by Edith Layton
He lay before her, but he had struggled to an elbow and seen what she’d done.
“Oh, mighty Cristabel,” he said in a strained voice, “thank you for disposing of the rude fellow.”
“How are you?” she asked in terror, her hands going beneath his cloak, to his hard chest, to his heart—her own heart near stopping when she felt the wetness there soaking through her gloves.
“Fine, fine,” he said absently, his face growing paler. “Why did you do it?” she raged. “I could have stood by your side and taken care of meself.”
“Had to protect you,” he whispered, as he slid down to the street again and closed his eyes.
“Oh, damn you,” she shouted, shaking him, trying to throttle him to consciousness again, “Damn you, blast you, rotten bloody pigheaded villain! Who is going to protect you? All your life protecting others: your sap-skulled brother and all yer blasted sisters and yer hen-witted sister-in-law, and me! Me, a blackguard’s dirty daughter, who can protect herself, blast ye! Who is going to protect you, ye great bleeding dumb-ox fool? Did ye think ye were made of wood or steel? No, ye be but a man, a good man, too good, damn ye, damn ye. Who asked ye to carry the world on yer shoulders? Does no one look out for ye? Why din’t ye let me? Oh, see what you’ve done, you great oaf, oh, just see,” she wailed.
She sat there grieving, holding him and cursing him and stroking his cold face until they pulled her away, and gently raised him up and carried him off, with her sobbing and running beside him all the way, his cold, limp hand held tightly in hers.
CHAPTER 14
They made her leave the room because she frightened the doctor so much. They worried about his being able to get the job done in her presence—it being difficult to a operate on a man while a madwoman holds a pistol to your head. Or so Martin said.
“He’s a good physician, I promise, Cristabel,” Martin said as he stood with his back against the door to the room Magnus was in. “I can’t let you go back in. You’ll do no good in there anyway. Let him work. He has to get the bullet out and tend the wound, that’s all.”
“He’ll cut too deep, he’ll bleed him dry, he’ll dose him too strong, he’ll sew him sloppy if he don’t have someone there to see. I don’t trust quacks. I seen too many of them hurt a man worse’n his wounds,” she fretted, pacing up and down, eyeing the door Martin stood before, as though she’d leap in if he just moved a fraction away from it.
“Yes, but not this doctor. He’s no fool. He’s not fashionable, just sound. He’s used to dealing with more than a matron’s crochets; he knows how to deal with shell and shot. If it makes you feel any better, he sailed with Her Majesty’s navy as a sawbones for years before he settled here to practice.”
“That certainly don’t make me feel no better,” she grumbled, but he saw her shoulders relax.
They’d taken Magnus to Martin’s house instead of his own because they’d thought he’d have better care from relatives than mere servants…if he survived the wound, Martin thought uneasily. But he couldn’t let his apprehensions show, because Cristabel was a tinderbox. Sophia was frightened into tearful, prayerful silence, but at least she was calm. Not like Cristabel, who raved and paced and ranted like a vengeful wraith. Surprisingly, Martin found that having to appear confident and dealing with Cristabel’s touchy temper helped him cope with his own fears, because he was deeply troubled.
Seeing Magnus lying bleeding and pale had frightened him. Seeing him totally unresponsive had shaken him deeply. Magnus filled his life, he was always there to depend on, to lean on. Even in the depths of his misery in that pirate hell, Martin had found the courage to go through with Captain Whiskey’s mad request because in the back of his mind he’d known that somehow Magnus would make it right again. Now, seeing his big brother unconscious and vulnerable was beyond tragic, it seemed impossible.
“You’ll do no good in there,” Martin repeated. “The bullet will come out, the doctor will leave medicines, and there’s an end to it.”
It was a bad choice of words; he knew it when he heard them, and winced when he saw her eyebrows go up. But before she could open her mouth, the bedroom door opened.
“If there is a Cristabel on the premises, I believe it would be best if she came in now,” the doctor said hurriedly. “He calls for her.”
