The Viscount's Betrothal. Louise Allen

Mrs Chitty had cleared away the scandalous prints, the empty brandy bottles and the more outrageous items of underwear. And my given name is Adam. Will you not use it?’

      As he had no doubt hoped, the ridiculous nonsense provoked a smile from her before she could decide to be stuffy about first names. ‘Very well, as I imagine we are going to be housekeeping together for several days. Adam.’

      It was a good name, and it suited him. Decima let herself relax a little.

      ‘Can you cook?’

      ‘Oh…more or less,’ she replied cheerfully, suppressing the truthful answer that she couldn’t boil water and they would almost certainly starve if it was up to her. Perhaps Bates could cook. ‘Shall I have a look and see what food there is?’ After all, how hard could cookery be?

      She had just put her head around the door of the larder when the crash and the yell came. Adam was across the room, the back door banging, before she could wrap her cloak around her and snatch up the largest lamp. In its light she saw the sprawled figure of Bates in the middle of the patch of treacherous, glittering ice that spilt out from the base of the horse trough.

      Even from that distance there was no mistaking the implication of the way Bates’s lower right leg was twisted at an angle that was totally unnatural. The snow had ceased and everything sparkled with a hard cold.

      Ducking back inside, Decima snatched up Pru’s cloak and made her way gingerly across the glassy surface. ‘Here.’ She tucked it around the groom’s shoulders. ‘Have you hurt anything besides your leg?’

      ‘No, and that’s enough of a bl…No, miss, thank you.’ He was white to the lips and, as Adam touched his leg, he recoiled convulsively. ‘Hell and the devil! Leave it be, damn it!’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ Adam said sympathetically. ‘I’ll just leave you here, nice and comfy, to freeze to death, shall I? And watch your language while Miss Ross is within earshot.’

      ‘Let him swear,’ Decima urged, ‘I’m sure it will help. We really ought to splint it before you move him,’ she added.

      ‘No time. It will hurt, but that’s better than frostbite. Up you come, Bates.’

      The resulting language as Adam hoisted the man up and carried him across the yard made Decima clap her hands to her ears, then cautiously remove them out of sheer curiosity. The groom did not seem to repeat himself once. She shut the door behind them and regarded Adam. ‘Here on the kitchen table? It is warm and the light’s good.’

      ‘No, I’ll take him upstairs. I don’t want to have to move him once it’s set. Which room did you light the fire in for him?’

      ‘First on the right.’ Decima ran on ahead up the stairs and cast a rapid glance around the room. The bed would have to move. She dragged it out from the wall, her muscles protesting, and shoved it back at right angles so there was access to it on either side. As Adam came in she pulled off the top bedclothes, then lit all the candles. ‘There. Now, what do we need?’

      ‘Go downstairs, please, Miss Ross.’ Adam was bent over the bed, his gaze rueful as he met the groom’s eyes. ‘I do not think we are in for a very enjoyable quarter of an hour.’

      Decima sighed. Men. Even this one, whom she had put down as sensible and non-patronising. She began to think out loud, counting off items on her fingers. ‘A sharp knife to cut off the boot and his breeches. A nightshirt so we can get him into that first to save moving him later.’ Bates sent her a look compounded of shock and outrage. ‘Splints, bandages and laudanum. I’ll go and see what I can find.’

      When she returned Adam had got the groom out of his upper clothes and into his nightshirt, draped modestly to preserve everyone’s blushes. She handed him the knife and began to pour laudanum into a glass. ‘Miss Chitty has an admirable stillroom, thank goodness. Here, Bates, drink this, it will help. Do you think some brandy as well, my lord? I’ve brought a bottle.’

      The groom swigged back the drug and Adam shrugged. ‘Give him a stiff tot, it can’t do any harm; he has a head like teak.’

      ‘I’ve got the best straight kindling wood I could find for splints and I’ve torn up a sheet that was in the mending basket.’

      ‘Thank you, Miss Ross, you are most resourceful.’ Adam pulled off the boot from the uninjured leg, then fell to studying the other thoughtfully. ‘Now go away, please.’

      Decima turned to the door. She did not want to stay and see Bates suffering. She certainly did not want to see whatever removing that boot revealed and what would happen next. But it felt like cowardice to go meekly off downstairs like a good little woman when she could be helping.

      She got as far as the landing before the sobbing intake of breath drove her back into the room and onto her knees next to the bed. ‘Shove off, miss,’ Bates snapped.

      ‘You swear as much as you like,’ she said encouragingly, hoping she wasn’t as green in the face as he was. ‘Just hold on to my hands and it will soon be over. And, no, my lord,’ she said as Adam began to speak. ‘I am not going to shove off downstairs, whatever either of you says.’

      ‘Have you ever met a woman who wasn’t as stubborn as a mule, Bates?’ Adam remarked conversationally.

      ‘Can’t say as I have, my lord.’

      ‘I have to say I am shocked at your language, Miss Ross: you must be mixing with the most uncouth men. Right, Bates, that’s the boot. Now for the breeches. Are the horses all right, or am I going to have to drag over there after I’ve patched you up and sort them out?’

      Decima half-turned indignantly, recalled Bates’s state of undress and turned back in time to see him produce a twisted grin. ‘They’re all right and tight and rugged up, my lord.’ Adam was talking to him to keep his mind off what was happening, she realised.

      ‘Gig gone? Bates? Pay attention.’ The groom, whose eyes had begun to roll up in his head, snapped back to consciousness.

      ‘Yes. Gig’s gone and the riding horse. Looks as though the lot of them went off for marketing and couldn’t get—bloody hell!’

      ‘Sorry. I needed to check if there’s just the one break. Hmm. Skin isn’t pierced at any rate. I’ll set it now, there’s no point in hanging around and letting the swelling get worse. You may faint any time you see fit, Bates.’

      ‘Thank you. My lord.’ Bates sounded anything but grateful. Decima shifted her position so that she blocked off as much of his line of vision as she could and smiled encouragingly. There was a minute of major unpleasantness while Bates went even whiter and she thought her fingers were going to be crushed in his calloused grip. Adam swore softly and continuously under his breath. Then Bates gasped and fell back, unconscious.

      ‘He’s fainted.’ She was not going to be sick.

      ‘Good. Look, I need another pair of hands. Can you grip his leg just above the knee and hang on while I pull to get the bones aligned?’

      Don’t think about it. Just do it. If it was a horse you’d do it. She fixed her eyes on the top of Adam’s bent head, held on and prayed that Bates would stay oblivious.

      ‘All right. You can let go now. Decima? Let go.’

      ‘Oh. Of course.’ She forced her fingers open and sat back on her heels. ‘The splints and the bandages are…’ Decima swallowed and got up. ‘I’ll go and get the hot bricks.’

      She managed to get to the kitchen simply by talking to herself all the way down the stairs. ‘Hot bricks for Bates and Pru. Might as well do all the beds while I’m at it. I must find something to wrap them in. Check the kettle, see the fire is all right in the range. We’ll need something to keep the bedclothes off that leg.’

      The admirable Mrs Chitty kept a stack of neatly hemmed flannel squares in the stillroom. Decima wrapped four bricks and made her way unsteadily upstairs to meet Adam on the landing, a bolster under each