by Kim Bowman
Branches whipped her face and arms as they pushed through the woods, and Sophia was sorry there had been no time for a saddle when the horse jumped over a ditch. Pitiful, the stodgy gait the old horse ground out, but Sophia quelled her impatience and resisted tapping the nag’s flanks despite being almost giddy with dread.
At last she spied Elise and Mary huddled at the fence ahead, standing before the south gate of the property with Madeline nearby. Sophia heaved a sigh of relief to see them all well and standing. Fritz danced irate circles at the gate, jumping up on his hind legs and barking through the iron bars. The girls turned and waved their arms when they heard the horse approaching, their faces panicked and tear-stained.
Movement on the north hill where the road split for Rosecrest caught her eye. Tearing down the road at a flat gallop rode Wilhelm, crouched low as he pushed the gelding to its top speed. He didn’t see her, in fact he seemed to aim for the east side of the property. And — could that be Philip? Riding hell for leather in the opposite direction, on course to intercept Wilhelm, came a man who looked like Philip as far as she could tell, though he was supposedly watching over Rougemont in Devonshire.
Utterly confused, Sophia decided to attend to Wilhelm’s nieces. She dismounted and ran to them. Elise and Mary met her halfway, crashing into her with clinging embraces. She squeezed them back and set them aside to look at Madeline, who writhed on her tiptoes and whimpered. Caramel ringlets seemed to float above her head. Upon closer inspection, Sophia saw Madeline’s hair supremely tangled in the iron filigree covering the gate, and her efforts to work free had turned her hair into a tangled mess resembling a fisherman’s net.
“What happened here?” Sophia tried to ask Elise. She barely heard herself over Fritz’s racket, and Elise stood shaking as though she’d been haunted by a ghost.
Mary swallowed and finally answered. “A m-man! A despicable, horrible man…” She fluttered a hand over her heart. “Appeared out of n-n-nowhere! And Fritz, he…”
Sophia’s heart sank. Oh, no. “Who was it, Mary?”
“I don’t know, but he asked about you. He said he would k-k…” Mary burst into loud sobs, competing with the din from Fritz.
Kill us all, no doubt. Not if I get him first. “Shh, Mary. Hush now, I will ask for the tale later.” A jolt of panic threatened her calm, making her want to either cry like a baby with the girls or bark at the gate like a lunatic with Fritz. Her father had tracked her here, or at least one of his thugs had. And threatening the girls? She shouldn’t be surprised by the depravity, but it did stoke her anger.
Sophia shouted at Fritz to desist. He obeyed but paced and jumped about, complaining with doggish grunts. Madeline shifted and whined, reminding Sophia of the first priority. She tried to work a section of twisted hair over the loop, but Madeline yelped in pain, so she let go. Elise and Mary cried out in response.
“Elise, Mary, stop that this instant. You’re frightening her.” Sophia leaned in close and whispered, “If I have to cut it, I want no dramatics from you. Please.”
Madeline’s head blocked access to the hair caught on the gate, so Sophia used the horse to reach the top and climbed over. Her dress snagged on an iron finial, tearing it noisily from hem to waist. Brilliant. She swallowed a curse and asked instead, “How on earth did you get your hair stuck in the gate?” All three girls started blubbering at once, so Sophia decided to wait awhile for the explanation.
On her way down, her foot landed on the handle and it turned, opening the gate door. Not locked. Who had unlocked it? Only Wilhelm and the few Rosecrest staff should have the key.
Sophia knelt and studied the tangled mess of Madeline’s hair. She threaded some of the strands off the iron loops, but what to do about the long strands snagged from root to tip? She had no scissors, not even a knife. But in her pocket she did have her bookmark, a metal dagger-shaped piece truthfully meant to be a letter opener. It was only marginally sharp, but it would have to do.
“Did I ever tell you about Lady Rosalind DeFarier?” Sophia used a breezy voice to distract the girls, ignoring Madeline’s yelping over her pulled hair. “Undisputed authority on modern Grecian fashion. Tight short curls with a band of flowers across the head, mimicking a laurel wreath. Only weeks after she went out with her new coif, I saw no less than fifty heads so styled at the opera, both in Paris and London.”
Sophia glared at Elise and Mary, warning them to silence as she sawed through the worst of the knots, holding Madeline still with a hand on her shoulder. Poor girl; she would debut before it all grew back.
Oblivious to the diplomacy at hand, Elise blurted, “I agree short hair can be considered comely on a girl with a long-shaped face, but I also heard that a woman’s hair is her crowning glory.”
Madeline gasped. “How short?”
Elise indicated seven inches between her fingers, and Madeline began to cry again.
Mary knelt in front of Madeline. “We shall all cut our hair short. Won’t we, Elise?”
Elise’s eyes went wide, and she opened her mouth to argue.
Before Sophia could react, Fritz erupted into barking and leapt at the gate. Elise and Mary startled, shoving Madeline sideways, and the force jostled Sophia’s arm just as she pressed down the little dagger to cut a knot of hair. The bump to her elbow sliced the blade right across her left forearm. She grasped the gate to keep from toppling over, righted Madeline on her feet, and shouted at everyone to calm.
It took a few seconds to clear the chaos, and moments longer until Sophia noticed the stream of blood running down to her hand onto her dress. The source was a long dark gash; it looked like she’d smashed blackberries on her arm. Odd that the dull blade had cut so deeply, but wasn’t that just her luck?