“I’m here,” Cristabel said, and ran to the door. But the doctor refused to move out of her way immediately. He studied her closely first. She’d been a wild thing when he’d first come to the house. She was quieter now and he could assess her, even in the dim guttering candlelight.
She saw his appraisal and remembered how she’d greeted him when she’d been distracted. Flushing, she put a hand up to smooth her hair. It was a futile gesture. Her dress was stained with blood and dirt, her face had smudges on it, and her hair was out of its pins and tumbled to her shoulders. She looked tousled and hard-used but nevertheless surprisingly young and lovely, less like a grieving woman than like a maid who’d just been soundly tumbled. But her eyes gave her away. When they met the doctor’s steady gaze, he saw determination and a terrible fear quickly hidden by her lashes.
“First,” the doctor said sternly, “you go wash your face and hands and see to your hair. If he opens his eyes, I want him to see that you’re in control and everything is normal. Go, go,” he said a little more kindly. “I took the ball out of his chest and he’s in pain, but he has a chance.” Her face lit with such sudden radiance, his voice grew softer when he added, “I can’t speak of the future with confidence. It depends on many things. His heart’s whole, thank God, and his lungs were not touched, but it was a near thing and there was too much blood lost. I can’t see beneath flesh and bone, so I can’t see what else might have been affected. If he lasts through the night and doesn’t take a hard fever, he has a chance for a full recovery. But even then—there are sickbed contagions…but he’s a strong lad, with a good history of healing. I can’t say; no one can. Go, Mistress Cristabel,” he said impatiently, “prepare yourself. He asked for you, and from now on the state of his spirit is as important as that of his body.”
She fairly flew to her room. When she emerged from it again, she’d combed and pinned her hair into a neat bundle of curls, scrubbed her face, changed her gown, taken off her hoop so that she could have more freedom of movement, and had even added a dab of perfume to her wrists. She was pale but composed, if one did not notice the fine trembling of her hands. Magnus didn’t.
She entered his room quietly and went straight to his high bed and gazed down at him. He lay on his back, his chest swathed in bandages. Someone had washed his face and combed back his hair. Cristabel reached out and gently laid her hand on his broad forehead. It was warm, but not hectically so, only as warm as his whole glowing body usually was. And as such, far warmer than her icy hand. But he didn’t open his eyes.
She blinked back tears. He looked like a warrior carved on a tomb, such as the ones he’d taken her to see in London’s great cathedrals. Even in repose, his strength and power were evident—every line of his body spoke silently of grace, his broad-boned face that of a man of valor. All he needed, she thought with a terrible tearful flash of humor, was a sword at his hand and a dog at his feet—and a marble lady all of his own to lie at his side through eternity. Not a pirate’s daughter. Not the ill-gotten wretch whose very presence had made him an enemy who had brought him to this.
It was all her fault, she knew it. He’d had no enemies until she’d been landed on him. As she stood by his side and counted his breaths, she felt almost as bad about who she was as she did about what had happened to him. She would settle the score with the man who had planned this. There was no doubt in her mind their attacker had been paid to do his evil work. He hadn’t sought a purse or shouted a complaint when he’d struck. Men who killed silently in the dark were men who did others’ work. She’d find the one responsible and deal him what he’d dealt, she vowed. Whether Magnus lived or the unthinkable happened, she’d have her vengeance a
nd leave here, forever.
“Cristabel,” Magnus breathed. His eyes were open and he smiled. “Cristabel,” he said, “you’re all right.”
“Aye, and so be—are you,” she said with a rising smile. “Fine as fivepence, you are.”
His big hand rose from his side and he touched his bandaged chest. His hand fell still when he felt what was there. “Yes,” he breathed, “but best make that one pence, Mistress Stew. I’ve a hole in me the size of a cannonball, I think.”
“Pshaw, that’s soon mended,” she said with awful cheerfulness.
He struggled to sit up and fell back before helpful hands could force him to stop trying. “’Od’s life!” he said on a puff of pained breath, his great chest rising and falling with the force of it. “It was a cannon, I think. Where’s Martin?”
