Page 61 of His Highland Duchess
She hit the grass with a loud thud, pain cracking across her backside. The wind left her, she crumpled like a house of cards, and in the space of a second or two, she was on the ground, splayed out, barely able to breathe.
“Margaret!” Lysander dismounted and coming for her. “Don’t move!”
He dodged around her frightened horse and dropped to his knees. Spotty licked at him, but he gently pushed the puppy away as he examined her.
“Can you move?” he asked, voice panicked. “Can you hear me?”
She groaned as her mind returned to her body. A throbbing pain in her backside. A wrist that ached when she tried to move it. And to breathe felt as if small daggers had taken residence in her lungs.
“I… I fell,” she said stupidly.
“The dog!” Lysander snarled angrily. “Do not move.” He looked her over, eyes searching, panic taking him in a way she had never seen before. He was always so calm and composed, in total command of himself. But this was something else entirely.
“I am fine…” She tried to push up.
“I said don’t move!” He did not snap at her, but she could sense anger nonetheless.Is it me he is furious with? Or himself?“You may have broken something…” He tested her arms and legs. “Does that hurt?”
“Nae,” she said, still on her back. “But me wrist…”
“Shit.” It was the first time she had ever heard him curse. “We must return to the manor.”
“I can walk –”
“No,” he commanded. “You will do no such thing.” He clicked his tongue as he considered, and again she could sense his panic. His worry. Hisfear, as if she lay dying by his feet. “Here…” He slipped his arms under her and lifted her up as he stood. “I will carry you.”
“That is nae –”
“I will carry you,” he spoke over her, his tone brokering no argument.
Lysander carried her back to the manor, a long journey, and one made in total silence. In a way, how much her fall seemed to frighten him should have given Margaret hope, for it was surely proof of how much he cared.And yet, there is something else… another emotion in him that I cannae puzzle out.
His jaw was gritted. His stare, fixed on the house, was determined. But behind it she could see his mind turning. She could feel how undone he had become. She might have been the one who had fallen but Lysander looked to be the one it had broken.
What that would mean for them? Margaret hadn’t a clue.Oh guid, something else to add to the confusion. As if things weren’t confused enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lysander paced the hallway as he waited, hands folded behind his back. His eyes were trained on the floor. He listened as if expecting to hear his name called at any moment. He was trying to concentrate and get his thoughts in order, but he could do no such thing.
Whenever he tried to pull himself back into the moment, his thoughts would inevitably return to that moment in the field when he was sitting atop his horse, smiling gaily, nothing in this world to worry about as everything looked to be going perfectly. And then…
It was the sound of Margaret hitting the ground that shattered the illusion of my happiness. Like a hammer breaking through a pane of glass, it tore me from this dreamscape and landed me back in reality.
He felt sick when he pictured the incident. Even now, knowing that she would be fine, it was all he could do to stay on his two feet rather than collapse. His legs shook. His body lurched. Anddespite himself, he could not help but wonder atwhyhe was feeling this way andwhathe was going to do about it.
Nothing good, if he knew himself half as well as he thought he did.
A doorway opened suddenly at the end of the hall, and from it stepped the doctor whom Lysander had called on the moment he returned. “Doctor!” Lysander strode for him. “How is she? Tell it to me true.”
The doctor was one whom Lysander knew well, having called on the man dozens of times for his own daughters. He trusted him fully. “She is fine,” the doctor assured Lysander. “A little worse for wear, but ultimately she will make a full recovery.”
“Her injuries…”
“A sprained wrist is the worst of it,” the doctor said. “And a few bruises. A cracked rib, also, but there is not much to be done about that.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing,” he said simply, which made Lysander wince. He hated being told that there was nothing he could do. “She requires rest. Tonight, at the very least, followed by a week of care.” He looked at Lysander and raised an eyebrow. “That means little physical activity – certainly no more horse riding.”
