Perhaps it had been the reaction to that admission he had made to the Survivors at Penderris that he had taken his recovery as far as it could go. Perhaps he had needed to push himself to one more level of achievement just to prove to himself that he had not simply given up. The open meadows bordered by hedges in which he had been riding had tempted him. The hedges were high enough to be a challenge but not high enough to make the attempt to jump one of them entirely reckless. And so he had chosen this particular hedge, set his horse directly at it, and soared over with at least a foot to spare.
The rush of exhilarated triumph that had accompanied the jump had quickly converted to sheer, blind terror, however, and his mind had been catapulted back to that most hellish of black moments in the tumult of battle when he had been shot, his horse had been shot under him at the same time and had fallen on him before he could draw his foot free of the stirrup, and then another horse and rider had come crashing down on top of them both.
He had thought it was happening all over again. There had been that sense of falling, of losing control, of staring death in the eyeballs. Pure instinct had kept him in the saddle and set him to bringing his horse under control, and he had soon realized that the source of the whole near catastrophe was a damned maniacal hound, which was still leaping about, barking ferociously, long after all danger was over. And there was a woman, an ugly old crone, dressed from head to toe in hideous black, seated at her ease on the grass below the hedge, surrounded by wildflowers and not doing a blessed thing to control the beast.
Had he been at liberty to stop and consider, of course, he would have realized a number of other things, as he did now while he rode away from the scene of his guilt. She would not have been sitting on the ground gathering flowers just for the sheer pleasure of it. It was a chilly, blustery day. She must, then, have fallen or been knocked down. Her dog would not have behaved as it had if he had not come flying over the hedge without any warning. And he might easily have killed the woman if he had taken the hedge just to the right of where he had. The fault for the whole debacle had been, in fact, entirely his.
As she had not been shy about pointing out.
Something else had quickly become clear to him—two things, actually. She was not an old crone. She was in fact a youngish female, though he had not been able to see her face through the hideous funereal veil that covered it. And she was a lady. Her voice and her demeanor had both given evidence of that fact.
Not that his guilt would have been lessened even if she had been a crone. Or a beggar woman. Or both. He had yelled at her, and he could not be sure he had not used some inappropriate language while doing so. He certainly had when fighting for control of his mount. He had not gone to her rescue. Not that he could have done so literally, of course, but he might have shown considerably more concern, perhaps even explained why he could not get off his horse.
In short, he had behaved badly. Quite abominably, in fact.
He briefly considered turning back and begging her pardon, but he doubted she would be delighted to see him again. Besides, he was still feeling too irritated to make a sincere apology.
Pray God he never saw the woman again. Though he supposed it altogether probable that she lived in the neighborhood since she was out on foot with her dog—unescorted. And she was obviously in deep mourning for someone.
Good Lord, he had been terrified. How must she have felt when horse and rider erupted over the hedge a mere whisker from where she stood? Yet he had ripped up at her for walking and exercising her dog in a public meadow.
After he had ridden into the stables at Robland Park and dismounted, he was still feeling considerably out of sorts. He made his slow way to the house.
“Ah, you are back safe, are you?” Beatrice said, looking up from her knotwork as he lowered himself to a chair in the drawing room. “It concerns me that you insist upon riding alone, Ben, instead of taking a groom with you as any sensible man in your circumstances would. Oh, I know, I know. You do not have to say it, and I can see your brows knitting together in vexation. I am acting like a mother hen. But with Hector gone to London already and the boys back at school, I have no one to fuss over but you. And I cannot ride with you as I am still under physician’s orders to coddle myself after that chill. Did you have a pleasant ride?”
“Very,” he said.
She rested her work on her lap. “What has ruffled your feathers, then? Apart from my fussing, that is.”
“Nothing.”
She raised her eyebrows and resumed her work.
“The tea tray will be here in a moment,” she told him. “I daresay you are a bit chilled.”
“It is not a cold day.”
She laughed without looking up. “If you are determined to be disagreeable, I shall make a companion of my knots.”
He watched her for a short while. She wore a lacy cap on her fair hair. It offended him somewhat, though it was a pretty confection. She was only thirty-four, for God’s sake, five years his senior. She behaved like a matron—which was exactly what she was, he supposed. It was longer than six years since he had been wounded, and sometimes it seemed that time had stood still since then. Except that it had not. Everything and everyone had moved on. And that was, of course, part of his recently acknowledged problem, for he had not. He had been too absorbed in trying to put himself back together so that he could pick up the threads of his life exactly where he had left them off.
The tea tray was brought in, and Beatrice set aside her work to pour them both a cup of tea and to carry him his, together with a plate of cakes.