Mistress of the Hunt (17 page)

“What are you talking about?” demanded Jessalyn. “Why did they have to carry Lord Rochford into the house, and why was it into
this
house?”

“Yes, please, and how badly is he hurt?” begged Lucinda, her eyes spilling over with tears.

“Mercy me, Philippa, answer the girl before she floods the place,” said Miss Pellerin with acerbity. “I never saw such a one for watering up.”

“Lucinda, your brother will be perfectly all right,” Philippa said bracingly. “He took a tumble and bumped his head. All the commotion comes about merely because his friends were by to see him do it and cannot resist the opportunity to roast him. Such is the way with gentlemen, as you will learn. They are at this moment making merry in the yellow drawing room, whilst Dr. Livesey attempts to make Rochford comfortable in the blue damask bedchamber.”

“I want to see him,” said Lucinda woefully.

“Not just now,” Philippa told her, wincing at the thought of what Rochford’s reaction must be to his sister’s weeping presence at his bedside. “You will do better to wait until he is feeling more the thing. However,” she added quickly when Lucinda sniffled, about to give way entirely to her tears, “since he will very likely remain here overnight if not longer, I am persuaded he would feel better to know you are under the same roof, so if you will oblige me by writing out a list of what you will require, I will send someone to carry it to Wyvern. We must tell your uncle and your companion what has occurred, after all.”

“But I thought Uncle Archibald had ridden out with them.” said Lucinda on a note of protest, ignoring the reference to the worthy dame whom Rochford had hired to bear her company at Wyvern.

Philippa smiled at her. “He may have done so. Not everyone was at hand when your brother had his accident. We had taken a different direction, so the riders were separated into two groups.”

“How very odd,” said Lucinda. “Was there not but one fox?”

“Yes, well, in any event,” said Philippa hastily when she saw her stepdaughter’s mouth opening to pursue this interesting topic, “you may stay here for as long as Rochford wishes you to do so, Lucinda. Merely instruct your maid to bring the things you will need.”

Bickerstaff entered the morning room just then to inform her that the doctor wished to speak with her.

“Thank you, I shall go down to him.”

“And how many extra covers do you anticipate for dinner, my lady?” asked the butler without a blink.

“Extra covers? Oh, good gracious, I hadn’t thought. Surely not all of them.” Pulling off her hat, she ran a slim hand through the disordered tresses, then shook her head with a rueful grimace. “Tell Cook she must manage, whatever happens, Bickerstaff. I haven’t the slightest intention of inviting any of them to remain, but I shouldn’t wish to wager that we won’t have company nonetheless.”

“No, my lady. If I might venture to say so, his lordship may well desire one or two of the gentlemen to share his meal with him.”

She nodded. “Keep a sharp ear to the ground, Bickerstaff. I shall depend upon you, and upon Mrs. Bickerstaff as well, to see that Cook does not fall into flat despair.”

With that, she hurried down the great stair and was thankful to find the doctor awaiting her in the stair hall. Sounds of revelry came from the drawing room, and she would not have liked to have to seek him out among the others.

“How is he, Doctor?” Her tone sounded anxious, even to her own ears, and she could not be surprised that the doctor felt compelled to speak to her with gentle sympathy.

“He’ll do, my lady,” he said, smiling kindly. “He’s very strong, you know, and if he hadn’t hit his head, I’d have said you might see the back of him and the rest of that lot by suppertime. But he is suffering from concussion, I believe, and if he isn’t already as sore as be-da—that is, as sore as he can be—he will be by morning. I don’t think he’s broken anything, although his shoulder is severely bruised and he may have cracked his clavicle—the collarbone, you know—and his ankle was badly twisted. I’ve left a paper of instructions on the table in the bedchamber for his man, for I know you will send for him. There’s nothing much to be done, barring giving him a drop of laudanum to help him sleep and putting cold compresses to the ankle.” He smiled more broadly. “I doubt you’ll get him to take the laudanum. Not if he knows it, in any event.”

She nodded sagely. “I take your meaning, sir. We’ll see that he gets the rest he needs. How soon will he be up and about?”

