Geoffrey was confined to his bed, even though he was slowly recovering his strength, and was contemplating moving about. Dr. Fergus – that was the name of the other doctor, Geoffrey had discovered – wrote that his inner ear was irritated. Whatever that meant, it didn’t sound good. But they didn’t put the rod back in and the ringing had gone down, so he was better, and able to stay awake for long periods of intensely boring time. He couldn’t focus on a book for very long, and he could hardly make conversation with his guest without wasting a lot of paper, but regardless, someone was always there when he woke.
Finally, George, who had long gone off to Cambridge, delivered on his promise, because Georgie was there when he woke. She was not the same Georgiana Bingley he remembered. Something about her was inexplicably changed, even though there was no sign of injury on her, and she was dressed properly, aside from the blue ink lines that were fading on her arms. He reached out his palm, but instead of taking his hand, she put something in it. He looked intently at his signet ring – he hadn’t realized he’d lost it. When had he lost it? Hatcher must have taken it from him. “Thank you.” It was the first time he remembered smiling in a while. He had sometimes smiled falsely, to reassure his mother when she looked at him with eyes that couldn’t hide her worry, but this was different. Genuine.
This was Georgie, his Georgie, so he knew he could ask, “Where were you shot?”
She pointed to a spot on her side.
“Does it still hurt?”
No.
He could tell she was lying, but he withheld comment. “George wrote that you saved me.”
Yes.
“Thank you.”
She grabbed the charcoal pencil and scribbled, You saved me, too.
“I shot Hatcher. Right?”
Yes. She giggled. He couldn’t hear it, but he could see it.
“What’s so funny?”
Her bemused look at his question made it worse. Again she wrote, and held up her question. Are you aware that you are shouting?
“What?”
Now she was outright laughing. Eventually she paused to hold up, Yes.
He had no ability to temper his voice. He had only assumed that he was speaking in a normal tone. “No one said anything.”
She wrote, Well, you are.
“Stop it. It’s not funny.”
Yes it is.
It hurt to laugh, but it was the kind of pain that was worth the struggle.
Chapter 19 – The Knight’s Tale
Dr. Maddox was thankful for the Darcy’s constant vigil over their son, because someone would need to be there when the boy woke, and the doctor needed to think. He had seen Geoffrey’s condition in the camp and when he was brought back, and he knew it was beyond his abilities to repair.
He had no time, as a doctor, to question his own actions. He was used to the difficult rhythm of surgery, which allowed for no mistakes and no regrets, even if a few deaths still haunted him. He had worked with people who were beyond hope. He had deferred authority in cases where someone else was better. But he had never had to do it for a relative, and more importantly, never because of his sight. It didn’t affect Geoffrey’s case much, but there was the matter of Georgiana. She could have held out for the local surgeon, but his wife insisted. As the sun went down on that dreadful day, and both children were being watched by their parents, he had time to think, and his mind was filled with medical ruminations on what to do with Geoffrey.
“Daniel.” His wife, of course, found his hiding spot in the library, where he strained to read the words in the French medical tome he always carried in his trunk.
“Does someone need me?”
“You need to sleep,” she said, shutting the book in front of him. “There is nothing in there you don’t already know, and you are only straining your eyes to read it.”
He had to cede to her authority, mainly because he was too tired to do otherwise. He wasn’t sure what had been so exhausting – he’d dealt with longer hours and more medical trauma before. Maybe he was getting old. Pemberley’s halls were too dark for him to see properly at this hour, but he had memorized them long ago. He checked on his patients once more before finally following Caroline to their chambers.
“I should have told them,” he said.
“You told them you needed assistance.”
“I obviously was not perfectly clear.”
“Darcy was in no mood to hear reason with Geoffrey missing. You can hardly blame him for that.”
He dismissed the servant and stumbled his way to the bed. “It was my damned pride and I know it.”
