CHAPTER FOUR
Soft sounds of distant activity chased away the blurred remnants of fantastic dreams. The click of a door latch, followed by a silken rustle of skirts, brought Jack’s eyes to half mast. He smiled sleepily at the anxious-looking woman bending over the bed.
“Good morning, Mama.”
·A relieved smile animated a rosy-cheeked face of unlined prettiness at odds with its frame of silver-hued curls. “At last you look like yourself again, my dear one. How is your headache?”
“At the moment I am scarcely aware of any ache at all.”
“Thank heavens! You gave us such a fright, Jack, arriving here half-conscious and moaning in pain. It was madness to leave a sickbed against the doctor’s orders, and sheer insanity to undertake a jouncing journey in that condition!”
“It was only a couple of miles, and I feared you would be worried sick about me, Mama. Anyway, there is no harm done. A good night’s sleep has set me to rights again. Why are you looking at me like that?” Jack added, eyeing his mother’s dropped jaw uneasily.
“You have been at Belfort for three nights, Jack, and until yesterday the doctor feared that the exposure to the storm on the night of the accident might result in an inflammation of the lungs in addition to the head injury. You were delirious much of the time at first and feverish. Do you not recall waking and repeatedly calling out for an angel to give you a drink? Huckston had all he could do to restrain you from leaving your bed to search for this angel.”
Jack wondered if he was looking as slack-jawed as his mother had a moment before as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing. “I … I believe I have a vague recollection of seeing Huckston here … and of you placing cold cloths on my head.”
Lady Hastings nodded. “I sat with you in the daytime, and Huckston took over at night so I could get some sleep.”
“Indeed I am very sorry to have worried you, Mama, and caused a commotion in my godmother’s house, but I promise you I am feeling quite myself this morning — it is morning?
” he asked, breaking off to scan the patch of blue sky visible through the windows opposite his bed.
“Small wonder I feel empty to my toes,” he went on, when his mother nodded.
“That is easily remedied. I shall personally supervise the preparation of an enormous breakfast, everything you most like to help you regain your strength. All the servants have been wonderfully accommodating these past days.” Lady Hastings squeezed her son’s hand and rose from her chair on the words, looking a question when Jack kept her fingers imprisoned in his.
“Mama, since I have been in no fit condition to observe the proprieties, I hope you have written to Mrs. Marsh to thank her for opening her home to a stranger in distress?”
Lady Hastings looked rather embarrassed as she said hastily, “I know I have been remiss in not yet doing so, my dear, but I simply could not bring myself to write while your condition was in doubt. I shall send off a note this very morning expressing my gratitude for Mrs. Marsh’s kindness.
” She paused for a second as her son smiled and released her hand, then added casually, “Your godmother says the Marsh family is quite well respected in the area, and that Mrs. Marsh is accorded to be rather a well-looking woman … for her age.”
“That is damning with faint praise, Mama,” Jack said with a grin. “Annabelle Marsh is quite beautiful, as you will discover for yourself when we call at Wellstead Farm to tender our gratitude in person.”
“Oh — well, I am sure I should enjoy that excessively, my dear,” Lady Hastings said hastily, blinking her eyes, “if I had not already told Catherine that we will be leaving Belfort as soon as you are strong enough to travel. I feel I have trespassed on her hospitality beyond what is agreeable. It is so fatiguing to have guests outstay their welcome —”
“Outstay — Mama, guests are the breath of life to my godmother! And your company must always be the most pleasing to her, so close as you two have been over the years.”
“In general I would not disagree with you, but in this instance I believe Catherine may have formed the intention of paying a visit herself in the near future,” Lady Hastings rebutted.
“Naturally she would not wish us to depart before you are quite recovered; in fact, I know she will insist on seeing you in prime twig again — as your father would have put it — before she will hear of us leaving. You must concentrate on regaining your strength, starting with the breakfast I shall order.”
Jack watched his mother whisk herself out of the door before sinking back into the pillows, overtaken by bewilderment and unease.
