Gallant Waif (18 page)

“Oh, well, that’s a relief,” murmured Kate provocatively.

He shot her a look of hard enquiry.

Her lips twitched with amusement. “I feared the strain would be too much for you.”

“I fail to understand what you find to amuse you in this situation,” he grated.

“Oh, nothing, to be sure, sir,” she said. “Only that I feared that your effort to refrain from cursing would be too much for you. However, I perceive that your tongue is in its usual fine form, so I need feel no anxiety on your behalf.”

He stared for a few seconds and then recalled his use of the word “damned’. Despite himself, his lips twitched. Leaning heavily on her, he began to move slowly towards the house. After a few minutes he glanced down at her. “You really are the oddest girl.”

“What makes you say so?”

“Ninety-nine women out of a hundred would be turning this into a major dramatic occasion, weeping and having hysterics over me, and here you are, having the audacity to tease me about bad language.”

“Would you prefer me to have hysterics, then, sir?” Kate pretended to consider it seriously. “I must confess that I haven’t had a great deal of experience in the matter, but if it would make you more comfortable, then I’m sure that I could undertake to stage a very convincing bout of hysterics. If you prefer it, that is.” Her eyes danced mischievously, but all the time she urged him onward, hoping her nonsense would distract him from the pain.

He threw back his head and laughed outright at that.
“Good God, no!
Heaven preserve me from hysterical females!”

They continued their laboured progress for a few more minutes,
then
stopped for a brief respite.

“You have no idea how refreshing it is to have a sensible female to deal with,” he said earnestly.

At this Kate was forced to lower her head and compress her lips to prevent herself laughing out loud.

He noticed, however. “What is it now?” he asked and, when she did not respond, he put a hand under her chin and turned her face up to his. Finding it brimful of suppressed merriment, he frowned in suspicion.

“Well, what have I said to cause this?” With a light finger he flicked at the dimple which peeped elusively out.

Her eyes danced irrepressibly. “For weeks now you have been calling me ‘the stubbornest, most infuriating female it has ever been my misfortune to meet’!” she growled in a deep gruff voice. Then she allowed her mouth to droop mournfully. “And
now,
when you call me
a sensible female,
alas, there are no witnesses!”

His lips twitched. “Well, most of the time…” he began.

Kate burst into peals of infectious laughter and reluctantly he joined in. As they laughed, she met his eye and felt the jolt of warm good humour pass through her. Slowly the laughter died in his eyes and she felt his gaze intensify. Suddenly Kate became hotly aware of the intimacy of their
position,
her body held tightly under his arm, wedged firmly against his hard, warm body, his mouth only inches away from hers. For a moment they stood there, their eyes locked, then she felt, rather than saw, his mouth moving down towards hers. Abruptly she turned her head away, her heart racing,
her
mouth dry.

“Come on now,” she murmured. “We’d best keep moving and get you in out of this chilly morning. Your leg will need to be examined by the doctor.” She felt him withdraw as they moved off.

“I’m not having any damned leech or sawbones maul me around any more. I had enough of them to serve me a lifetime on the Peninsula.”

“Oh, but surely you cannot compare the physicians we have here in England with some of the butchers that passed for surgeons during wartime?” Kate said incautiously.

Jack stopped and looked at her in surprise. “Do you know
,
you’re the first person in England that I’ve ever heard with an accurate notion of some of those bloody devils? Apart from anyone who was there, I mean. You sound as if you actually have an inkling of what it was like.”

Kate smiled slightly. “Do I, indeed?” Her face sobered. “Well, I did have two brothers and a father who died there. Now, have you had enough of a rest to continue, or do you wish to rest a moment or two more?”

That got him moving again. Kate was relieved, but, more than that, he’d given her the opening she’d wanted. “Not all doctors are butchers, you know,” she said after a time. He snorted.

“It’s true,” she insisted. “I once met the most wonderful physician, descended from a long line of physicians, right back to the Moors, who used methods of treatment that enabled some terrible wounds to heal almost like new.”

“Humph!”

“For instance, with a bad leg like yours,” she persisted, “where the wound had healed, but the muscles had lost their strength, he would order that the leg be massaged three times daily with hot oils, the oil being rubbed well in and each part of the leg stretched and pummelled.”

“Ah…” he said ironically
. “A torturer.
I have heard that some of those oriental types have the most subtle and fiendish methods.”

“I know it sounds like that, but it is truly efficacious, though it is not at all comfortable at first.” Kate remembered the groans of anguish that her brother Jemmy had uttered when the treatment first began, and how it had taken all her will-power to continue the treatment.

“After a few short weeks, the limb begins to strengthen and, with added exercise, I believe that almost full power can be returned in some cases.”

“Rubbish!” he snapped curtly.
“Unscrupulous leeches preying on credulous fools.”

Kate understood his hostility. Hope could be very painful.

“Possibly,” she said quietly. “I suppose it depends on the wound, but this treatment had my brother walking after our English doctors had told him he would never be without crutches again.”

She paused to let that sink in. “And his wound was very bad, enough to have them planning to amputate.”

Kate would never forget frantically clinging to the surgeon’s arm, begging him to wait for another opinion, and then the final relief when her father had burst into the tent and wrested the saw from the man’s drunken hand.

