The Summer of You (19 page)

“Don’t leave,” he said, as he labored to keep his breathing even.

“I won’t,” she replied, seating herself on the floor beside the couch, her hand still grasped in his. “It’s your leg, is it not?” After his nod, she asked, “Is there anything you can take for the pain? Surely the doctor—”

“No!” he barked, startling her with his fierceness. “I won’t take anything—Jane, don’t let them give me a drop. Not a single drop.”

“But it must be severe—” she argued, only to be met by a growl.

“Don’t let them!” his voice had become feral, his eyes bloodshot as he sought her gaze. “Promise me,” he demanded softly. Then, squeezing her hand harder, “Promise me!”

“Yes. I promise.” Her hand was crushed in his, but she did not speak of it. It was a measly hand, after all, a bruise to be gloved until it faded. A small sacrifice, considering what Byrne had gone through that morning.

“Do you know,” she said, keeping her voice as light as she could manage, “that the ladies of Reston are going to inundate you with preserves now?” He looked at her wildly, questioning. But she continued blithely, “There will be no end to the baskets they bring you—I’m afraid you are going to have to practice your most humble manners. You will have to endure at least ten minutes of conversation with everyone who comes to call.”

“Why?” he asked, bewildered through his pain.

“Because you saved that boy,” she whispered. “You’re incredibly brave.”

Byrne shook his head tightly, “I didn’t save him. He’s not safe.”

“He will be. The doctor will rouse him,” she argued, her heart in her throat. “He will, Byrne. Mark my words. And you will simply have to survive being called a hero.”

He might have laughed then, Jane was unable to tell. But he gave a short burst of disbelief and continued massaging his leg.

They held silent for a while, listening to the bustle of voices in the hall, as the rest of the Wiltons arrived and poured into the drawing room. The noise died off as they moved out of the hall, leaving Jane alone in the silence with Byrne.

“I was thinking about kissing you again,” he said suddenly, softly. It was possible he hadn’t known that he spoke aloud.

Jane’s breath caught. She could not deny that she had been thinking about something similar, before she was awoken this morning by chaos. But now, it was a remnant of a time before—crisis had suspended the thought, and Jane had no reply.

So instead, she put her head down on the leather sofa, rested it there as she held his hand, and watched Byrne’s face wrestle with the pain she would take from him if she could.

And waited for word from beyond the door.

THERE is no accounting for how time flows in a crisis. It stops and starts, holds infinite in single moments and blazes through hours. People hold their breath for news, as the entire world becomes focused on a tiny point.

They had all rushed in—Jason taking Victoria up behind him, and Dr. Berridge riding fast on his own horse. Sir and Lady Wilton had readied their carriage, stuffed it with blankets, and followed shortly thereafter. Victoria had been near to tears, but her parents were calmer, if no less concerned. Lady Wilton had a mother’s concentration, the experience of knowing that little boys got into scrapes, and that one had to be strong and sober to handle what came next.

Michael told them all the story of how they had come to be out on the lake—and that perhaps they might need to fetch Mr. Morgan’s dinghy from wherever it had floated. He then explained to all that Mr. Worth had come to their rescue and swam Joshua to shore and pounded on his back until he breathed again. Michael was hugged and scolded in turns by every member of his family. But still they awaited the doctor’s prognosis.

It was quickly discovered by Dr. Berridge that the blood coming from Joshua’s mouth was because he had bitten his tongue in his fall. He turned him with haste to his side so he wouldn’t swallow any more blood and become ill with it. The tongue would heal, he assured the family. Then Dr. Berridge discovered Joshua had no broken bones, no visible injuries to his skull. It was decided that he remained unconscious due to possibly having a concussion, or “a shaking of the brain,” the doctor explained, “and we shall simply have to wait for his mind to right itself.”

And there was nothing in the universe like the relief felt when Joshua’s mind righted itself enough to allow him to open his eyes, see his mother and sister, and smile weakly. Then he promptly fell back asleep.

The Wiltons and Dr. Berridge voiced a desire to shake Mr. Worth’s hand in gratitude . . . and they did so, once they found him in the library. He took their hands but was remarkably recalcitrant, thought Sir Wilton, unable to meet their eye, his movements cold and controlled. Terribly odd behavior, this avoidance of being thanked, this uncaring attitude about whether or not Joshua lived or died. But, Dr. Berridge interjected, the man’s oddities aside, he did save their son and should be shown some allowance. The Wiltons grudgingly agreed. Then Lady Wilton spied Dr. Berridge having a short exchange with Mr. Worth, in which the latter man answered the doctor’s questions with a gruff and vehement “No!” before he turned away again.

Odd behavior indeed.

