“I have to go,” she told the giant, but when she put her feet on the floor and tried to stand, the right foot collapsed under her. A stabbing pain made the room swim before her.
The giant caught her before she fell and lowered her to the couch, swinging her feet up and pushing her back onto the cushions. “Is it your head?” he asked.
“My ankle.” With her head and ankle both supported, the pain reduced enough for thought, but she still couldn’t remember the giant’s name.
He stood, looking down at her shod foot, his mouth twisted, his brows drawn together and his eyes sombre.
“I need to go home,” she insisted. “My father is confined to bed, and he will be worried.” Not about her, whom he didn’t recognize, but certainly about the storm and about being alone. He had been asleep when she ventured out, but he never slept for long, and she should have been home long since—in the nasty little shack that was all the home she could afford.
“I think, Miss Whoever You Are, that you need to resign yourself to waiting out the storm,” the giant said, his tone cold. “May I suggest that, on future occasions, you remain with your father instead of going off on your own to steal someone else’s roses?”
Rosa flushed. They were his roses. She knew that quite well. However, Father had been asking for roses for two days. When someone in the village mentioned that the rambler at Rose Cottage had flowered even in this cold and blustery weather, so unlike any summer in living memory, she had seen the opportunity to bring him the comfort of the flower he loved.
Rosa sighed. “I am Rosabel Neatham. And I apologize about the roses. I did not know you had arrived yet, Mr.…”
The thick brows lifted, conveying suspicion with an edge of laboured patience, but he responded, “Gavenor. At your service, apparently. May I examine your ankle, Miss Neatham? It is Miss Neatham?”
She coloured again, the hot blood flooding her cheeks. Yes, it was Miss Neatham, though she was in her thirties. No one had ever seriously courted her, except the loathsome Pelman. Rosa had soon discerned that the arrangement he wanted fell short of marriage. Not that she would consider him as a husband if he offered.
“Miss,” she confirmed. “Is it… Do you think you need to? I am sure…”
“I am sure you cannot stand on it, Miss Neatham, and someone needs to check that it is not broken. I can do it, or you can do it, for there is no one else in the house.” His bored expression and voice were unaccountably reassuring. Pelman would be salivating at the thought of her baring her stockinged foot. The giant—Mr Gavenor—looked as if he would rather eat poisoned rat bait.
Rosa nibbled her upper lip while she thought, but really, she had no choice.
“Very well,” she conceded. Then, since that seemed decidedly ungracious and one of them should show some manners, she added, “Thank you, Mr Gavenor.”
The fairy would be white with pain if her embarrassment hadn’t turned her a deep rose pink. Bear rather enjoyed discomforting her; a small revenge for his own awkwardness. He could manage the ladies of Society well enough. Harpies, the lot of them. He knew what they wanted and was not interested in giving it to them. The wives of his business acquaintances wanted little from him except attention to their husbands, which suited him nicely. Blushing fairies were a new experience, especially one with a determined chin who spat at him like an angry kitten and did not back down when he growled.
He knelt on the floor by her feet and examined her ankle. The flesh was swollen and held the indentation when he pressed it with his finger. Broken? Or sprained? He palpated and moved it, watching her face for a reaction. She managed not to make a sound, but the colour had receded from her face altogether, and sweat stood out on her white face. She lay against the pillows, biting her upper lip.
“Not broken, I think,” he said at last. “But you have a bad sprain, Miss Neatham. You will not be standing on this foot for some time.”
Miss Neatham’s forehead creased in a frown. “But I must go home,” she repeated, as if wishing would make it so. Undoubtedly, such a beauty had more than her share of courtiers falling over themselves to make her wishes come true.
He didn’t bother with her nonsense. “May I remove your shoe to see if there is damage to the rest of the foot?”
She nodded, and Bear slipped her shoe off as gently as he could.
“The worst is over,” he reassured her.
She managed a small twist of the lips that may have been a smile.
He was impressed by her attempt. He returned his attention to her foot, but the only problem appeared to be her ankle. “I do not see how you can go anywhere, Miss Neatham. You cannot walk on that ankle, and I have no carriage.” Though, if he had one, he would send for a doctor. The ankle would heal with rest, but he could not be easy about the knock she had taken on her head.
“A horse?” she asked. “Could I borrow your horse?”
She had the grace to sound doubtful. Borrow a man’s horse, indeed. Even if he had been inclined to put a beast of his into the keeping of a chance-met rose thief, he had no choice but to deny her. “Stabled in the village,” he said. The shed here would not keep out the rain, and the stables at the Hall were in a worse state.
“Then a walking stick,” she proposed. “I think there are some in the stand in the hall, unless Mr Pelman removed them.”
Bear lifted his brows. “You know Pelman, then?”
“Everyone knows Mr Pelman,” Miss Neatham’s arid tone said more than her words.
He was unaccountably cheered that she did not admire the man, which made his response more abrupt than he intended. “You are being ridiculous, Miss Neatham. You can go nowhere in this weather and on that ankle, and you should not, in any case, be walking after such a blow to the head.”
“But I must,” she repeated. “Mr Gavenor, you do not understand. My father is bedridden and frail. I must go to him.”
“Your servants will look after him.”
The fairy shook her head. “I have no servants.”
That was a conundrum, though he should have guessed it. Her accent belonged to the gentry, which had deceived him into forgetting about the evidence of her patched clothing and inadequate shoes. However, it begged the question of why the fairy had walked all the way to Rose Cottage, abandoning the poor man in his bed. In any case, he could not see what either of them could do about the situation.
“Resign yourself to remaining here until the rain stops, Miss Neatham. I will then walk into the village and arrange for transport. Meanwhile, surely one of the neighbours will call in and look after your father?”
Her look conveyed sheer disbelief. She hoisted herself upright, holding onto the side arm of the couch to balance herself on her good foot. “Unless you mean to keep me prisoner, Mr Gavenor, I am leaving,” she proclaimed, her defiance diminished when she put the damaged appendage to the floor, turned even whiter and suddenly sat down. “Oh dear,” she said.
Bear shook his head, sighing. “Give me your father’s direction and I will see to him. You, Miss Neatham, sit here with your foot up until I return.”
“There is a large umbrella in the stand, too,” she told him, “and an oiled coat hanging on the back of the scullery door.”