“Couple of days should do it. He oughtn’t to ride or to be banged about in a carriage until he can stand and move about without feeling dizzy, though, so if you can contrive to keep him still for two days at least, you will have done him a service.” He coughed delicately behind his hand. “Uh, he has expressed a strong desire to speak with you, by the by, which is why I’ve ordered that lot to stay out of the bedchamber for now. Afterward, you can let them in if you must, but don’t let them stay long. I don’t like concussion.”

Philippa had scarcely heard anything he said after the bit about Rochford’s wanting to speak to her, but she nodded and thanked him for his assistance. The doctor regarded her speculatively for a moment, then said gently, “There truly is no reason to fret, you know, Lady Philippa. He’ll be fit as a fiddle in no time at all, and you may send for me at any hour. My house is the second you come to on the Nottingham Road in Melton. Any of your local lads’ll know where to find me.”

“Yes, of course, Doctor,” Philippa said vaguely. “Won’t you have a glass of Madeira before you go?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

She watched him enter the drawing room and heard the surge of masculine voices that greeted him, then turned toward the back of the stair hall. A moment later she entered the blue damask bedchamber, hoping she looked more composed than she felt and wondering just how mussed her hair was.

Rochford was propped against a number of pillows. The bedclothes came only to his waist, but he was wearing a gray woolen dressing gown that she recognized as belonging to the late baron. His eyes were closed, but when he opened them as she shut the door behind her, Philippa swallowed uncomfortably and, for some odd reason, remembered her confrontation at Belvoir Castle with Jessalyn. She hadn’t felt like this, she thought unhappily, since before she had married.

Rather than let the silence grow, she said “Dr. Livesey said you wished to speak to me.”

“I do.” He straightened a little, wincing in the process. “I should like to say a good many things to you, my girl.”

She had seen the pain in his expression and experienced a flashing memory of the fear she had felt when she had seen him lying unconscious on the ground. That memory was followed by an increasing sense of guilt. Stepping a little closer to the bed, she said contritely, “I never meant anyone to be hurt, sir. We had become friends, I thought, and I was persuaded that you would not be really angry if I joined your hunt in progress. I meant to depart before the kill, you know, and no one would have thought anything more than that I had ridden in and out for a bit of a lark.”

“You never believed for a moment that I would approve of such an action,” he said so coldly that a chill raced up her spine, causing her to feel instant empathy for any subaltern who had chanced, during the course of Rochford’s military career, to incur his displeasure.

He waited now for a response, and she felt her dignity deserting her. “I … I was persuaded—”

“You persuaded yourself is what you mean to say, Philippa, and a damned idiotic thing it was to have done,” he said harshly. “Had you truly believed I should not object to such a course, you would, at the very least, have joined us at the meet, not midway through the first run. And certainly you would not have taken flight as you so stupidly did the moment you realized I had seen you.”

“I was frightened,” she said in a small voice that could be controlled only with effort. “You …you looked so fierce.”

“I was angry. I
am
angry, for a more ill-advised stunt I cannot imagine. You must have mush for brains, madam, or you would know that much yourself. You might have been killed or have brought harm to someone else, for you hadn’t the least notion of what you were doing. Have you even considered what might have happened if the fox had contrived to go to ground in whatever copse you chose for hiding? You’d have had the hounds rioting at least, and God only knows what else would have occurred. As it was, only luck prevented your mount from stumbling when he overran the hounds and headed the fox. Lord, what a mess that was! And riding as you did, without thought for line or obstacle, you might have been blinded in that bullfinch if your horse hadn’t found an opening. I won’t say what you deserve for this day’s work, my girl, but you may count yourself fortunate that I am not your father, for I should not then be satisfied with mere words, I promise you.”

He was not satisfied by so few words as these, of course, and continued in blistering form for some minutes longer, his accusations bleak and pointed, his opinions harsh and cutting. Fighting an overwhelming urge to burst into tears, Philippa listened meekly, having no wish to defend herself. She well knew that little though she liked what she was hearing, she deserved to hear every angry word. Indeed, her own guilt threatened to bring her more pain than any words he might choose to say, even though his temper caused him to say hurtful things, things that exaggerated the truth. Such things, she knew, were but the result of temper. Then, too, how it must gall his pride to know he had failed to take a jump that she had cleared easily.

