by Kate Moore
“Dover? Where traitors go?” she said bitterly. “No.”
“And you? Where is Barksted taking you?” Emily could see a purple bruise on Lady Ravenhurst’s cheek.
“Back to Ravenhurst,” she said in a small voice. It was an admission of defeat, and Emily had no comfort to offer.
“Thank you,” Emily said, and turned for the door. She no longer envied Lady Ravenhurst her fragile beauty.
“Wait,” said the lady. “You should know. One of Barksted’s men shot him.”
Everything stopped for a moment. Emily’s lungs forgot to take their next breath. Her heart forgot to beat. Her hand refused to turn the doorknob. “Is he dead?” she asked.
Lady Ravenhurst shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
* * * *
Emily knew that the distance to Longfield would be counted nothing on a fair day with a decent pair of horses and a well-sprung vehicle, but melting snow and gnawing worry made the way long and tedious. Goldsworthy made his displeasure known that she had not asked Lady Ravenhurst about Walhouse. At a crossroads Wilde jumped down to ask directions of a passing farmer, and then they were there, driving past a stand of chestnut trees onto the gravel sweep, pulling up to the plain yellow house.
No one answered Goldsworthy’s call when they entered. The house smelled of damp and cold fires. Emily glanced at the empty rooms as she passed toward an open door at the end of the passage. A walled garden and a small field lay between the parsonage and a sort of barn, its doors hanging open. Behind her Goldsworthy tramped about while Wilde bounded up the stairs. She lifted her skirts and descended into the garden. A squat stone church with a square Norman tower stood off to one side. In the trampled grass at the base of the garden wall she found a pistol and a smear of blood in a patch of snow.
“Lynley,” she shouted, scanning the field.
From within the little barn, a horse whinnied, and Emily took off at a run. The snow had retreated, making islands of white in a sea of green. She stumbled her way over the rough ground, her skirts growing wet and muddy. She stepped through the open barn door, peering into the gloom and feeling the deeper cold where no sun had penetrated. The little barn smelled of neglect, of rank hay and old dung. Three stalls lined the wall to her left. Dust-covered tools and tack hung on the wall to her right.
At first she thought she’d imagined the horse’s whinny. Then a magnificent black head rose above the second stall. The great black horse shook himself all over. He was saddled and bridled. For a heart-wrenching moment she could not breathe. Lynley would never leave a horse untended.
“Hello,” she said, approaching slowly, wishing she had an apple or some hay. “Hello, Sultan.”
The horse’s ears flicked toward her at the sound of his name. “Where’s Lynley?” Emily asked. “Where’s your master?”
She slipped into the stall and extended her hand to let the horse know she offered no danger. She stroked the long neck. “You’ve been here too long, haven’t you, Sultan? Let me find Lynley, and I’ll see to you.”
She stepped back from the horse, trying to gather her wits. Lynley had not returned to the house. She had seen no sign of him in the field. Her mind raced with plans to retrace her steps through the grass and call Wilde, when glancing down, she saw a long, low heap of black clothes, lying like a mound of turned-up earth in a field, from which a pair of muddied boots protruded.
She ducked around the front of the horse and dropped to her knees in the old straw. Lynley lay rolled in a black cloak against the side of the stall, his eyes closed, his face drawn and white, a thin line of dried blood at the corner of his mouth. She put a hand to his rough cheek. He shivered but did not open his eyes.
She leaned down and kissed his cold lips. She whispered, “Later, my love, I will be very angry with you.”
She pulled herself up, offered the horse a reassuring word and a stroke on the silky neck, and strode for the house.
Goldsworthy stood in the back doorway. “Well?” he shouted.
“I found Lynley. He’s hurt, and we need to get him to the house.”
“Did he get the papers?”
“He’s wounded,” Emily replied, governing her temper.
Wilde appeared and squeezed past Goldsworthy. In the barn the youth and the horse regarded each other warily. Emily moved Sultan to a second stall. With Wilde’s help, she roused Lynley. His eyes fluttered open. He looked straight at Wilde. “Walhouse has the papers. Cannot have got far. Winged him,” he said.
