Page 40 of Lady Like

Harry is shocked to discover she isn’t dead.

Probably not dead. She might be dead. She’s in an alarming amount of pain that seems to be coming from everywhere.

Her brain feels as though it’s been rattled in her skull, and her face burns like it’s been pressed to a hot stove—and she is certain that, should there be an afterlife, it will be all fire and brimstone for her.

But if this is hell, it looks very much like the Milton Downs.

“Where is Rochester?” someone says from above her. “Go fetch him—tell him to control his goddamn horse.”

It’s Collin, Harry realizes. Collin is kneeling over her—possibly two of him—she cannot be sure of the number of Collins. Her vision is swimming. No, not two Collins—one Collin and a second man with him. One of the race officials. The one who dropped the flag.

Or perhaps it is two Collins—one her actual brother, and the other a counterfeit version of him that gives a damn about her.

“Jesus Christ, Harry,” says the false Collin. “Open your eyes.”

“They are open,” she murmurs. Her mouth tastes like she’s been sucking coins.

A pause as he peers into her face. “So they are.” Collin catches her chin as it slumps onto her chest and shakes her. “Stay awake,” he says, his voice gentle, before he turns and bellows over his shoulder, “There must be a goddamn doctor here!”

“One’s been sent for,” says the race official at Collin’s shoulder.

“Where’s the blood coming from?”

Which yes, seems like a good question, and the race official replies, “Her nose—” and, “bit her cheek—” Each sentence steps on the heels of the one before it, and Harry wants so badly to go to sleep.

Collin hooks Harry’s arm over his shoulder. “Come on, Hal, try to stand.”

“Here, let me—” The race official is on her other side, but when he tries to move her arm, Harry’s body flinches from him like oil in a hot pan. Pain ricochets through her, so intense her vision blurs. She collapses back to the ground with a scream.

Collin screams too. She tries to sit up and swoons, slumping over into his chest.

“She’s separated her shoulder,” the official says, prodding the socket.

Harry wants to swear at him but instead spits a mouthful of blood into the grass.

“I can reset it—hold her tightly.” Collin obediently fastens an arm around Harry like he’s trying to hold her back in a barroom brawl.

Harry grits her teeth, braced, but still unprepared for just how much it hurts when the race official wrenches her shoulder back into its socket.

Harry screams again. Collin’s arms go tight around her, pinning her to him. She bites hard on his gloved thumb, and he curses, but doesn’t let her go.

“Give her a moment,” the race official says. “And then we’ll stand her up.”

Her body feels as though it’s convulsing, hot tremors of pain running through her like the resonance of a struck bell. Though perhaps it’s Collin who’s trembling. Harry thinks suddenly—unexpectedly, deliriously—of the way violin strings will sometimes resonate when a neighboring string is plucked.

“Sympathetic resonance,” Harry murmurs, and Collin’s grip loosens.

“What was that?”

“Where’s Emily?” Harry’s face throbs, and she tastes blood. “Is she here?”

“Who?”

“Emily.”

“Em—” Collin breaks off, cursing under his breath, then takes Harry by her uninjured arm. “Come on, let’s get you away from here. And I need to find Rochester.”

“I don’t want to see Alex, I want—”

“Emily, I know,” Collin says, and hauls her to her feet. “I’ll find her, Hal, I promise.”

—

The race official installs Harry and Collin in one of the betting tents, the long table cleared of cards and pencils so Harry can lie upon it.

Her shoulder pulses persistently, and she wants desperately to sleep, but every time her eyelids droop, Collin prods her.

When the doctor arrives, he examines the reset shoulder, instructs her to keep it in a sling and rest for the next several days, as she’s likely concussed.

He cleans the scrapes from the impact, and gives her laudanum for her shoulder, her face, her cracked ribs, her concussed head, her pride—all the general pain.

All the while, Collin paces and frets at the doctor’s shoulder, tearing at his hair and agreeing so emphatically with every instruction it feels like he’s arguing.

When the doctor leaves, Harry raises her good arm to her face, testing the taut skin of her forehead. The swelling is already beginning to tunnel her vision. “I can’t work out what went wrong.”

“And you needn’t,” Collin says. His hair is puffed up like dandelion fluff from all his distressed running of fingers through it, and Harry notices a spot of blood that she suspects is hers on his collar. “Not now. We’ll worry over it later.”

“I think it was the saddle—”

“Harry—”

“I didn’t know the grooms, and they wouldn’t let us do it ourselves—”

“There will be time for investigations later,” Collin says firmly, prying her fingers away from her forehead. “Stop touching your face, you’ll make it worse.”

The tent flap is drawn back suddenly, and Collin leaps to his feet, ready to banish any bystanders who may be hoping for a glimpse of the possibly dead jockey, but it’s Rochester, his jacket unbuttoned and his top hat missing.

He’s pale and wide-eyed, like he’s seen a ghost—or possibly, Harry realizes, like he’s seen his friend and sometimes lover fall from his prized racehorse and possibly die before an assembled crowd of the ton.

That’s more likely than the ghost thing.

“My God, Harry.” Alexander barrels past Collin to her side. “Are you all right?”

“Where the hell have you been?” Collin demands.

“I had…” Alexander waves absently to the tent flap. “To see to the horse.”

“Is Matthew all right?” Harry asks, pushing herself up on her good elbow.

“He’s fine,” Rochester replies. “He was having such a good time running without your weight, he finished the race on his own.”

