Lost in Your Arms

by Christina Dodd

  “Mrs. MacLean!” Mr. Throckmorton hurried out of the garden to the open door of the carriage. “Let me assure you—you’re performing a service for Her Majesty’s government. You will be paid. Regardless of your husband’s legacy, you’ll not be left destitute at the end of your service.”

  Mr. Kinman looked shocked to hear money discussed, but Enid wanted to sag with relief. “Thank you, Mr. Throckmorton. That’s good to know.”

  “While you’re here, if you need anything, anything at all, you are to ask Kinman.”

  “Glad to do anything,” Mr. Kinman said gruffly.

  “We placed MacLean in one of the estate’s cottages. I am going to be married the first of September.” Mr. Throckmorton gave a brief, genuine smile, then sobered at once. “The cottage is quieter and more conducive to a recovery than the house, which is bustling with every kind of tradesman.”

  The cottage is easier to defend, Enid found herself thinking. And she remembered how, on the train from London, two guards had stood outside her compartment.

  Mr. Throckmorton and Mr. Kinman were worried about something—or someone.

  Had they lied to her? Was she in some kind of danger?

  But she didn’t ask those questions. These were men. The best of men believed a woman should be protected from unpleasant truths, and the worst of men believed women would gossip if told a secret. She judged Mr. Throckmorton and Mr. Kinman to be the best of men, and if they had lied once, they would lie again.

  So she said only, “Don’t worry, Mr. Throckmorton. I will protect myself—and my patient.”

  The carriage drove to a charming stone cottage surrounded by a white picket fence and covered with pink climbing roses. Leaning close to the window, Mr. Kinman scanned the area. “We transformed the attic into a sickroom. London sent us the best doctor to care for MacLean, but I don’t believe—”

  The carriage lurched to a stop. Before Mr. Kinman could finish, Enid stood. Before the footmen could descend, she opened the door. Now that she understood the extent of MacLean’s injuries, she was anxious to see for herself what kind of dire situation she faced.

  She noted how the footmen scurried to set the step, how Mr. Kinman steadied her from behind as she descended. Servants stood on either side of the gate, curtsying and bowing as she passed. Enid nodded, but she didn’t stop. Only the wounded man inside mattered now.

  She crossed the threshold into a large, bright room. The windows were opened to the summer breeze. A table with benches stood by the fireplace, where a small pot bubbled and steamed. A bed occupied one corner. Yet nothing interested her here; all her concentration focused on the wooden stair that rose in the middle of the room, straight and broad, to the dim opening in the ceiling. She put her foot on the bottom step and thought where these stairs would lead her. Back to Stephen MacLean and the turmoil of being his wife . . . or his widow.

  As she climbed, the atmosphere grew still and stifling, rife with the smells of illness. She stepped into the attic. Curtains hung over the windows, allowing in only slivers of light. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the bed and the still form lying there. The floorboards creaked as she groped her way to MacLean’s side.

  As Mr. Throckmorton had promised, bandages swathed his face and chest. The counterpane covered the rest of him. He lay so still, so silent, that she couldn’t even see the rise and fall of his chest. Fearfully, she leaned over him and touched his arm. He was still warm. Still alive. “MacLean,” she said.

  No response. His flesh was too warm; the muscles beneath her hand hung slack. Death hovered very near, and in a rush of fury she strode to the window, flung the drapes aside and opened the sash. Sunshine and fresh air rushed in.

  A female voice squawked, “ ‘Ey!”

  Enid turned on the unnoticed attendant as she rose from her place in the corner.

  “Ye can’t do that!” the beefy, drowsy-eyed woman said. “Th’ doctor—”

  “Is a fool if he commanded this,” Enid finished. She heard a thump of boots as Mr. Kinman topped the stairs. “Go open that other window. You can’t rouse a man if he doesn’t know the sun is shining!”

  Mr. Kinman’s mouth hung slack, but he slapped it shut. “I don’t know if I should.”

  “Mr. Kinman, do as I say!”

  He did.

  Returning to MacLean’s side, she pulled the heavy covers back.

  “ ‘E’s got a fever!” the attendant protested.

  “I would say he does. Who wouldn’t, wrapped like some Egyptian mummy?”