Some time later, after Victoria had taken Michael home, it was decided that Joshua was recovered enough to be moved back to his own house. He was a little groggy and complained of a headache, but he was awake now for minutes at a time, and the trip was short enough that Dr. Berridge had no objection.

Byrne’s man Dobbs, having heard the commotion in town and finding the widow Lowe’s house unoccupied when he returned, put two and two together and came to the Cottage. He took one look at Byrne and fetched him away, despite Lady Jane’s protestations.

Nurse Nancy had gone upstairs to attend to the Duke, whom she had left in the care of the second nurse all morning. Jason, having gone almost a full day without sleep, stumbled upstairs to change out of his evening kit and crawl into bed. Two chambermaids set about folding up the blankets and banking the fire in the drawing room, righting the space to what it normally was.

And suddenly it was quiet in the house. The crisis had passed, and Jane was alone in the foyer, in her dressing gown. She looked at the grandfather clock that ticked away merrily in the echoing space. It was barely noon.

What a terrifying, incredible, strange start to the day, she thought wildly, as she turned once, twice, and then decided there was nothing else to be done but go upstairs, change, and find some breakfast.

It goes without saying that over the course of the next week, Jane was proved correct about many things. The first being that it would be quite some time before Byrne would want for jams and jellies in his little house. The second being that he really should have brushed up on his manners.

The pain in his leg dulled over time, but he kept off it as much as possible, not wanting to reinjure himself and endure the agony again. Dr. Berridge came by, and after again suggesting a course of laudanum for the worst of the pain and being rebuffed, insisted that Byrne remain abed (or as Byrne insisted, a-sofa) for the better part of every day. Byrne grumbled at this but complied. Unfortunately, this compliance meant he was in residence whenever anyone stopped in—and it seemed none of the villagers cared whether or not he was in a state to receive.

Mrs. Hill was the first to call, while he was lying on the sofa wearing little more than a shirt and trousers, his leg elevated on cushions. She fluttered kindly, depositing a basket of blackberry preserves and fresh bread in the kitchen, telling him all the while of his incredible bravery in saving that poor boy from drowning. She then proceeded to tut at the old curtains and told him that she was expanding her dress shop to other textile services, including drapery, if he was interested in “sprucing the place up,” as she put it.

Mrs. Hill was shortly followed by Mrs. Morgan, who also came with a basket, this time a cold ham from their farm, praised his heroics, and asked if he had any idea where Mr. Morgan’s dinghy had floated off to. They had yet to find it, which was surprising, considering the relatively small size of Merrymere. And Mrs. Morgan was elbowed out of the way by Mrs. Cutler. She brought cheese.

It took about a half hour that first day for his small sitting room to fill with townswomen. And soon, Byrne was to discover why. For it was not long after, the entire space tittering and clucking and sipping (someone had found widow Lowe’s old tea service and made a pot of one of her exotic teas) that Lady Wilton arrived, bearing the largest basket of fruit—apples from their apple tree—and commanded the attention of the entire room.

“Mr. Worth,” she said, her voice filled with a somber hauteur, for the benefit of her audience, “I’ve come to thank you for your kindness to my son Joshua. He would not be alive today, were it not for you.”

The ladies applauded Byrne as Lady Wilton regally took a seat. Then she obligingly took questions from the others, all of whom cried to know how Joshua was faring, what the doctor had recommended for his care, and what was being done to remove the dangerous, offending deadhead from the waters of Merrymere, so it would not tempt other young boys.

Really, it was all he could do to keep from pitching the lot of them out of his house then and there.

Admirably, he held his countenance. But he didn’t know how much longer he would be able to endure it. So he pulled his face into a pained expression and whimpered once.

This had the effect of setting many of the women fluttering and making excuses, not realizing that they had overtired poor Mr. Worth. As many of them bustled out, Lady Wilton hung back, making noises about seeing to his comfort. She had begun folding a blanket, and tut-tutting about the old-fashioned state of the house (which Byrne resented—he was a bachelor after all, he was allowed to care little for decorations) before Dobbs entered, bearing a load of wood for the stove. Byrne sent him a signal—although one was hardly needed. Dobbs had bustled Lady Wilton out the door before she could fluff a single pillow more.

The next day, the men of Reston visited. Their visits were far shorter and less grouped, but still they sat awkwardly in his living room and tried to start conversation. Some asked him about his family in London—and considering he hadn’t returned his sister-in-law Mariah’s letters in ages, he was fairly certain there was no news of import, and therefore gruff, bare answers were all he had. Mr. Cutler asked Byrne about his service in the military during the war. This was a subject he liked even less, and therefore his answers were shorter and even gruffer.

