of snapping bone in a door slam, a serving dish set down heavily, the sudden spit of a log in the hearth.
He hardly left Willoughby’s side, dozing fitfully in a chair next to his bed.
Servants attended to him, of course, a rolling roster of housemaids, and all of them kindly.
But it was Rollo who mopped his fevered brow, who coaxed willow bark through his parched lips, who fed him laudanum when his screams woke him from his opium-addled dreams. The surgeon visited daily, sweeping in and out of the bedchamber with the sole purpose, in Rollo’s opinion, of self-congratulation.
Most days the puffed-up physician accompanied him, and they prodded and poked poor Willoughby as if he were a tailor’s mannequin.
Even darker hours came and went. Hours when Rollo knelt on the hard floor next to the bed, clasped his hand in Willoughby’s, and bent his head in silent prayer.
Hours when the next world lusted for his twin’s thin broken body like a lovelorn youth lusting for his first kiss.
Nearly snared him too. Dank, yellow pus seeped from the wound, and many a night, Rollo clung to Papa, counting each and every one of his brother’s tortured, shallow breaths. Yet Willoughby held on.
“There is no room for doubt, Rollo,” asserted Papa when he tearfully voiced his fears.
“Not in this bedchamber. I shan’t allow it.
” He’d barely left the bedside either, his long, bony fingers twisted around his pearls, his striking features tense and drawn.
“Willoughby will be fine. He is strong. The doctors say he will recover.”
“I should never have let him jump. I knew it was too dangerous. Should have insisted harder.”
“He’s a daredevil on horseback. There’s no stopping him.” Papa’s pearls twisted into a tighter knot. “And he will be again. You’ll see.”
And so it went on, whilst outside the sick chamber, the rains came down, the wind blew, and the storms mocked them, reminding them of their infinite power. More than anything, Rollo wished he had Fitz by his side.
*
“FRIGHTFUL WEATHER WE’RE having,” commented Kit from behind his newspaper.
Papa had coaxed Rollo to join them for breakfast with a promise that Pritchard would not move from Willoughby’s side until Rollo returned. Miserably, he pushed the food around his plate as Papa and Kit attempted a semblance of normality.
“The water-logged roads between here and Winchester are treacherous,” Kit continued. He tapped on a page, shaking his head. “Impassable for over a week. It says here that a mail coach driver has been seriously injured and one of the horses succumbed.”
“Gosh, somebody must have penned some truly atrocious missives,” Rollo’s father murmured. “Even Willoughby’s poems don’t directly kill.”
Kit lowered the newspaper, his lips twitching. “The rear axle broke going over the flooded bridge at Hempton. The chap took a blow to the head when the horses bolted. The remnants of the coach and its contents were last seen floating towards Guildford. Terrible business.”
“Quite,” agreed Papa, nibbling on a slice of buttered toast. “Reminding us we should count our blessings, however meagre they may feel at the moment.”
White-faced, Rollo pushed his coddled eggs to one side. Willoughby’s fever had broken in the early hours. For the first time in over a sennight, he’d seemed lucid when he briefly woke and asked for a glass of cold water.
“May I be excused, Papa?” Rollo asked. “Cook has made a mild chicken broth, and I would like to feed it to Willoughby myself if he is able to stomach it.”
“As long as you let me hug you first, my darling.” Dabbing his mouth, Papa gave him a weary smile. Tiredness etched his usually flawless skin. Willoughby’s near-death experience had taken its toll on all of them. As Rollo sank into him, for the millionth time he tried not to cry.
“He’s going to live, my darling, and everything will return to normal. You’ll see. I will not allow it any other way.”
*
“WHAT DAY IS it, Rolly?”
“Tuesday, my love,” answered Rollo. “And if you’re very good and swallow five more mouthfuls, I’ll even tell you which month.”
Attempting to shift in the bed, Willoughby groaned. “It hurts so much, Rolly. Everywhere. I want to close my eyes again and do nothing but sleep until I feel better.”
“You’ve been employing that strategy remarkably well.”
Obediently, Willoughby opened his mouth for the spoon. “I’ve been out of it quite some time, haven’t I?”
“A sennight,” Rollo agreed. “Give or take.”
“My last memory is grass, bramble, stars, and then blackness.” Willoughby huffed a dry laugh, then winced. “I was an idiot, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, but you weren’t to know that the loudest thunderclap the heavens have ever cobbled together would choose to unleash its demonic powers over Rossingley at the precise moment you took your jump.”
“Is Papa dreadfully cross?”
“Dreadfully,” teased Rollo. “As soon as you are well enough, he will have you writing out one hundred times: I must not lead my trusting and impressionable younger twin into trouble. I must not lead my trusting and impressionable younger twin into trouble.”
“That was the first time in our entire history,” scoffed Willoughby. “And you know it.”
