The Reluctant Countess (28 page)

“It is an onerous task you set me, madam,” Patrick said with a deep sigh. “Yet I believe I can manage until we are able to get you comfortable enough to ride solo.”

“Never!” Sophie declared.

“A challenge, my love? You have yourself a deal.”

“Ooh, look at that lovely meadow of wildflowers over there!”

Patrick eyed the flowers Sophie was pointing at and then the hill he had to climb to inspect the fence on the other side.

“I have to inspect a fence over that hill,” he said. “If I drop you here for a few minutes, will you be able to stay out of trouble and pick your flowers until I return?”

Sophie pinched his hand.

“That’s hardly sporting, and especially when I could simply drop you on your delectable fanny in that puddle of mud over there.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Sophie squealed as he moved closer.

“Another challenge, my love, tsk tsk, you really must learn that I never walk away from a challenge.”

He held her over the puddle for several seconds while she cursed him with several vile words and then he planted a loud kiss on her lips and lowered her gently to a clean patch of soft grass.

“I’ll be back soon and then I’m taking you to my favorite place. It has a soft bed of grass,” he added, waggling his eyebrows.

“You may have to find me first,” Sophie said with a grin.

He rode away to the sound of her laughter and had never felt happier.

It did not take Patrick long to reach the fence and he quickly noted several places where repairs were needed. Making mental notes, he started back to Sophie. When he arrived in the meadow, he could see no sign of her.

“I’ll find you, Sophie!” he said, dismounting. After several minutes of searching, he felt his first trickle of unease. There weren’t actually that many places a person could hide.

“Where are you, Sophie?” Patrick whispered, as he once again rode back along the same path they had taken.

“Sophie!” he roared as panic started to set in and it was then he heard the sound of a gun discharging.

“Patrick!”

He whipped his head to the right and saw her bursting out of a clump of bushes. “What the hell?” he said, urging Barnaby into a gallop. Sophie was running strangely, she was holding her left side and it was then he saw the blood, and as he drew nearer, he heard what she was saying.

“Don’t stop, bullets!” Sophie gasped. Holding out her arm, she closed her eyes and waited.

Without breaking stride, Patrick caught Sophie under the arms and swung her up before him, turned Barnaby with his knees, and galloped back to the stables. The distance was not great, but to Patrick it seemed miles. He tried to ignore the blood that seeped into his shirt, which seemed to be coming from Sophie’s arm, and instead concentrated on getting her to safety. Bending low, he protected her with his body as best he could, and then he prayed for the first time since his youth. He galloped straight into the stables and only then pulled Barnaby to a halt.

“Mac!” he roared, swinging his leg over and sliding to the ground with Sophie in his arms.

“My lord?”

“Get Doctor Fickle, someone shot the countess. Then gather the men and find who did this,” he growled. “But first bring me bandages.”

Patrick did not wait to get confirmation of his orders; he lowered Sophie to the floor and looked at her arm. Blood had soaked through her sleeve, making it difficult to see anything, so he simply tore the sleeve from the bodice.

Sophie whimpered as pain shot through her arm, then bit her lip to stop herself from crying out again.

“Scream if you want, love,” Patrick rasped, pushing a tangle of curls from her pale face with fingers that shook.

“I d-don’t scream,” Sophie whispered, with a ghost of a smile on her pale face.

“You have no need of bravery around me, Sophie,” Patrick said against her lips as he kissed her briefly before pulling back to look at her arm.

“N-not your fault,” Sophie said between her clenched teeth. “Y-you could not h-have known.”

“Save your strength, love.”

“Not your f-fault,” Sophie reiterated.

The wound did not seem overly deep, Patrick thought, pushing aside her words of absolution. He should not have left her unprotected. The bullet appeared to have passed right through the fleshy part of her arm above the elbow and missed the bone. He felt a deep searing rage at the sight of that bloodied hole in his wife’s arm.

“Patrick,” Sophie whispered, looking at him with pain-filled eyes as he took the bandage from Mac and started binding her arm.

“It’s all right, sweetheart, you are safe now,” Patrick soothed as he concentrated on stemming the blood flow.

“I … I feeeel …”

Patrick went cold as Sophie’s eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped lifeless to the ground.

“ ’Tis best that she has slipped into a faint, my lord, it will make the stitching and binding easier.”

