The Virtuous Widow. Anne Gracie
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tried to move and heard himself groan. His head was killing him. Like someone had taken an axe to it. How had that happened? Was he bleeding? He tried to feel his head. And found he could not move. Trapped, dammit! He could not move his hands and legs. Someone had tied him up. He’d been taken prisoner. He began to struggle.
“Hush,” the woman said soothingly. She began to loosen the bindings around his arms as she spoke. “It’s all right. I just wrapped you tight in my blanket because you were all wet and I feared you would take a chill.”
He blinked up at her. His head throbbed unbearably. The rest of his body ached as well, but his head was the worst. Dizziness and confusion washed over him.
And then it hit him. She had spoken in English. Not Portuguese, or Spanish or French. English—not foreigners’ English, either—proper English. His sort of English. So where were they? He tried to speak, to ask her. He felt his mouth move, but it was as if someone had cut out his tongue. Or severed it from his brain. He felt his lips moving, but no words came out. He fixed his gaze on her face and tried to muster the energy to ask her the question. Questions. They crowded his splitting head.
The woman sat down on the floor beside him again and smoothed his hair gently back from his forehead. It felt so good, he closed his eyes for a moment to savour it.
“I don’t have any brandy,” she said apologetically. “All I have is hot soup. Now, drink a little. It will give you strength and warmth.”
Warmth? Did he need warmth? He realised that he was shivering. She lifted his head up and though he knew she was being as gentle as she could be, his brain thundered and swirled and he felt consciousness slipping from him. But then she tucked him against her shoulder and held him there, still and secure and somehow…cared for. He gripped her thigh and clung stubbornly to his senses and gradually felt the black swirling subside.
He recoiled as something clunked against his teeth. “It is only the teapot,” she murmured in his ear. “It contains warm broth. Now, drink. It will help.”
He wanted to tell her that he was a man, that he would drink it himself, out of a cup, not a teapot, like some helpless infant, but the words would not come. She tipped the teapot up and he had to swallow or have it spill down him. He swallowed. It was good broth. Warm. Tasty. It warmed his insides. And she felt so soft and good, her breasts against him, her arm around him, holding him upright against her. Weakly, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to be fed like a baby.
He drank the broth slowly, in small mouthfuls. The woman’s breath was warm against his face. She seemed to know how much to give him and when he needed to wait between mouthfuls. He could smell her hair. He wanted to turn his head and bury his face in it. He drank the broth instead. The fire crackled in the grate. Outside the wind whistled and howled, rattling at the doors and windows. It was chilly inside the cottage, and the floor underneath him was hard and cold, but oddly, he felt warm and cosy and at peace.
He finished the broth and half-sat, half-lay against her, allowing her to wipe his mouth, like a child. They sat for a moment or two, in companionable silence, with the wind swirling outside the cottage and the questions swirling inside his head.
Beneath the blanket he was stark naked, he suddenly realised. He stared at her, another question on his unmoving lips. Who was she, to strip him of his clothes?
As if she knew what he wanted, she murmured gently in his ear, “You arrived at my cottage almost an hour ago. I don’t know what happened to you before that. You were half-dressed and sopping wet. Frozen from the sleet and the rain. I don’t know how long you’d been outside, or how you managed to find the cottage, but you collapsed at the door—”
“Is Papa awake now?” a little voice said, like the piping of a bird.
Papa? He opened his eyes and saw a vivid little face staring at him with bright, inquisitive eyes. A child. A little girl.
“Go back to bed this instant, Amy,” said the woman sharply.
He winced and jerked his head and the blackness swirled again. When he reopened his eyes, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He was no longer leaning against the woman’s shoulder and the little face of the child was gone. And he was shivering. Hard.
The woman bent over him, her eyes dark with worry. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean to bump you like that. My daughter gave me a fright, that was all. Are you all right?” A faint frown crumpled the smoothness of her brow. “The bleeding has stopped and I have bandaged your head.”
He barely took in her words. All he could think of was that his head hurt like the devil and she was worried. He lifted a hand and stroked down her cheek slowly with the back of his fingers. It was like touching fine, cool, soft satin.
She sighed. And then she pulled back. “I’m afraid you will freeze if I leave you down here on the stone floor. Even with the fire going all night—and I don’t have the fuel for that—the stone floor will draw all the warmth from your body.”
He could only stare at her and try to control the shivering.
“The only place to keep you warm is in bed.” She blushed and did not meet his eye. “There…there is only one bed.”
He frowned, trying to absorb what she was telling him, but unable to understand why it would distress her. He still couldn’t recall who she was—the blow had knocked all sense from his head—but the child had called him ’Papa.’ He tried to think, but the effort only made the pain worse.
“It is upstairs. The bed. I cannot carry you up there.”
His confusion cleared. She was worried about his ability to get up the stairs. He nodded and gritted his teeth over the subsequent waves of swirling blackness. He could do that much for her. He would climb her stairs. He did not like to see her worried. He held out his hand to her and braced himself to stand. He wished he could remember her name.
Ellie took his arm and heaved until he was upright—shaky and looking appallingly pale, but standing and still conscious. She tucked the blanket tight under his armpits and knotted it over his shoulder, like a toga. She hoped it was warm enough. His feet and his long brawny calves were bare and probably cold, but it was better than having him trip. Or naked.
She wedged her shoulder under his armpit and steered him towards the stairs. The first step was in a narrow doorway with a very low lintel, for the cottage had not been designed for such tall men as he.
“Bend your head,” she told him. Obediently, he bent, but lost his balance and lurched forward. Ellie clung to him, pulling him back against the doorway, to keep him upright. Fearful that he would straighten and hit his injury on the low beam, she cupped one hand protectively around his head and drew it down against her own forehead for safety. He leaned on her, half-unconscious, breathing heavily, one arm around her, one hand clutching the wooden stair-rail, his face against hers. White lines of pain bracketed his mouth.
There were only fourteen steep and narrow stairs, but it took a superhuman effort to get him up them. He seemed barely conscious, except for the grim frown of concentration on his face and the slow determined putting of one foot in front of the other. He gripped the stair-rail with fists of stone and hauled himself up, pausing at each step achieved, reeling with faintness. Ellie held him tightly, supporting him with all the strength she could muster. He was a big man; if he collapsed, she could not stop him falling. And if he fell, he might never regain consciousness.
There was little conversation between them, only the grim, silent battle. One painful step at a time. From time to time, she would murmur encouragement—” we are past the halfway mark,” “only four steps left”—but she had no idea if he understood. The only sound he made was a grunt of exertion, or the raw harsh panting of a man in pain, at the end of his tether. He hung on to consciousness by willpower alone. She had never seen such stubbornness, or such courage.
At last they reached the top of the stairs. Straight ahead of them was the tiny room where Amy’s bed was tucked—no more than a narrow cupboard it was, really, but cosy enough and warm for her daughter.