He must have looked horrified by the possibility of not being able to walk or ride properly for a month or so. She gave him a wry smile and a sympathetic shake of her head. Where were lordly aloofness and hard-won self-control now? Lost like a highwayman’s mask, he decided, and only just stopped himself shaking his head because he knew it would hurt.
‘I suppose the amount of time your ankle takes to heal will let us know whether it is broken or sprained. And as for your head and the amount of time you have spent sleeping since you knocked yourself out on that wall, the ridiculous ride you put yourself through to get here faster than a man was meant to travel accounts for most of that, if you ask me. Dr Long was worried the pain of being moved did not wake you, but he did not see you at dawn on Miss Donne’s doorstep so he has no idea you were a fool to start with, my lord. At least two days’ worth of hard riding and your refusal to be sensible even before you insisted on riding here because you did not trust me to look after Juno meant you have had less sleep than your body needs for several days. In my opinion Mother Nature simply took over, Lord Stratford, and your head injury is not as severe as the doctor fears. Your long sleep only proves your body has more sense than the rest of you.’
‘He is a doctor,’ Alaric said with only half his mind on what he was saying. The rest was worrying at the threat still hanging over him that the blow on his head was more serious than they hoped and how he wished she would stop calling him Lord Stratford all the time. He did not feel like a correct and aloof viscount, lying here like a helpless infant. He wished she really was Marianne to him and not just a stranger so she might call him Alaric and soothe and nag him out of affection instead of duty to an injured stranger.
‘Of a sort,’ Marianne said dismissively and where were they? Ah, yes, doctors—he had little interest in them at the best of times. ‘I met one or two like him when I was with the army,’ she went on as if she agreed with him for once. ‘They believe in malign providence rather than a duty to heal the injured. In my experience cleanliness and patience mend more hurts than the sawbones’ gloom and purges.’
‘You were with the army?’ Alaric asked incredulously.
‘My husband was a soldier,’ she said and he thought she must be very weary herself to let him see the sadness and faraway look in her eyes, as if she was with her absent Mr Turner in spirit even if she would not be seeing him again this side of the grave.
‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he said sincerely, presuming on that past tense.
‘So am I,’ she said very quietly, then seemed to make an effort of will to snap herself out of the lonely place memory of Lieutenant or Captain Turner, or however high her late husband rose, had taken her. ‘And you need more sleep in order to heal. I forgot to add you are bruised black and blue all down the side of your body that hit my brother’s newly mended wall to the list of your injuries, Lord Stratford,’ she told him softly but sternly, as if he might not know he was aching like the devil.
‘I must have had a deal of rest already. It was no more than an hour or two after midday when I let that bad-tempered nag throw me and you say it is the middle of the night now. You are the one who is in need of sleep now, Mrs Turner. I seem to have had plenty of it to be going on with.’
‘Someone has to sit with you in order to make sure you do not get out of bed and ride off into the night. Juno is too young for this much responsibility and quite worn out after all the walking and worrying she did on the way here. My brother has to be up early tomorrow to take charge of the men after yesterday’s shenanigans, so I persuaded him go to bed as well.’
‘You should have a chaperone,’ he argued and frowned when she chuckled as if the very idea was ridiculous. ‘Of course you should—you are hardly at your last prayers and neither am I.’
‘You are not in any state to endanger anyone and the widow of a common soldier is not bound by the same rules as a Miss Defford, my lord,’ she said and her set mouth and steady gaze dared him to be shocked by the man she had married.
Yes, he was shocked and her family must have been disappointed by the match, but she still looked like a lady to him. It must have taken great courage to defy the conventions and marry her soldier anyway. ‘So you feel free to make up your own rules?’ he said and there was a flicker of doubt in her eyes as if he had put his finger on something she did not want the rest of the world to know.
‘I am free not to paint watercolours or embroider fire screens or perform good works the poor probably do not want if that is what you mean. I fear I was never a properly genteel young lady, my lord, and at least I do not even have to pretend I want to be one any more.’
He wanted to laugh out loud, but did not dare, first, because it would jar his bruises and, second, because she would be offended. She would never be quietly, boringly compliant with society’s sillier edicts about what a lady could and could not do if she lived to be a
