Never a Road Without a Turning (6 page)

“Daft bugger, ain’t I?”

The horse snorted his agreement, and Pip smiled despite himself. He patted the beast’s neck and let his eyes close for a time. When the horse began to shift restlessly beneath him, Pip finally shook off his mortification and finished saddling it. But as they rode out, Pip knew at once that his ride was already spoiled.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize that the only reason he was allowed to continue his favorite duty was that the master was unable to perform it himself. A gentleman of the major’s birth wouldn’t forgo the pleasure of such a fine animal unless he had to. Never one to take pleasure in another’s pain, that fact had put a bit of a pall on Pip’s afternoon rides already. Now, after having seen the man’s pain for himself, Pip couldn’t get the image out of his head, and he urged the horse into a run, trying to escape his thoughts.

In the end, his guilt turned to irritation, the longer he thought about it. Why should he care if his new master was lame? What difference did it make? If their roles were reversed, the man wouldn’t shed a tear for him. Pip knew that for certain. The gent had enough money to sit on his arse in comfort for the rest of his days and pay people like Pip and the Applethwaites to wait on his every need. That wasn’t much of a hardship from Pip’s way of thinking. Why on earth should Pip feel sorry for him?

Eventually the horse slowed to a stop at their usual place, and Pip sat back in the saddle, indulging in a solitary vigil of his own. He was purposefully trying to distract himself with the beauty all around him when a shout from nearby startled him out of his gloom.

“Oi, Pip!” Agnes waved as she crested the hill.

Pip forced a smile and climbed down from the horse. “Agnes, m’ dove. Did yer father unlock the tower or did ye’ climb down on yer own?” he teased.

Agnes huffed and giggled a little breathlessly. Her father’s dairy farm might be the closest habitation to Greer cottage, but it was still a fair climb over rough hills, and she must have hurried for she was clearly out of breath—her ample bosom heaving beneath her knitted shawl.

“I were out in the barn when I saw ye on the hill. Father don’ know I’m gone. But I ’ad to speak with ye,” she panted. “I thought for sure ye’d be sacked after what ’appened. But I’ve ’eard not a word in the village.”

Pip shrugged. “The master was forgiving. But I ’ave to be on me best from now on.”

She snorted and Pip grinned, forgetting some of his earlier disquiet. Being with Agnes was always like that, always so easy. He should have sought her out long before now. He had no idea why he hadn’t.

“Come sit wi’ me.” Pip reached for her hand and led her and the horse over to a small outcropping of rocks.

Agnes sat on a large flat stone, attempting to tame her wild brown curls beneath her bonnet and tugging her tan shawl more tightly around her shoulders while Pip secured the horse’s reins. She’d apparently recovered her breath by the time Pip returned to sit beside her because she immediately began peppering him with questions. “What’s ’e like? Everyone’s all agog in the village. Is ’is brother truly a
baronet
? Is it true ’e were at Waterloo? An’ that ’e’s a surgeon? An’ ’e’s just back from the Cape where ’e were cut down by savages?”

All except for the bit about coming back from the Cape was news to Pip, so he held his tongue until she wound down a little. Pip was almost jealous that Agnes seemed to know so much more than he did, but he certainly wasn’t going to admit it.

“That’s what I ’eard,” Pip lied. “But what else are they sayin’?”

Agnes’s plain brown eyes were wide with excitement as she pressed herself close to his side, the warmth of her breast seeping through to Pip’s skin despite the layers of wool and linen. “Only that ’e ’asn’t been back to England more’n a couple o’ times since Waterloo, travellin’ the world over. Mary Trent said that Doctor Fields paid a call on ’im but stayed barely ’alf an hour. Is that true?”

Pip shrugged. “’E’s ’ad a few callers, but I don’ know who they were. We weren’t exactly introduced. I saw to a few ’orses. I don’ think none of them stayed long.”

“Mary says ’e’s been invited to at least two dinners in the village already, but ’e’s accepted nary a one.”