Nonetheless, despite her continued self-reassurance that it was pain and temper causing him to hurl the angry words at her, by the time he was finished Philippa’s eyes were burning from unshed tears, and a lump had filled her throat, refusing to be swallowed. When he paused at last, she tried to speak, but the words would not come.

Clearly thinking she meant to defend herself, Rochford said sharply, “There is little you can say to your credit, I fear, for your actions were both foolhardy and inexcusable. ’Tis no wonder your stepdaughter misbehaves, madam, with you for her example. And my own sister—”

But Philippa heard no more, for with a gasp of hurt dismay and tears spilling down her cheeks at last, she whirled about and hurried from the room, pausing only to close the door to the dressing room behind her. By taking the service stairs, she avoided the morning room and was able to enter her bedchamber through her dressing room. There, by telling herself several more times that he had not meant the half of what he had said, that he had been speaking out of temper, she managed to calm herself at last and to sit in quiet reflection until Miss Pellerin came to find her to tell her that dinner would soon be served.

“Do we dine alone, ma’am, or in company?”

“Mr. Brummell and Lord Alvanley dine with his lordship,” Miss Pellerin said, regarding her narrowly, “but Bickerstaff has already served them in his lordship’s bedchamber and Mr. Brummell promised faithfully that they would not stay long afterward or wait upon ceremony with you. I assured him that you would not expect them to do so.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I do not believe I can cope with either of them tonight. Has his lordship’s man arrived?”

“Yes, and he has everything well in hand, for Bickerstaff set up a cot for him in the dressing room, you know. And Lucy’s maid has come, but not her companion, which is just as well, for I am persuaded we should neither of us know what to do with her. I put Lucy in with Jessalyn, thinking that was what you would like.”

“Yes, for aside from Edward’s bedchamber, there is no other suitable room downstairs, not that I think for a moment that Rochford would want her near him.”

Miss Pellerin cocked her head to one side. “Are you all right, Philippa?”

“Oh, yes.” Philippa managed a smile. “ ’Tis merely a crisis of the nerves, ma’am, for you must know that Rochford rang a rare peal over me. Not that one can blame him, of course, though he rather outdid himself in some of the more cutting things he said.”

Miss Pellerin nodded as though it was no more than she had expected to hear, but then she said gently, “If he lost his temper, my dear, he will be sorry for it. You will see.”

Philippa nodded, not believing her but able to think of nothing to say. After her dinner, she contrived to arrange a conference with Brooksby, the viscount’s able valet, in consequence of which a toddy ordered from the kitchen was augmented with a liberal dose from the bottle of laudanum left by Dr. Livesey. Thus did the viscount sleep soundly through the night, and the following morning when Philippa went, a little apprehensively, to visit his lordship and inquire how he did, she was greeted by a rueful smile and what could only be described as a wary look in his lordship’s gray eyes.

“I certainly gave my tongue full rein, didn’t I?” he said with a wry twist to his lips.

“As to that, I cannot say, sir,” she replied, smiling back at him quite naturally in her relief that he was not still angry with her, “but I must hope you have not thought of any worse accusations to fling at my head.”

“I haven’t.” He glanced down, then up at her again. “To be truthful, I cannot even recall all I said yesterday, but I am certain that I overrode the necessary, and if my temper led me to say anything of a particularly offensive nature, I hope you can forgive me.”

“Handsomely said, my lord, and I do not bear a grudge, so you may be easy. Have you everything you require?”

“I am bored to distraction and aching in every limb, if you would have the truth of the matter.”

She chuckled, well in charity with him again and glad to see that now his temper had run its course, he had regained his customary good humor. For the rest of that day she exerted herself to see that he was entertained, even going so far as to encourage the young ladies to take some of their lessons in his company, and when he laughed aloud at a tale related to them by Miss Pellerin, Philippa knew she had found the perfect medicine for what ailed him. That evening he insisted upon joining them in the library after supper and managed to do so without seeming to suffer unduly, although he leaned heavily on his valet’s arm and gritted his teeth each time his left foot touched the floor.