Faint!
The word seemed to vibrate off the walls inside Patrick’s head. Of course Mac was right—Sophie had fainted, he realized, fighting to refill his lungs with air. He could still see the gentle rise and fall of her chest; she was alive and breathing.
Get a grip, man, Sophie needs you
, he counseled himself.
And you need her
, a voice inside his head added as he climbed to his feet once again with her in his arms.

“As to ahhh, Doc Fickle, my lord,” Mac said shifting from foot to foot in front of his master.

“Spit it out, man!”

Mac felt sweat trickle down his spine as his master sent him a murderous look. “He is from town, visiting his sick sister.”

Mac was actually impressed by the range and length of the profanities that suddenly rent the air. However, he never changed his facial expression, just waited for his next orders.

“Ride till you find one and get whoever did this!” Patrick roared as he started back toward the house.

He held her close, half running, half walking, checking every few steps to make sure she was still unconscious. Her head lolled against his arm and her feet dangled, swinging gently backward and forward as he moved, until finally he reached the house.

“Patrick!”

“Stephen!” Patrick yelled, both surprised and relieved to see his friend coming out of his house toward him.

“Sophie has been shot, you have to help me!”

Stephen, shocked by the look of anguish on his friend’s face, turned immediately and ran back inside the house. “Ribble, Miss Pitt!” he bellowed.

They came running as Patrick walked inside with Sophie.

“Mac has just told me that Doctor Fickle is out of town. He is riding to find another,” Patrick said, heading toward the stairs.

“Bring boiling water, cloths, and that salve you used to paste all over us when we had scratches and cuts in our youth. Plus brandy, whiskey, or any strong spirit, and needle and thread,” Stephen instructed, then followed Patrick. Passing his friend, he opened the door to the countess’s rooms and moved to the bed, where he pulled the covers back in readiness.

Patrick lowered Sophie to the bed. She still had her eyes shut, he noted. Taking a deep breath, he tried to control the fear and rage battling for supremacy inside him.

“We must clean it, Colt; remember what happened to Sergeant Potter’s hand?” Stephen said, moving closer to inspect the bullet hole in Sophie’s arm.

Patrick shuddered at the memory of the rotten mass of flesh that was Sergeant Potter’s hand after infection had taken hold. He would not allow that to happen to Sophie’s beautiful arm.

“That French doctor swore that if it had been cleaned instantly, he would have survived,” Stephen said grimly as he studied the wound.

“She will not die,” Patrick gritted out through clenched teeth.

“No, she will not die my friend, but we must now be her doctors,” Stephen said, feeling his own chest tighten at the pain in Patrick’s voice.

“We have everything you need, my lord,” Miss Pitt said, following Ribble and a white-faced Jenny into the room.

“Dear God, I hope she remains unconscious,” Patrick said as he reached for a towel.

They worked as a team, with Mrs. Pitt handing them things as they asked for them. Laying Sophie’s arm flat, Stephen held the torn edges of the flesh open while Patrick poured a combination of alcohol and hot water over the wound, trying to sluice it clean. Everyone froze as Sophie moaned, then opened her eyes.

“Easy, love,” Patrick said, as she started crying and rolling her head from side to side.

“Patriiiiick!” Sophie screamed as fire shot through her arm.

“Hold her, Stephen,” Patrick’s words were clipped, knowing what he was about to do would hurt her more.

Sophie looked up at Stephen, her eyes accusing as he braced her shoulders, holding her still.

“Not long, Soph,” he soothed, but she was beyond hearing.

Her scream as Patrick poured alcohol straight into the wound made Stephen clench his eyes shut. Patrick, however, cursed fluently, long and loud.

“Noooo more, pleeeease!” she begged, trying to get free. She panted, struggling through the waves of pain, and then she arched upward and once again slipped into unconsciousness.

Stephen let her go and his hands shook as he reached for the needle and cotton thread that Mrs. Pitt had soaked in boiling water. “I will stitch, Colt; you hold the wound together,” he said, taking a deep breath. Stephen kept the stitches small, taking his time with each one until finally he had the wound closed.

Watching Patrick as he stroked one of Sophie’s cheeks, apologizing for causing her pain, Stephen knew that his friend loved his wife, and that if anything should happen to Sophie, Patrick would also be beyond saving.

