Hope Tarr - [Men of the Roxbury House 02]

by Enslaved

  Unclenching Gavin’s fingers from the sword hilt, Rourke gently drew away the weapon and set it safely on its side. “Stay here and try not to move. I’ll go and fetch the doctor.”

  “Get me home, Rourke. I want to go home.”

  He started to add “home to Daisy” when a shaft of white hot pain shot into his shoulder, stealing his breath and his will. The next thing he knew, his friend’s retreating form faded to black along with the rest of the empty room.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:

  This wide and universal theater

  Presents more woeful pageants than the scene

  Wherein we play it.”

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Duke Senior,

  As You Like It

  Daisy must have drifted off to sleep because the main door opening caused her to start. She blinked and looked about. Though she’d left the desk lamp alight, it still took her a full moment to remember where she was and why she was there. Gavin’s study … They argued and then he walked out. He was hardly the first man to have done so and yet in his case she’d known he would come back eventually and not only because he lived there. It simply wasn’t in his nature to walk away, and yet years before hadn’t he done just that?

  He was a boy, Daisy, a child the same as you. Forgive him and get on with your life. Her adoptive mother’s words came back to her, their commonsense wisdom a balm to her bruised heart.

  It had gotten chilly in the study. The blanket wrapped about her, she rose to stand on stiff legs. “Gavin,” she called out in a carrying whisper, loud enough for him to hear and yet not so loud as to wake the household, or rather Jamison, whose snores sounded from the far end of the hall. When no reply was forthcoming, she wondered if he might be deliberately ignoring her. She walked over to the door and poked her head out into the hallway. “Gavin, is that you?”

  “It’s Rourke, but I’ve Gavin with me.” The Scot, not Gavin, called back to her from the outer room. “The surgeon’s seen to him and he’ll be fine.”

  Surgeon! Daisy threw aside the blanket and hurried into the parlor.

  Rourke had Gavin propped against the door. Leaning heavily on their friend’s arm, Gavin looked up at her and tried for a smile. “Daisy, you’re still here?” followed by “Sorry … didn’t mean to wake you.” Instead of the intermittent stammer, a slur thickened his speech.

  She looked to Rourke. “Dear God, what’s happened to him? Is he drunk? Was there a fight?”

  He’d left the flat in a temper, but Gavin still wasn’t the type to brawl. In the year they spent together at Roxbury House, she’d never known him to get into a single scrape whereas Rourke and Harry were always coming to her with blooded noses and blackened eyes.

  “In a manner of speaking. Help me get him to bed, will you?”

  “Of course. Follow me.”

  She led them down the hallway to Gavin’s bedchamber, the room in which they’d made a lifetime of memories in such a very short span. It was difficult to believe that just the night before he’d been glowing with health.

  She turned up the bedside lamp and threw back the bedcovers. Together they eased Gavin onto the bed. Daisy was shocked to find he was as good as dead weight. His arm floundered when Rourke released them as though he had no more muscle mass than air.

  As if reading her mind, Rourke said, “It’s the laudanum. The club surgeon dosed him with it before beginning the stitching. Me, I would have called for whiskey instead. I only hope the wee quack dinna give him overmuch.”

  So that explained the slurred speech and limp muscles. “I want to hear everything from start to finish, and see you leave nothing out.” She started on the buttons fronting Gavin’s damp jacket.

  “The doctor, Pritchard, says he’ll call tomorrow morning. I gave him your direction. I hope that’s all right.”

  “Of course.” It struck her that even their friends had begun treating her as though she were Gavin’s wife rather than his lover. She ought to feel, if not annoyed, then trapped, only she felt neither. At what point had her gilded cage begun to feel like a happy home?

  Gavin’s jacket unbuttoned, she set to work on the shirt. She was easing it off his shoulders when he groaned. Looking down, Daisy saw the blood-soaked bandage covering a goodly portion of his left shoulder and felt her own blood turn to ice water.

