I stood, brushing bits of hay from the bottom of my skirts. Buttermilk turned as I stepped forward. The awkwardness of his grandmother’s words hung heavily between us.
Anxious to distract the both of us, I asked, “Why was your grandmother so surprised to find you in the stables?”
He glanced at an empty stall. “I’ve come here only twice since my accident.”
I breathed out a tiny “Oh.” His riding accident. Of course.
He pushed a hand through his dark hair. “What? No questions?”
“I have plenty.”
“But?”
A twinge of pain lit through my palm. “I am trying my hand at patience.”
He glanced up. I could sense some internal battle taking place within him, though his features remained unreadable. “Walk with me.”
Without hesitation I fell into step beside him, walking toward the entrance of the stable.
“It happened in January, almost two years ago now.” His voice was harsh, but I knew his tone had nothing to do with me. “I was half a day from home and decided to ride the last leg of the journey in hopes of making better time. But the weather was terrible. It had snowed for the last several days—it wasn’t deep, but the low temperatures made the snow as hard as ice. Riding had always made me a little reckless.”
We passed through the stable doors, out into the open. His limp seemed especially pronounced as he dragged along the dead weight of his bad leg. I kept my eyes fastened on him, trying to imagine it all.
“It happened just over there.” He pointed to where the road emerged from the woods on the edge of the meadow. “That road is a shortcut so steep it isn’t used by carriages, but I took it anyway because it leads directly to the stables. Prince was fatigued from several hours of hard travel in the snow, and the ice was slippery. He lost his footing and sought for purchase, but instead he stepped backward into a hole. He fell on top of me, crushing my knee and breaking my lower leg.”
Much as I wanted to say something, I couldn’t. My mind was full of the images he’d put there, the excruciating pain he must have been in.
His eyes were solemn and dark. “I lay there for almost three hours before someone found me. It was somewhat of a miracle I didn’t die of winter fever, but it didn’t seem that way at the time.” He stopped midstride, his gaze still resting on the spot where the road came into view. “The cold numbed my pain, but when I came back to the castle and feeling returned to my leg, it was unbearable. The doctor kept me drugged for almost a week because I would thrash about whenever I woke.”
I shook my head. How difficult that must have been for a man for whom control was paramount. “And after that?”
A bit of the tension in his voice slipped away. “That was just the beginning. My mother called in doctor after doctor, and I went through several operations before they realized this”—he motioned toward his bad knee—“was the best they could do.”
“I wish it didn’t give you such constant pain.”
He considered for a moment. “I have learned to block a great deal of it out.”
Which explained the hard set of his face so often—he tried to keep much of the pain in. “Is there no hope it could continue to improve?” I looked at him anxiously, for the thought of a life of pain stretching out before him seemed almost unbearable.
“Perhaps. I try not to hope. Better to face the reality of what is.”
“I can’t decide if that is admirable or troubling. Perhaps both.”
“There are moments I forget it. Until my mother invites visitors who come with their inevitable stares. I’ve endured enough to know that will never change. Despite the pleadings of my mother and grandmother, I refuse to go back into the public eye.”
“And to marry.” After hearing him describe his pain, the thought of him alone threatened to cleave me in two.
He gave me a hard look. “No doubt you have an opinion on the matter.”
Anything but honesty felt impossible with the way he was looking at me. “Your grandmother is right. The accident has taken enough from you. Why have you resigned yourself to being alone?” A slight tremor shook my voice.
He grunted. “What woman would want to marry a man with such an injury? And why would I subject her to a life full of my pain, my limitations?”
Halstead leaned over the fence railing, staring past the paddock into the distance. I came and stood beside him and, for a moment, tried to imagine him as he was before—young and carefree, without a thought for the future, his face unmarred by the constant effort it took to keep his agony hidden.
Much as I wished his pain away, I knew I would never have loved that man as I did the one who now stood by my side, forever altered by a chance accident. He was a little harsh at times, perhaps, but he was a man who understood what it was to suffer, who had held me in his arms and shared my pain, whose empathy had healed me as much as the doctor’s treatments for my hand. Even if it couldn’t be me, even if it wasn’t Lady Margaret, he deserved to find someone to share his life with.
I swallowed against the ache forming in my throat. “Perhaps if the burden of the pain were shared, it might ease.”
His gaze remained aloof. “To expect that of . . . anyone . . . would be unfair.”
At that moment nothing seemed fair.
Neither of us was prepared to continue this conversation, fraught as it was with the danger of uttering words that couldn’t be taken back. We both stared out into the distance. Thick gray clouds had rolled in since I’d fled the house a few hours before, and only now did the cold begin to sweep through me. I rubbed at my arms, trying
