A Hint of Scandal (3 page)

“The man or the horse?” Tommy asked.

“Both,” she said, moving close to the big animal. Bella gathered her resolve and assessed the situation. “Let’s remove his feet from the stirrups first. Then you take one arm and I the other and we’ll ease him off. I hope this beast stays still.”

The black horse did stand docile, out of exhaustion or trust, Bella could not tell. It was no easy feat to hold the man steady as they pulled him sideways off the horse, especially since it was difficult to keep their footing on the rain-soaked ground.

Once they got the unconscious man down, Bella knelt next to him and felt his neck for a pulse. Though it was weak, he was definitely alive. Sighing with relief, Bella struggled against her wet bedclothes to rise from the sodden earth. It had begun to rain again.

“Whatever is wrong with him will not be helped by being out in this weather,” Bella told her equally soaked brother.

Tommy nodded. “How are we going to get him inside, Bella?” he asked, wiping rain from his face.

“We certainly can’t carry him in.” After thinking a moment, she said, “We must roll him onto a blanket and drag
him into the house. Tommy, go get the blanket from my bed.”

Tommy nodded and went quickly into the house to do her bidding.

“I wonder what in the world happened to him,” Tommy questioned aloud upon returning to the drive with the blanket.

“God only knows,” his sister replied, as they began to roll the man carefully onto the blanket.

Several hours later, Arabella placed her hands flat on the narrow bed and pushed herself wearily to her feet. A worried frown creased her brow as she gazed down at the pale, prone man.

Blessedly, the bleeding from the ugly wound marring his left shoulder had almost stopped. Very gently she reached down and placed her hand on the bandage she had created out of an old but still perfectly usable nightgown.

Still frowning, Arabella pulled a sputtering candle stub closer to the unconscious man. She wanted to make sure that there was no blood seeping from beneath the torn strips of cloth.

Sighing with tired relief, Arabella lifted the heavy braid off of her shoulder and watched the large man’s chest rise and fall in a shallow rhythm. Somewhere in the back of her mind it registered that the rain had stopped beating against the house, and the quiet lay heavy on the morning.

Arabella’s eyes traveled from the man’s chest to his face. Though she had worked frantically for hours on this most unlikely patient, she had, as yet, not really looked at his face.

Padding softly to the corner of the room in her stockinged feet, she took hold of a small rocking chair and dragged it next to the bed. Pulling her shawl closer around her neck, she seated herself, rocked forward, and looked for the first time at this mysterious stranger who was still so close to death.

His hair was dark, she noted, very glossy with a hint of a wave. Her weary eyes traveled to his brows, which were also dark and slightly arched over closed lids with long curling lashes. Beatrice, her cousin and best friend, would
be green with envy over such lashes, she thought, as she continued her perusal of his features.

Tilting her head, she continued to examine his face. She decided she liked the shape of his aquiline nose, and wondered if his square jaw indicated a stubborn nature, as some people claimed.

Who was he?
she wondered for the hundredth time this morning. Reaching down next to her chair, Arabella gathered up the pile of clothing she and Tommy had removed from the man earlier.

Hesitating, she made no other move for a few moments. She knew she was being much too particular under the circumstances, but she felt as if she would be grossly invading his privacy to go through his clothing.

Shaking off such nonsense, she examined the white shirt with the bloodstained hole. Her fingers caressed the soft material. Never had she felt such exquisite fabric. Stitches in the seams were so tiny and perfectly even. Arabella, not being much of a seamstress, was impressed with the expert workmanship.

A faint, woodsy, spicy scent reached her nose. She lifted the shirt to her face and inhaled. An unidentifiable, yet somehow intoxicating smell filled her senses.

She refused to allow her thoughts to dwell on the horrible possibility that this nameless man could die any moment in her bed.

When she had watched the man long enough to assure herself that he was not immediately going to expire, Arabella resumed her inspection of his clothing.