  She jerked her head to Rourke. “Dear God, what happened to him?”

  Standing sheepishly by the bed, he could barely meet her gaze, putting her in mind of the boy from all those years ago. “We were fencing, just a friendly match, when the foil slipped off my sword just as I lunged forward and, well … I mean to stick with boxing from here on.”

  She nodded. Men could be such ridiculous creatures. “I don’t suppose this doctor of yours left any instructions for his care?”

  Her question apparently jiggled Rourke’s memory. “Oh, aye, I’d as good as forgotten.” He reached into his coat pocket and produced a small, brown glass vial. “It’s laudanum. Should he wake up toward morning in pain, you’re to give him one drop, no more and no less.” Handing her the medicine, he turned to go.

  She nodded. “Thank you for bringing him home.” As soon as the words were out, it occurred to her how very much like a wife she must sound. Bad, Daisy, bad.

  On the threshold, he turned back. “Daisy?”

  She looked up from Gavin’s sweat pearled face. “Yes, Patrick.”

  “His first words after being struck were for me to be sure to bring him back home.”

  Wondering where he was headed, she answered with a nod. “I’m sure he’ll rest best in his own bed.”

  Rourke hesitated as if weighing whether or not to say more. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, it wasna his bed he was missing. It was you.”

  As much as Gavin appreciated Rourke bringing him home, now that he was tucked into bed that the night before he shared with Daisy, he couldn’t wait for the Scot to leave so he might have her to himself. He knew he was supposed to be angry with her, he remembered that much, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember why. Rourke had plied him with whiskey in preparation for the surgeon stitching up his shoulder and the subsequent dosing with laudanum had sent him over the edge of sobriety.

  Hearing the outer door close, he let out a relieved sigh and looked up into the beautiful if strained face of his nurse. “Do you realize how close to the heart that blade struck?” she demanded, tone admonishing. “You might have been killed.”

  She bent over him to arrange his pillows, and he caught a glimpse of her breasts spilling out the top of her black silk wrapper. Remembering how perfectly they fitted his palms, how the hardened nipples felt against his fingers and lips and tongue, he realized he was randy as a game cock.

  Straightening, she looked down on him, her lovely face serious. “Mind, you’re not to stir from that bed, do you hear me? If you need anything in the middle of the night, I’ll get it for you.”

  “How will you know what I need?” You, I need you.

  She hesitated. “I’ll know because I’ll be right here beside you.”

  Things were definitely looking up. “In the bed?”

  Even in his stupefied state, he marked how her gaze slid away. “No, I’ll sleep in the chair. I wouldn’t want to risk bumping your shoulder.”

  He’d be only too happy to have her bump into him though he wasn’t thinking of his shoulder. “I’ll have to bathe. You’ll have to help me with that.”

  Turning back to him, she arched a brow. “It won’t hurt you to go to bed dirty for one night.”

  “Now which of us is being a spoil sport?” Not giving her time to answer, he said, “You look fetching, by the way.” He sent her a lopsided grin and reached for her hand.

  She let him take it, and he realized it was cold as well as trembling. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He rubbed his thumb along the seam of her palm, making sure to hit the sensitive spot he knew she liked. �
��Won’t you rest beside me … in the bed, I mean?”

  She shook her head, apparently adamant. “No.”

  “How about a goodnight kiss, then?”

  She hesitated. “Are you certain you’re up to it?”

  Glancing down at the erection tenting his trousers, he said, “Yes.”

  “Very well.” Bracing her hands on the mattress on either side of him, she leaned forward and kissed him, a soft, sweet brushing of her mouth over his. Pulling back to look down at him, she asked, “There, better now?”

  He nodded and reached up to cup the back of her head. Threading his fingers through her loosened hair, he was aware that his eyelids felt suddenly very heavy as though weighted with sandbags. The sand man’s coming, Daisy. Best close your eyes or you might miss him, he’d said to her on those nights at Roxbury House when she couldn’t seem to settle. So many years spent, so much innocence lost. His eyes drifted shut. Holding up his arm suddenly took tremendous effort as though it were made of lead rather than flesh and bone. He dropped it, and it landed bouncing on the mattress like India rubber.

