Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Hugo was beginning to lose hope that he would find Evelyn, as he trotted through the forest, squinting at every movement that caught his eye. Maybe she had returned to the manor of her own accord. He prayed that was true, but there was an uneasiness in his chest that he could not quieten.
If she is not there, what then? He expelled a tense breath. I shall have to organize a search party.
It was a better use of horses and dogs, but he did not want it to come to that.
Ideally, he would return to the manor and find her sipping tea in the drawing room, quite well and unharmed.
It would take a herculean effort not to embrace her out of sheer relief, but he would do his best to restrain the impulse.
“Evelyn!” he yelled. “Evelyn, where are you?”
His ears pricked at the faint sound of a voice replying, “Over here!”
He turned his horse in the direction of the noise and shouted at her again, following the soft echo of her voice until, at last, he saw her. She sat on a rock in the shade of a willow at the edge of a fast-moving stream, where her horse was enjoying a drink.
“You?” she gasped, staring at him. “Why were you shouting for me?”
He led his horse through the stream until he was on her side, and slid down from the saddle. Even now, it took every shred of his willpower not to go to her and pull her into his arms, holding her in gratitude that she was all right.
“No one knew where you were,” he replied, moving closer to her.
She stood up, dusting off the seat of her skirts. “The mare was too slow to keep up, so we decided to just take a leisurely ride through the woods instead. We were having a lovely time, in truth.”
Until you arrived… He heard the part of the sentence that she did not say.
“You might have told someone,” Hugo said, his tone harsher than he had meant it to be.
“Who? There was no one around. Like I said, we were too slow to keep up,” she shot back, edging toward the mare in question, putting the animal between herself and him.
“Why do you keep doing that?”
“What?”
He ran an exasperated hand through his hair. “Avoiding me. You have not even looked at me since we parted ways the other day.”
It had been two days since her confession in the study.
Since then, every room he entered, she left.
Every time he glanced at her during meals, she would look anywhere but at him.
When she saw him in the hallways, she turned and walked in the opposite direction, using the manor’s vast size against him.
Evelyn shook her head, stroking the mare’s nose instead of answering him.
“Tell me,” he urged. “Have I done something to upset you? Is it because I took you into that room? Is it an apology you want?”
“An apology would be a start,” she said quietly. “But it will not fix the problem.”
He moved to the water’s edge and stepped in, so that he could see her better. “What problem?”
“You, Your Grace. I keep… breaking the rules because of you!” she blurted out, her eyes shining with tears that he could not understand.
“I should have departed that study the moment you pulled me in there, but I did not. I cannot risk my reputation, Your Grace, and I… I keep getting caught up in your careless behavior. Well, no longer. I think it would be best if we avoid one another for the rest of the week… and, indeed, beyond.”
“Is this because of your betrothed?” he asked bluntly, the word like poison in his mouth.
Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open, and he waited for the explanation that had been haunting him through the woods.
“No, Your Grace, it is not because of him,” she said in a rush, as she scrambled up into the saddle.
“It is, as I just said, because of you and your… obliviousness. You think you can do as you please and no harm will befall you, and while that might be true, I would urge you to consider the people who are not protected by title, status, popularity, and the gift of being born a gentleman.”
With a click of her tongue, she rode through the stream, water splashing, and seemed intent on riding away from Hugo as fast as the mare would permit.
Oh no, you do not get to blame me and leave…
He jumped up into the saddle of his own horse and took off after her, certain that his gelding would be able to catch up with ease.
But as he gave chase, she made the mistake of twisting around to look at him, her mouth opening to shout at him.
But before a word could leave her lips, a low-hanging branch caught her squarely in the chest…
and she went flying, sailing backward through the air, where she landed with a thud in a spongy patch of moss.
“Evelyn!” he yelled, loud enough that all of the county probably heard him.
Sunlight glanced through the trees, the sky the most perfect shade of blue, as Evelyn lay there in a daze.
She blinked the blurriness from her eyes and gulped in breath, the wind knocked out of her.