  “Look, miss, I don’t know ‘oo ye are, but I’m tellin’ ye—”

  “I’m his wife.” Enid spaced the words, made them a threat.

  The woman shrank back. Then her confidence rebounded, and she advanced on Enid. “Ye’re th’ wife? Ye’re ‘ere t’ talk t’im, not tell yer betters ‘ow t’ do their jobs.”

  Her odor made Enid step back a pace. “Mr. Kinman, remove her, please. She smells of gin, she sleeps at her post, and this room is dirty and disorganized.”

  Mr. Kinman bowed and took the woman’s arm.

  “Ye can’t remove me. I work fer Dr. Bridges!” the female yelled as she followed Mr. Kinman. “Ye’ll hear about this!”

  Enid didn’t listen to the fading protests. Instead she leaned over the prone body of her husband and examined him. His forehead and the side of his face were bandaged, but no matter; she would never have recognized him. His nose had been broken. Swelling disfigured every visible part of his features. Blood seeped through the linen strips on his chest, and as she slowly pulled the covers back, she saw that the bandages extended all the way to his stomach and below the loose, short breeches he wore. His leg . . . his leg was splinted and raised on pillows, and every bit of him stank of sweat and sickness.

  What had they been thinking, to treat him like some wayfarer felled on the road of life? If this was the best Her Majesty’s government could do, then philistines and charlatans populated Her Majesty’s government. Going to the stairs, she shouted, “Mr. Kinman!”

  “Ma’am?” He sounded amazed by her ferocity.

  “I want hot water immediately!”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He came to the bottom of the stairs and stared up at her with something akin to awe. “Mr. Throckmorton is on his way, ma’am.”

  “Good. I have a few words to say to Mr. Throckmorton.” Indeed she did. As she peeled back the first of the bandages, she practiced those words. “If you want to save a man’s life, you don’t hire some slattern of a nurse and use some ignorant bumpkin of a physician. Incompetent, uncaring . . .”

  Dear heavens. Her hands slowed as she revealed MacLean’s face. She would never have recognized him. The explosion had obviously come from the right side, for that side of his face had been sliced and cut by a dozen shards. Each injury had been neatly stitched, but the swelling and bruising disfigured his cheek. He’d lost his earlobe, but his scraggly beard hid any injuries to his jaw. The fever had cracked deep grooves into the fullness of his lips. “MacLean?” Leaning close to his face, she looked again. She touched him using just her fingertips. That heat wasn’t just his temperature. That heat was his will to live. If he could have moved, he would have grasped life in both hands and held it tightly.

  She would have to do it for him.

  But she didn’t like the look of his wounds. “Mr. Kinman!” she called.

  “Ma’am?” He had sneaked up the stairs and even now moved toward her on tiptoe, towels draped over his arm, extending the basin as if afraid to bring it closer.

  “Put it on the bedside table.”

  He did.

  She peeled away the bandages from MacLean’s neck, chest and arms. Some of them stuck, and she glanced around. “Clean rags,” she said. “Towels.”

  Mr. Kinman thrust them at her, then scuttled as far away as he could be and still remain in the room.

  Dipping the rag in the warm water, she stroked MacLean’s still face and sought some remnant of the man he had been. Beneath the swelling she
discovered the broad cheekbones and forehead and angular jaw that had made her husband such a handsome man. But his nose, smashed as it was, looked larger and sharper than she remembered. The passage of time, the effects of the explosion, her own memories betrayed her. “MacLean, what have you done?” she murmured.

  She dropped the crimson-stained bandages onto the floor in an ever-increasing pile. “Mr. Kinman, I need a bucket to dispose of these, and when I’m done washing him, I’m going to need help changing the sheets.”

  Mr. Kinman made an odd noise, and she glanced toward him.

  With horrified fascination, he gazed at the dreadful wounds she had revealed. Color washed from his cheeks, his eyes rolled up like those of an unbroken horse, and he hit the floor with a thud.

  Too bad. She could have used the assistance. But she didn’t have time to worry about him now. Mr. Kinman would stir by himself; her patient lay motionless beneath her hands. “Your friend is useless, did you know that?” she asked MacLean in a conversational tone. “A pleasant man, and probably good in a fight, but he’s fainted clean away. I’m amused. Are you?” She watched MacLean for any sign that her words reached him.