Her tone was scandalized, and Pip felt compelled to come to his master’s defense for some strange reason. “’E’s only just settled in, Agnes. An’ I don’t think ’e’s recovered from his travels yet. ’is leg pains ’im, I’m sure.”

“I suppose so.” She shrugged and then looked coyly at Pip through her eyelashes. “’E is a ’andsome gentleman, though, ain’t ’e? I only saw ’im that once, but I wouldn’t mind bringing that one ’is breakfast every morning.”

“Aye,” Pip replied, too distracted by all he’d learned to fully understand her question until he looked up to find her watching him with a strange expression on her face. “What?”

She frowned at him, and it took a few seconds for Pip to realize his mistake. Instead of jealously objecting to her speaking that way about another man, he’d simply agreed with her without thinking. Before he could devise a means of smoothing Agnes’s feathers, she huffed and jumped to her feet.

“Father’ll be wonderin’ where I’ve gone,” she said tersely before turning her nose up and stalking away.

“Agnes!” Pip tried to call her back, but his efforts were halfhearted at best. And when she didn’t stop or turn around, he let her go. She’d calm down after a space, and he’d try to talk to her again later… perhaps.

T
HAT
NIGHT
at dinner, Pip wanted to ask Mrs. Applethwaite about all that he’d heard from Agnes but changed his mind when he saw what a temper she was in after she returned from seeing to their master. The woman even snapped at her drunkard of a husband twice in the space of a few minutes, more than she had in all the time Pip had been at the cottage, and Pip decided he would do best to remain invisible. Hopefully he’d find her in a better humor the next day so he could wheedle some of the story from her and satisfy his rampant curiosity.

As soon as he was finished eating, Pip hurried off to bed before she remembered he was there. The moon was full and the sky clear, so instead of risking drawing attention to himself by lighting a candle, Pip read by moonlight until he fell asleep.

He was dreaming about watching the major ride the horse in circles around him, smiling happily, when pounding on his door and Mrs. Applethwaite’s harried voice startled him awake. “Pip! Pip, wake up. Come at once!”

Pip stumbled out of bed and opened his door a crack. “What is it?”

“The master! I need your help!”

In the light of the single candle she held, the housekeeper’s eyes were wide and frightened beneath her nightcap. Without waiting for a reply, she spun around and hurried down the hall, her steel gray braid swaying down her back and the sleeves of her gown fluttering in the candlelight like the wings of a great moth.

Pip shook his head to clear it of the strange fancy and quickly pulled on his trousers before following her down the hall.

Too much poetry before bed.

As he passed through the kitchen on the way to the rest of the house, he spotted Mr. Applethwaite snoring in his chair by the fire, his mouth open wide and an empty bottle on the floor by his feet. Pip spared a moment to frown at the man and curse him under his breath before he hurried to catch up to the housekeeper’s rapidly receding candle. Pip found her in the library, where she stood clutching a handkerchief to her mouth with one boney blue-veined hand as she looked down at the prone form of their master lying on his side on the floor.

“I tried to wake him, but I couldn’t,” she said shakily.

Pip crouched down next to the man’s body and felt his cheek. The skin was still warm, and when Pip put his fingers under the major’s nose, he could feel his breath. Pip rolled him onto his back, and the major let out a groan as the smell of whisky filled the air. A glance in the direction of the sideboard showed Pip that the crystal decanter was almost empty, and Pip had seen Mrs. Applethwaite fill it only that afternoon from the bottles she kept locked in a cabinet near her bedchamber.

“C’mon, master. Let’s get ye t’ bed,” Pip said with only a hint of the annoyance he was feeling. He draped one of the man’s arms over his shoulders and tried to lift him onto his feet.

Together, Pip and Mrs. Applethwaite managed to pull their master upright. Supporting the major on the side he usually held his cane, Pip followed Mrs. Applethwaite as she lit the way upstairs. Pip was sweating and panting by the time they made it to the master’s bedchamber, where he dumped the man rather unceremoniously onto his bed, because he didn’t have the strength for anything else.

