In Self Defense, Susan Sloan [best classic romance novels txt] 📗

left lung, or that she was bruised and battered from top to bottom and bleeding from a deep gash on her head.  It wasn’t clear to her how she had gotten off the mountain, much less how she had gotten to this place -- or what this place even was, for that matter, or what was going to happen to her next.

Nor could she remember having slipped.

***

Clare spent the better part of a week in the Port Angeles hospital, frightened of every sound, every motion, while the doctors set her leg and elbow fractures, immobilized her shoulder, taped her ribs, sutured the gash in her head, bandaged her raw hands and other lacerations, and waited for the punctures in her lung to seal themselves.  Then she came home, to spend six more weeks lying in the king-size bed she shared with her husband, waiting for her injuries to heal, waiting for the casts to come off, waiting for the nightmares to go away.  And during those six weeks, something changed.  Something in her manner, something in her color, something in her eyes.

In the beginning, she tried to remember what happened.  After that, she tried to forget.  Questions confused her.  Sudden movements startled her.  Once cheerful and self-confident, she began to look at the world around her with apprehension rather than confidence.  Things she used to be sure about were now cloaked in uncertainty.  Relationships she had always taken for granted now had to be reevaluated.  Those who understood stayed close, those who didn’t drifted away.

Richard was never far from her side.  Except for what he could do by telephone, he all but abandoned his work while Clare remained in Port Angeles.  Even after she was finally released from the hospital, and an ambulance had brought her home to the sprawling Tudor style mansion in the exclusive Seattle suburb of Laurelhurst, he went to the office for only a couple of hours each day.  At all other times, he could be found at his wife’s side, feeding her, plumping her pillows, arranging her bedding, massaging her temples, reading to her, or just sitting quietly by the bed, loathe to leave her for so much as a moment.

Seeing him, Doreen Mulcahy, the housekeeper, wagged her head back and forth.

“That man is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders,” she was heard to mutter.  “Why, you’d almost think he was to blame for what happened.”

“He does blame himself,” Richard’s sister, Elaine Haskell, told her.  “You know him -- he prides himself on always being in control of everything.  He thinks that somehow he should have been able to prevent what happened to Clare.”

After a week, however, Clare had had enough.  “Please, Richard, go back to work,” she begged.  “You don’t have to hover.  Really, I’m going to be all right.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“I’m sure,” she told him.  Her legs were in casts, as was her arm, her shoulder was immobilized in a sling, her punctured lung and cracked ribs were slowly healing themselves -- as were the cuts and bruises all over her body, and the gash on her head was repairing itself beneath its sutures.  She was physically exhausted and emotionally drained.  What more could happen to her?

“Well, if you’re sure,“ he said.  He didn’t have to be told twice.  He was gone in a matter of minutes, like a recalcitrant schoolboy released from detention.

Clare breathed a big sigh of relief. Despite heavy medication, she was in constant pain and discomfort, and she was frightened -- more frightened than she had ever been in her life.  She could put on a brave face for a few minutes at a time, for friends and family who insisted on coming to visit, but it was far too great an effort to do it twenty-four hours a day in front of her husband.

It wasn’t long before Richard slipped back into his old habit of leaving early in the mornings and returning late in the evenings, sometimes as late as midnight.  To make up for his absence, or perhaps to assuage his guilt, he sent his assistant to Laurelhurst as often as possible.  Clare smiled to herself.  She knew her husband so well.  But she didn’t mind.  She liked James Lilly.  He was perhaps two or three years younger than she, actually much brighter than he let people know, and although somewhat shy, he had a devilish sense of humor.  He sat by her bed and made her want to laugh instead of cry.

It was James who finally got her out of bed.  “You can’t hide in there forever,” he declared, six weeks after her release from the hospital.  “The doctor says your elbow and your shoulder are healing nicely and they’re strong enough to use, so it’s time for you to get up and rejoin the world.”

Were it anyone but James saying it, she might have said no, but he was so sweet and so caring and so funny, she didn’t have the heart to refuse.  He made light of the crutches, showing her how to maneuver with them without looking too ungainly.

“These things may seem awkward to you, but they have a multitude of uses,” he told her.  “Among other things, they make great weapons.”  And he showed her how to brandish them as though she were engaging a foe.

“I have only one question,” she said.  “How am I supposed to stay standing while I’m using these things to smite my enemy?”

“Don’t bother me with minor points,” he said.  “You’re here to learn from the master.”

“The master, eh?” she said with a chuckle.  “And how many broken legs have you survived?”

“Well, at least one more than you, in my lifetime,” he declared.  “So, back to walking.  The first thing you do is you take your time.  After all, how would it look for you to survive falling off a mountain only to trip over your crutches and break your neck?”

She practiced by going up and down the second-floor hallway, swinging