Page 69 of A Sense of Fate
‘Lay him on the bed,’ Flora said, bustling about as she turned her back and prepared a cold compress.
‘Always so damned bossy,’ Archie muttered, grimacing as he lay in shirtsleeves and stockinged feet on the top of the bed.
‘Thank you, Will.’ Her groom nodded and left the room, seeing nothing inappropriate about Flora tending a half-naked man to whom she was not related. ‘Those trousers need to come off.’ Archie sent her a salacious grin. ‘Behave yourself!’ she adjured. ‘I need to cool those muscles down.’
‘No!’
‘Ignore him, Miss Latimer,’ Pawson said, moving Archie’s body with an efficiency born of experience, minimising his discomfort as he removed his trousers.
‘Damn it, don’t let her see me!’
‘I’ll close my eyes,’ Flora replied, running her hand softly down Archie’s injured leg, trying to ignore the fact that he was now wearing only his long cotton drawers. ‘You have strained the healing muscles very badly,’ she told him, gently manipulating the leg and earning a barrage of suppressed oaths for her trouble. ‘Look on the bright side. I couldn’t have moved it that much if you’d broken anything or damaged the ligaments too much.’
‘I must be learning how to fall.’
‘The mud cushioned the impact, fortunately. This will feel cold.’ She wrapped his knee and thigh in an icy compress. ‘But it will help to reduce the swelling. You are an idiot, Archie Felsham, but you saved my sister so I cannot scold you too much.’
‘It felt good,’ he said, grimacing through the pain.
‘I have questions, but they can wait. You need to rest.’
‘Don’t go.’ He reached for her hand and held it tight, waggling his brows at her as she perched on the side of the bed. ‘I’ve waited such a long time to get you into the same bedchamber as me.’
‘Well, at least I’m safe enough with you the way you are now, even if Mr Pawson appears to have left us alone.’
‘He knows me too well.’ Archie shifted his weight and grimaced through the pain. ‘And just so you know, I never could resist a challenge.’
‘You have been holding things back from me, and I am not best pleased about it.’
‘Sorry.’ He winced as he attempted to move his leg.
‘Stay still. Give the cold compress time to do its work and tell me what you know about exorcisms.’
‘I think your father is performing them, and I think Conrad is heavily involved, which is how they came to be connected.’
Flora nodded. ‘I’ve found passages in Grandmamma’s diaries which I misinterpreted when I first read them. They were written at the time of my grandfather’s death.’ Flora wiped an errant tear from her cheek, unaware that Archie was watching her reaction until he gave the hand he still held in his a reassuring squeeze. ‘When I read them previously, I thought they were references to an argument about Grandmamma’s skill with herbs that had earned her the reputation of being a witch. As I told you before, Papa was bullied because of it, which is why he made a career in the church, publicly distancing himself from his mother’s behaviour.’
‘Don’t upset yourself, my love.’ Archie raised her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it.
‘I’m not particularly upset—well, I suppose I am to a degree. I didn’t think there was anything my father could do to disappoint or disgust me any more than he had already done with his treatment of Melanie.’ She glanced at Archie and absently pushed the hair from his brow. ‘But I was wrong. He admits to having accidentally killed his own father in a dispute that got out of hand, but I don’t think he told the truth about the dispute in question. They weren’t disagreeing about Grandmamma. I think my grandfather was taking him to task for his own interest in demon spirits.’
‘Very likely.’
‘And Grandpapa’s death was not an accident. It was a deliberate act of defiance by my father when Grandpapa tried to stop his growing obsession with dark forces.’ She paused to try and control her emotions. ‘I think Grandpapa threatened to reveal Papa’s cruel streak to the bishop. Grandmamma doesn’t actually say as much. She has couched her words so that the meaning is obscured, which is why I missed it before. I suspected something of this nature following Conrad’s appearance, even before you told me about the exorcisms.’ She sighed. ‘I had seen only what I wanted to see before that. I have little respect and no love for my father, but I didn’t want to think quite that badly of him. Grandmamma, even in the depths of her despair, must have realised it and tried to shield me without completely hiding the terrible truth.’ She blinked tears from her eyes and she looked at Archie. ‘What are we to do?’
‘I think your father is a cruel man who has taken his exorcisms too far. I suspect that they started out as honest attempts to cast out evil spirits. As you say, in his desire to distance himself from your grandmother’s reputation, he went too far in the opposite direction and found that he liked the power he wielded in that field as a man of the cloth. We know from his treatment of your sister—’
‘And me. He enjoyed whipping me as punishment for the smallest of transgressions. I think, looking back, that it aroused him. That’s partly why I left. His punishments had become more brutal and I worried that he would eventually kill me, much as he killed his own father, if I failed to do as I was told.’ She managed the suggestion of a smile. ‘As you know, I am not good at taking orders. Anyway, he rose through the ranks in the church believing he was invincible, that his word was law, his behaviour the will of God.’
Archie snorted his contempt. ‘Nothing would surprise me.’
‘I still don’t understand what Conrad’s role in it all could have been.’
‘He is as amoral as your father, trust me on this.’ Archie winced. ‘I will talk to him myself tomorrow and get a few answers. The snivelling coward will tell me whatever I need to know in order to save his own miserable hide.’
‘Is he the one who orchestrated your accident?’ Flora asked.
‘Yes. It hadn’t previously occurred to me, but I have always wondered why Simpson would do something as underhand as cutting away that vine, my escape route. He was a gentleman and a soldier. He would have confronted me directly and demanded satisfaction if he knew of the affair. That is probably what he intended to do but I heard him coming and tried to get away. I was, I suppose, unwilling to accept that he might tell me I was welcome to her—which of course is exactly what she wanted. But the affair had already run its course.’ Archie smiled at her through his pain. ‘Conrad was my predecessor—’