  Nothing.

  “This explosion of yours did an amazing amount of damage.” She gently probed his ribs. “Yet you were lucky. Perhaps you have some cracked ribs, but none are broken and stabbing you.” As she washed each part of him, she dried it carefully and placed it beneath the blanket.

  Each time she touched him, the sense of connection between them expanded. When he’d been healthy and her husband, she had never felt like this. Perhaps this tragedy had altered him—or perhaps the years had matured him, permeated his essence to such an extent she discerned them. Perhaps she’d changed, softened, grown forgiving. Or she realized that death hovered above them like a great dark raven, ready to snatch him away before they could write more of their history.

  She could hear men moving below, a greeting, then the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Behind her, Mr. Kinman stirred and groaned, a great hulking man who feared the sight of blood. But only one thing was important now. To give MacLean a fighting chance. “MacLean.” She repeated his name, thinking surely he would respond to that above all else. “You could have lost an eye to the flying glass, but you were lucky there, too. And the break in your leg was dreadful.” As the sound of booted feet grew closer, she began the torturous process of unwrapping the limb. “But somehow you’ve thrown off any infection. You’ll walk again. So tell me, MacLean, why are you still asleep?”

  “He’s asleep, young lady, because of the blow he sustained to the head.” A bewhiskered gentleman stood at the top of the stairs, dressed in brown tweed and smelling of tobacco. A superior gentleman, and from his expression, one given to scorn and an unwarranted haughtiness. “I’m Dr. Bridges, and I demand to know what you think you’re doing!”

  Mr. Throckmorton stood behind him in the shadows, and for all that he allowed Dr. Bridges to take the lead, Enid addressed only him, “Mr. Throckmorton, I’m washing MacLean. He was filthy.” Enid tossed her rag into the basin. “Mr. Kinman, could I prevail upon you to discard this and bring more warm, clean water?”

  Mr. Kinman groaned again, then crawled toward her and held up his hands.

  She placed the basin in them and admonished, “Don’t spill it.”

  “I won’t,” Mr. Kinman whispered. Staggering to his feet, he headed for the stairs.

  Dr. Bridges’s luxuriant mustache quivered with indignation at being ignored. “Young lady, I am a trained physician, a graduate of Oxford, and what you’re doing is wrong.”

  “Perhaps it is, but what you’re doing is killing him.” She kept her voice low, for if she didn’t, she would have started shouting again, and that might disturb the patient.

  She glanced at MacLean’s slack features.

  Although she might come to shouting yet, if that would wake him.

  “Even a sick man deserves to be washed and to rest on clean sheets,” she said.

  “Those bandages were the only thing keeping the swelling down.” Dr. Bridges gestured toward MacLean. “Look at him! Now that you’ve removed them, he’s puffing up like a toad.”

  He was, and Enid’s heart sank. If only she’d had time to finish assessing MacLean before facing her opponent and her judge. “I’ll pack him in ice to keep the swelling down. Mr. Throckmorton, can you commandeer me ice?”

  “Indeed.” Mr. Throckmorton walked to the stairs, called down and gave the order, then returned to watch Enid and the doctor, weighing them both with austere resolution.

  Mr. Kinman returned, looking a little less ill and a great deal more interested in the conversation. He set the basin on the bedstand and offered clean rags and a small towel filled with ice. When she took them he offered a quick nod of encouragement.

  He didn’t like the doctor, either.

  Mr. Kinman stepped back to stand by Mr. Throckmorton.

  She placed the towel across MacLean’s nose and over his eyes, taking care that it should not block his airway. Wetting the rag, she stroked it over MacLean’s thigh. She could clearly see the scarring where the bone had protruded through the skin. Yet the bone had set straight and true. If he survived, he would walk again, and she recognized that miracle.

  “Fresh air. While you bathe him!” Like a spectator in a tennis match, Dr. Bridges looked from window to window. “The chill will kill him.”

  Enid’s indignation rose anew. “This chamber was like a mausoleum, not a sickroom. How is MacLean to know when to wake if he’s held in a prison?”

