ANNE ASHLEY - Lady Knightley's Secret

“I’m looking for more candles. We may as well try to keep as warm as we can.”

Elizabeth watched in some amusement as he began to light them. “I feel like a sacrificial lamb placed at the altar,” she quipped, seeing the semicircle of light.

There wasn’t so much as a ghost of a smile around Richard’s mouth, however, and the expression in his eyes was faintly disturbing. “That, my dear girl, is precisely what you shall be if we’re not rescued soon.”

Anne Ashley was born and educated in Leicester, U.K. She resided for a time in Scotland, but now lives in the West Country with two cats, her two sons and a husband who has a wonderful and very necessary sense of humor. When not pounding away at the keys of her typewriter, she likes to relax in her garden, which she has opened to the public on more than one occasion in aid of the village church funds.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

1815

Sir Richard Knightley woke with a violent start. He was sweating profusely and his every muscle seemed suddenly to have grown taut. What in the world had woken him? he wondered. Cannon fire? No, it couldn’t have been. Just a bad dream—that was all: nothing more than vivid memory; a deep-seated fear. It was over…Surely it must be over? He just couldn’t go through it again, not that carnage! He detected the distant rumble once more and released his breath in a deep sigh of relief. Thunder…only thunder.

Trying to ignore the throbbing ache in his shoulder, and the sudden darting pain in his left leg, he eased himself into a sitting position. His night-shirt, damp with perspiration, clung to him like a second skin. Ye gods, wasn’t it oppressive tonight! he thought, pulling the offending garment over his head and tossing it aside in disgust.

Perhaps this storm might clear the air. Mary had warned him earlier that there was one brewing. He could quite easily discern those claps of thunder getting steadily louder, even if he was oblivious to the flashes of lightning.

Instinctively he raised a hand to touch the bandage over his eyes. The sabre gash in his right shoulder had been excruciating, and so too had the lead ball which had torn through the flesh in his thigh, but it had been the damage to his eyes when that pistol had been discharged which had caused him most concern. To be deprived of one’s sight didn’t bear dwelling on. To be led about by the hand for the rest of one’s life…

A further clap of thunder, which seemed to shake the house to its very foundations, broke into his depressing thoughts and brought him back to the present by reminding him of how oppressive it was in the room. Had Mary inadvertently closed the window when she had paid that last visit before retiring for the night? He turned his head in the direction in which he knew the window to be, and after a moment’s indecision decided to make the attempt.

Wincing slightly as he moved his injured leg, he swung his feet to the floor, and then reached out a hand to the wall. Mary had not delayed in encouraging him to exercise his muscles by taking a gentle turn about the bedchamber twice a day. He quickly discovered, however, that it was one thing having that blessed girl to guide him, and quite another trying to feel his way about a room he had never yet seen, a room where every object was a potential danger to a man who had been as good as blind for the past month.

‘Oh, confound it!’ he muttered as his elbow made contact with something, sending it crashing to the floor. What the devil had he broken? he wondered before his toes came into contact with a wet patch on the floor. It must have been the pitcher.

‘Don’t you be taking another step, sir!’ came a gently warning voice, spiced with an unmistakable West Country accent, ‘otherwise you’ll be a-stepping on broken porcelain.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mary. I hope it wasn’t valuable.’

He discerned the slight click as she closed the door, and then heard that soft footfall of hers as she came across the chamber towards him.

‘As you know, sir, this don’t be our ’ouse, so whether it be valuable or no I can’t rightly say, but it’s of no matter, anyhow. What be you a-doing out of bed? ’Ave you need of the chamber-pot?’

He couldn’t prevent a smile at this rather base enquiry. But then, he reminded himself, anyone less matter-of-fact, less practical would hardly have coped so admirably in nursing the six British casualties brought into this house.

Not that he retained any memory whatsoever of the journey back to Brussels in that lumbering cart filled with the dead and wounded. It had been Sergeant Hawker who had informed him that it had been Mary herself who had agreed to the army surgeon’s request to offer sanctuary to the injured men, and it had been she who had insisted that three of those six must be men from the lower ranks. There would be no discrimination under her roof, no preferential treatment to those higher born.

Richard couldn’t recall being carried up to this room, nor had he any memory of those first few days after the surgeon had tended the deep gash in his shoulder and had removed the piece of lead shot from his thigh. The last thing he could remember was having his mount shot from under him and seeing a blinding flash whilst he lay, momentarily stunned, on the scorched, bloodstained ground; though who had discharged the firearm, a fellow soldier or the enemy, he had no notion. Then, as he had made to rise, his vision blurred, his eyes smarting, he had been felled again by a French cavalryman wielding a sabre. The next thing he remembered was someone gently raising his head and coaxing him to take a little water.