“Lift the arm, Ribble,” Patrick ordered. Placing a pad covered in Mrs. Pitt’s paste on the holes where the bullet had entered and left Sophie’s arm, Stephen then bound them tight with a bandage.

“If you will take his lordship through to change, Lord Sumner, Jenny and I will see to the countess’s comfort,” Mrs. Pitt said, as she started removing the bloodied cloths and water.

“I will not leave her!” Patrick gazed at Sophie, silently urging her to open her eyes and look at him.

“You will change, Colt,” Stephen ordered. “Otherwise Sophie will wake and see all that blood on your shirt and think it is you who are injured and not she.”

He saw the truth in Stephen’s words when he looked at his clothes, but still he didn’t move.

“I will call if she opens her eyes, my lord,” Mrs. Pitt said gently. She told Mrs. Gumbrill later that she was moved to tears by the master’s obvious distress and devotion to his countess.

Stephen pulled Patrick through the door that connected the two rooms, leaving it wide enough so they could hear Sophie if she woke. He had spent his youth racing through this house and knew it as well as his own, which sat just a few miles to the west. Once inside, he pushed Colt into a chair and poured him a large brandy.

“It is my fault.”

Stephen ignored Patrick’s words and told the valet, who had just entered the room, to fetch hot water and clean towels for his master.

“First you will wash and change, Colt. Then I want the whole story,” he said, moving to retrieve a clean shirt and breeches for his friend and throwing them on the bed.

When the valet returned Patrick quickly washed the blood from his body and pulled on the clean clothes.

“You may leave now, Peters,” Patrick told his valet. Once the door had shut behind the servant he began to tell Stephen what had happened to Sophie.

“Could Spode have followed you here?” Stephen queried when Patrick had finished.

“I think it’s safe to say he has and if I had not left her alone, Sophie would not have been shot.” Patrick’s voice was filled with self-loathing.

“If Jack Spode chose to shoot Sophie, he would not have stopped just because she sat in front of you on a horse, Colt,” Stephen reasoned. “So please let us have no more of your guilt, it will help no one.”

“This time I will find that bastard and kill him,” Patrick said, firing out another volley of curses.

“That is one thing we are in agreement about,” Stephen said in the same tone.

* * *

Sophie woke thirsty, her arm felt heavy, and fire traveled through its length as she moved. Her right side was pressed up against something warm. Turning her head, she tried to see what it was and her cheek brushed Patrick’s soft curls. He had said that only disease would part them, and not even then.

“Sophie?”

“I am thirsty, Patrick,” she croaked, her voice sounding like a rusty hinge.

She heard him move and then there was a flare of light. Soon he was back, dressed in his robe, with a glass that he placed on the small table beside the bed. He laid one hand on her forehead.

“There is no temperature,” Patrick said, relieved. “I will lift you, love,” he added, easing an arm beneath her. “Don’t strain, let me do all the work.” It still hurt; he heard her indrawn breath and then the sigh as he laid her back onto the pillows after she had gulped down the water, which he had laced with laudanum.

“Patrick?” Sophie said, as he once again joined her in bed.

“I am sorry, Sophie,” he rushed to say before she could speak.

“No, Patrick, this is not your f-fault, how could you have known this would happen here, at our h-home,” Sophie said, struggling through the waves of sleepiness that threatened to claim her. She needed to tell him something, something that if the bullet had killed her today, she would have taken with her to her grave.

“It is my fault, Sophie, but know this, love, never again will I let anyone harm you,” he vowed.

“Patrick,” Sophie sighed, then with her good hand she reached for him, locking her fingers in his curls and pulling gently.

“Ouch,” Patrick said, moving closer until his face was just inches from hers.

“And know this, husband,” Sophie whispered, and to Patrick’s ear she sounded in her cups; the laudanum was obviously taking effect. “I … llllove youuuu.”

He watched her eyelids flutter as she struggled to stay awake, then Sophie once again slumped into the pillows. Patrick felt as if it was in fact he who had been shot. She loved him; was it possible?
Warmth spread through his body as he looked down at his slumbering wife. He could have lost her today and he would never have heard her declaration of love. Closing his eyes, Patrick vowed to find Jack Spode. When he did, he would make sure the man was not able to hurt Sophie again.