The Invalid
Florinda woke to blue.
Blue wallpaper. Blue bed hangings. Blue coverlet tucked up to her chin by someone who was decidedly not her.
She stared at the canopy above her head—also blue, with small embroidered flowers that blurred and sharpened as she blinked—and attempted to recall how she had come to be surrounded by so much unfortunate décor.
Her leg provided the answer. Loudly.
"Ah," she said to the ceiling. "That."
The pain was extraordinary—a deep, throbbing ache that seemed to emanate from somewhere below her knee and radiate outward in waves of increasingly creative agony.
She attempted to shift position and was rewarded with a spike so profound that she heard herself make a noise usually reserved for small animals caught in traps.
"You're awake. Excellent." A woman's voice, brisk and unsentimental. "Please don't move, my lady. Your leg is splinted, and the surgeon was quite firm about keeping it still."
Florinda turned her head—the only part of her that seemed willing to cooperate—and found a middle-aged woman in a housekeeper's dress rising from a chair by the window.
Mrs. Pritchard. She remembered the name from...
somewhere. A voice outside a door. A hand on her forehead.
The edges of memory were unhelpfully blurred.
"Where am I?"
"Carthedge Hall, my lady. The blue guest chamber." Mrs. Pritchard moved to the bedside with the air of a woman who had managed crises before and found them all tedious. "You've been unconscious for nearly two days. Do you remember what happened?"
Florinda closed her eyes and attempted to think through the fog of pain and what she suspected was a heroic quantity of laudanum.
She remembered the road. Dawn. Her mare shying at what had probably been a rabbit but might have been a shadow or the general malevolence of the universe.
The wall rushing toward her with vindictive speed.
And then—
Arms. Someone lifting her. A voice in her ear saying things she couldn't quite—
Frederick.
She opened her eyes with what she hoped was an appropriate lack of alarm. "I fell off my horse."
"You did, my lady. His Grace found you on the Ashbourne road.
Your leg was badly broken—compound fracture, the surgeon called it.
His Grace carried you here himself. Nearly two miles.
" Mrs. Pritchard's tone carried the particular disapproval of a woman whose employer had created a tremendous amount of extra work.
"The surgeon says you're fortunate to be alive.
You'd begun to grow cold from exposure. Another hour, and... "
She did not finish the sentence. She did not need to.
Florinda stared at the blue canopy and considered her situation with the detached horror of someone watching a carriage accident in which they happened to be the carriage.
She had fled the palace to avoid being married off. She had redirected her carriage to Ashbourne House to claim some small measure of independence. She had gone riding at dawn to prove to herself that she was a woman of action and self-determination.
And now she was lying in the blue guest chamber of the Duke of Edington's country estate, unable to move, wholly dependent on the hospitality of a man she had kissed in a stable nine years ago and his perfectly pleasant fiancée.
"Marvellous," she informed the canopy. "I appear to have wandered directly into the pages of a Gothic novel. Am I to expect sinister monks? A mysterious manuscript? Perhaps a crumbling abbey with suspicious sounds in the night?"
"My lady?"
"Nothing. I am merely congratulating the universe on its impeccable sense of timing." She turned her head back toward Mrs. Pritchard. "How long must I remain here?"
The housekeeper's face arranged itself into the particular grimace of someone about to deliver unwelcome news. "The surgeon says eight weeks before you can stand on the leg, my lady. Possibly longer. The bone was quite badly damaged."
"Eight weeks."
"At minimum. He's forbidden travel until then—says the jolting of a carriage could undo all his work and leave you with a permanent limp. Or worse."
Eight weeks. Two months. Sixty days of lying in this aggressively blue room, unable to walk, unable to leave, unable to do anything useful whatsoever.
Florinda had spent four years making herself indispensable—caring for children, managing household crises, being the sister who could be relied upon when catastrophe struck. And now she could not even get out of bed without assistance.
The irony was so perfectly awful that she almost laughed.
She did not laugh. Her leg hurt too much for laughing.
* * *
The surgeon arrived at midday—a Mr. Harding, who possessed impressive whiskers and a manner that suggested he considered all patients to be mildly inconvenient obstacles to his lunch.