That, of course, had been Mary, several days after he had been carried into this house. Since then she had administered to his every bodily need, had nursed him back to health and had forced him to come to terms with his brother’s tragic death.

‘No, my darling girl, I don’t have need of that particular receptacle at the moment. But I do require the window opened before I expire from the heat.’

‘It is open, but I’ll open it a little more, once I’ve got you safely back into bed.’

He felt the warm touch of gentle fingers on his wrist before a slender arm encircled his back. He was instantly aware of soft curves pressed against his side, and was both astounded and faintly embarrassed by his body’s immediate reaction. He recalled that it had been some weeks since he had assuaged his needs in that particular direction, and was aware in those moments before returning to his bed that he was far stronger than he had realised.

Praying she hadn’t noticed his arousal, he didn’t waste a second in pulling the covers up to his chest. He heard the grating of the sash window as it was raised higher, and then felt a blessed waft of fresh air. ‘That’s better!’ he remarked with genuine relief before he detected a faint chink as Mary busied herself with picking up the fragments of porcelain.

‘I suppose it never occurred to you to throw the bedcovers off?’ she chided, placing the broken pieces in the bowl. ‘There! That’s cleared that up. Now, let’s have no more middle-of-the-night wanderings!’

He couldn’t forbear a smile at the scolding tone; he had grown quite accustomed to it by now. He heard her light tread once more and arrested her progress to the door by asking her to stay for a while.

He felt the bed go down slightly under her light weight, and instinctively sought one of those infinitely capable hands. ‘I’m a selfish devil, because you must be tired, but just sit with me for a while.’

He couldn’t see the smile which played around the exquisitely formed lips, but couldn’t mistake the gentle understanding as she said, ‘I know you must be concerned about tomorrow, Richard, but everything will be all right…I know it will.’

He brushed his thumb back and forth over the soft skin, easily detecting the small bones beneath. How often during these past weeks had he held these tapering fingers for comfort and support? He would know these caring hands anywhere. He had not infrequently marvelled at the fact that such a slender creature could be so strong, manoeuvring his six-foot frame in those first early days when he had been too helpless to do anything for himself. He had learned from Sergeant Hawker, the old rogue, that she was a very pretty young woman; knew too, from Mary herself, that her long hair was the colour of sun-ripened corn and that her eyes were blue. Such a delicious combination! But he had never looked upon what Hawker considered the sweetest smile in Christendom…Would he ever be privileged to see it?

‘I wish I had your confidence, Mary.’

Her soft laughter had a teasing quality. ‘You will see,’ she assured him again. ‘Call it the gypsy in me that knows.’

He was still far from certain, but knew he was probably being too pessimistic; behaving like a spoilt child, as Mary had told him in no uncertain terms on more than one occasion during these past weeks. Darling little scold! His sight hadn’t been permanently damaged—the doctor had assured him of that. His eyes had been inflamed, certainly, and everything had been just a blur, but the condition was only temporary. His eyes had needed only resting and nature would effect its own cure. Tomorrow, when the bandages were removed, he would see again. He must believe that! Surely life wouldn’t heap the torment of blindness upon him on top of everything else?

He found himself experiencing that same gnawing ache of grief, infinitely more painful than any one of the several wounds he had sustained during his years in the army. It had been just over two weeks since Mary had read that letter informing him of his brother’s tragic death. He still found it difficult to accept that, when he did eventually return to England, Charles wouldn’t be standing outside the ancestral home waiting to greet him, as he had done so many times in the past; that dear Margaret wouldn’t be there either, nor little Jonathan. A racing curricle, driven at breakneck speed, had forced his brother’s carriage off the road and it had tumbled down a ravine. Because of some mindless fop’s attempts to win a wager, Charles and his wife, and their nine-year-old son, now lay six feet beneath the earth.

Learning about the tragedy so soon after seeing so many comrades fall at Waterloo had been almost too much for him to bear. He had come perilously close to losing the will to live; might well have not survived his injuries; might never have attempted to come to terms with his tragic loss if it hadn’t been for Mary.

Mostly gently coaxing, but occasionally rounding on him like a spitting virago, Mary had somehow managed to transfuse a small part of that indomitable spirit of hers into him, lifting him from the nadir of despair, and instilling in him a determination to face up to the responsibilities which had been placed upon him by his brother’s untimely death. It would take a long time before he got over his loss; perhaps he never would, fully; but, for the sake of the baby niece he had never yet seen, he must face the future.