Emily reminded herself that she could berate him later for his single-mindedness. “Where are you hurt?” she asked him.
“Em?” He seemed baffled by her presence. “Shot. Arm,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Then let’s take care of that,” she said. “Mr. Goldsworthy can go after the papers.”
Lynley gave her one more puzzled look, then nodded. Together, she and Wilde got him to sit upright and offered him coffee from a flask Wilde carried. The journey across the field, through the garden, and into a wingchair in the cold parlor at the back of the house further tried Emily’s patience.
She set Wilde to work making a fire and searching the house for anything of use like bedding, candles, and water, while she helped Lynley out of his heavy cloak and mud-caked boots. His stockinged feet were icy cold, and she wrapped them in her cloak. The room warmed as they worked, and whenever Mr. Goldsworthy grumbled at the delay, Emily reminded him of her letter. She made Wilde promise to stop at the first inn they passed to send for a doctor.
When, at last, though it could not have taken long, Emily had what she needed, she let them go.
She looked around the small parlor with its once cheery red sprig wallpaper, somewhat battered white wainscot, and bare plank floors, and laughed. Of all the places for a woman to be compromised by her lover, this one was woefully lacking in the elements of a successful seduction. A sadly banged-up copper kettle simmered on the grate. An overturned box held a pair of chipped cups and a tea jar with a few faint leaves. Slanting late afternoon light came through the north-facing windows. It was no love nest where she and Lynley could fall into a sumptuous bed hung with silks and piled high with soft cushions.
She turned to Lynley and found him watching her.
“You’ve been busy,” he said, his voice low and a bit unsteady.
“You have no idea.” She crossed to stand in front of him, her skirts against his knees, looking down on the tousled hair, the dark shadow of his beard against the pallor of his skin, and the furrow of pain between his brows.
“A number of things puzzle me,” he said.
“You’re surprised to see me here?”
“With Goldsworthy.”
“Ah,” she said. “Your spymaster did need some persuading.”
“No doubt you’ll explain it all to me.” She heard the weariness in his voice.
“I will, my love,” she said, “but now, we really must get you out of these clothes.”
A light flared in his dark eyes. With his good hand, he pulled Emily to stand between his knees, closing them against her legs to hold her in place. His shirt collar gaped open above the black silk of his waistcoat.
“What did you do with your neckcloth?” she asked. She reached for the top button of his waistcoat and began to work the tiny buttons down his chest.
“Stuffed it over the bullet hole.” With his good hand he indicated a bulge in his right sleeve.
“Very wise,” she said, releasing the last button of his waistcoat and gently spreading it open over the fine lawn shirt. “Can you lift your left arm?”
He complied with a grin, and she pulled his coat sleeve up until he could free his arm.
“Lean forward,” she ordered.
He did, pressing his forehead into the hollow of her throat where the lace collar dipped, breathing against her skin. For a moment they leaned against each
other, like spent runners catching a ragged breath. She peeled the close-fitting coat from his back until only the right sleeve remained. He inhaled sharply.
“This part may hurt,” she said, easing the shirt off his shoulder. His eyes closed briefly, and then opened as she slid the coat over the injured arm. The bloodied neckcloth tumbled free, and Emily caught it.
His lawn shirt stuck to his arm. Blood had spilled and stained the shirt from a small hole no bigger than Emily’s thumb, an angry circle of singed black fibers. A similar hole marked the bullet’s exit.
“Wilde promised he would send a doctor from the next inn,” she told him, studying the way the shirt stuck to his flesh.
“How long do you think we have?” he asked.
The question sent a flash of heat through her. At least Lynley would not die of a chill. She took a steadying breath and gently pulled free of his legs. Spreading his ruined coat on the floor, she stepped onto it, lifted her skirts and reached for the ties on her petticoats.
He grinned. “This is promising,” he said.