His leather breeches revealed nothing. Setting those aside, she pulled his heavy jacket onto her lap. It was dark green and made of the finest wool she had ever seen. Even her uncle David wore nothing so exquisite, she mused, and he was an earl. Again that indefinable, spicy, smoky scent permeated the material.

Her slender fingers went over the jacket swiftly, stopping as they encountered something solid in the inside pocket.

Pulling a leather pouch from the jacket, Arabella placed the envelope-shaped case on her lap. She could see that the butter-soft leather was expertly tooled, and she noted that
it bulged slightly. Picking the pouch up, Arabella turned it over and saw that something was embossed on the flap.

Lifting the pouch closer to the dripping nub of the candle, she saw that there was some sort of crest tooled in gold on the soft leather. Casting a curious frown at the unconscious man, Arabella examined the pouch closer.

She saw that it was a coat of arms. There was an embossed shield in the middle flanked by a mythical beast on one side and a falcon on the other. Entwined with the animals and shield was a depiction of ivy and ribbon intricately tooled with the words
Virtute et Armis.

Bella was able to translate the motto easily:
By Valor and Arms.

Taking a deep breath, Arabella lifted the flap and emptied the contents of the pouch onto her lap. The candlelit silence of the room was shattered by Arabella’s shocked gasp. Glistening in her lap was a pile of coins and notes.

Arabella stared at the treasure for a stunned moment. In her estimation she held a small fortune. Shaking her head in bemusement, she put the money back into the pouch and returned it to the jacket pocket.

The waistcoat was next. She was about to set it on the jacket when something crunched under her fingers. She pulled two pieces of paper from the small front pocket.

Ah!
These might reveal the identity of her mystery man. A small anticipatory smile touched her tired features.

Unfolding the first note, she saw it was written in a small, delicate hand on fine vellum.

That was all. Arabella glanced again to the prone man, raising one delicately arched brow in surprise. “What an indiscriminate use of exclamation points,” she said aloud before turning to the next note.

“Good Lord.” Arabella felt her cheeks growing warm from a blush. What a sticky situation that could be, she thought looking askance at the prone Lothario in her bed. The handwriting in this missive was definitely not the same as that in the first letter.

But again, this letter was as little help as the first in identifying the mystery man. Hesitantly she refolded the letters, still blushing at what she had read. Shaking her head at the continuing mystery, Bella put the notes back in the pocket.

Holding his clothing close to her breast, she stood up and moved to the small chest at the foot of the bed. Kneeling with her bundle, she carefully folded each item and placed it inside.

Closing the lid, she turned to the large, heavy coat with its six layers of capes at the shoulders. Surely this article of clothing had helped save the man’s life, she deduced. It was so dense that it must have slowed the lead ball’s force.

Her hands shook now at the horrible memory of the previous few hours. She had never faced so perilous a task as to remove a slug from someone’s flesh. Yet she had known that it would be much better for the man if the piece of lead could be removed quickly.

Arabella had always been one to do what needed to be done. Ever since her mother’s death, she had had to be the practical one in her family.

So, with a fervent prayer and items from her sewing bag, Arabella had set out to carefully remove the lead ball from the gaping wound in the unconscious man’s shoulder. She had instructed Tommy to hold the stranger’s arm securely, and she’d been thankful the prone man had only flinched reflexively once or twice at her probing. Arabella had held her breath, the large darning needle poised above his bloody shoulder as he moved restlessly. Arabella knew that it would have been difficult for Tommy to have tried to restrain him if he had suddenly regained his senses or begun to thrash about.

But luckily he had remained unaware, and the slug had been fairly easy to dislodge, to Arabella’s weak-kneed relief.

“Good show, Bella,” Tommy had said as she placed the piece of lead in an old chipped cup.

The wound had still been bleeding steadily even after she had cleaned it and carefully sewn it up, so she had spent a considerable time pressing a pad of cloth against it, hoping to stem the flow of blood.

