Redeeming the Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath Page 0,39
and a quarter inches. Another helpful physician gave me that hideous number because he felt the urge to measure it. He thought it remarkable. My case remarkable. Because I wasn’t expected to survive the night, let alone the six-week sailing home. But survive I did, more’s the pity, as I wouldn’t wish that first year of recovery on anyone.’
‘Why?’
‘It was agonising. I spent most of it in a delirious stupor thanks to all the laudanum they forced into me. It was as if I was trapped in a never-ending nightmare involving the fire and the water...’ His eyes were bleak now. The anger gone from his voice and replaced by something else. ‘Hell on Earth. Then I had to suffer another three months of a different kind of hell as Eleanor weaned me off the stuff after the worst of the wounds had healed over.’
‘By then your ship was gone.’
‘It was. And my crew and my illustrious naval career with it.’ He couldn’t disguise the sadness in his dark eyes. ‘Alongside my father, who died of pneumonia that winter—not that I was compos mentis enough to understand that, let alone grieve for him when he passed. We were never close and even less so after I defied him to go to sea, but still...’ He had lost so much. Been through so much. None of it his fault yet he would carry the scars of it for ever. Was it any wonder he was angry at the world?
‘Then, of course, I was bullied into six long months of exercise because my muscles had wasted away.’
‘Eleanor again?’
He smiled wryly. ‘She wanted me to live. I wasn’t so keen.’
‘And now?’ The thought he still might wish for death broke her heart.
‘And now... I am here.’ He shrugged. ‘Trying to find the wood for the trees. Except my sister doesn’t think I am capable of doing that by myself.’ He bent to retrieve the pickaxe and leant on the handle. ‘She thinks I need to rejoin the world.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I try not to think. Like you, I find my thoughts exhausting.’
‘Digging helps. Although it is physically impossible to dig all day and, once I stop, off those thoughts go again.’ Effie drew a spiral on her temple with her index finger. ‘Spinning wildly. I have to keep myself constantly occupied or they send me mad.’
‘I’ve been counting things. Patterns, forks, clouds...’ He sighed. ‘It is not a particularly effective method of keeping them at bay. I’ve been thinking for some time I need another method.’
‘If you find a way which works all of the time, please pass it on.’ They had something in common. Something real and tangible in common. Something few others would understand and that warmed her. ‘I find the nights the worst...’
‘When your body is crying out for sleep and your mind isn’t done playing with you?’
‘You, too?’
He smiled in response and something peculiar happened as she smiled back at him. For the first time in her life she felt a true connection with another human being, although she couldn’t put her finger on exactly why that was, other than to feel unjudged and able to be completely herself for a change rather than pretending to be the diluted version she always strove to be in the company of others. Even with her father, dear understanding Rupert and Lord Richard—the three closest relationships of her life—Effie had often guarded her words. Yet with this strange, changeable, complicated man whom she barely knew, but felt she did, she already realised she did not need to do that. More bizarrely, for the first time, her over-active mind was quiet. Calm.
Content.
‘Digging might well be a distraction, but it’s thirsty work, Miss Nettlesome. I don’t suppose you brought any water with you?’
‘I did better than that.’ She stood and brushed the dust off her breeches. ‘I brought lunch. It’s in my satchel and I am happy to share it with you seeing that you have practically demolished that pesky wall for me.’
‘Then don’t dither, Miss Nithercott. Bring it hither from thither before I wither.’