"The bone is setting well," he announced after an examination that involved a great deal of prodding and caused Florinda to develop several vivid opinions about the medical profession, none of them printable.
"You're fortunate, Lady Florinda. Very fortunate.
When His Grace brought you in, you'd already begun showing signs of exposure. Another hour on that road..."
"Yes, I have been informed that I narrowly escaped death." Florinda kept her voice admirably level. "Several times. By several people. I am beginning to feel that I should write thank-you notes."
Mr. Harding did not appear to register the sarcasm. "His Grace is quite the hero. Carried you nearly two miles without stopping, by all accounts. Most men would have ridden for help and left you where you lay."
Florinda thought of arms around her. A voice saying her name. The strange, half-remembered rhythm of footsteps—steady, relentless, as though counted.
"Yes," she said. "Most men would have."
She was irritated to discover that her voice had gone soft. This was precisely the sort of weak-minded sentimentality she despised in Gothic heroines.
* * *
Edward and Ella arrived in the afternoon, sweeping into the blue guest chamber with the particular energy of people who had travelled a considerable distance to confirm that a family member was not, in fact, dead.
"You absolute terror," Ella said, bending to kiss Florinda's forehead while simultaneously examining her for signs of impending mortality. "I received Edward's message and very nearly had a fit. What were you doing on that road? You were supposed to be going to Margot's."
"I made a detour."
"A detour? To Ashbourne House? Florinda, Ashbourne House is in the opposite direction from Raventhorn. That is not a detour. That is a complete rebellion against the basic principles of geography."
"Yes, well." Florinda attempted to look dignified, which was difficult when one was lying flat on one's back with one's leg elevated on pillows and one's hair in what felt like a rat's nest. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Edward, who had been standing by the window with the look of a king who had been forcibly prevented from pacing, turned to face her. "The surgeon says you cannot be moved for eight weeks."
"I am aware."
"Which means you will be residing in the Duke of Edington's household. During his engagement party. As an unmarried woman."
"I am also aware of this."
"Are you?" His voice carried the particular weariness of a king who had spent too much time managing wayward sisters-in-law.
"I have already heard three separate comments about the romantic nature of rescue.
By the time you are well enough to leave, half the county will have invented a torrid love affair and the other half will be laying odds on the wedding date. "
"Then they shall be disappointed when I depart as a spinster with a limp.
" Florinda met his gaze with what dignity she could muster.
"I did not ask to fall off my horse, Edward.
I did not ask to be rescued. And I certainly did not ask to be trapped in a blue room for two months whilst the gossips of Hertfordshire compose fiction about my virtue. "
"The Duke behaved with perfect propriety," Edward admitted, after a pause that suggested he was conceding the point against his will. "He has not visited your chamber. He has maintained appropriate distance. I cannot fault his conduct."
"How reassuring that my near-death has been managed with appropriate decorum."
Ella made a noise that was either a cough or a suppressed laugh. "We'll send Margot to check on you in a few weeks. In the meantime, try not to scandalise the household by having opinions or reading inappropriate material."
"I make no promises regarding the reading material."
* * *
The visitor Florinda had not anticipated arrived near teatime.
Lady Penelope Ashworth was precisely as Florinda remembered from their few brief meetings in London: pretty in an understated way, with dark hair and gentle eyes and the kind of serene composure that made Florinda feel like a particularly dishevelled gust of wind.
She entered carrying a small basket and wearing a look of genuine concern.
"Lady Florinda." She set the basket on the bedside table. "I hope you will forgive the intrusion. I thought you might be in need of comforts."
Florinda regarded the woman who was engaged to marry the man who had carried her two miles with a shattered leg. The woman who had every reason to view Florinda as an unwelcome complication in her neatly arranged life.
Penelope smiled—a warm, uncomplicated smile that contained no hint of rivalry or suspicion.
"I brought laudanum," she said, "and Gothic novels. Mrs. Radcliffe's The Italian, specifically. I find there is nothing quite like reading about someone else's imprisonment in a sinister convent to make one feel better about one's own circumstances."
Against her will, Florinda felt her mouth curve upward.
"You brought me laudanum and Gothic novels?" She raised an eyebrow. "Do you want me recovered, Lady Penelope, or pleasantly unconscious for eight weeks?"