  “Wake? You think he’s going to wake? We can scarcely get water into him, and I’d like to know how you’ll do better, young lady!” The doctor’s whiskers quivered with resentment. “You’ve unwrapped his leg. I hope you haven’t ruined that, too.”

  Dabbing the leg dry with a towel, Enid considered the situation. Mr. Throckmorton had no reason to trust in her skill, while Dr. Bridges held a degree from the most prestigious medical school in England. But Enid had to stay with MacLean. He needed her if he was to survive. More than that, the unconscious, emaciated form on the bed tugged at her soul. She didn’t know why; he should be no more to her than any other patient.

  In fact, if MacLean lived, she would still be bound to him, and if he died while in her care, she would be free. Yet something about this man tugged at her senses. Even unconscious, he exuded an aura of strength, of power, of irresistible allure. So she would do anything—beg, fight, even appease the doctor—for a chance to drag MacLean back to life. Nothing else was acceptable.

  So although conciliation stuck in her throat, Enid offered an olive branch. “You did an excellent job with the leg, Dr. Bridges.” Amazing though it seemed, he had. “A difficult break. Congratulations.”

  A profound silence settled on the room, and she glanced up from her ministrations.

  “An Arab physician set the bone,” Mr. Throckmorton said.

  Dr. Bridges whirled to face Mr. Throckmorton. “He’s going to die anyway! What difference does it make?”

  Mr. Throckmorton’s expression stilled. His eyes grew so cold that the temperature in the room dropped perceptibly. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve been treating my friend inattentively because you believe he can’t be saved?”

  Dr. Bridges wasn’t an intuitive man, for he dared to answer, “I’ve done what I can for him, but I’ve never seen such dreadful wounds. Of course he’s doomed.”

  Mr. Throckmorton snapped his fingers, then moved to stand beside Enid.

  Taking the protesting doctor by the arm, Mr. Kinman hustled him down the stairs.

  “I requested the best,” Mr. Throckmorton said, chill fury in his tone. “And that’s what I got?”

  The anxiety that clutched at Enid’s throat relaxed, and in a careful, nonjudgmental tone, she said, “Dr. Gerritson, the man who trained me, used to say trouble comes when the physicians believe in their own infallibility.”

  “Your Dr. Gerritson sounds like an intelligen
t man. How did you come to train with him?”

  “After MacLean abandoned me, I had to pay off his debts. So I assisted the village doctor with all manner of injuries and illnesses. I didn’t faint at the sight of blood—I’d seen too much at the orphanage to get queasy about anything. After I helped him set the hostler’s collarbone, he offered me a place working with him. His wife said he was too old to work so hard. She was right. He died three years later, and here I am.”

  Mr. Throckmorton watched in silence as she bathed MacLean’s wounds. “Will you be able to save MacLean?”

  “I don’t know.” MacLean was so ill. “I don’t even know if I can keep him alive through the night. But I will try.”

  He didn’t reproach her. Instead he asked, “What can I do to assist?”

  If only all men were so astute! “I need an attendant, a sturdy woman of good size and sense who’ll help me move him, give him water and feed him should he come to consciousness.”

  “I’ll send Mrs. Brown to you. She’s our nursemaid, and a more sensible woman I’ve never met.”

  “I hate to deprive your children of their nursemaid.”

  “My daughter and my niece, and I assure you, my fiancée will be thrilled to have the children to herself.” Mr. Throckmorton’s smile twisted up on one side and down on the other, and he looked like a man who didn’t know whether he was delighted or deprived. “My fiancée was formerly their governess, you see.”

  Enid didn’t see, but she didn’t care, either. As long as Mr. Throckmorton filled her needs, he and his betrothed could do and be whatever they wished. “If Mrs. Brown is the best to be had, I’ll take her and gladly. I want maids to clean this room so I can bring some kind of order to the unguents and linens and . . .” She gestured at the clutter about her. In the face of such a vital task, she needed sanitation and organization or her methodical soul would rebel.

  “Maids. Immediately. I need herbs.”

  “My gardener will attend you.”

  She nodded, well-satisfied, and leaned over MacLean again.

  “I would ask while you’re here that you stay within the confines of the cottage unless accompanied by one of my men.”