A Duel With Destiny

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1815-2

Rowena wondered what had happened to the horses. She could not bear to think that they might have been hurt.

She remembered the last time there had been an accident on the roadway when two horses being driven at an outrageous speed had broken their legs and had had to be destroyed.

She wondered if the gentleman’s driving had been at fault.

But she felt certain that he would be an expert with the reins and that the accident had been entirely due to the Stagecoach.

Had Abe not said the driver was drunk?

There were far too many coaches on the road these days driven by drunken incompetent drivers, many of whom should not have been in control of horses in the first place.

At the same time Rowena had the feeling, perhaps unfairly, that the gentleman had been driving fast.

He did not look the sort of man who would linger on the road, he would be impatient to reach his destination and perhaps that would account for his present position.

She looked around the room to see if there was anything else she could do, but at that moment she heard the front door open and ran to the top of the stairs to see that her father was already in the hall.

“Papa!” she exclaimed.

“There you are, Rowena! Abe told me they had put the patient to bed.”

“He is ready and waiting for you. Papa. Was it a very bad accident?”

“Rather a mess,” Dr. Winsford replied as he came up the stairs.

“What happened?”

“The driver of the stagecoach took the corner on the wrong side of the road. It was entirely his fault and only by superb driving did the man in charge of the phaeton save his horses from a head-on collision.”

“I thought it would be the stagecoach driver’s fault.”

“God looks after drunkards and fools, so he escaped without a scratch,” the doctor said. “But this poor devil had his phaeton overturned and I rather suspect that the wheel went over him.”

“Is he really bad, Papa?”

“I cannot know until I have examined him,” the doctor replied. “Will you bring me some hot water?”

“It is there in the bedroom already,” Rowena answered, “and I have washed the blood from his face. His forehead does not look too bad.”

“It is his internal injuries I am concerned about,” Dr. Winsford replied. “Have you left me some bandages?”

“Yes, Papa, they are there.”

Dr. Winsford walked into the bedroom.

He looked towards the bed and said,

“You have undressed him, good girl! It saves time and there are a dozen scratches, bruises and bleeding noses for me to attend to at The Plough and Sickle!”

Her father walked across the bedroom as he spoke to wash his hands in the basin on the washstand.

“Is there anything else you need, Papa?” Rowena asked.

“No, I think I have everything,” her father replied vaguely.

He was looking at the patient on the bed as he dried his hands and Rowena knew that he was concentrating on the injured man, which prevented him from thinking of anything else.

“I will go and make you a cup of tea, Papa,” she said. “Call if you want me.”

She ran down the stairs glad to have something to do for her father.

She knew only too well how accidents such as this upset him, it was part of what the villagers thought of as his miraculous powers that he was actually sensitive and hated to see people suffering pain of any sort.

Rowena could visualise the screaming women and children from the stagecoach, the horses plunging and neighing with fear, the shouts of the men and the fallen bodies of those who had been hurt mixed up with the luggage thrown off the stagecoach, the coops of hens and more likely than not a goat or a sheep sewn up into a sack.

Most of all her father, like herself, would wince from the injuries inflicted on the horses.

She was quite certain that the gentleman who had been hurt would be driving superlative horseflesh and she only hoped that they had not been pierced by a broken shaft or blinded, as recently a horse had been in a collision that had occurred in a neighbouring village.

“Is the doctor ’ome?” Mrs. Hanson asked as Rowena entered the kitchen.

“Yes, he is upstairs with the patient.”

“I were to tell ’im, Miss Rowena, that Mistress Carstairs would appreciate if ’e’d call in to see ’er this evenin’.”

“He will not have time for that,” Rowena replied firmly. “You know as well as I do, Mrs. Hanson, that all Mrs. Carstairs requires is someone to listen to her grumbles about her son. There is nothing wrong with her and she just wastes Papa’s time, only he is far too kind to say so.”

“I’m only a-passin’ on the message as I receives it from the kitchen door,” Mrs. Hanson retorted.

“Yes, I know,” Rowena answered, “but I think we will just forget it in the excitement over the accident.”

Mrs. Carstairs was only one of many who imposed upon her father’s good nature, she thought.

He was not only the physician for the village, he was the confidant, the Father Confessor, and at times she teased him by saying he was almost a fortune-teller as well!

“There is nothing they do not expect of you,” she would say. “It is time that lazy Vicar took some of these people off your hands.”

“They trust me,” Dr. Winsford had replied gently. “I must not fail them, Rowena.”

As she went upstairs carrying her father’s tea on a neatly arranged tray, she thought that now her mother was dead her father immersed himself even more completely in his work than he had done before.

She was sure that it was because when he was working he did not have to think about the wife he had lost, who had left an aching void in his life that no one, not even his children, could fill.

Rowena knew that he was fond of her and relied on her, but no one, however willing, could take her mother’s place and, as far as her father was concerned, when she had died, the light had gone out of his life.

It had all happened so swiftly and, Rowena often thought, unnecessarily.

It had been a hard cold winter and her mother had developed a cough, which persisted despite the fact that they tried various home-made remedies.

