Chapter Text
Audrey Hall had lost count of the number of things she was frustrated about not being able to do with her wrist strapped up and aching. But her employer’s insistence on taking a morning off to roll up his sleeves and don a pinny meant that she did not count her temporary inability to knead bread among them.
With the war affecting the availability of ingredients so much, the dough was heavy and stubborn. She already knew it wouldn’t rise the way her bread did under better circumstances. It would be dense and probably not pleasant to eat by itself — she’d had to sacrifice some of her nicer flour just to keep it from sticking to the table.
But she hoped it might be persuaded into making an acceptable bread sauce or bread and butter pudding, even if those recipes would also have been altered out of necessity. Anything to relieve the pressure on the better bread for toast at breakfast and sandwiches for packed lunches or suppers after late night calls.
He had, she reflected, been almost suffocatingly attentive in the wake of finding her hobbling back to the village after her rounds, so much later than usual that he had left their home to look for her. In hindsight, pushing her bicycle with only one good hand and limping from her other bumps and bruises had slowed her down more than she thought it would.
When a car came over the brow of the hill, driving slowly with its headlights off in keeping with Mr Bosworth’s interpretation of the black out rules, she was more than half-convinced that she only thought she recognised it as the Vauxhall because she so badly wanted it to be Siegfried.
He had waited up for her every time she went out on her rounds, since that first one, he would have done that night, she knew. But she had no idea how late she was, her watch broken somehow falling off her bike, or how long he might wait before he got too worried to stay in the house.
The driver’s identity was obscured by the darkness inside the vehicle until he had pulled over a hundred yards away and flung open the door, calling her name urgently as he jumped out. She had been so relieved to hear his voice, tired and hurting, that her eyes had filled with tears.
He had already noticed her slow, limping gait before she answered him, quickening his stride. When her voice cracked as she replied, he broke into a run, barely slowing when she warned him to be careful of slipping on the wet road.
“What happened? Where are you hurt?” He was firing off questions before he reached her, catching her gently by the shoulders, already aware of the way she held one arm protectively against her chest, scanning her as best he could in the dim moonlight, similar to the night he’d nearly run into that paint-striped cow.
“Sorry I’m late, I had a s-spill…” Her voice was shaky and she lost her grip on the bicycle’s wet handlebars. It clattered to the ground but he ignored it, cradling her face in his hands, eyes scanning her, noticing her hair was soaked from the fine mist of rain, half-escaped from its pins, and her hat was nowhere to be seen.
“Oh, my dearest Audrey… Did you hit your head?”
She knew, rationally, it was just falling off her bike and not serious. It wasn’t even the most painful injury she’d ever experienced. But tears spilled down her cheeks anyway and she knew if she tried to talk any more she would end up sobbing, so she leaned into him and hid her face by burying it in his chest.
He held her close, murmuring soothing nonsense as she took deep breaths to compose herself, her uninjured hand clenched into a fist, gripping his lapel. His overcoat smelled like him and their home and his pipe tobacco, and it calmed her jangled nerves.
“It’s alright, my darling, I’ve got you. I’m here. It’ll be alright.” He was stroking her hair gently, waiting for her to regain her equilibrium and, perhaps, surreptitiously checking her for bumps. His voice was tender, softer even than the calming tone he used with anxious animals. “Does your head hurt at all, my love? I need to know if you’ve injured it…”
“No, I don’t think so.” She said, pulling herself back together with a sniffle and lifted her head so she wasn’t muffled. “Lost me hat, though.” He offered his handkerchief, and she dried her face, feeling suddenly ashamed to have been clinging to him and weeping into his coat, no matter how much part of her mourned losing the closeness. She stood taller, determined to reassure him she was not seriously hurt.
“What happened?” He tipped her chin to examine her face and frowned, brushing his thumb across the curve of her cheek where she had a bruise-like smudge. It wiped away and he withdrew his hand, satisfied there was no injury there. He still had one arm protectively around her and she felt pathetically grateful for it.
“I came off at a bend a couple of miles back.” She told him ruefully. “I think there might have been something on the road — oil or grease, maybe. I felt the front wheel go but there was nowt wrong with the bike when I checked it after, and I’ve never come off because of rain before.” An angry noise escaped his throat at the idea someone’s carelessness might have caused her harm but he didn’t interrupt. “I’m not badly hurt — the worst thing is probably me wrist. Just bumps and bruises apart from that.”
“Let me have a look.” He said, holding his hands out for her arm. She nodded and let him uncurl it from her body and open her hand. He huffed softly in sympathy at the raw scrape across her palm, gritty and still oozing blood thanks to the rain, his hold gentle as he manipulated it, watching her carefully for any reaction.
“Any numbness?” He asked. “Can you move your fingers?” She shook her head to the first question and moved her fingers gingerly to demonstrate the answer to the second. He nodded and released her arm.
“Alright. Let’s get you home. I’ll take a better look once we’re inside.” He scanned her head to toe again, afraid of having missed anything, before putting an arm around her and guiding her to the car. After settling her in the passenger seat, her wet coat removed in favour of bundling her in a woollen rug, he marched back to where the bicycle lay, wheeled it across the road and lifted it over the drystone wall, putting it down none too gently, annoyed with it even if it hadn’t been at fault. He turned smartly on his heel and strode back to the car, clearly determined to get them home as quickly as possible.
“I’ll telephone the farmer tomorrow and ask him to bring it up to the village when he can.” He told her, starting the car. “You won’t be cycling until your wrist is healed, anyway.”
In the kitchen, he administered a glass of brandy, brought towels for her to dry her hair and cleaned the scrapes on her hands and one knee, where a bruise was already starting to bloom through the new hole in her uniform trousers. He winced apologetically when she hissed in pain during his examination of her wrist and bandaged it tenderly.
Her ankle had swollen up when he removed her boots and she had been obliged to admit that the hip and shoulder on the same side were also bruised when he demanded to know if there was anything else wrong. After bandaging her ankle and providing some painkillers, he refused to let her walk up the stairs and carried her instead.
He set her cautiously down at her bedroom door and promised to return with a cup of tea and her bottle of witch hazel for any bruises she would need to tend by herself. She knew he would have insisted on treating them himself, were it not for the thin line of propriety he kept between them. He dutifully appeared, teacup and bottle in hand, and wished her goodnight with a lingering look of affection and a brief comment about how glad he was to have her home.
Once he’d left her to put herself to bed, she wanted to consider the way he had come for her, comforted her and looked after her. Her mind wouldn’t pipe down even as she lay under the covers in the dark, but she was so tired she fell asleep almost immediately in spite of it, a sweet ache in her chest.