She laughed. “I’m just being practical.”
“I’m not allowed to hope for more?” he asked, one brow raised.
“Clean bandages,” she said, giving a little shimmy and letting her petticoats settle onto his coat. She stepped out of them and whisked them up onto the other chair. She managed after several tries to tear a strip of cloth. She poured hot water from the kettle into one of the chipped cups and soaked her makeshift bandage, then wrapped the wet strip around his arm.
“I should have had you with me,” he confessed.
“I did think we were partners,” she said.
“I was strongly opposed to Barksted’s bullyboys or anyone else putting hands on you again.”
“I feel quite the same way about Barksted’s henchmen banging you up. This,” she said, waving a hand vaguely over his person, “belongs to me.” In time she would kiss every inch of him.
“I can make it up to you,” he said.
“I’m interested.”
When she judged that the wet compress had had sufficient time to do its work, she lifted it from his arm. Gently, she peeled his shirt away from the skin, pleased to see that the blackened fibers remained attached to the torn shirt and the wound itself had only a little black residue around the edge. She put aside the stained compress.
“Now, your waistcoat and shirt.”
“You won’t stop until you have me naked, will you?”
“I do like the idea of you naked, but I suspect the doctor will only need to see your arm.”
She made him stand briefly to get the waistcoat off and pull his shirttails free of his trousers. He was a bit wobbly on his legs, so she pushed him gently back down into the chair. She undid his cuffs and worked the shirt off his uninjured side and over his head before pulling it from the wounded arm.
She held the linen, warm from his body, and stared at what she’d uncovered. She wanted to run her hands over the fine broad shoulders, and down the chest with its swells of muscle and swirls of soft dark hair to the taut belly. The bullet had passed through a bulge of arm muscle just below his shoulder. Blue and yellow bruises marked his ribs and torso.
“Barksted’s men,” he said, watching her.
She nodded. They had wounded his flesh, but the faint line on his imperfect mouth was the real wound, the old hurt that had sent him off alone to rescue a woman who didn’t wish to be rescued. Emily traced it with her finger. He shivered under her touch.
“You may wonder,” he said, “that I came to Lady Ravenhurst’s assistance when I should simply have taken the papers and been on my way. Had I found Walhouse alone, I would have done just that.”
Emily waited, holding her breath, stilling every judgment.
He released a long, shaky breath. “When my mother left, I thought I could stop her. I pleaded and argued. I tried to fight her lover to keep her with us, with my father and me. She wept, but she watched him beat me.”
Emily had wanted him naked, but this was more, this baring of the hurt he kept concealed behind his cool, bored indifference. She wanted to tell him that he had been young, that she knew what it was to be young and to imagine that you could right wrongs in the world by your own valiant efforts.
“You aren’t that boy anymore. You are wiser, and better armed.”
He laughed. “But still wrong.” He looked at her, his dark eyes filled with honesty and something more. “I was wrong yesterday again, wrong to try to stop her...alone. I should have waited to bring my partner with me—you, Em.”
It was an unlikely admission, an admission of need. Lynley, she realized, had been determined to need no one from the time of the disaster. His aunt called it a disaster because it involved the family in scandal, but the real disaster had been the grave injury to the heart of a loving boy. His aunt and his uncle had completed the work begun by his mother and her lover until he had refused to be vulnerable or open.
Emily dropped his ruined shirt and leaned over to kiss him. With his good hand he pulled her down into his lap and settled her against the unhurt shoulder. She pressed against him and placed her hand on his heart, a heart that could now heal.
But as she felt its steady beat, she was tempted to move her hand over his chest, to fill her senses with the textures of his skin, the rough and smooth, the taut ridges of muscle, the soft swirls of hair, and the flat coins of his nipples. He was sensitive there, and when she felt his body flex in response to her touch, she smiled, her lips brushing his collarbone.
She owed him this. He had, after all, been teasing her senses for days, awakening yearnings she had not felt before.
“Are you seducing me?” he asked.
