Page 10 of How the Duke Saved Christmas

“I’m not ill. Just tired.” She was exhausted from her encounter with Michael, both physically and emotionally. Ghosts were haunting her, and she wanted nothing more than to fall asleep and sink into oblivion until morning, when she wouldn’t have to think about him again until the carriage was leaving Northbourne Park for Kelso.

With a relieved nod, Mrs. Bailey pulled the night rail and dressing robe from the overnight bag and laid them across the bed. It wasn’t always convenient having the woman for both nurse and maid, but what she lacked in dressing skills she made up for in concern for Clara’s health.

Perhaps too much so.

Oh, Mrs. Bailey was kind and dedicated, certainly. But sometimes Clara felt as if she were little more than a child tended by a nanny.

“Mrs. Hansen is bringing up a tray,” Clara informed her. “I’ll have dinner here in front of the fire.”

Mrs. Bailey hesitated as she placed Clara’s vanity set on the mirrored dressing table. “Are you certain you don’t want me to send for a doctor?” She moved back to the bags and took out a green day dress for tomorrow. “His Grace most likely keeps one on retainer for—”

“I am fine.” Dear Lord, how many times did she have to say so? But she wouldn’t be fine if she didn’t have a moment’s peace and quiet. So she threw out, “But perhaps John Coachman and the tigers aren’t. Would you please make certain that the men have proper accommodations for the night?” She added, almost apologetically, “We’ve stayed at places on this trip where the host’s grooms cared more for the horses than the men.”

“Of course, my lady.” Mrs. Bailey hung the dress in the armoire and set to unpacking the rest of the bags.

“You can leave that for later. The bath won’t be ready for at least half an hour.”

Mrs. Bailey paused, then smiled tightly, realizing that Clara wanted that half hour alone. “Shall I check on the men now, then?”

“Please.”Please leave and give me air and space…

Mrs. Bailey nodded and exited the room but left the door ajar. Far enough open, Clara knew, that Anthony or one of the servants would hear if Clara needed anything—or God forbid, if she tried to retrieve anything herself and fell onto the floor, helpless. But even if she did, she still wouldn’t call out because a servant might happen to come to her assistance before Anthony. Michael would hear of it, and she’d rather be stuck on the floor for hours than suffer that humiliation.

Michael.She squeezed her eyes shut and took several deep breaths to calm her racing heart and settle herself. But it didn’t work. The blasted man would always be capable of making her heart race.

A tear escaped down her cheek. He was her first love, heronlylove, and she’d loved him enough to push him away. Today had been a brutal reminder of why.

She brushed the tear away and reached into her bodice, beneath the collar of her coatdress and down into the stays. She brushed her fingers over the small gold and ruby ring she’d hidden there, secure around her neck on its long chain. She never removed it. The first time Mrs. Bailey had helped her undress and saw it, Clara told her it belonged to her mother. What was one more secret surrounding it, compared to all the others?

A sharp tingling shot up her leg.

With a wince, she released the ring to rub her thigh and ease the pain caused from too many days spent riding in a cramped carriage. She tugged her skirt up to her knees. Her leg stuck straight out as always, like some parasitic creature that wasn’t truly a part of her anymore. Beyond her skirt hem, if she dared to lift it higher, she would see shriveled muscles and a bright pink, jagged scar that cut from knee to hip. There were other wounds from the accident, too, ones that were invisible to the world yet cut into her heart when she thought of all she’d lost.

Her leg was stiff, weak…useless.

The skirt slipped through her fingers and back into place. A hot bath would help. Cold and damp weather always made her knee ache, sometimes to the point that Mrs. Bailey had to work it for her manually to keep the blood flowing and the muscles from seizing up. The doctors in London had also given her an ointment to rub into her skin that supposedly loosened the muscles and stopped the cramping.

But the metal from the wreckage had broken her knee and sliced up the side of her thigh, cutting deeply enough to expose the bone and causing enough trauma that her monthly courses stopped. Her body would never again work properly, no matter now many hot baths she took, no matter how many jars of ointment she used. The doctors had told her with pitying looks that the pain in her leg would persist as her muscles continued to weaken and atrophy. Only time would make it stop, they assured her, once her muscles had completely died.

Each rub of her thigh and scratch of the jagged scar beneath her fingertips simply reinforced the truth.

She would never walk on her own again.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Northbourne Park is lovely.” Anthony leaned forward to flick the ash from the tip of his cigar, then kicked his feet onto the fender of the study’s fireplace and settled back in the leather chair. “Why didn’t we have parties here with our chums when we were at university?”

“To keep it lovely.” Michael took a splinter from the spill vase on the mantel, bent down to the fire to light it, and lit his cigar. “What good is asking me questions if you’re simply going to answer them yourself?”

To punctuate that point, Michael swatted his hand at Anthony’s feet to make him take them down. His friend grinned and clamped his cigar between his teeth.

When Michael settled back into the chair next to his, Anthony kicked his feet back onto the fender.

Michael grimaced into his port at his friend’s incorrigibleness and raised the glass for a healthy swallow.

They’d taken their dinner here in the study. There had been no point in having the footmen set the dining table when he’d learned from Mrs. Hansen that Clara wouldn’t be joining them and when the children were too young to be served with guests at a formal dinner table. Michael welcomed the children’s company in what was otherwise a large, empty, and silent house at this time of the year, but he also knew where to draw lines of propriety. It was important that Clara knew he kept an organized house, if for no other reason than to remind her that he would have been a man she could have been proud to have for a husband and Northbourne a home that would have made her happy.

Dining in the study, though, had its benefits. Cigars and port were in ample supply here, and after the way his conversation with Clara had gone earlier, he needed both to fortify him for the evening. There would be no chance to speak with her again if the way she’d barricaded herself into her bedroom was any indication. Even now, her absence hung heavy over the study when the three of them would have been as thick as thieves in years gone by.