“Here,” Martin said, coming to his side and taking his hand.
“Good lad. All’s safe then?” Magnus asked, trying to search his brother’s face in the dim light because he knew Martin could hide nothing from him.
Martin nodded, then not sure Magnus could see it, added, “Yes, all of us are perfectly safe. All of us but you.”
“Too big a target to miss,” Magnus said ruefully. “And the villain?”
“You got him, and then Cristabel finished him,” Martin said.
“Hasty wench,” Magnus said with a weak grin. “A pity, he might have had an interesting song to sing. Still, it’s nice to have a Valkyrie on one’s side. Tell me, brother—” He winced as he paused to suck in another deep breath and went on. “Since Mistress Stew’s determined to be a cheerful nurse, I must ask you. I want truth. What was hit? How will I do?”
Martin nodded at the doctor, who had pushed his way to his patient and was feeling his pulse. “Dr. Fowler says nothing vital was hit. But the recuperation will be—up to you.”
“Doctor?” Magnus asked.
“Aye,” the doctor said gruffly, “I can’t promise anything. I did my best. But the ball was near too many important organs and too much blood was lost for me to be pleased. It’s as your brother says, up to you and God now, my lord.”
“Well, I’ll certainly do my best,” Magnus said, and laughed. He closed his eyes against the pain of his laughter, and did not open them again.
“Sleeping,” the doctor said quickly, hearing Cristabel’s gasp and turning to see her face. “You’d best learn the difference between sleep and disaster if you’re going to last the night. Here, take this chair, my dear. It will be a long night.”
It was.
She sat and watched Magnus sleeping, and stood and waited for him to wake. Sometimes she paced, but never too far to miss hearing his every exhalation. Martin sat with her, servants moved quietly through the sickroom going about their chores, and Sophia stole in every so often, looked at Magnus, raised her handkerchief to her eyes, and fled again. She did it almost every hour. It was the only thing that made Martin and Cristabel smile. Until Magnus groaned, and stirred and opened his eyes again.
“Devilish thirsty,” he muttered, his head moving restlessly.
They smiled at each other and helped him to sip some water.
“Ah, I’m a deuced nuisance,” he said fretfully.
They denied it gladly.
“’Od’s blood, but it’s hot in here,” he complained. They stopped smiling. Because the room was chill.
His fever grew with the night. The doctor bled him, and would have done it once more if he dared face Cristabel’s wrath. As it was, since it had done no good so far, he shrugged and resorted to the other best treatments modern medicine offered. They used cold cloths and soft words, they chafed his wrists and stroked his hair, and still the fever rose. It was a dry heat, a burning thing that made his flesh feel like baked stones. It grew until Cristabel could swear it singed her hands so much that they hurt when she put her fingertips together to pray.
She was a sailor’s daughter and knew all the superstitions and true lore of the sea, and so when the night grew hazy gray and started to fade to dawn, she held her breath and prayed as she held his hand tight in her own. She knew that human life had its own tides, and that dawn and dusk were powerful times because human souls sought safe harbor at the margins of the night and day. Every sailor knew those turning times were when life had its most tenuous hold. And so she hung on to Magnus’s hand as if she were hanging on to his life—holding it back against the turning tide of night, refusing to let it flow away as night vanished into day.
His hand was so broad and wide, she could only hold it halfway round, but she clutched it tightly, squeezed her eyes shut, and prayed.
“Cristabel,” Magnus murmured.
“Aye, here,” she said.
“Look you,” he said with effort. “I have been thinking. Yes, I can think in this oven. I’ve been lying here thinking things out as best I can. There’s a thing…there is a thing you must do for me.”
“Anything,” she said fervently.
“Don’t be so hasty,” he said, licking his dry lips. “It won’t sit well with you. But it is the only right thing to do. I cannot rest easy unless it’s done.”
“What?” she asked, her heart pounding with fear because of the way the words “rest easy” hurt her ears.
“Marry me,” he said. “Now.”