“Perhaps the method may help your leg.”

“I doubt it!”

“It could not hurt to try, surely?” she coaxed.

“Dammit! You know nothing about it, girl! I have been mauled enough by incompetents from the medical fraternity and I will have nothing to do with any more quack cures, especially those dreamed up by mysterious oriental fakirs!”

Kate felt a wave of frustration surge through her. It was perfectly obvious to her that he had been attempting to ride his horse in defiance of the medical prognosis he had been given and despite the pain his leg was so clearly giving him. It was sheer insanity to attempt to use a barely healed limb for strenuous exercise.

“Don’t be so stupid. You cannot simply ignore damage done to muscles and sinews and ride by will-power alone. You are just a man, with a man’s body. You were dreadfully injured and I am sorry for it, but you must face the fact of your injury, instead of pretending it does not exist.”

“What the devil would you know about it? I’m damned if I’ll give in to it,” he growled, attempting to thrust her away.
           

Kate glared right back at him. “And who said you should give in to it?” she demanded. “Not I—I said face facts, not give in.”

“Dammit, girl, you go too far. This is none of your concern!”

“Well, if you wish to ride that horse instead of falling off it all the time, you will have to do something differently,” Kate said furiously. “You may be able to walk on that leg, but it is so stiff and weak you cannot grip on to a horse. And if you keep doing what you are doing you will end up giving yourself a much more serious injury. You need to retrain your muscles and exercise them. The treatment I spoke of is specifically aimed to restore flexibility and muscle strength…”

The words died on her tongue. Jack was staring at her with such a mixture of humiliation, outraged pride and sheer fury that she recoiled, thinking for a moment that he might strike her.

“Damn you to hell and back, girl! Mind your own blasted business!” he exploded. “I don’t need your damned unwanted advice, I don’t need your blasted quack miracle cures and I don’t need your damned assistance. I can make my own way to the house!”

Kate knew she should stop, but she had to have one last try, using an analogy he might accept. “What would you think of a trainer, who, after a horse had fallen and injured itself, put it straight at the highest jump, and expected it to succeed?
Would you not think him a fool?”

He was silent. Not knowing whether to feel encouraged or not, Kate continued, “A man who wants such a horse to jump again would surely walk it over low jumps, gradually raising them until it is strong enough and confident enough to jump anything. Well, wouldn’t he? Think about it, Mr Carstairs.”

He stared at her, and for a moment Kate thought her argument might have reached him. But, gritting his teeth against the pain, Jack pushed her roughly away and began to stump painfully towards the house.

“You stupid stubborn man!” raged Kate, going after him and inserting her shoulder under his again. “If you don’t want to listen to what I say, well, of course, that is
your
right, short-sighted as it may be… No, I
won’t
be pushed away! How ridiculously…” she cast around for an adequate adjective “. .
.manlike
…to reject my practical assistance when you know you need it.”

Jack stopped and glared furiously down at her, his fingers biting into her shoulder.

“All right,” she said hastily, meeting that fiery blue gaze. “I have said my piece now and I promise you I will say nothing more on the subject.” She began to head once more towards the house, forcing him to move too.

They made slow, painful progress to the house, Kate silently cursing her runaway tongue. For the first time ever, they’d been completely easy with each other, even joking and laughing, despite his awkwardness at being discovered, helpless on the ground. And then she’d ruined it. Knowing what she knew.

As she’d sat on the cold ground, cradling his head against her, the whole picture had come together—the sound of a galloping horse when she first arrived, hoofprints on frosted grass, day after day, his early morning bad temper, white lines of pain around his mouth.

He’d been doing this for weeks, sneaking out before dawn to try and learn to ride again.
His mental anguish, the desperation that drove him to try to ride, secretly, day after day,
knowing
he would fall—Kate’s heart contracted at the thought.
It had taken courage—mad, proud, stubborn courage. But without treatment he would never be able to do it. And sooner or later he was bound to do himself a grave injury.

It need not be that way, she was sure of it, and so she had spoken—too much. Offending the very pride she admired. He would never listen to her now, never forgive her. She was only his housekeeper, existing, not to put too fine a point on it, on the goodwill of his family.
When
would she learn to accept it?

Finally they reached the house and she helped him to a chair in the kitchen. “I’ll fetch Carlos,” she said quietly, and moved towards the door.

He did not acknowledge her; he just sat there, his face a white and bitter mask.

Chapter Eight

“What-
s this?
Looks delicious.”

Before Kate could say a word, Jack had scooped a fingerful of the creamy mixture and popped it in his mouth. She clapped a hand over her mouth, attempting unsuccessfully to repress her mirth. Giggles escaped her as his eyes filled first with disbelief, and then with disgust. He rushed outside and she heard the sounds of vigorous spitting, as he attempted to rid his mouth of the foul taste of her latest domestic effort.

Kate collapsed in a chair, and laughed until the tears rolled down her cheeks. It served him right. He had been hanging around the kitchen all day, popping in and out for no apparent reason—lurking! Several times she’d asked him if there was anything he wanted, but he’d almost snapped her nose off! It was his kitchen, wasn’t it? Well, of course it was, the silly man! She knew that!