Page 66 of Secrets of the Marriage Bed
He vaguely remembered casting up his accounts. ‘I apologise if—’
‘No apology required. After all, you were exceedingly kind to me when I was ill. But we do not know if your stomach can handle anything more than broth, especially if you continue to feel dizzy.’
When he made as if to argue she raised a brow. ‘Now you wouldn’t want to set me a bad example, would you?’
He let go a sigh. ‘Broth it is. Show Jaimie up, will you, Grindle?’
Julia slipped out and the butler closed the door behind them both. Alistair pushed up a little higher on the pillows and cursed as the room took a slow circle around his head.
A moment or two later, Jaimie entered the room with a collection of leather straps. ‘How are you feeling, Your Grace?’
‘As if I fell off a horse.’
Jaimie grinned. ‘Excellent. You’ll soon be up on your feet. Quite a blow to the noggin, the doctor said. It is a good thing you are a hard-headed man.’
Those were likely the most words he had ever heard Jaimie McPherson utter at one time in the year since he’d come to work for Alistair. He dropped his gaze to the tack. ‘What happened?’
The grin faded to grimness. ‘The girth was cut.’
Was this an excuse for bad management of his stable? Oiling a girth would result in stretching, which would result in it slipping. But Julia had said it broke. ‘Cut, you say?’
‘Cut.’ Jaimie lay the straps on the bed and showed Alistair a clean break on one girth and how the other was holding by little more than a fraction of leather. ‘If this one had torn through. I am thinking you would have landed far harder than you did. Someone intended you should be badly injured or worse.’
‘Someone did not place the rock right where my head landed.’
‘You might have broken your neck.’
Jaimie was right. The damage to the saddle was too clean to be normal wear and tear. A deliberate act that must have happened while the horses were at Beauworth. There was only one person who benefitted from his death and that person was now employed by the Marquess. Something about the thought stirred a memory. It slipped away again. ‘It might have caught on something right before being placed on Thor.’
The eye Jaimie gave him was none too complimentary. ‘You did bang your head, didn’t you? I am riding over to Beauworth—’
‘No.’
Jaimie’s eyes widened. ‘Surely—’
‘No.’ This required careful handling if it was deliberate. Perhaps Luke and Isobel had decided they’d waited long enough. Or had heard about Alistair’s attempt to have him removed from his position. Or something else entirely.
Julia entered with a tray which brought with it the scent of beef tea.
Alistair nodded at Jaimie, who instantly understood their discussion was over and gathered up the tack.
‘I’ll be out to take a look at Thor as soon as I am able,’ Alistair said.
‘Dinna worry. The lad is feasting on oats and feeling very much the hero.’ He neatly bowed to Julia and her tray and left the room. There was more to Jaimie than a stable master. Occasionally, he forgot his lowland brogue and sounded more like a landed gentleman. And his manners were far too nice. He bore watching. After all, who had more contacts among stable hands at the other estates than he?
And then there was the matter of his wife. She was looking as pale as a sheet, when she’d seemed perfectly calm before she left.
‘Is something the matter?’
She bit her lip, her gaze dropping to the contents of the tray. ‘No, nothing.’
Once more he had the feeling she wasn’t telling him the truth. He thought of asking her to trust him with whatever was causing her worry. How could he, when he honestly didn’t trust her?
Or he shouldn’t.
* * *
‘Now,’ Julia said, hoping the rapid beating of her heart caused by yet another pot of laudanum-doctored tea was not obvious, ‘drink this broth and we will see how you do.’ She had intended to tell him about the laudanum the moment they returned, but now she was not sure she should bother him at a time when he should be resting.