  Daisy’s hand, cool but no longer cold, descended on his brow, brushing back his hair. As if from the opposite end of a tunnel, he heard her say, “Good night, Gav.”

  Straightening, Daisy looked down. Gavin was asleep, which was all to the good. Now that the drama of the moment was past, she realized she could do with a rest herself. Hearing he was hurt had affected her more than she would have thought. Though the wound was a nasty-looking gash, judging from the extent of the dressing, it could have been so very much worse. She hadn’t exaggerated when she said he might have been killed. A world without Gavin Carmichael was a world she didn’t care to imagine. Even though she meant for them to part ways at the month’s end, it was important to her that she leave him alive and well. She pulled the covers up over him and turned down the lamp.

  She bent and brushed a kiss across his brow. “Sleep well, Gav. Like as not you’ll forget all this by morning, but I’ll remember every bloody word you said as well as all the ones you thought to but didn’t say.”

  She pulled the chair up to the bed and settled in to watch and wait.

  The club physician, Dr. Pritchard, came the next morning to check on Gavin’s progress. Jamison led him into the bedroom where Daisy sat beside the bed memorizing her lines from As You Like It. A sickroom might not be the ideal rehearsal hall but Gavin had insisted he didn’t want to stall her progress and she was glad enough for the distraction. Neither of them made mention of the found letter, the ensuing argument, or the fact she still meant to leave in another week. Matters between them went back to more or less normal—on the surface anyway.

  Small and squat, the doctor reminded Daisy of some species of plump game bird—a squab or perhaps a pigeon. She stood at the bedchamber door while he examined Gavin’s wound and came forward when called to assist in changing the bloodied dressing for clean.

  After they finished, Pritchard beckoned her out into the hallway. “Am I safe in assuming you are taking primary responsibility for his care?”

  “Yes, that’s so.” If she had to stay past her final week to nurse him, she was prepared to do so.

  Beyond a faint lifting of the brow, he gave no indication he found their situation scandalous or even untoward, but then in his profession, he must hear and see a great many situations that skirted the bounds of propriety. “In that case, see the wound is bathed and the dressing changed at least once a day. The salve I’m leaving you should ward off any infection, but if the site turns flush or putrid, send for me at once.”

  “I will, doctor. Thank you.”

  Gavin was lying propped up on a pillow, shirt off, the left side of his chest swathed in fresh bandages, when she reentered the room.

  “What’s that you’ve got there in your hand?”

  She glanced down the brown glass vial. “Laudanum. I’m to give you some just before bed to help you sleep.”

  “I don’t want it,” he said, face fierce, and she suspected he must be recalling snippets of the previous night when his drugged state had loosened his tongue and his inhibitions. “You can toss it out for all I care.”

  Rather than argue with him, Daisy shrugged. “As you wish, but I’d just as soon keep it on hand.”

  She settled into the chair beside him and picked up the play script. She was searching the page for the place she’d left off when Gavin reached out, his hand going about her wrist. “Daisy, about the other night …?” Gaze locking on her face, he let the sentence fall off unfinished.

  It had to happen sooner or later. The elephant in the room could not be ignored indefinitely. Stiffening, she looked up from the printed page. “Yes, Gavin?”

  “I was heavily drugged before I ever left the club. I might as well have drunk a pint of scotch whiskey. On second thought, I may have done that, too.” He sent her the lopsided grin of which she was growing entirely too fond.

  She assumed he meant to revisit their argument over the letter. Tensing, she said, “You would have been in a great deal of pain otherwise.”

  He didn’t debate the point. Instead, he said, “You’re a very good nurse. I’m sure Dr. Pritchard couldn’t have had a better helper had he called in a professional.”