Mrs. Applethwaite hovered in the doorway, not yet recovered enough from her fright to take charge as she usually did. Pip had to wonder at that, since he assumed she’d had to do this with her husband at least once a fortnight, but he made no comment. Instead, he took pity on the woman, lifted the candle from her shaking hand to light the lamp next to their master’s bed, and said, “I’ll ’andle things from ’ere, Missus. I’ll stir up the coals and get ’im tucked in so ’e don’ catch chill.”

“Thank you, Pip,” Mrs. Applethwaite said and gave him a rare smile. She cast one last concerned look toward their master before taking the candle and heading back the way they’d come.

Pip went to tend the fire first, poured on more coals, and then stirred it up until the heat coming off it soaked into his chilled limbs through the damp linen of his shirt. Now that he’d recovered a bit from lugging the wretch up the stairs, he was regretting not grabbing his jacket before leaving his room. He allowed himself the luxury of resting in front of the coals until his shirt dried and his muscles relaxed.

A groan from the bed reminded him that he had a task to finish before he could return to the warmth of his blankets. He sighed, walked to the bed, and stood staring down at his foxed master. This was the first opportunity Pip had to study the man without those unnerving silver eyes boring into him, and he had to admit Agnes was right. The major was a handsome gentleman. He looked younger in his sleep. The lines of strain around his eyes and mouth had eased, and the silver in the thick waves of his dark blond hair were harder to see in the lamplight. He had a strong chin, framed by carefully trimmed sideburns, a patrician nose, and lips that were neither too full nor too thin. They seemed to have a natural upward curve to them in repose, and Pip had to wonder what made him force them downward so often.

Was it his injury, or was there something else that tortured him?

When Pip realized he was still staring at his master’s mouth, he shook his head to clear it and set to work finishing what he’d begun. He shoved the major over, none too gently, eliciting another moan, and then he drew the heavy blankets back. Pip was about to drag him into the spot he’d cleared, when he realized the major still had his boots on. It struck Pip as rather odd that a man who could most certainly afford house slippers would wear his boots indoors when he rarely went out. He found it equally strange that the man would wear loose trousers over his boots rather than a tighter fitting pair of breeches tucked into them, as most country gentlemen did.

But who was Pip to question the ways and wants of the gentry? Perhaps it pained the major to take his shoes on and off, so he kept to the same pair all day. Pip shrugged and set to removing them so Mrs. Applethwaite wouldn’t have a fit when she discovered the dirty linens.

The first boot came off without too much of a struggle, and he set it on the floor next to the bed, but when Pip tugged on the other, it didn’t budge. Pip grabbed the heel and gave it another good pull. The major moaned louder this time, but nothing yielded beneath Pip’s hands. In fact, the heel and leg inside the boot felt strangely hard. Pip pushed the trouser leg up and up until it passed the top of the boot and that’s when he realized the leg wasn’t real. Pip stared at the contraption of wood, leather, and metal for a few moments in morbid curiosity before quickly pulling the trouser leg back into place. He had no idea how to remove the thing without removing the man’s trousers, and Pip was fairly certain any attempts to do that without leave would surely get him sacked this time. He was no valet, and he wouldn’t risk the master taking offense.

Feeling strangely unsettled, Pip simply dragged the major across the mattress, pulled the blankets over him, grabbed one of the warming bricks from the hearth, and placed it at the man’s feet—
foot
—before taking the lamp and hurrying from the room.

Pip slept fitfully the rest of the night, uncertain why the whole affair had him so flustered. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen a man who was missing a leg or an arm before. The battle at Waterloo occurred only a little more than a decade ago, and Pip well remembered the hundreds of wounded soldiers who had flooded London’s streets afterward. But for some reason, the thought of the major suffering that, and still so obviously in pain, kept Pip tossing and turning in his bed, and he was next to useless when Mrs. Applethwaite roused him for his duties the following morning.