Safe in his arms, the young girl pressed her face into his coat. He put a protective arm around her shaking shoulders.
‘You’re safe now, Matilda,’ he said, and turned Pharaoh back to the mounting block where he let Matilda down. She sat down on the block and buried her head in her hands. Isabel pulled the sobbing child towards her and held her close, making hushing sounds. Sebastian watched her, seeing not the child but the woman who should have been a mother.
Now the danger had passed, a familiar stabbing catch in the wound and, more worryingly, the warm stickiness of blood on his skin reminded Sebastian that the exercise had been foolish. Making sure he had the animal positioned so that he could dismount on the offside to the bystanders, he slid off, grimacing in pain under the pretence of adjusting the stirrup.
He thanked Thompson, who had taken the reins. Isabel looked up from Matilda, and he inclined his head. Without another word he walked out of the stable yard, only his stiff back and tight mouth betraying the fact that each footstep sent shafts of fire jarring through his body.
He made it to his bedchamber without a break in his stride. Once there, he looked around for a chair, but the elegant silk-covered seats and oriental rugs did not invite the risk of a bloodstain. Finding nothing suitable, he rang for Bennet and sat on the windowsill.
He got no sympathy from his corporal.
‘What were you thinking, sir?’ Bennet chided, removing the ruined jacket and bloodstained shirt. ‘That exit wound is barely scabbed, and you’ve gone and broken it open again. Sorry, sir, I’m going to say it: you’re an idiot.’
‘I should have you whipped for your impudence,’ Sebastian said between gritted teeth.If I didn’t happen to agree with you.‘Just patch me up.’
‘Patch you up so you can go off careening around on ’orsesagain? I don’t think so. You’re going back to your bed,’ Bennet said in a voice that brooked no argument.
As Isabel ascended the stairs,she passed Pierce. The old man carried a pile of clothing and was muttering to himself as he stomped past, barely acknowledging her. She caught the words ‘ruined’ and ‘never would’ve happened in the old lord’s day’.
She put a hand on his arm to waylay him. ‘Whatever’s the matter, Pierce?’
‘It’s his lordship,’ Pierce said. ‘Only gone and ruined a perfectly good set of linens. Not to mention his new jacket. I’ve no idea how I’m going to get the blood out.’
‘Blood?’
Pierce indicated the shirt. The red-brown stain on the back of the new linen told its own story.
‘Soak it in cold water,’ Isabel suggested. Gathering up her skirt, she hastened down the corridor to Sebastian’s room.
She found him sitting in a large, winged chair wearing a pair of loose trousers, a clean shirt and a loose green brocade banyan that she recognised as one of Anthony’s. Underneath the shirt, she could see the tell-tale ridge of heavy bandaging. He had placed his slippered feet on a stool and had his nose in a book. He looked up as she entered.
‘Don’t stand!’ she said as he reached for the arms of the chair to haul himself up.
As he subsided back into the chair with a grimace, she opened her mouth, but something flashed in his eye and she thought better of it.
‘My dear Lady Somerton, if you’re here to practice your schoolroom manners and lecture me on the foolishness of riding horses when I am barely out of my sick bed, spare yourself,’ he said with a rueful smile. ‘I have been lectured by Bennet and disapproved of by Pierce.’
Relief sharpened her tongue. ‘I am naturally concerned for your health, my lord. It would be most inconvenient if you were to die on me now.’
She tempered the words with a smile as he shut the book with a thump.
‘I assure you, Lady Somerton, I have no intention of dying.’
‘I’m relieved to hear that.’
She wanted to tell him what a remarkable thing he had done, but something in his demeanour discouraged discussion of what had occurred in the stable yard.
He held up the book he had been reading. ‘Tell me, are all the books in the library like this?’
‘Like what?’
He flicked the pages. ‘Uncut.’
Isabel took the book from him. John Milton’sParadise Lost, exquisitely bound in Moroccan leather and embossed with the Somerton coat of arms, its uncut pages smelt as if they had come straight from the printer. A letter opener sat on the table next to Sebastian’s chair, along with a decanter of whisky and a glass.
She handed it back to him. ‘Your grandfather purchased the library. The books were for show, not for reading.’
He opened it to the page he had been reading and, without looking up at her, said, ‘Please excuse me from joining you for dinner. I am under orders from Bennet that I am not to set one foot outside this room.’