Three days! Evidently he’d occupied this bed in his godmother’s house for three nights and two full days with only the haziest recollection of anything that had transpired after the agonisingly painful drive to Belfort from Wellstead Farm.
Since the accident during the storm, his life seemed to be racing ahead at breakneck speed and without any active participation on his part.
He’d met a lovely girl and spent ninety-five per cent of their brief acquaintance sleeping, after which, true to his nickname once again, he’d obeyed an idiotic impulse and blurted out a marriage proposal.
When he’d compounded the idiocy by pressing for a reply, she’d dismissed his offer with the tolerant expression of an adult toward a child’s foolishness.
He should be grateful for Miss Marsh’s forbearance.
She might have fled the room in alarm as from a dangerous madman or — worst of all — accepted the offer and enjoyed his subsequent efforts to extricate himself from the trap of his own devising with his honour and self-respect intact.
He would have had to plead to a diminished capacity to exercise proper judgment by virtue of the concussion the doctor had diagnosed.
Yes indeed, he should be relieved and grateful for the disinterested kindness that had spared him future embarrassment.
Enlightened self-interest had never been Jack’s guiding principle, however.
He admitted that her casual dismissal still irrationally rankled now that he was — arguably — in full possession of his senses once more.
His mother’s ill-disguised reluctance to call at Wellstead Farm suggested that she recognised a social distance between themselves and the Marsh family.
Prudence recommended that the wisest course was to add his written thanks to his parent’s, augmented perhaps with an unexceptionable token of his appreciation in the form of flowers or fruit, and then move on with his life.
Granted that prudence and wisdom had not been ruling forces in the conduct of his life to date, but surely he was capable of aspiring to these excellent qualities in future.
Ennobled by good intentions, Jack settled back into his nest of pillows to await the arrival of nourishment and wisdom.
A fortnight later, after a series of internal debates that had commenced in his godmother’s luxurious guest chamber in Hertfordshire, moved into Northamptonshire as he escorted his mother home to Rosehaven and continued to the present moment, Lord Hastings approached Wellstead Farm for the second time, thankfully under vastly improved conditions from his first visit.
He could not have ordered up a more perfect example of an early spring day, he mused, trotting along the road under a pure azure sky unmarred save by one cotton-puff cloud on the horizon.
He took a deep appreciative breath of air made aromatic by overnight showers and studied the earthen tapestry all around him with sensual pleasure, noting the increase in fuzzy green growth of all description.
His eyes lingered with delight on a small clump of celandines, those shiny yellow harbingers of spring, and took note of the swelling buds on a hazel tree in the field behind the hedgerow and furry pussy willow branches moving in the slight breeze.
Jack was cognisant of feeling intensely alive physically, no doubt in response to the eternal promise of spring as embodied in this verdant corner of the world.
His mental state was less easily categorised or accounted for, he realised unwillingly.
When he’d bidden his mother goodbye, he’d still been of two minds about calling at Wellstead Farm on his way to London.
His doting parent’s lack of enthusiasm for meeting the Marsh ladies had not escaped his attention.
It was perfectly comprehensible, of course.
Few parents would welcome an unequal connection — not that there was any question of that!
This would be a courtesy call, no more nor less.
The bump on the head had left him in a highly suggestible state, for want of a more clinical term.
There had been an otherworldly aspect to the events of that night as he had drifted in and out of consciousness.
Women and angels had become confused and merged into one image that had impressed him forcefully in his weakened state.
Now that he was restored to his normal self, it was odds on that he’d find the Marsh ladies pleasant but quite ordinary countrywomen with whom he’d likely have little in common.
Once he’d convinced himself he simply owed it to his consequence not to appear backward in personally acknowledging a kindness, Jack had sent Huckston and his valet on ahead with the carriage and curricle while he took advantage of the lovely day to exercise his favourite mount, the big grey gelding whose stamina never flagged, no matter the terrain.
The small bag attached to Atlas’ saddle contained a change of linen in the event he decided not to push on to town today after all.
It was not beyond imagining that Mrs. Marsh might ask him to dine with them.