The house had been cold since they could not afford much coal and money had been so short that they had not always even had enough to eat.

Looking back when it was too late, Rowena was certain that her mother deprived herself so that her husband and children could have the lion’s share of everything there was.

Her cough had grown worse until suddenly they found that she had developed pneumonia and, without the strength to resist it. she had died suddenly to leave her family shattered by the blow.

“If everybody had paid you what they owed,” Rowena said bitterly after the funeral, “I am sure Mama would be alive today.”

Her father had not answered and she would not worry him any further.

But Rowena decided with a determination that made her thrust out her small chin that never again would she allow patients who could afford it to get away without paying their bills.

The local notabilities, and there were not many of them, were astonished to receive letters written by Rowena in her elegant hand setting out how many attendances her father had made on them and asking that he should be paid as soon as possible.

When this failed, she did not hesitate to arrive in person.

“I must say, Miss Winsford,” the butcher’s wife said acidly, “your father has never harassed us like this in the past.”

“With the result, Mrs. Pitt, that we often go hungry,” Rowena replied.

The butcher’s wife was astonished.

“Do you really mean that, Miss Winsford?”

“I am sure your husband will tell you, Mrs. Pitt, that we have not ordered any meat for the last week,” Rowena replied, “and that is simply because we have not the money to pay for it.”

The butcher’s wife had paid, as had several other well-to-do residents of Little Powick, but the majority of her father’s patients had not a penny to bless themselves with.

Although Dr. Winsford actually spent more time on them than on the well-to-do, Rowena treated them as objects of charity.

Sometimes, however, she could not help thinking that charity should begin at home, especially when she contemplated her extremely scanty wardrobe and the fact that she had to spend every moment of her spare time making clothes for her sisters and brother.

She opened the door of the bedroom and carried in her father’s tray of tea.

He had his shirtsleeves rolled up and was just putting the sheets and blankets back over his patient.

“I have brought you some tea, Papa.”

“Thank you,” Dr. Winsford replied absent-mindedly.

“He is bad?” Rowena asked.

“Bad enough,” the doctor replied. “I fancy that there are two or three ribs cracked and his stomach is bruised, but it is hard to tell what may have been damaged inside.”

“Have you any idea who he is?”

“Yes. His groom told me. He is the Marquis of Swayne.”

“The Marquis of Swayne?” Rowena repeated with wide eyes. “Surely he lives at Swayneling Park, that huge house near Hatfield?”

“That is correct,” Dr. Winsford answered.

“What are you going to do about him?” Rowena enquired.

“His groom, who was not injured, is driving home to tell them what has happened. I expect he will have a secretary or someone who will get in touch with us, although I am sure that he should not be moved until he has been examined by a specialist.”

“A specialist?” Rowena exclaimed. “Where do you think we can find one around here?”

“Doubtless they will send to London,” Dr. Winsford replied. “I imagine that it will not be an extravagance where the Marquis is concerned.”

He smiled at his daughter as he spoke and the smile illuminated his thin face.

He had been an exceedingly handsome man and those who had known him in the past could understand why his children were all so outstandingly good-looking.

“Don’t look so worried, my dear,” Dr. Winsford went on. “I am quite certain that the noble Marquis will not trouble us for long and quite frankly the sooner he is in expert hands the better!”

“I doubt if it will be better for him, Papa,” Rowena answered. “You know as well as I do that you have what the old women call ‘healing fingers’ and I doubt if any specialist would be able to do more for him than you can.”

“I wish that were true,” Dr. Winsford replied, “but I am well aware of my own limitations.”

*

The Marquis lay with closed eyes and wondered where he was.

He felt very weak and tired, but the fog that had seemed to fill his head and prevent him from thinking had cleared and he was aware now that there was someone in the room.

It was a person who walked very quietly and he thought that he had been aware of her presence for some time, but it had been impossible to concentrate.

As he thought about it, he felt an arm slipped under the back of his head, and he was lifted very gently, to feel the edge of a cup against his lips.

“Try to drink a little,” a soft voice said.

Almost automatically he responded to the voice and felt that this was not the first time he had obeyed it.

What he swallowed tasted sweet and delicious and because he realised that he was thirsty and his throat hurt he drank a little more.

“That is very good,” the voice said approvingly. “Now go to sleep again and I will bring you some beef tea a little later on.”

“Why cannot I have some beef tea?” someone asked.

The Marquis was aware that it was the high-pitched voice of a child.

“Lotty, how often have I told you, you are not to come into this room?” the first voice asked.

“But I like to look at him.” Lotty replied defiantly, “Hermione says he looks like a fallen gladiator. I think she’s in love with him!”

“You are not to talk such nonsense! Go downstairs at once and neither you nor Hermione are to come in here again. Is that understood?”

“I think you are very selfish, Rowena, to keep him all to yourself,” Lotty objected. “We want to look at him too.”

“Go downstairs at once!”

There was a note of authority in Rowena’s voice which apparently had its effect, because the Marquis heard the patter of feet down the stairs and Rowena, whoever she might be, crossed the room to close the door.