Rollo adjusted the pillows behind his back. “Of course he’s not cross. He’s hardly slept with worry about you. None of us have.”
“You do look awful,” his brother remarked.
“Thank you, you are too kind. But a damned sight better than you. For a moment there, I was in line to be the next earl, and frankly, I don’t have the time or the patience for it.”
He kissed Willoughby’s forehead. “Ugh. Your poor skin is terribly dry. I must find a salve.”
Willoughby rolled his eyes. Rollo fed him more broth. “How is Bunty? She hasn’t been punished, has she?” His eyes darkened. “Or injured?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. She’s tough as iron. And being treated like the pampered queen she is. Though she’s missing your ministrations. Kit and I are poor substitutes.”
“You have to kiss her nose twice every evening and treat her to half a carrot chopped into batons, otherwise she won’t settle. And if that doesn’t work, you must stroke the soft tufty bit between her ears and sing her a lullaby.”
“Do I look like the sort of chap who’d sing lullay, mine liking, my dear heart, mine sweeting to a damned nag?”
Rollo had finally got his hands on his papa’s chartreuse banyan, and he wore it today, paired with a delicate lace neckerchief. Willoughby regarded him solemnly.
“Don’t answer that, Willoughby.”
*
WILLOUGHBY’S CONDITION IMPROVED in leaps and bounds over the next two weeks.
As did his ability to direct orders from his sickbed, a sure sign he was on the mend.
Kinglike, he demanded his pillows be plumped, then flattened, lowered then raised.
Broth was too hot or too cold, the window too draughty when open, the air too close when shut.
If Rollo wasn’t such a sweetheart and so relieved his brother was still sufficiently alive to bark orders, he might have snapped a few of his own in return.
“Rolly?” his twin asked weakly after Rollo’s attempts to comb and tame his brother’s knotted locks had almost resulted in fisticuffs, “Why are you still here?”
“That’s a jolly good question,” he answered sourly. For the third time that hour, he refreshed Willoughby’s water, too warm the first two times, apparently. “Would you like Pritchard in my stead? Or Dobson?”
“God, no. It’s…it’s…” Willoughby’s brows knitted together. “But don’t you have a decrepit old lover to visit?”
“If you’re referring to my darling virile Fitz, then yes. And I miss him dreadfully. But I also have a sick brother. Fitz will understand—we have the remainder of our lives together.”
“Do you?” Willoughby sounded incredulous. “It might be churlish of me to point this out, but as I’m ill, I can be excused anything. So I’ll go ahead and say it anyhow.”
He sipped at his water. “You and Papa both encouraged me not to pledge my troth to Lavinia. Mostly because her father is an inveterate gambler, but also on the grounds that I was too young to throw in my lot with the first chit to catch my eye. Does that argument not apply to you too?”
“Fitz is not my first, as you damn well know.”
“Yes, but cricket masters and stable boys aside, Fitz is the first for whom you have declared a tendre. Do you want to be tied to a…another person when we go up for the season? Or, indeed, for several years to come?”
“We shall hardly be parading our amour arm-in-arm at one of Lady Butterworth’s soirées, Willoughby. I’m afraid that for chaps like me, discretion is a hard and fast rule.”
“That isn’t really the answer to my question, is it?
Surely, you’ve had your fun with him, but perhaps you, too, could move on.
There are plenty of other chaps like you, aren’t there?
” Willoughby hesitated. “What’s so special about this one?
You could find someone younger perhaps. And more… straightforward?”
“Dull, you mean?” For a moment, Rollo pictured himself sitting beside the fireplace, drinking tea with a faceless but impeccably dressed chap opposite, discussing the politics of the day. Not a toy soldier or brandy decanter in sight. “No thanks.”
Nonetheless, his brother did have a point. Willoughby’s illness had afforded Rollo many hours to ponder the nature of love and loss. Life in general, in fact. And whilst Fitz’s absence had taught Rollo that they could live apart perfectly well, it had also taught him he didn’t want to.
“Papa says that sometimes in life, one feels as if one is in freefall,” Rollo began. “As if one has misstepped and hurtled off a ledge. He was referring to some of the unexpected, unavoidable griefs we all face, often without warning. Your terrible accident, for instance.”
“And our poor mama’s demise,” agreed Willoughby, his face sombre. “I have heard him say it.”
“Yes. He was horribly lonely afterwards, I believe, until he found Charles. And then he fell in love with Kit. But even when one finds a person that one is prepared to love for years and years, as I intend to love Fitz—as Papa loves Kit—these dreadful events will still occur. Such as your accident.”
“Tragedy, illness, and other various horrors are simply the unavoidable consequences of being alive,” observed Willoughby grimly. “Even if one is never idiotic enough to jump a hedge in a raging thunderstorm.”
“Yes,” Rollo agreed. “But with Fitz, I imagine I shall survive them all. We shall fall from the ledge hand in hand. And that’s all there is to it, really.”