“Is it working?”
He nodded wordlessly, and Emily continued the explorations that seemed more likely than any saline draft to distract him from the pain of his wounded arm.
Chapter Twenty-Three
What numbers of girls are turned out in London each Season, dressed and coiffed with the elegance their families’ means allow, feeling only that they must attract the notice of gentlemen around them and that it is the duty of those gentlemen to choose a wife? The husband hunter must not be like one of these—ignorant of human nature and unacquainted with her own heart, lacking a plan of action and with no sense of her duty to shape her destiny. To become a woman, she must act. She must choose. Unless she takes charge of her life, she remains, though a wife, a perpetual girl.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
The doctor came near dusk as the sky grew pale and the trees turned to black rustling shadows. Mr. Windle was a bewhiskered gentleman in an old-fashioned brown coat, with a brusque manner.
He hollered a greeting from the door, and at Emily’s reply, he tromped into the little parlor.
“What’s this I hear about a man who’s been shot?” he asked, coming to a halt in front of Lynley, his bag in his hand.
Lynley pulled aside the coat he’d been using for warmth.
Windle’s eyes widened at the sight of the bullet hole. “Bring that light closer, miss,” he ordered.
Emily stood holding their one candle over Lynley. Mr. Windle peered at the bullet wound and then at the bruises on Lynley’s chest and ribs. “And who are you?”
“Sir Ajax Lynley of Buckinghamshire.”
“Buckinghamshire?” Windle glanced at Lynley’s pistol lying on his black cloak by the hearth. He turned a skeptical gaze on Emily. “And you? His sister, perhaps?”
“His fiancée,” said Emily levelly. “We were on the road to Dover and stopped at Lord Strayde’s request to see the state of the parsonage. Unfortunately, a pair of ruffians had broken in, and attacked Lynley until he was able to fire his weapon.”
“Hmm,” he said, examining Lynley’s arm with a gentleness at odds with his heavy frown. “The ball seems to
have gone cleanly through. As you’re the sort to wear clean linen, you probably have little to fear from infection. Did you lose much blood?”
Emily showed Windle the wadded neckcloth. He nodded.
“Replenish the lost fluids,” he said.
He produced a glass and looked closely at the wound. With a sharp blade he cut away a fine layer of skin around the two openings. He fashioned a dressing and tied it neatly around Lynley’s arm. He returned his instruments to his bag and issued a series of orders to Lynley to open and close his fist, bend his elbow, and slowly raise the injured arm. Finally, he probed the bruises on Lynley’s torso. “I find no broken ribs. You’re lucky.”
“What may I give him?” Emily asked.
“Broth, and I’ll leave you a saline draught for the pain.” Windle snapped his bag closed and faced them, looking grave.
“And what may we give you for your services?” she asked. She had little money with her, but when Goldsworthy returned, they could offer more.
“That depends,” he said. He pointed to Lynley’s gun. “That’s a dueling pistol, young man, and a damned fine one, if I’m any judge. And I’m told that the only gentleman in Buckinghamshire who wears a black cloak and a black hat is a highwayman. I’ve a mind to call the magistrate.”
While Emily was considering how to answer him, a carriage pulled up at the door. Goldsworthy’s voice boomed a greeting, and his heavy tread sounded in the passage.
Dr. Windle gaped when Goldsworthy filled the doorway and squeezed into the parlor with his treelike bulk.
“Yer the sawbones, are you?” he said. “How’s my lad?”
“Should be locked up, if you ask me,” said Windle. “There’s some havey-cavey business going on here.”
“Lock up Lynley?” Goldsworthy crossed to Lynley’s side and put a huge hand on his good shoulder. “Every Englishman should drink to his health. He just saved us from going to war.”
Lynley looked up. “You got the papers then?”
“It was just as you thought. Walhouse took a wood splinter in the arm from your shot. That and the weather slowed him down. Only got as far as Cuxton. Nabbed him nursing his woes over a bit of punch in the landlord’s private room.”
