continues to bleed.’
‘Come with me and I will tend to it,’ she said curtly.
Taking up a candle, she walked across the hall to the kitchens, through which the still room was located. It was where Alice liked to mix her own remedies. Arabella often helped her. It was clean and quiet and fragrant with summer smells of thyme, rosemary and lavender, berries and seeds, and herbs that were readily available in the hedgerows.
Glad of the opportunity to speak with her alone, Edward followed her. Her skirts swayed gently as she walked and the line of her back was straight and graceful. Removing his jacket, his sling and his sword, he slipped his arm out of his shirt sleeve to expose the not-so-clean bandage covering his injured shoulder. Sitting on a stool, he waited for her to proceed.
Trying to barricade herself behind a mask of composure as she held up the candle, Arabella’s gaze was reluctantly drawn to his exposed flesh. Lighting two more candles better to see, carefully she cut away the blood-soaked bandage. His bare, muscled arm and shoulder gleamed in the soft light. It was excruciatingly intimate to touch his flesh. It was warm and firm. He was strong, sleek but not gaunt, all sinew and strength, his muscles solid where her fingers touched.
Forcing herself not to think about his manly physique and to focus on the raw wound, which drove such thoughts away, she inspected it carefully. It looked angry, a thin trickle of blood oozing from the lacerated flesh. Tentatively she felt the surrounding tissue with her finger. He winced. It was obviously painful to the touch.
‘The wound appears to be quite deep. It has to be cleaned. You say it happened earlier today?’
‘Hopefully it won’t have had time to fester.’ Watching her as she lit more candles, filled a bowl with water and gathered cloths with which to wash the wound, he said, ‘You have changed, Arabella.’
‘War does that to people,’ she answered, her manner brusque as she proceeded to clean the wound, her pale hands working quickly and efficiently.
‘I am sorry you’ve had to endure its hardships.’
She shot him a look. ‘Why? You did not start the war.’
When she began to wash the wound his expression tightened and he gritted his teeth. Her heart wrenched, having no wish to cause him more pain. Yet she was quietly pleased by the sight and it gave her some satisfaction of him being less that formidable.
‘How long have you been at Bircot Hall?’ he asked.
‘Two years now. We really are quite impoverished. We have managed to put some of the house back to some kind of order. The property will be restored later, when it can be afforded—when the war is over. We hope it will be soon—although when King Charles was executed we thought it was the end of Royalist hopes.’
‘Not when the Scots proclaimed his son King of Great Britain and after Cromwell routed the Royalists at Dunbar.’
‘You were there?’
Edward nodded, as memories of that bloody battle slashed like a blade through his mind’s eyes. ‘I was there. I was one of the lucky ones. I managed to escape over the border and back into England, where I made my way south.’
‘We have heard that King Charles is heading south with a Scottish army. Is this true?’
He nodded, avoiding her gaze. ‘It is. I will join him when I know Dickon is safe.’
There was a stillness in the air, a foreboding that sent a cold shiver down her spine. ‘I can’t bear to think there is to be more fighting.’
‘We are all weary of it. There have been times when we were defeated, but we are not destroyed.’
‘And new plots are being devised to continue the fight every day. If you are killed? What then?’
‘If you agree to let Dickon remain here for the time being, should the Royalists be defeated, then I would ask you to take Dickon to my sister in France.’
‘I see.’ Pausing in her task, she cast him a wry glance. ‘Your audacity knows no bounds. You ask too much of me, Edward.’
He met her gaze steadily. ‘I know. I am desperate, Arabella,’ he said softly. ‘My property has been confiscated. My son is all I have left. I have to know that he is safe. The war will end—but not as you or I would like. The way Cromwell has trained his army is something else. Never in England, until now, has there been an army like it. For the first time soldiers are properly trained. They proved how well at Dunbar.’
Looking into his eyes, she saw there were haunted shadows and she guessed that, like every other soldier who had survived, the ugliness of the wars had left lasting scars on his mind. ‘So—what are you saying? That there is no hope?’
‘Unless the King can produce a miracle, the cause is doomed.’
‘I fear we are all doomed whatever the outcome.’
‘You sound bitter, Arabella.’
She gave him a cold look. ‘Bitter? I remember those months after Marston Moor, when everyone thought the war must end. It seemed impossible then that it would start up again. How soon they were to be proved wrong. And now look at me. My husband is dead—along with our child. My father was killed at Naseby and my brother is preparing to prolong the fight. I have no home to call my own and I have been forced to throw myself on my sister’s charity, whose house has been violated by men who care nothing for the cause but only for what they can plunder from the homes of decent people without respect to their persons. Yes, Edward, I am bitter. Bitter that there are those not satisfied and continue to stir up the ugly storm of war, determined to drag it out to the bitter end.’
‘No corner of England has remained untouched by the evils of war, Arabella. In every shire and every town, families have been divided and much blood spilled. With the failure to find a political solution all England is in confusion. Many remain loyal to the king.’
‘As a man or as a symbol?’
‘The latter, I think. When the end comes there will be no recovery.’
‘King or Parliament—it’s not as if war decides who is right—only who has the power to rule.’
‘I fear you are right. Royalists are fleeing in their hundreds to the Continent like rats deserting the sinking ship.’
‘If they loved their homes more, they would stay behind and share the burdens of defeat with their womenfolk.’
Edward was silent while she wrung a bloodied cloth out in the bowl of water, then, ‘Do you bear malice toward me—for what happened between us?’
‘Malice?’
Briefly Arabella closed her eyes. It was painful to recount such memories, especially when she had become so accustomed to burying them—or trying, for no matter how hard she had tried she had not succeeded. Secretly she had missed him more than she would have believed possible, for how could she ever forget how volatile, mercurial and rakishly good looking this man was?
She recalled the pain she had felt when told he had renounced their betrothal, the horror and humiliation of it. She had promised herself that never again would she allow herself to be so treated.
Reaching deep inside herself, she pushed thoughts of his rejection of her away. Thinking like this served no purpose. There was nothing to be gained from these haunting thoughts. Shaking the shroud of the past from her, she set herself firmly to this one task of tending his wound. Besides, she had other matters on which she must focus now—his child and what she was going to do about him.
‘Why should I bear malice? I can understand it must be a grim prospect indeed for a man who is compelled to exchange marriage vows with an unappealing woman merely to satisfy his family. You wanted Anne Lister, I knew that. Despite her family being for Parliament, the moment you were introduced you were smitten by her.’
He nodded gravely. ‘That I cannot deny.’
‘You