God and Charlie, he didn’t have to return to his father like the beggar he’d always been.
He hunched deeper into the folds of his scarf, but it didn’t prevent a trickle of rainwater finding its way down the back of his neck. And that didn’t take his mind off the water splashing up from his horse’s hooves and soaking his breeches. Pretty soon his backside would be soaking wet, too.
While the dry and warm Mrs Falkner, when he caught up to her, would not be the slightest bit pleased with him or his news.
The woman certainly offered a challenge to a man known for his charm when it came to lonely widows. A reputation he’d worked hard to acquire. Pleasurably hard. Those words in conjunction with thoughts of Caro Falkner had him shifting uncomfortably in the saddle. Was it her obvious disapproval that had him thinking of seduction each time he saw her or the beauty she tried so hard to hide behind her severe demeanour and dress? Or was it the mystery behind her facade of unbending respectability? The picture she painted of the vicar’s perfect daughter, when he remembered her so very differently. Was she hiding something that might prove dangerous to his friend and his friend’s wife?
An intriguing question.
He rounded a bend to a scene of utter disaster. A carriage tilted crazily on the verge. A shattered wheel some distance off. A team—Tonbridge’s team, for goodness’ sake—trembling and shifting in the harness, ready to bolt. His heart rose in his throat.
He galloped the intervening hundred yards and leaped down. His gut clenched at the sight of the coachman sprawled face up in the ditch. Blade had seen enough death to recognise a broken neck. Why had he not caught them up sooner? Had the woman’s distaste for him made him deliberately hang back? Idiot.
‘Mrs Falkner?’ His shout was met by a resounding silence. Heart in his mouth, he approached the carriage door swinging free on its hinges and peered inside. The sight of her pale face, her closed eyes and the way she lay on the floor in a heap brought bile to his throat. He leaped aboard. She groaned softly and her eyelids fluttered.
Alive, then. Relief flooded through him.
He rubbed her cold hands. ‘Mrs Falkner?’ he repeated. ‘Come on, let’s get you out of here.’ It would be cold in the wind and rain, but he could feel the carriage shifting as the horses moved restlessly. At any moment the animals might take it into their foolish heads to run.
‘Mrs Falkner,’ he said again, more demanding this time. Louder.
She opened her eyes and put a hand to her head. For a moment she stared at him blankly, then frowned. ‘Mr Read? Where is Josiah? Mr Garge?’
He thought about lying, but she was going to see how matters lay the moment he got her out of the carriage. ‘Dead, I am afraid. Broken neck. Here, let me help you up. Put your arm over my shoulder and hang on.’ With only one hand, he had to get her to help herself. Fortunately, her eyes cleared and, with his aid, she pushed to her feet. He helped her to the ground, where she swayed slightly, then found her feet and her balance.
Out in the grey light of the morning, his blood chilled as he saw the red lump on her forehead, already turning blue, and the blood streaked across her chin. ‘You are hurt.’
She stared at him blankly, then glanced down at her hand where more blood welled. ‘A scratch, I think.’
He guided her to a boulder and sat her facing away from the coachman. ‘I must see to the horses and then we will see what we can do about that injury.’ He’d seen men die from less on the battlefields of Europe.
A quick check of the horses confirmed his impression that while nervous, they were unharmed. He found a length of rope beneath the coachman’s box and used it to hobble the leaders. There was no way for him to repair the coach. They needed help.
He went to his own horse and pulled down his saddle pack before going back to Mrs Falkner. Her colour was already better. A good sign. He put a finger beneath her chin to lift up her face so he could see to tend her forehead. Her eyes widened in shock. ‘You have a bump,’ he said by way of explanation for his forward behaviour. ‘Do you have a headache?’
She shook her head. ‘It only hurts if I touch it.’
Another good sign. He pulled out a bottle of witch hazel and dabbed at the bruise and then at the cut on her hand.
‘Did you say Garge is...?’
No sense beating around the bush. ‘Dead. Yes.’
‘How can that be?’
‘He must have struck his head on a boulder when he came off the box.’
‘But...he opened the door. Looked in on me. I heard him. I felt so dizzy, I told him I had to rest a minute. He left before I could open my eyes. But he was there. After the accident.’
Not possible. She likely imagined it. ‘I am so sorry, Mrs Falkner, but Mr Garge’s neck was broken by the fall. It would have been instant.’
She stared at him, then turned her face away, clearly confused. And why would she not be after such a bang to the noggin. ‘Is there nothing we can do for him?’
‘No.’ He kept his voice matter-of-fact. He did not want her going into a fit of hysterics after she’d been so stoic. She would not like him to see her in such a state any more than he would like to watch her fall apart.
She started to rise, swayed and put a hand to her head. Her face blanched.
He gently pushed her down. ‘Sit.’ He pressed her head to her knees with his forearm at the back of her neck, a beautiful vulnerable nape that begged a man’s touch. He forced himself to look away and gaze off into the distance until her breathing evened out.
She took a deep shuddering breath. ‘I am better now. Thank you.’
He released her immediately. He did not want her thinking he had anything untoward on his mind, because it would be easy to fall into such a trap with a woman as lovely as this one. ‘He wouldn’t have felt a thing,’ he said. It was what they always told themselves in the aftermath of battle, though, given his own experience, he doubted it was ever true. ‘There was nothing anyone could have done.’
She buried her face in her hands. ‘What on earth am I to tell his wife?’
He grimaced. It was something he had always hated, but at least he’d only been required to write a letter. He’d never had to face anyone’s widow with the bad news, though he’d met plenty of them since returning to England. Made a point of it. And they were grateful, most of them, when they should have taken him to task for not caring for their men better than he had.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. The coach bounced so hard it must have hit a rut in the road and then I was thrown against the door. I don’t remember much after that.’
With a coachman as competent as Tonbridge’s driving a team as steady as this one, it was hard to imagine Garge running foul of a rut. ‘Did you see anything unusual?’
She frowned. ‘What sort of thing?’
Clearly his conversation with the innkeeper had his senses on high alert. ‘I wondered if something might have distracted Garge. Made him make a mistake?’
She frowned. ‘I heard a crack. The whip. I assumed he was trying to make up some time after the slow going in the valley.’
Ice ran through his veins. A shot? He bit back a curse, not wanting to scare her. He needed to look at the carriage. And the coachman. He rose and stared around him. ‘Well, there is no moving the carriage with that broken wheel. We must find you some shelter.’ He’d also have to notify the local authority about the death. ‘Our best course is to hope someone travels along this road, sooner rather than later.’ Once he knew she was safe, he’d come back before the local coroner arrived and see if his suspicions were borne out by evidence.
She touched a hand to her