There was pain, though she could not quite decipher where; her whole-body aching with the impact.
Although she had had the good fortune to land in a mossy patch of earth, softening her fall.
“Evelyn? Evelyn, are you well?” A figure skidded to his knees at her side, a warm hand sliding underneath her neck.
Worried blue eyes, rather like that perfect sky, gazed down at her.
“Evelyn?” His other hand grasped hers. “Evelyn, are you hurt? Did you hit your head? Can you see me?”
Clarity came back to her in a rush, the fog lifting from her dazed mind, suddenly very aware of that warm, rough hand under her neck and the grip of his other hand holding hers with an urgency that disarmed her.
She struggled to sit up, pulling her hand from his. “You should not touch me, Your Grace.”
His touch lingered on the back of her neck, forcing her to hurry in her attempt to stand, to get away from that gentle contact.
Putting weight on her right foot, a sharp pain shot all the way up from her ankle to her knee, and downed her once more.
She grimaced as a harsh breath hissed through her teeth, her fingertips pulling up the hem of her skirt to see the damage.
Hugo was there again, kneeling by her, his hands reaching for her ankle. She knew she should protest, but the shock held her silent as his eyes intently surveyed her for injuries.
“Does this hurt?” he asked, extending her leg forward slightly, taking all of the weight upon his surprisingly capable hands.
She gasped. “Yes.”
“And this?” He turned her foot to the right and then to the left, as if he knew what he was doing.
She pulled a face, cursing herself for turning back when she did, annoyed that she had not been looking where she was going. “Yes.”
“Badly?”
“It is… bearable,” she replied.
“Is it truly bearable or are you pretending to be brave?”
She squinted at him, her ankle throbbing as if there were a hot coal within the bone. “If I was pretending to be brave, I would be on my feet, limping along and insisting I was quite all right.”
It defied her understanding, but whenever she was around him, it was as if she was not herself…
or perhaps more herself than she had ever dared to be in front of anyone else.
She could not imagine speaking like that to her brothers or her father, or some other gentleman of the ton.
So what was it about Hugo, in particular, that shattered all of the artifice, the restraint, and the forced politeness that she reserved for everyone else?
I suppose it began at the opera house… Circumstances regarding Selina had made it necessary for her to be blunt and forthright, and it seemed she could not revert back to how she was expected to behave. Not with him, at least.
“Goodness, you are even grumpier when you are injured,” Hugo remarked with a smile.
“I am not grumpy; I am… frustrated that whenever there seems to be trouble, you are right there,” she replied, her breath catching as his hand gently closed around her ankle, his fingertips pressing the tender spots.
“With respect, I thought you were lost in the woods,” he said, his gaze focused on her injury. “I was coming to your rescue. If you had not ridden off like the impetuous woman that you are, you would not have been struck by that branch and you would not be injured right now.”
“Impetuous? Me?” She barked a laugh. This gentleman did not know her at all if he thought that was a description that matched her. Why, she was the very opposite of impetuous… though she could somewhat understand why he would think that.
His gaze flitted to meet hers, and she looked away quickly, her cheeks flaring with sudden heat.
“You really should not be touching me,” she said thickly. “Only a physician should do that.”
“There is no physician here, and it is starting to swell,” he replied, her heart racing as he gently placed her foot on the mossy ground and began to peel off his riding jacket.
Out of the corner of her eye, she simply could not stop staring, noting the pleasant shape of his shoulders and the powerful contours of his arms beneath his shirt. Arms that she soon gained a closer view of as he abruptly ripped the material, tearing the sleeve right off at the elbow.
“What are you doing?” she gasped, her throat tightening at the sight of a corded forearm, freckled and gilded by the sun. It did not take much time for her mind to better imagine the muscle of his upper arm, now that she had seen the forearm.
Goodness…
“Getting ahead of the swelling and bruising,” he replied, as if he had done this a thousand times.
“And to give your ankle the support it evidently knees. We would not want you to stumble on a weak ankle, now, would we? Otherwise, a gentleman might think that you are weak at the knees instead, and misunderstand.”