Lady Knightley's Secret. Anne Ashley

      Chapter One

      1815

      Sir Richard Knightley woke with a violent start. He was sweating profusely and his every muscle seemed suddenly to have grown taut. What in the world had woken him? he wondered. Cannon fire? No, it couldn’t have been. Just a bad dream—that was all: nothing more than vivid memory; a deep-seated fear. It was over…Surely it must be over? He just couldn’t go through it again, not that carnage! He detected the distant rumble once more and released his breath in a deep sigh of relief. Thunder…only thunder.

      Trying to ignore the throbbing ache in his shoulder, and the sudden darting pain in his left leg, he eased himself into a sitting position. His night-shirt, damp with perspiration, clung to him like a second skin. Ye gods, wasn’t it oppressive tonight! he thought, pulling the offending garment over his head and tossing it aside in disgust.

      Perhaps this storm might clear the air. Mary had warned him earlier that there was one brewing. He could quite easily discern those claps of thunder getting steadily louder, even if he was oblivious to the flashes of lightning.

      Instinctively he raised a hand to touch the bandage over his eyes. The sabre gash in his right shoulder had been excruciating, and so too had the lead ball which had torn through the flesh in his thigh, but it had been the damage to his eyes when that pistol had been discharged which had caused him most concern. To be deprived of one’s sight didn’t bear dwelling on. To be led about by the hand for the rest of one’s life…

      A further clap of thunder, which seemed to shake the house to its very foundations, broke into his depressing thoughts and brought him back to the present by reminding him of how oppressive it was in the room. Had Mary inadvertently closed the window when she had paid that last visit before retiring for the night? He turned his head in the direction in which he knew the window to be, and after a moment’s indecision decided to make the attempt.

      Wincing slightly as he moved his injured leg, he swung his feet to the floor, and then reached out a hand to the wall. Mary had not delayed in encouraging him to exercise his muscles by taking a gentle turn about the bedchamber twice a day. He quickly discovered, however, that it was one thing having that blessed girl to guide him, and quite another trying to feel his way about a room he had never yet seen, a room where every object was a potential danger to a man who had been as good as blind for the past month.

      ‘Oh, confound it!’ he muttered as his elbow made contact with something, sending it crashing to the floor. What the devil had he broken? he wondered before his toes came into contact with a wet patch on the floor. It must have been the pitcher.

      ‘Don’t you be taking another step, sir!’ came a gently warning voice, spiced with an unmistakable West Country accent, ‘otherwise you’ll be a-stepping on broken porcelain.’

      ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mary. I hope it wasn’t valuable.’

      He discerned the slight click as she closed the door, and then heard that soft footfall of hers as she came across the chamber towards him.

      ‘As you know, sir, this don’t be our ’ouse, so whether it be valuable or no I can’t rightly say, but it’s of no matter, anyhow. What be you a-doing out of bed? ’Ave you need of the chamber-pot?’

      He couldn’t prevent a smile at this rather base enquiry. But then, he reminded himself, anyone less matter-of-fact, less practical would hardly have coped so admirably in nursing the six British casualties brought into this house.

      Not that he retained any memory whatsoever of the journey back to Brussels in that lumbering cart filled with the dead and wounded. It had been Sergeant Hawker who had informed him that it had been Mary herself who had agreed to the