“You are perhaps the last person on Earth I would accuse of being too proud,” she said. He could hear her move about the room before she joined him on the bed.
“I am allowed to have my moments.”
“No harm was done. Georgie will be fine, and Geoffrey – well, we all have no idea, but your ‘pride,’ as you call it, could have made no difference.”
“If he wakes, he’ll most likely be deaf,” he said. “And if Professor Fergus does not arrive soon, it is almost certain.”
“Quite a pair you will make, then.”
She could still make him laugh. That was a good sign. He would not give in to total melancholia quite yet.
*****************************************
Geoffrey did wake, after what seemed like a lifetime, even though only two days had actually passed. Dr. Maddox was not sure if he was grateful or sorry that he missed the fight between Bingley and Brian. But with two critical patients in Pemberley, he could not attend to his brother and sister-in-law’s wounded pride in Lambton, and Brian knew that. In case he didn’t realize it, Dr. Maddox composed a brief letter, and when he asked Darcy to have it sent, the master of Pemberley just looked surprised that he was not angrier that Darcy had tossed his brother from Pemberley.
“If it hadn’t been for Georgiana, I would have sent Bingley off, too, for the way they were acting,” Darcy said. “Not that that’s a comfort.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Bingley have a lot to be angry about and nowhere to direct it,” Dr. Maddox said. “And Brian does bear some of the responsibility. As does Nadezhda, who does not walk on water as he thinks she does. But that shall all be sorted out in time.”
“You are very logical about it.”
“Am I ever anything else?”
Darcy probably would have given one of his little smiles at that, if he had it in him. The exhausted father did not. Dr. Fergus did arrive, in time to diagnose Geoffrey’s left ear, declaring it able to be saved, with some luck and a tube to force the canal open. Fortunately he was asleep when it occurred, though even then, the boy did not seem pleased about the tube, as one of his first conscious actions was to try to remove it. But he was awake and that was what was important. The swelling on his head was going down, so that his eye opened more with further tries, and he had not been whacked dumb, as Dr. Maddox secretly worried he’d been. His other senses were intact.
As Geoffrey rested between brief periods of consciousness, Dr. Maddox checked on his other patient. Georgiana had not been awake much either, and when she was, the medicine obviously dulled her senses. No matter how mighty a warrior she was, her height and weight dictated that even the smallest dose either put her out cold or into such a daze that she spoke in a slurred voice and was slow to understand others. In a way he was grateful; it spared her from the realities that the rest of them faced, and if anyone needed a rest, it was Georgiana Bingley.
“How is my patient today?” Dr. Maddox said as he entered, finding her mother at her side.
“She needs her medicine,” Mrs. Bingley said, her voice ragged. “She won’t admit it, but she does.”
“Mama!” Georgiana whispered in protest.
Jane Bingley just looked up to the doctor with pleading eyes, to which he responded, “I have many obstinate patients. Some of them are even my cousins and dear friends.”
She nodded and took her leave, as he sat beside Ge
orgiana, who was trying to make it look like she was not holding her side.
“I need to see the site, if you don’t mind, Miss Bingley.” He pulled aside the robe, and some of the bandages, enough to look at the wound. “You’re healing quite nicely.”
“Stunning.”
“Wounds like that can be dangerous, even at this stage,” he said as he went to mix a fresh batch of medicine with the opium he kept on his person and not on the tray.
“I want to see him.” She did not need to specify who she meant.
“I know you do, but you can’t be moved, and neither can he. That puts us in a precarious predicament, doesn’t it?” he said, as he measured out the dosage. “He asked about you.”
“He did?”
“He was relieved that you had survived. Apparently he does retain some memory of the incident, though perhaps not the whole of it. That is a very good sign.” Talk about Geoffrey was one of the few topics that seemed to animate her. Her brother Charlie was confined to his room for lying about her whereabouts, and she was not able to see Brian and Nadezhda, perhaps the only people who were truly proud of everything she had done. “How are you feeling in comparison to yesterday?”