Byrne did as best he could, but he had never understood the small town’s desperate need to know everything about everyone. And somewhere along his travels, he knew he had lost the ability to be engaging and charming—to be a man who could talk of nothing with people unknown to him and do so happily.

Would he ever get it back? He did not know.

The men left shortly thereafter.

The only person he thought he could stand seeing did not come. Jane Cummings remained away. Even as he was visited daily by one of the women from Reston, who fluffed pillows, put tea on, and brought samples of fabric (they had apparently decided between them that Byrne required tending and worked out a schedule, and as long as they held themselves to the sitting room, he managed to stand their curiosity), Jane was not among them.

He didn’t blame her for avoiding him. He had shown her the worst of himself, mad with pain, growling and spitting.

The only word he had from her was a letter, carried by a footman from the Cottage, containing a short note saying she had read the copied pages from Sir Wilton’s ledger, and enclosed them for his perusal. That was it. No indication that she would visit to discuss the pages, no reason for her avoidance.

She probably pitied him.

The thought turned Byrne’s stomach worse than Mrs. Frederickson’s blood pudding (which she kindly brought on her scheduled day).

And so it went for over a week: Byrne, keeping his leg aloft, testing its strength daily, enduring with better grace each day the ladies of the town’s best, most meddlesome intentions, wondering briefly if he would hear word of Jane.

In spite of all the attention, it was truly one of the most boring, pedantic stretches of time he’d had at the lake.

That is, of course, until the highwayman attacked again.

Lady Jane Cummings was a coward.

There was no other way to paint it. After the dramatic events of the morning over a week ago, she found herself remarkably busy. Or, more to the point, she made herself remarkably busy.

She went through every item in the linen closets and trunks, detailed what needed to be mended and what needed to be thrown out. She walked with her father daily. She planned menus for the next month with the cook. She inspected the gardens with the head gardener and decided on new plantings in the south lawn. She went through her pile of books she had brought from London and read seven. She wrote letters to all her friends, sent away for sheet music for a new sonata on the pianoforte, and requested copies of dress plates from all of the publishers she could think of.

She visited Reston and was delighted to see that after a few days of rest, Joshua Wilton was back to his old self, as evidenced by the amount of dirt he and Michael had collected on their clothing.

She played two dozen games of chess with her father in the evenings and lost nineteen of them. Jason either moped around the house, complaining of boredom, or rode out into the country. He took no hand in their father’s care, and Jane was distressed to see that he seemed to have lost all interest in mastering the accounts, instead leaving the books in the same disarray in the library, slowly collecting dust—as Jane refused to allow the maids to clean the desk, wanting to keep the books out in the same arrangement Jason had left them in case inspiration struck him as he passed.

In fact, Jane did anything and everything except what she craved most to do—to escape her house, walk down that wooded path by the lakeshore, and visit Byrne Worth.

What would she say to him? She didn’t know. What would he say to her? He had saved a child’s life, but she had a feeling that he would accept no gratitude from her for it. Would he reject her for having been witness to his weaknesses? It was another weight on her already weighted mind.

But before that morning, there had been that night. When he had kissed her in the bushes, hiding from the assembly beneath the stars. He had just done it. No wavering, no wondering how it would affect their friendship like she had. Just the press of his lips to hers, the brief but electric exchange of breath, the jolt to her heart.

And what had he replied when she asked why? “It was worth the doing.” As if random, unplanned kisses were a constant in his line! So, no, Jane had no idea how to look at Byrne and how he would look at her. So she avoided it in the practiced way of polite people everywhere.

That is, until she could avoid it no longer.

It was after dinner, the house gone quiet and the land gone dark, spotted with stars, when the knock came at the door. Jane was in the midst of losing her twentieth game of chess to her father, as Nurse Nancy worked on some stitchery by the window.

“Now who can that be?” her father asked, looking up from the board, slightly dazed by the interruption. “Is it a caller?”

“It’s far too late for callers, Father,” Jane replied with a quizzical look. She laid down her king (her father had her in six moves anyway) and went to the drawing room door. Peering out, she saw an alarming number of gentlemen being admitted to her foyer.

“It’s disgraceful!” cried one man, who removed his hat to reveal the grayed and balding head of Mr. Hale, the steward of Crow Castle.

“Appalling!” agreed the schooled accent of Mr. Thorndike, the man in charge of the London house. Apparently, the stewards had received Jason’s letter of inquiry . . . along with Jane’s added note inviting them up to stay.

And it seemed they weren’t alone.

“Ohoohooh,” Nevill, half of the diabolical twosome Charles and Nevill Quincy-Frosham, snickered at the older men. “Did the nasty highwayman scare you?”