The bleeding had stopped long enough for her to make a bandage from her old gown. She had almost cried in exhausted frustration when the bleeding started again as she attempted to bandage his wound. She was neither weak nor petite, but it had been an exhausting struggle to lift the stranger’s large body enough to wrap the strips of muslin around his shoulder and across his chest to keep the arm from moving. If only her papa had not been detained overnight at Penninghurst Park because of the dreadful storm, they would have fared much better, she had thought.

Now she stood looking down at the very pale stranger, holding his heavy coat with the many capes, and hoping as she had never hoped for anything that she had done enough to save him.

The damp, early-morning chill seemed to permeate the room. Arabella hugged the coat closer and suddenly felt something hard amongst its folds. Looking down, she fumbled with the coat until she found a pocket. Her fingers pulled something cold, small, and hard from an interior pocket of the garment.

It was a gold watch. Sitting down again, she examined the watch closely, turning it repeatedly in her hands until it was warm, looking for anything that would give another clue to the stranger’s identity. In exquisite detail, the same coat of arms that was on the leather pouch was engraved on the back of the timepiece. Her thumb found the catch, and she opened the front piece. It was almost nine o’clock, she noted. On the inside of the front piece, intertwined in beautiful scrollwork, were the initials A.W.

A.
She mused over the letter as, again, she looked at the aristocratic features of the very still man in her bed. Allen? Adam? Albert? She hoped he would soon be able to assuage
her curiosity about his name. And about many other things too, she thought as she closed the watch and put it back in the coat pocket. Such as, What in the world was a man like him doing in Mabry Green in the middle of the night with a lead ball in his shoulder?

B
ella was relieved beyond measure when she looked out her window and saw Mrs. Ash coming up the path. Mrs. Ash was a large, good-natured woman who spent three days a week at the manor helping Bella with the housework. Normally she was quite unflappable. Today proved the exception.

Upon entering the house from the back door, as was her habit, she went from the mudroom to the kitchen and into the front room and let out a shrill scream.

Bella jumped at the unearthly sound and rushed out of her bedroom to where Mrs. Ash stood screaming about bloody murder in the front room.

“Mrs. Ash!” Bella shouted, raising her hands in a calming motion to the extremely distressed woman. “We are all fine, Mrs. Ash. Please calm yourself,” Bella said with weary firmness.

“Where did all this blood come from? Did Tommy hurt himself again? I vow that boy gets into more scrapes—”

“No, no,” Bella uncharacteristically interrupted the older woman. “Tommy is perfectly well. But he did find a half-dead gentleman early this morning. Tommy and I brought him in and I removed a ball from his shoulder. He is unconscious in my bed right now. I have sent Tommy for the doctor. Papa never came home from the Park last night, due to the storm, no doubt.”

Mrs. Ash stood with her mouth agape at this rather disjointed speech, shock plainly visible in her pale blue eyes.

“A half-dead gentleman? Whatever are you saying, Miss Bella?”

“Come, I’ll show you. I don’t think he should be left alone.” Bella led the older woman up the staircase to her room.

The man was exactly as she had left him moments ago. Mrs. Ash walked to the foot of the bed as Arabella went to the window and pushed the drapery aside to allow the feeble late-winter sun help brighten the room.

“Well, bless me, it really is a gentleman,” Mrs. Ash said with some surprise as she looked from the prone man to Bella.

“Of course it is. Did you think my attic was to let?” Bella asked as she moved to stand next to Mrs. Ash. She looked down at her patient with a frown.

“It’s just so unexpected. How does he happen to be here?”

Bella explained in greater detail the events of the early morning as Mrs. Ash set about tidying the room. She tuttutted and made properly shocked sounds as Bella described the horrific task of removing the lead ball from the man’s shoulder.

“Oh, Miss Bella! What a tale. You certainly did the right thing. The poor man would surely be dead if you and Tommy had not been able to help him.” She nodded her head for emphasis before continuing, “Goodness, Mabry Green has not seen this much excitement in years. Wait until I tell Mr. Ash. He’ll want to take a look at him too.”