“Why won’t I just heal?”
In other word, she felt the same. “Patience is something generally acquired by age, sadly. Your body needs time. You were shot with a rifle.”
“What happened to the bullet?”
He had thought she would ask, and immediately produced it from the medical bag on the stand. Her eyes lit up at the sight. “I always found it strange that patients either want nothing to do with the item or treasure it forever. I assume you will do the latter.” He dropped it into her awaiting hands. “Your Uncle Darcy, for example, had little interest in making a keepsake of his wound.”
“From when he hurt his hand fighting Uncle Wickham?”
“No, the only thing that hit him then was a sword hilt and a fist. I mean from the time Lord Kincaid shot him.”
“Lord Kincaid?”
“Oh, yes. You were practically an infant at the time,” he said with self-amusement as he stirred. “I mean the present Lord Kincaid’s older brother, the late James Kincaid, who was once my wife’s suitor, until Mr. and Mrs. Darcy discovered he was a lying scoundrel, only after her inheritance. James Kincaid didn’t take well to this discovery and shot Darcy in the back.”
“Where were you?”
“I was Mr. Hurst’s foot doctor at the time, and Mr. Bingley called me to save Darcy. The first time we were formally introduced was, I believe, when he was barely conscious. But that was a long time ago.” He presented her with the spoon. “Open up.”
“It tastes awful.”
“You can have lemonade afterwards. Now open, Miss Bingley.”
She obeyed, and he didn’t remove the spoon until she swallowed, and he handed her the lemonade, which she gladly finished off. “It makes my head funny. Not really in a bad way, but I don’t like to feel off.”
“I assume you would not prefer the alternative.”
She played with the bullet in her hands.
“It is real silver, you know. Your father looked at it. It must have cost the man a fortune.”
“Really?”
“Someone did appreciate your lupine antics, Miss Bingley. And by appreciate, I mean that you scared him to death.”
“It was sort of my intention.”
“Well then ... good work.”
Georgiana giggled. Yes, the drug was taking effect. At least he could comfort someone.
*****************************************
Hearing Geoffrey scream when they removed the tube and cleaned his ear stung Dr. Maddox in a particular way. He wasn’t ready for it – no one was, only Dr. Fergus, because he had no particular attachment to the boy, and he was accustomed to this. “A normal reaction,” the doctor said when he was finished. “In fact, it shows how alert he’s become in the last day.”
“Thank you,” Dr. Maddox said, but could not bring himself to be entirely relieved. This was Geoffrey Darcy, the boy who fenced with his son, the son of one of his best friends and relatives – and to see them all devastated by it only made it worse. It had taken both Darcy and the manservant, with some of Dr. Fergus’s own strength, to hold the boy down, especially when he was screaming, shouting specifically for Dr. Maddox, who he couldn’t see sitting at his other side. As if I could do something to help him. To see Darcy, looking so old and grey, stroking his son’s hair after he had passed out, whispering things to him that he knew the boy couldn’t hear. Wisely he had shut the door, but of course Elizabeth heard it through the walls. He doubted there was anyone in Pemberley who hadn’t. “Mrs. Darcy,” he said politely as she entered. “It was a normal procedure. He’s past it now.” He said it because he knew she wanted to hear it from him, not the other doctor, no matter how kind Dr. Fergus actually was. But giving that news did not require him to stick around, watching her cry again. In fact, he avoided almost everyone and made a stealthy exit, leaving a note behind that he was (finally) going to Lambton.
The carriage always felt ostentatious, but he could no longer ride, and hadn’t been much of a rider in his younger years, anyway. He arrived midday at the best inn of Lambton, where his brother and sister-in-law were lodged. By then he had regained some of his composure. But he couldn’t yell at his brother – not yet, anyway. Instead he just embraced him, and greeted them neutrally.
