Her whole body hurt, and her heart hurt more still. Curling up, she buried her face in her knees and sobbed, trapped back in a nightmare from which, for a while, she thought she had escaped.
At some great distance, Frances heard other voices, Beatrice, Lord Scovell and perhaps some of the outdoor staff.
“Take Lord Mulford to the boundary wall and throw him back on to his own property,” Frances heard her father say to some unnamed retainers. “If he trespasses on our land again, I shall take a shotgun to him.”
Oswald Keeton was presumably still in no condition to resist but Frances still felt a sense of relief once he was gone. She also felt a sense of reassurance from the fact that Ambrose had remained kneeling beside her, even if he did not speak and she was afraid to touch him.
Her mind feeling as weak as her legs, Frances did not fully recall the journey back to Scovell Hall although she had vague memories of Beatrice helping her to stand and descend the hill. She knew too that she had been lifted onto a horse which Ambrose led while Lord Scovell walked beside her.
Lady Scovell came running to meet them in the hallway and seeing the intense concern and distress on her mother’s face, Frances finally fainted away completely. When she came around, she was in her old bedroom upstairs and Beatrice was sitting there in a chair beside the bed, reading a book.
“Beatrice?” Frances said and saw the relief on her sister’s face as she closed her book and moved to join Frances on the bed. “What happened downstairs? How long have I been here? I remember you all bringing me back from the folly but nothing after that.”
“You fainted in the hallway. Ambrose carried you upstairs and Mother and I put you to bed about four hours ago. I’ve been sitting with you most of the morning.”
Frances nodded, sighed and closed her eyes.
“Thank you.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired, sore, not very certain of anything…But I don’t know what to do, Beatrice.”
“You don’t have to do anything but rest,” Beatrice answered very practically. “The physician will be coming out this afternoon and I doubt Mother will let you out of bed for a day or two.”
Again, Frances nodded, relief filling her veins. It was good not to have any choice about resting. Still, that was not what she had meant.
“I can’t go back to Westall Park, not now,” she blurted out.
“Not for at least a few days,” agreed her sister.
“Maybe not at all,” Frances clarified and saw the unhappiness on Beatrice’s face.
“What about Ambrose?” she asked. “Do you really not want to go back to him?”
The question made her heart ache. Frances wanted more than anything to be with Ambrose and to have everything exactly the same again as it had been before the poisonous interference of Annabelle Sinclair and Oswald Keeton. But she could not.
“Even if I want to go back, even if I need to go back, for Winnie’s sake, I am not sure I can. It does not matter what I want,” answered Frances dully. “Is Ambrose still here?”
“He is downstairs with Mother and Father,” confirmed Beatrice. “They wanted him to go home and come back tomorrow, but he said he would not go unless you told him to.”
Frances trembled at this but forced her voice to steadiness.
“Would you tell him that I said he should go back to Westall Park? I will write to him.”
“Are you sure, Frances?” Beatrice asked, getting to her feet. “Would you not prefer to tell him yourself?”
Frances shook her head, knowing the effect her husband’s body had on hers and how hard it would be to think under such an influence. With the added appreciation of Ambrose’s rescue of Frances from Oswald Keeton’s clutches, there was no hope for clear thinking at all.
Lady Scovell sat with Frances as she picked at luncheon in bed and the physician visited mid-afternoon, prescribing only rest and a calm atmosphere to speed her recovery. From some of the physician’s questions, Frances gathered that Mr. Smith was trying to assess whether she was with child, which she supposed was only natural when a young married woman fainted.
She answered him honestly regarding her last monthly bleeding, and when she had last shared her husband’s bed. Then, she had asked him outright if pregnancy was a possibility. Mr. Smith had shrugged and looked at her with sympathy, assuming that it was something she was actively hoping for.
“Probably not yet, but I am sure it will happen for you soon, Your Grace,” he assured her.
Frances had only nodded. The thought of bringing a child into her present emotional mess was actually terrible, even if part of her now yearned for it, in a way she had never experienced before Ambrose had touched her.
In between these brief encounters with the physician and her family, Frances slept, her body and mind both depleted by the rigors of recent days. She felt as though she could sleep for a week and still not want to rise.
