Page 30 of Gentleman Jim

“It’s true that Bessie was my nurse. But it was many years ago and…” Maggie looked ahead of them to the broken trunk lying just outside a cluster of trees.

St. Clare put his arm around her waist. “A few more steps.”

And then they were there, and Maggie was sinking gratefully onto the tree trunk, gloved fingers tugging at the ribbons of her bonnet. “I can’t breathe,” she whispered, tears springing to her eyes.

St. Clare sat down beside her. “Let me.” Ignoring Maggie’s faint protests, he untied the ribbons himself and gently lifted her bonnet from her head. “Better?”

Maggie nodded weakly. She closed her eyes and took a breath. And then another and another. Bit by agonizing bit, the frenzied beating of her heart slowed and the constrictive heaviness in her chest began to ease. “I felt as if I was suffocating. Forgive me. I shall be all right directly.”

She exerted all of her will toward calming herself. Toward breathing. It was soothing really. Being out of doors like this. The breeze rippled through the trees and she could smell the scent of horses and fresh, damp grass. And then there was St. Clare, the strength of his presence at her side so big and warm and comforting.

He’d fallen into a brooding silence. It was some time before he spoke again, and when he did, it was in tones of grave self-reproach. “I shouldn’t have taxed you to walk with me. And I certainly shouldn’t have argued with you while you did so. I find I must apologize once again.”

She looked up at him in order to respond. Her heart skipped a beat. While her eyes had been closed, he’d removed his tall beaver hat. He was watching her now, tousled golden hair glistening in the afternoon sunlight and gray eyes fathomless beneath deeply knit brows. Next to him, Maggie felt small and vulnerable and disconcertingly female. Worst of all, as she met his gaze, she had a sudden, visceral memory of his warm lips closing over hers. It sent a shiver up her spine.

“Good grief,” she said, flustered. “I hope I’m not yet so infirm that I can’t walk across the grass leaning on a gentleman’s arm. I’ve already given up riding, driving, and most every other activity that brings me pleasure. If I’m now too frail for walking, I can’t think what’s left for me.”

“And yet…you claim you are not ill.”

“Nor am I. Not now, at any rate.”

“When?” he asked quietly.

“Three years ago.” Maggie answered his next question before he could ask it. “It was influenza. And according to our village doctor, it has left me frail and enfeebled with a set of what are, apparently, the weakest pair of lungs in the West Country. It’s why I haven’t attended any balls since I came to town. I can’t manage dancing any longer, or any manner of overexertion. I daresay you’ll be lucky if I don’t expire in your curricle on the journey back to Green Street.”

St. Clare saw no humor in her words. Indeed, he seemed to stiffen with something very like anger. “How? Was there an epidemic in the village?”

“Nothing so dramatic as that, thank goodness. An elderly tenant on the outskirts of Beasley Park contracted a virulent strain of the fever. He lasted only four days, and after he was dead, his wife became ill. It was difficult. She had no family or friends. No one to nurse her. I couldn’t let her die alone. I wouldn’t have. My father forbade me going, naturally, but nothing could prevent me.” She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “I stayed with her until she died three days later. By that time, I had the fever myself.”

“And almost succumbed to it.”

“Yes, well, it was a very near thing until Bessie came.”

And just like that, the aristocratic façade dropped and the icy coldness of St. Clare’s countenance melted under a smoldering explosion of temper. “What in blazes were you thinking? Did your own well-being mean nothing to you? Had you no care at all whether you lived or died? My God.” He raked a hand through his hair. “To risk your own life for…who? The village pariah? A person who’d be mourned by no one? Whose death would go unremarked? I cannot credit it. And now you’re ill—”

“No!” she objected.

“You’re ill,” he repeated, glaring at her accusingly. “For nothing. For no bloody reason.”

“Oh, stop ripping up at me! It’s true, my own well-being wasn’t foremost in my mind, but it wasn’t for ‘no bloody reason.’ I had every reason to go to her when she was dying. I had an obligation.”

“Because you must play lady of the manor,” he said scathingly.

“No. No. Not that I wasn’t… But ministering to the sick was never… Oh, drat you! If you must know, I went because the tenant’s wife…” Her palms were damp beneath her gloves. “I’m sorry, Nicholas, but the tenant’s wife was Jenny Seaton.”

This time St. Clare didn’t object to her use of Nicholas’s name. He merely stared at her as if she’d said something to him in a language he couldn’t understand. “What?”

“The year after you left, she married Ned Jensen. Perhaps you remember him. The cantankerous old recluse who used to shout at us whenever we rode past his cottage?” She swallowed. “He was looking for someone to keep house for him and Jenny told him that marrying her would be less expense than hiring a woman from the village.”

“How touching.”

“It was no love match, but they contrived to rub along. Indeed, I think they were both fairly content for the years they had left.”

“They contrived to rub along.” St. Clare’s mouth curved into a slow, derisive smile. “What an epitaph.”

Maggie wasn’t sure what to make of his reaction. At first, he’d seemed to be almost stunned. But now…Good lord, he was furious.

Nicholas had never had a close relationship with Jenny Seaton. He’d never even called her mother. Not that she’d deserved the title. She was ignorant and neglectful, notoriously loose with her favors, and prone to unpredictable mood swings that shifted between maudlin bouts of self-pity and shrieking rages during which she often struck her young son with whatever implements were close at hand.