A Stroke of Malice (Lady Darby Mystery #8) - Anna Lee Huber Page 0,71

gave me quite a fright. Did you trip?”

“I-I . . .” I tried to swallow, but my throat was so dry. “I don’t know,” I managed to croak.

“Well, come over here and sit down, sit down. We’ve sent for Mr. Gage,” she explained while the footman helped me over to a padded bench pushed against the wall. “He should be here any moment.” She gasped. “My goodness, but you’re as pale as a sheet. You really must take more care in your condition.”

“For goodness’ sake, give the girl some air,” the dowager duchess stepped forward to remonstrate. “I’m sure she knows perfectly well what’s at stake. Reminding her does not help matters.” While not precisely comforting, her stern voice and unflinching gaze did help to steady me. “Robert, fetch Lady Darby a glass of brandy.”

The footman hurried off to do her bidding, nearly colliding with Gage as he hastened through the doorway. “Kiera! What’s happened? What’s wrong?” he asked as he fell to one knee in front of me. His eyes anxiously surveyed me from head to toe, lingering on the rounded swell of my abdomen.

“Nearly fell down the stairs, that’s what happened,” Lady Bearsden interjected before I could gather the words to speak. “And gave us a terrible fright.”

Gage kept my hands gripped in one of his larger ones while he reached up to brush back a tendril of curls that had fallen from the bandeau in my hair, tucking it behind my ear. “Your condition truly has made you clumsy, hasn’t it?” He spoke lightly, but his features were taut with alarm.

A small smile of chagrin formed on my lips at his reference to my slip on the stairs in our home in London two months prior. Though I had strained my wrist slightly then, it had been nothing like the terror of this incident. “It appears so.”

I could feel the dowager duchess’s eyes on my face, and lifted my gaze to meet hers, seeing clearly that she knew that I was minimizing the episode. That this had not been a simple matter of clumsiness.

“Are you injured?” my husband asked, once more studying my appearance for signs of harm.

“No, but I wrenched my shoulder a lit—” My harsh intake of air as I tried to move it belied those words. Pain shot through my joint, sharp and swift before settling into a dull throb.

Gage surged to his feet. “Don’t move it, Kiera.”

I gave a short nod, having no intention of doing so.

“Is there a trusted surgeon in any of the neighboring villages?” he turned to ask the dowager duchess.

“I don’t need a surgeon,” I protested, having a natural aversion to allowing any man of that profession to touch me after the three years I spent married to Sir Anthony Darby. Most medical men recognized me by my name immediately, but surgeons and anatomists often displayed a particularly derisive and antagonistic attitude toward me. There were exceptions, of course, but I was not optimistic about the liberalness of a surgeon from the strict Calvinistic small villages of Lowland Scotland. “I’ve merely wrenched it. I-I’m sure it will be better after a good night’s rest.”

Gage’s eyes softened with understanding, but his jaw was set. “Kiera, it’s your right shoulder.”

The bands of residual fear still wrapped around my chest tightened to almost a stranglehold as I grasped what he was saying. It was my painting arm.

My stomach seemed to drop out of me, and my breaths came tight and quick, making my thoughts slightly muzzy. If I couldn’t lift a brush, if I couldn’t paint . . .

I closed my eyes, refusing to contemplate the possibility. My shoulder was simply wrenched. It would heal.

Nevertheless, I didn’t protest when Gage conferred with the dowager duchess again, and then sent the waiting footman off to have the surgeon and physician summoned. Nor did I speak when he reached down to grasp my left elbow to help me rise, pulling me close to his side.

The other footman returned then with the glass of brandy, and hovered behind Lady Bearsden, uncertain what to do with it.

“Oh, give it here,” the dowager duchess huffed as we moved away.

Gage did not speak as we traveled the corridors of the castle to my bedchamber, though I noticed he avoided the ballroom staircase, instead taking me around the perimeter of the castle to the circular staircase leading from the doom straight up to our rooms. For my part, I could not have spoken, even if I wished to. I