“Bastard. I’ll have him boiled.”

“It is too soon,” Collin says sternly, “to jape about death.”

“Mr. Lockhart,” Rochester says without looking at Collin. “Do you think I might speak to Harry alone?”

“Speak to her?” Collin repeats. He opens his mouth, seems to chew on what he would like to say for a moment before swallowing it down and instead saying, “About what, exactly? What is so pressing that you must speak to her now ?”

“The race.”

“The race?” Collin repeats, his words feathered by an astonished laugh. “You want to talk to her about the race ?”

“I want to know what happened.”

“She was thrown from your goddamn horse, that’s what happened.”

“She seems all right,” Rochester says.

“She’s hardly all right,” Collin says. “Look at her.”

Harry holds up her hand, trying to come between them as much as she can from a supine position. “Can someone find me a looking glass? I’m absolutely champing to see the damage.”

Both men ignore her, which is infuriating, if not surprising.

“But she’s alive,” Rochester says, casting a hand toward Harry in demonstration.

Even Harry frowns at the flippancy in his tone, though she’s willing to chalk it up to no one being their best selves in the wake of a great shock.

Collin, however, gives Alexander no such lead.

He gapes at Alex, and for a moment, Harry isn’t sure if her brother is going to slap the duke, or laugh at him, or perhaps slap him while laughing.

“ She’s alive? ” Collin repeats, and his voice trembles.

Then the laugh Harry had predicted bursts from him, though she vastly underestimated the lunacy of the pitch.

“ She’s alive? You’re ready to call this a win because we cleared the absolute goddamn minimum of Harry not being dead ?

She’s alive, thank God—but please, don’t start pretending to give a damn now.

Let’s talk about the race and your bets and the money we’ve lost and thank God she’s alive so nobody’s going to pressure you into shooting your racehorse because he threw her! ”

Harry closes her eyes for a moment, wondering if this is her head injury making itself known and she is hallucinating her calm, measured brother going absolutely mental at the Duke of Rochester.

Alexander takes a step back from Collin, raising a hand in defense.

“Steady on, mate,” Alexander says, but Collin jams a finger into his chest.

“Don’t you mate me, you profligate scapegrace.”

“Collin,” Harry says.

Alexander’s eyes flick skyward, and he mumbles, “The horse didn’t throw her, let’s get that straight.”

Which is when Collin puts his foot through the side of the tent. The canvas rips with a sound like a gunshot.

Harry and Alex stare at Collin, while Collin stares at the damage he has just done, fist pressed to his mouth. Then he turns back to the two of them, and declares with scattershot desperation, “I’ll pay for that.”

“Collin—” Harry says again, but he cuts in.

“I don’t know what came over me. I apologize—Harry, Your Grace, I’m so…I’m so very sorry.”

Alexander turns away, a hand over his mouth not quite covering his smug smile.

“Collin,” Harry says firmly before her brother burns the whole tent to the ground. “Could you fetch me a drink—I need the taste of turf out of my mouth.”

Collin drops his apologetic deference like kicking off a pair of slippers. “I don’t want to leave the two of you alone.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rochester mutters.

“Go on, Collin,” Harry says. “I’m not awake enough to be a good lay right now.”

Collin’s cheeks redden, and Harry thinks he’s going to yell again. But then he swipes his hat off the end of the table, smashes it onto his head, and stalks from the tent.

Alexander grimaces as he retrieves one of the stools left by the bookies and pulls it to Harry’s side. “God, what’s come over him?”

Harry sits up, immediately regrets it, for her head and ribs and face and shoulder and whole goddamn body throb, but is too exhausted by the idea of trying to lie down again. “You look terrible,” she says to Alex.

He wrinkles his nose at her. “And you look like you just fell off a horse.”

“I did not fall!”

“Well, you weren’t thrown. It seems the saddle was damaged. The girth was worn thin and at the jump, it snapped.”

Harry frowns, though it hurts her forehead. “That can’t be. Surely the grooms would have noticed. Who would have saddled a horse with a damaged tack?”

“An unfortunate accident,” Alex says. “These things happen.”

“I should have called for a hold,” Harry says. “I knew something was wrong, I should have—”

Alexander shushes her, and she doesn’t smack him for it only because he takes the hand of her uninjured arm. “That’s not what’s important right now.”

“Are you going to tell me what really matters is me resting up and saving my strength for getting well?”

Alexander’s brow furrows. “Yes, that’s important too, I suppose. But I came because I need to talk to you. About…” His throat bobs as he swallows hard. Harry tries to ignore the tug of sleep and pay attention. “Do you remember when you first rode Matthew?”

He must have well and truly thought her dead if it has inspired sentimental reflection. “Say your piece, Alexander. I cannot follow a rambling course.”

Alexander knits his hands behind his neck. “You made a proposal to me that evening.”

“A literal proposal, if memory serves.”

“You asked if I wanted to marry you,” Alexander says, like she hasn’t spoken, and Harry has a sense he has rehearsed this speech and can’t be thrown from the script for fear he’ll never find his place in it again.

“At the time I said no, but I spoke too quickly. And in light of recent events my feelings for you have become clear. I would like to reevaluate the answer I previously offered and perhaps reconsider.”

“Alex.” Harry throws her arm over her face. “Please, I’ve just hit my head—”

“My answer is yes, Harry.” He pries her hand from in front of her face and presses it between both of his. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”