The last shards of his lovely fantasy began to shatter as pain ran in to take its place with an evil chuckle. He frowned against the loss of what felt like earthly paradise and screwed up his eyes to protest at the light. He wished whoever was making that confounded row would be quiet so he could go back to sleep.
‘He is waking up at last,’ Juno said. What was she doing here? He hoped his innocent niece had not seen him slip out of Mrs Turner’s bed to deal with the idiot groaning in what sounded like agony when they were all trying to sleep.
‘Can you remember your name?’ Mrs Turner’s otherwise pleasant contralto voice demanded.
What a question to ask a man who had to deal with the idiot while he had agony coursing through him like hot knives. She grasped his good hand and squeezed it as if ordering him not to ignore her. ‘Your name?’ she nagged and he was far too busy with the idiot to reply to such a silly question, but he supposed he ought to oblige a lady.
‘I am Alaric Defford. I wish someone would tell that fool to be quiet and let me sleep,’ he murmured.
‘What fool?’ Marianne Turner asked as if wondering about his sanity.
‘The one who keeps moaning and groaning like an idiot.’
‘That is you, Uncle Alaric,’ Juno said and he felt his way up through another layer of unconsciousness and immediately wished he had stayed down there.
‘Is it? Then I must have been swearing as well,’ he admitted and opened his eyes to look up at his niece and hope she had not been listening. Agony bit as the sunlight bored into his flinching eyeballs and made him swear all over again as a jag of pain joined up with the one at the back of his aching head and ripped through him like hot iron.
‘So sorry, Jojo,’ he murmured and felt her hand tighten on his. Somehow he must find a way to cut himself off from the pain and protect her from it. ‘Bad uncle,’ he managed to say lamely before he shut his eyes again. He wished someone would turn off the sun so the inside of his eyelids were not such a fiery red. Shade might reduce the agony to a bearable hum and maybe he could gather his senses enough to open his eyes again and find out exactly what was going on.
‘No, you are the best of uncles,’ Juno argued with a tremble in her voice.
Somehow he managed to force his eyelids open again and never mind the thunderclap he knew was waiting for him this time. He had to let her know he was back in the land of the living and intending to stay here.
‘Lie still and be quiet,’ Marianne Turner ordered him softly and he was glad to do as he was bid for once.
She had put herself between him and the sun as well. He was almost ready to worship her thoughtfulness, although he wished his dream of her as his willing and about-to-be-sated-again lover was the reality he had woken up to instead of this one. In this world Mrs Marianne Turner had disliked him on sight and did not warm to him much afterwards. She was not likely to be impressed when he moaned and groaned and swore in his sleep, so there was very little chance of that rich fantasy ever coming true.
‘Gladly,’ he muttered and wondered when the sledgehammer inside his head would stop beating. Then he realised he could half hear and half feel a new sort of thunder through the very ground he lay on. He seemed to be in danger of being trampled by a herd of runaway horses or panicked cattle. He vaguely remembered the ill-tempered nag he rode in on taking offence at something before dreams and that very seductive fantasy took over his head and blotted out the pain and shock of being thrown. Maybe he should get up and run, but it felt beyond him so he lay as still as he could and waited for the next calamity to strike him. ‘Run!’ he muttered urgently to Juno and Marianne and tried to force his eyes open and even felt for strength to put himself between them and whatever was about to run them down.
‘Oh, Darius, I am so very glad to see you,’ he heard Marianne Turner call out with apparent delight as the noise of what he could now tell was a single horse’s racing hooves halted sharply. Alaric finally managed to open his eyes just in time to see Darius the Paragon leap off it and run towards them like a stunt rider.
‘Wonderful,’ Alaric said with all the irony he had available at short notice.
‘Good Gad, Nan, what has the noble idiot done to himself this time?’ Yelverton exclaimed as if Alaric had fallen off his horse on purpose.
He actually felt sick with dislike because it was better than being sick with pain. He did not want to humiliate himself in front of his niece and the lovely Mrs Turner. Loathing Darius Yelverton for being whole and hearty and not in pain, as well as in love with the woman Alaric thought he wanted to marry until he came here, would have to do instead. Although his yearning for Marianne Turner in his bed even when he was knocked out whispered he had not wanted to marry Miss Grantham anywhere near as passionately as she deserved her husband to want to marry her.
‘I am not sure it was his fault
