Page 9 of The Duke Who Loved a Widow
He needed to stand up; he couldn’t keep lying in this muddy puddle. He managed to get into a sitting position when a shadow loomed over him, and he looked up into emerald green eyes glinting in the sunshine. Was this a dream? Perhaps he had hit his head and was hallucinating this mesmerizing vision.
She knelt beside him in the mud, unconcerned about her gown and cloak.
“Are you hurt sir?” came a mellow, restful voice, which somehow matched the green eyes perfectly.
“I believe I have no broken bones. I need to stand to check if I’ve sprained anything,” he continued. “And I need to find the horse.”
He looked at her intently. “Is the boy hurt?”
“Not at all. He has a habit of escaping unscathed from any incident.” She turned to check on the child before continuing, “I’m not sure about the dog, though. He seems distressed.”
“If you help me up, then I’ll take a look at the dog,” Robert said. “I’m afraid I must ask you to allow me the use of your arm.”
She helped him to a standing position, and although he was stiff and bruised, he felt no strain or pain in his muscles or ligaments.
“I must thank you, madam, for your assistance. The soft ground has saved me from several broken bones, I think.”
“Now, I shall catch and tether the horse and then take a look at that spaniel. The poor dog sounds in great pain.”
The horse had remained close by, chomping grass at the side of the road a few feet ahead, and was easily tethered to a tree. Now for the dog.
The boy held the dog in his arms, and Robert could see tears in his eyes.
“He’s a fine dog,” he said. “A spaniel?”
The boy nodded.
“He’s hurt. Did he fall?”
“No sir, he was running alongside me and suddenly stopped and began to whimper, then he started to howl.”
“Let me look. Can you hold each of his front paws? I need to get a good look without him biting me.”
The whining had started again. Marginally better than the howling, Robert thought.
The little boy dutifully held out each of the dog’s front paws in turn.
“Ah, here’s the problem,” he told the child. “If you coax him into keeping still, then I can remove this thorn. It’s a wild rose thorn, and it is wedged between the nail and the pad of his paw. It must hurt him a lot, and he can’t put his paw down to walk without pain.”
Robert gently removed the thorn from the dog’s paw. The whining stopped immediately, and the child’s face looked up at him in awe.
“Thank you, sir,” he said
“Mama, Dash is better. He won’t die like Papa.”
“Of course, he won’t die. Everything will be alright,” the lady replied.
The woman looked towards Robert and smiled. He felt as if he had seen her before, perhaps in a dream. Those compelling green eyes were disconcerting.
However, as the pain from his bruises reminded him of his fall, he felt a momentary flash of anger. This woman’s incompetent oversight of her child had led to him being thrown from his horse. Now she had the audacity to smile at him as if they were in a drawing room taking tea.
“I suggest, madam, that you take better care of this child. I assume he is your son.”
The woman looked as if she had been struck. She flinched backwards from his words, her pale complexion standing out starkly against her jet-black hair. She nodded, “Yes, sir, this is my son.”
“Children need to know that sitting in the middle of a lane is dangerous. Even here in the countryside, there can be danger, as we saw today.”
He noticed the tears welling in her eyes and had a sudden desire to hold her in his arms and tell her it would be all right.