  “Thank you.” Seeing he wanted to talk, she set the script aside. “In theater companies this sort of accident happens more often than you might think.”

  “Really? I suppose I always assumed sword play was just that, play.”

  He’d been making a great many assumptions lately, including that the passion and tenderness Daisy had shown him must mean she was as head-over-heels in love as he was. Clearly, that wasn’t the case. And yet visceral instinct told him what they shared was real, that she cared for him even if that caring fell short of love. Should he cast that gift away because it didn’t come with the fairytale ending he expected?

  She shook her head. “Safeties come off sword tips all the time and even when one fights with prop weapons made of wood, much damage can be done if one isn’t careful.”

  Looking into her lovely, fine-boned face, Gavin realized he wasn’t ready to give up on her, not quite yet. He had another full week to change her mind and much might yet happen in that time. This Freddie of hers must be in Paris still. Why else would she bother with sending him a letter? Gavin reasoned he had two powerful advantages over his rival, proximity and history. He was here with Daisy in his London flat and though he certainly hadn’t planned it thus, he suspected his injury meant they’d be spending even more time together. They spent a full year of their respective childhoods living in each other’s pockets at Roxbury House, spending nearly every waking moment together. If that experience didn’t serve as a foundation for a future, he couldn’t say what would.

  He shifted position to reach for the glass of water on the table beside his bed, wincing when the pain in his shoulder flared to life. All concern, Daisy shot up from her chair. Handing him the glass, she said, “Whatever needs fetching, I can do for you. Does your shoulder hurt you very badly?”

  He shook his head. “Pain takes many forms. A nick in the shoulder is in no way the worst sort.”

  Leaning across the bed, she took his hand in hers. “Oh, Gavin, the very last thing I ever wanted to do is hurt you. Perhaps I shouldn’t stay out the month. According to Dr. Pritchard, you’ll be up and about in another day or so.”

  Touched by her tenderness, Gavin lifted her chin on the edge of his other hand, bringing her face up so their gazes met. “I want you to stay. We’ve another week by my reckoning, and I don’t want to waste another single second of it.”

  Emerald eyes peered into his. “Are you sure?”

  He nodded his head. “Yes.” He hesitated and then added, “There’s something else I’m quite sure of, too.”

  “What is that?”

  “I very much want to make love to you.”

  She regarded him with shocked eyes. “But, Gavin, you’re ill.”

  “And fi
lthy, I know. You could bathe me first.” He shot her a wink.

  She hesitated. Eyes going from emerald to smoky green, she shook her head. “Later, not just yet. I think I fancy you a bit dirty for a change. When Rourke brought you in last night, your shirt was soaked through with sweat and fragrant with musk.” She leaned in and slid her tongue down the side of his neck. “Hmm, salty.”

  He was coming to appreciate her sensual nature. He smiled back at her. “In that case, climb atop and make love with me, Daisy. Lift up your skirts and take me inside you and ride me as though it was the very last time, and the very last day on earth, for both of us.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you,

  deserves as well a dark house and

  a whip as madmen do …”

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Rosalind,

  As You Like It

  Week Four:

  They spent their final week more in bed than out of it and not because Gavin was ill. Dr. Pritchard’s prognosis of a speedy recovery was borne out. The next day Gavin was up and about and the day after that he insisted on going into the office for part of the day. Though the wound still pained him, the discomfort wasn’t great enough to warrant touching the laudanum the doctor had left behind. Making love to Daisy and then falling asleep in her arms was a far better tonic than any drug. She was the consummate lover, the ultimate fantasy woman. She had no inhibitions, or so it seemed to Gavin, and within the rich inner world into which his common sense had retreated he told himself her lack of reserve must be a measure of how deeply she cared for him.

  And she must care for him, otherwise how could she respond to him with such … exuberance? The little moans and sighs might be manufactured, but he doubted even an actress as talented as Daisy could produce at will the warm stickiness he felt on his fingers and on his member when he entered her or the sudden shiver of inner muscles when she climaxed around him.