Wicked Wager. Julia Justiss
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taste of fear bitter in his mouth. “Jenna!” he called, patting her shoulder. “Jenna, can you hear me?”
There was no response. He touched her wrist, overjoyed to feel a faint pulse against his shaking fingers. Though she lay with her face in the mud, he dare not move her until he knew the extent of her injuries.
Detachment settling in, he traced down her limbs, then up from the base of her neck. Relief flooded him when he determined that, as best he could tell, the spine appeared intact and no bones had been broken.
By this time the thunder of approaching hoofs told him the groom must have finally seen his fallen mistress. A moment later, a panic-faced lad skidded to a stop beside Tony. “Cor, m’lord, be she dead?”
“She breathes still—no thanks to your diligence,” Tony said acidly. “Help me turn her—gently!”
Tony discovered, as he’d suspected, a purpling contusion on her temple. Her even breathing and steady pulse reassured him somewhat, but he knew a brain injury could be as dangerous as a fracture to the spine. She might also have suffered other, not yet apparent hurts.
Though he was tempted to wait for a carriage to convey her home more gently, his battlefield experience argued that the longer she lay on the cold ground, the greater the danger that she might never recover consciousness or that the chill might settle in her lungs.
Horseback it must be.
“You—” he gestured to the boy “—fetch my horse, over there. Once I’ve mounted, you must hand Lady Fairchild up to me as gently as you can and lead us back to Fairchild House. I don’t want to jostle her any more than necessary, but we must get her home as quickly as possible and summon a physician. Return for her mount later.”
While the lad did as he was bid, Tony thanked God he had his horse available. With his arms well-developed from wielding a saber, lifting Jenna from the groom and balancing her before him in the saddle proved easy enough a task. He knew he’d never have been able to support her weight, slight as it was, were he on foot.
For an instant Tony wondered why Jenna’s seemingly docile mount had suddenly turned so fractious. Far too worried about her condition to spare more than that moment on the thought, he hugged her limp body to his chest.
The transit home seemed to take an age. By the time Upper Brook Street came into view, he was sweating, even his well-trained muscles strained by the effort of holding her as motionless as possible.
Just as they reached the townhouse, Jenna moved at last. Eyes still shut, she murmured and nestled against Tony, as if snuggling into his warmth. Or as if, slowly rousing from sleep, she were seeking her lover.
His body stirred at the thought and, despite his worry, he had to grin. Often as he’d dreamed of having Jenna Montague in his arms again, he’d never envisioned it happening quite like this.
Finally a Fairchild servant noticed them. “Someone from the house will assist us now,” Tony called to the groom. “Ride with all speed for the doctor.”
A moment later, a procession of servants began streaming out, among them Sancha, the Spanish maid who had accompanied Jenna all through the Peninsula.
“Madre de Dios, mi pobre señora!” she cried as she ran down the steps toward them. “What happened?”
“She fell from her horse,” Tony answered.
As the maid’s gaze lifted from her mistress to the man holding her, her eyes widened. “The Evil One!” she gasped.
So much for Sancha’s good opinion. But concern for Jenna outweighing his chagrin, he continued, “Get her into a warm bed as quickly as possible. A doctor was sent for.”
After carefully handing Jenna to a stout footman, he dismounted to follow. “Nay!” Sancha cried, stepping forward to block him and making the sign of the cross, as if to ward off the Evil Eye. “You may not enter!”
Before Tony could remonstrate, Lane Fairchild trotted down the stairs. He paused for a moment as the footman carrying Jenna passed him, his grim gaze scanning her pale face, then proceeded to halt before Tony.
“What outrage is this? If you have harmed my cousin, I shall call you out, even if you are a cripple!”
“Lady Fairchild fell while riding,” Tony said, ignoring the jibe about his condition and trying to hold his temper in check. “I assisted in carrying her home.”
Fairchild raised his eyebrows. “Jenna fell from her horse? Do you really expect me to believe that?”
Tony shrugged. “I don’t give a damn what you believe. Question the groom about it—indeed, I’d like to ask him myself how such a thing happened. But for now, Sancha, go to your mistress. The doctor should be here any moment.”
Fairchild looked as if he would comment further, but chose to refrain. “I do thank you for seeing her home,” he admitted grudgingly. “Now I must tend to my cousin.”
With that, Fairchild ran back up the stairs. As the front door shut behind them, the rest of the servants dispersed. For a few moments Tony stood alone, debating whether or not to continue up the stairs and demand entry. But given Fairchild’s plainly demonstrated animosity, it was unlikely he’d be able to inveigle his way in. Though it galled him to leave before finding out how she was, there seemed little point in remaining.
He’d return later after the physician had examined her, he decided. He’d done all he could for Jenna, save keep vigil until the doctor came. What happened now was in the hands of her maid, her physician—and Jenna herself.
“Fight like the good soldier you are,” he murmured. And then, shoulders aching, he mounted Pax and set off.
TWO WEEKS LATER, Tony sat in one of the new hells off Pall Mall, an untasted drink at his elbow as, hand after hand, he raked in the guineas of his opponent, a lad too drunk to count the cards in his unsteady grip.
He felt a bit ashamed, relieving this castaway stripling of so much blunt. But the grim news imparted by the family solicitor when Tony had finally consulted him, after being turned away three times from the Fairchild mansion after Jenna’s accident, made the necessity of finding an immediate source of income starkly clear.
The earnings from the Nelthorpe estates, financially crippled like so many farming communities after the war’s end, had diminished to a trickle that would barely pay to seed this year’s crops. Not attempting to hide his disapproval, the solicitor told him that his father had sold or gambled away the investments left by Tony’s grandfather, mortgaged nearly every property it was possible to mortgage, and was in arrears in paying back even the interest.
Like his father, the solicitor advised him to head off the disaster by marrying an heiress. At least this man had the grace to remain silent when Tony, angry and despairing, snapped back at him to ask which fair flower of virginity had a rich Papa, still in possession of his senses, who might agree to offer Tony her hand.
Perhaps something could be worked out, the man had said weakly. On that hopeful note, they’d parted.
He’d gone back to gaming to pay off the most pressing bills he’d found stuffed in his father’s desk. Thanks to a merciful Providence, thus far, he’d been winning.
But he’d gambled too long not to know that, skillfully and soberly as he was now playing, his luck wouldn’t last forever. The blunt he’d accumulated after two week’s play offered a small cushion against immediate ruin, but gaming could be no more than a temporary solution.
His only real chance to recoup their fortune would be, as everyone suggested, to marry one.
However, Tony’s few forays into polite Society had confirmed that his soiled reputation, no doubt reinforced by the activities of his sire, remained intact. Society matrons with marriageable daughters in tow took care to avoid him. His older sister, now Lady Siddons, had distanced herself from her Hunsdon kin immediately after her marriage and could not