They did not make him endure sitting on the floor for tea, as the inn was not set up that way. They did, however, serve it very exquisitely, and then Nadezhda excused herself.
“I can’t help Geoffrey,” he said after a long silence as Brian separated the leaves himself. “The treatments for his condition are not within my abilities.”
“But that doctor came? Professor Fergus?”
“Yes. And he’s doing his best to save Geoffrey’s hearing, but we still won’t know – maybe not for weeks. I don’t know how we’ll stand it.” He took the offered tea, which was green, and sipped it. The taste was very mild and soothing. “Georgiana is recovering more slowly than she would like. She’s asked for you, but she’s too drugged to be truly insistent.”
“What does her father say?”
Dr. Maddox frowned. “He is doing everything he can to comfort her, his wife, and his family. They’re devastated – by everything, but at the moment, mainly her condition. Do you know what it’s like to have a child in pain and not be able to do anything about it?”
Brian looked down, his eyes distant. “I do.”
“How could you – ” But then it came to him, in a flash – all of those awful memories of his cataract surgeries, especially the one when it had become infected. They had been in Scotland, just the two of them.
“My ability to empathize doesn’t excuse our part in the situation,” Brian said. “I should have – well, I should have stopped my wife. Or even noticed. I thought sending Mugin away -”
“Yes. Everyone’s quite confused about this business about sending Mugin away. As far as we knew, he simply left all of the sudden, but that was typical for him. At least that was what you told me.”
It was strange, when Brian was so serious, because he rarely was. “The last time he was here, about a week before he left, Mugin and I got drunk together and he told me that he had been teaching Georgie how to fight. And being the Englishman that I am despite all my denials, I immediately questioned him about it and he confessed that not only had Nadezhda known, but she sanctioned it and went to every one of their practices. When Georgie came to visit us, she wasn’t coming to see her crazy aunt and uncle – she was coming to learn from Mugin.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He said – quite honestly – she had a natural talent and she had begged him to teach her, so he saw no reason not to. Nady told him that it wasn’t proper, now that she was older, so she would also be at all of the practices. It was Mugin who taught Nady how to fight in Japan, while Miyoshi taught
me. I know he seems like a drunken convict to you, but he takes survival very seriously.” Brian shrugged. “Nonetheless I couldn’t sanction it. I told him to pack his bags, and he was gone the next week.”
“But you didn’t tell Bingley.”
“Nothing improper had occurred. Georgie was only thirteen. It had all been chaperoned. I thought that what Bingley didn’t know, wouldn’t kill him.” He added, “In fact, it saved his life. Hatcher meant to kill us there, and he might have succeeded in shooting at least one us before I got to him, had Georgie not been there.”
“But you still couldn’t expect Bingley to not be devastated – by her injuries alone. And Jane – ”
“He called my wife barren,” Brian said. “I don’t care if it’s true. He did. What am I supposed to say to that?”
“Did he open with that accusation or was it at the end of a long and frustrating argument?”
To this, Brian had no response.
“Even if Nadezhda had the right to do what she did – and I can’t even begin to fathom what propriety calls for here – she had the responsibility to tell Miss Bingley’s parents. Or at least you.”
Again, Brian said nothing, not in indignation, but in defeat.
“I’ve never known her to be unreasonable. In fact, she’s possibly the most reasonable woman I know – and I am including my wife in that. Will you please look at your actions and realize they were just done in anger and from frustration, and make your peace with Bingley?”
“I’ll speak with her,” Brian said, and downed his tea in one swallow. It seemed as though he was not looking forward to the conversation. “She loves Georgie.”
“I know. But Georgie is not her daughter. She’s not even her proper niece. She’s a second cousin by marriage.”
“I know, I know,” his brother responded. “It’s just hard to say that to Nadezhda.”
“But you have to say it. You want to be the responsible samurai? Protect your family from disaster.”
The Knights of Derbyshire Page 22
