Page 105 of The Secret Love of a Gentleman
‘Then tell them they not must tell anyone else.’
‘Robbie…’ Jane complained.
‘No one else.’ He shook his head; his skull screamed with pain.
His aunt lay a hand on his arm. ‘Robert will do as you wish.’
‘I will go to John’s myself and ensure the news is not shared.’
‘Take this laudanum,’ his aunt said as his uncle left the room. ‘Then I will help you try to drink a little broth.’
He accepted the teaspoon of laudanum but rejected the broth, closed his eyes and let the darkness claim him.
‘Son.’
Rob opened the eye that had some movement, his other was still swollen shut. His father was sitting beside the bed.
‘What happened?’
Rob tried to speak but flinched with pain.
‘Never mind,’ his father said quietly. ‘You look like you had a fight with the Devil. Do you want me to get a mirror and show you?’
‘How awful I look…? No.’
‘Your mother and I are going to stay here with you.’
A laboured breath drew past Rob’s lips as he tried to shake his head.
His father’s hand rested on Rob’s upper arm. ‘Your uncle toldme you do not want the others to know, yet your mother took one look at you and has gone outside to weep rather than cry before you. If you think she will leave your side once she has recovered from her tears, then you do not know your mother.’
The bedchamber door opened. It was her. She held a handkerchief and her eyes glistened with tears.
‘I do not know what to say to you,’ she said, as his father rose from the chair beside the bed and let her sit.
Rob tried to sit up, but the pain from his splinted arm and leg held him down.
His father’s hand rested on his mother’s shoulder.
Rob coughed painfully. His mother leaned forward and held her handkerchief to his lips. What he spat out was blood.
His father braced Rob’s head and held a glass of boiled water to his lips.
As his father lowered Rob’s head, Caro’s image hovered in his mind’s eye, but not the Caro of recent weeks. The Caro of the summer, when he had first fallen in love.
‘The gentleman said to tell you to leave what is his alone,’the voice of his attacker taunted.
Either they had mistakenly assaulted him, or Kilbride had paid the men to give him that message – there was no one else he may have upset to this degree.
Even more so now, he desired to make something of himself to give Caro the happiness she deserved. Kilbride would not win. He would not ruin the life she could have with Rob.
54
Over the next days, whenever Rob woke, his parents, his uncle or aunt were there to help him drink, eat or fulfil other needs.
As the days progressed, and he became more conscious, and able to see and speak more easily, his father and uncle would sit and talk with him in between bouts of sleep, when the dizzying relief of laudanum claimed him.
His dreams were spent with Caro, walking through woodland or reliving the afternoon they had spent in his bed at the apartment.
