Page 55 of Unending Joy
“I am quite—quite well,” she attempted, but the words slurred. She tried to focus: the Colonel’s face hovered in a blur, yet only the left half seemed to be working, but the right dissolved into shifting greys.
“She struck her head,” someone declared. “See, there is blood.”
“It is nothing,” Joy insisted—though even to her own hearing the claim rang thin. She attempted to sit up but the Park reeled, so she shut her eyes. A hush fell, punctuated by the intermingling of frightened conversation.
“We must fetch a surgeon,” someone urged.
“No, carry her to a carriage,” another counselled.
Joy opened her eyes again, but shapes glimmered like underwater shadows. Her right vision was absent, and while the left strove valiantly, faces still shifted like willows in the wind. Terror prickled cold along her spine. She felt St. John’s arm supporting her, yet the comfort mingled with dread.
“Send for Lord Westwood,” the Colonel ordered crisply.
Joy, half-dazed, saw Freddy’s face—it drew her like a bell in fog. She wished fervently for him to be real, to laugh the fear away with some outrageous jest. The pain in her head throbbed, her vision wavered, and darkness fringed the edges of sight. She was lifted by what must be Freddy’s arms, which she recognized by his familiar scent, and placed in a carriage.
She clung to consciousness as one clings to a slippery rein. In the swirl she caught St. John’s whispered oath, an expression strained and desperate—not of gallantry but of a man cornered. Then everything dissolved into shadow again.
When awareness seeped back, Joy found herself reclining in a moving carriage. Faith’s face hovered indistinctly above her, and somewhere opposite Freddy’s anxious profile bent forward, blurred but blessedly familiar.
“Joy, dearest,” Faith murmured, adjusting a folded cloak beneath her head, “lie still. We are nearly home.”
Joy strained to see Freddy. Her left eye was blurred, but her right yielded nothing. Yet she sensed his presence, a strong tether against the fear flailing inside her.
“How—how is Nightingale?” she croaked.
“Unharmed,” Freddy assured her, his voice husky. “A scratch to her hock, nothing worse.”
The relief was dizzying. She tried to smile, but tears slipped out instead. Faith dabbed them away, murmuring soothing nonsense. Freddy’s hand found hers, warm and sure, and she held fast, the way a drowning sailor might seize rope.
“Someone was lodging stones. There was the man,” Joy whispered. Vague questions and remembrances crowded her mind, but pain smothered thought.
“Hush now. Do not trouble yourself,” Faith soothed.
If St. John’s attentions had once seemed flattering, they now felt weighted with enigmas. In her swimming vision she sought a steady shape, and found only the steadfast pressure of Freddy’s fingers twined with hers—only familiar strength. She held to it, desperate, as the carriage rumbled towards Berkley Square. She surrendered again to darkness, convinced of only one certainty: she was now blind.
Freddy paced anxiouslyin Westwood’s drawing room while Dr. Harvey examined Joy in her chambers. The sisters wereall present with Joy upstairs, while Freddy, Rotham, Carew, Montford, and Stuart waited in the drawing room. All the sisters had been sent for and had come as quickly as possible with their husbands.
When at last Dr. Harvey emerged with careful composure to pronounce that Miss Whitford had sustained no fracture of skull or limb, that a concussion must be allowed its course, and that, most troublesome to the patient, an abrupt disturbance of her vision had asserted itself. She was now resting quietly, and should do so for a least a week. He took his leave, promising to call again in the morning.
Joy’s sisters soon followed.
“Joy is resting with cats strewn all about her,” Lady Westwood said, dropping into a chair between Lady Rotham and Mrs. Stuart. “Grace is sitting with her for now.”
Freddy, who had been pacing up and down by the window, turned. “How is the pain?”
“Eased, thank Heaven. She claims it is chiefly annoyance now—at being unseated before half of London Society.”
Joy would say something like that.
Stuart, standing behind his wife, shook his head. “That is what puzzles me. Joy has as good a seat as anyone I know. Something had to have happened.”
Freddy echoed the sentiment.
Before conjecture could ferment, the door opened and Westwood strode in and Colonel St. John followed close behind. Freddy felt his nerves tighten like a jockey’s reins before the start.
“We have tramped the length of where they were riding and the woods thereabout,” Westwood announced, “but found no spent shot, no wadding, no powder scorch on branch or rail. It appears no firearm was discharged.”
“Joy said someone was lodging stones,” Freddy said.