The room grew still. He squeezed her hand to get her attention. “Listen, my dear, it’s for the best. You need no mother if you have me. You need no father. Even if I die, you’ll have the name. If I don’t, you’ll have me. That’s the only problem for you that I can see. I can’t rest easy with you this way. I’ve tried, and I cannot. What say you, Cristabel?”
She was still. But the doctor spoke up. “My lord,” he said uneasily, “the fever may be speaking. A man oughtn’t to act in haste…”
“Doctor,” Magnus said with enough of his old power in his voice to quiet the man instantly. “I’m not asking for the first time. Pray be silent, and let pity do what prudence would not let her do.” He turned his head to Cristabel, his gaze steady, his voice serious. “If you hate me, then naysay me,” he told her, “for I fully intend to recover if God lets me. No—I’d even say that if you only have a mild care for me, you should say no and wait for your one true love to come along.”
“You are my own true love!” she cried, the words wrenched from her by fear and terror.
He smiled. “It is decided,” he said. “Martin, get us a man of God, and double-quick, sir. If not at the church, then at Fleet Prison, or cross the river at Southwark where they commonly do such things, or wherever you can find a holy man practical enough to do the deed here and now. Tell him a soul hangs in the balance—a soul with money in his pockets.” He laid his head back down on his pillow again, clearly exhausted just from the effort of issuing so many orders.
Martin hesitated. Sophia, who had crept into the room again, spoke up quickly. “Stay with him, Martin,” she said in a small, tear-filled voice. “I’ll see to it. I’ll send for a minister. I’ll send three footmen in three directions if I have to, I promise. Please, let me do something.”
Magnus nodded.
Martin stood and watched his brother as they waited for dawn and a minister—or death—to come to the room. Cristabel clung to Magnus’s hand just as stubbornly as he clung to consciousness. He didn’t say anything, but she could tell he was awake and aware of her from the way he tried to tighten his hand over hers every so often. Her hand grew hot and damp in that desperate clasp. But she didn’t let go until Martin touched her shoulder.
“Look,” he said with awe.
In the rising light she saw Magnus’s face beaded with dampness, and realized that her hand was slippery in his because the fever had broken. She flashed a glad smile, until the doctor spoke.
“Good,” he said, “but it must stay this way.”
“Cristabel,” Magnus said softly, “go. Put on something pretty for our wedding morning. I’ll be here when you return. That, I promise. Now that you’ve agreed to wed me, you’ll
really have to use a cannon to finish me off.” He managed to chuckle, and took a sip of water the doctor offered him.
Seeing that, she nodded. “But you keep your promise, hear?” she warned him in a thickened voice.
“If you keep yours,” he reminded her.
She nodded, and left.
The doctor sighed. “A handful, my lord, but quite a woman.”
“Quite a lady,” Magnus corrected him.
“Ah. Well, I think you’d better drink this potion, my lord.
It will help ease you. Drink it all. I should hate to think of what she’ll do if you die. Not only to me, my lord. But to you.”
Magnus grinned, and took his medicine.
*
The ceremony took place shortly after dawn. It was irregular, but the parson they had gotten never conducted regular ceremonies, his flock being composed of people willing and needful of paying for instant weddings, strange funerals, and odd christenings. It was all as legally binding as the highest church ceremonies, though, and that was all Magnus cared about. All Cristabel cared about was seeing that her groom lived through the ceremony. He was very pale, and she could feel his hand in hers growing warm again.
Magnus lay with his head propped up against his pillows and repeated the words in a low, strong voice. Cristabel stood at his side and tried to repeat them without crying. She knew she was doing the wrong thing, but she also knew that it was for all the right reasons.
“I do,” she said at last. At the vicar’s instruction, she bent her head to take her groom’s kiss. Only then did she let her salt tears flow, to soothe the scalding touch of his lips. Because he burned with fever again.
“Lady Snow,” Magnus said with satisfaction, savoring the words. Then, having won her hand, he lay back and closed his eyes to do battle for his life.