The girls gasped and panicked again. Sophia yelled something unladylike, silencing them. With the gate unlocked, at least she didn’t have to climb back over. Her arm throbbed now that the shock had worn off. “Madeline, are you hurt?”
She rubbed her scalp ruefully. “No. Not really.”
Sophia clamped a hand over her arm, and the girls stared wide-eyed at the blood seeping between her fingers. Elise moaned, on the verge of tears again.
“Elise, I think I loosened enough of the knots to slide the rest of her hair off the loops. Can you manage it?”
Elise nodded, completing the task with shaky hands.
The rumble of hooves and shouting male voices drifted from the east hill. Hopefully it meant Wilhelm had just caught the man who had frightened the girls. They shouldn’t linger in case not.
“Let us go home. If we see a bogeyman, I will let Fritz eat him.” She turned and scowled at the blasted dog. “Folge und verteidige.” Follow and protect. Without another word, she pulled herself onto the horse and let it walk back toward the house. She covered her bleeding arm with her ruined skirt. It soaked through before she was halfway there.
Chapter Nineteen
In Which Somebody Gets Roaring Drunk, And It’s Not Wilhelm
Wilhelm returned to a silent house, anxious for a reason he couldn’t explain. When he came through the front door, he saw Fritz sprawled on the rug, gnawing on a cut of meat probably stolen from the kitchen.
Before he could ask, he found Sophia sitting on the floor with her head propped on a chair cushion, one hand grasping her opposite arm. Her disheveled hair sported leaves and twigs. Blood smeared her face and coated her hands and arms.
“What in hell happened?” He took in the dark crimson splotches on her tattered dress.
She opened her eyes and raised her head, searing him with a defiant glare. He knelt at her side and she swatted him away. “Why don’t you tell me what in hell happened.” She dropped her head back and closed her eyes again, as though she could shut him out.
Dread warred with the distraction of hearing her throw his curse back at him. “Is that your blood?” Of course it’s her blood, lackwit. “How badly are you injured?” He tried to pry her hand away to look at her arm, but she resisted. “D
amnation. Sophia! What happened to you?”
“Amputation proved unnecessary.” She finally graced him with a marginal look from one slitted eye. “Wilhelm, I saw you. Riding eastward from the north hill.”
What? Hopefully she missed his jolt of alarm. She’d been outdoors, exposed and vulnerable? Frantically he reviewed the events of the past hour, wondering if he had unwittingly put her in danger.
“And was that Philip running the opposite corner of your trap? I hope you two caught the bastard, because he gave your nieces quite a fright.” Her voice sounded like low boiling, threatening to erupt.
“Are the girls here?”
“Upstairs with your Aunt Louisa. Safe and sound if not rattled, and short one crowning glory. Apparently I am not pleasant company at the moment.”
“I cannot fathom that,” he joked, running a nervous hand through his hair and feeling completely run over. He would go out of his mind later, but now he didn’t like the pallor of her skin. And if all the blood soaked into her dress had come from her injury alone, it was far too much.
“So did you catch him? Or would you prefer to start at the beginning?”
“That is a long tale I should save for later.” He touched his fingers to the underside of her jaw. Weak rapid pulse, cool damp skin.
“I’m not going anywhere. I know you have been keeping important matters secret from me, Wilhelm. In fact, the next time you hide away with one of those miserable little yellow papers, I swear I will—”
“Sophia, move your hand and let me look at your arm.” Her condition read serious, and all she cared about was berating him? Impossible woman.
He forced her fingers aside and hissed an oath as he saw the deep gash running diagonally across the inside of her forearm. He couldn’t be sure how deep because it still bled. She’d cut a vein. He let her put her hand back over it.
LeRoy and his henchmen hadn’t come near the house; Wilhelm had made sure of that. Yet after the chase, he’d sent Philip on to St. Agnes and ridden home to Rosecrest, simply because he’d felt he should. His instincts had always been so sharp, but that he had somehow known Sophia needed him prickled the back of his neck.
“When did this happen?”
“About a quarter hour ago.”
His eyebrows went up, but he betrayed none of his dismay. Fifteen minutes of steady bleeding? “That needs to be sewn. Or seared — but I doubt you would appreciate the scar.”
She wished him to the devil with her expression, and he comprehended his poor choice of words.
“Right. Well, should I send for a doctor, or do you trust me with a needle?”
“Are you sober?”
“Unfortunately so.”
“Have you done this before?”
“Dozens, perhaps hundreds of times,” he lied. He’d seen it done as many times, on other soldiers. Now was not the time to confess that he despised the sight, the smell, especially the texture of blood.
“Capital. Why don’t I get roaring drunk while you don’t, and then we shall get on with it?” Ah. And there shone the Sophia he adored.
“Hold tighter, try to stop the flow,” he replied, fighting a smile despite himself, and Sophia shot him a murderous glare. “I will get the supplies.”
He returned with a bottle of whiskey and cloths from the kitchen. “I stole this from the housekeeper. She had quite a stash.” He knelt by Sophia again, scooping her knees and shoulders in his arms to lower her onto the floor. A seat cushion served as a pillow under her head, then he spread a cloth beneath her arm.
“If you think I will take even one swallow of that nasty single malt, you are sadly mistaken.”
He dumped some of the alcohol on his hands and rubbed it in. “This is for your injury, actually. A field medic I knew in Crimea prevented septic shock by doing this.” He poured the whiskey over her cut, gently prying the folds open with his thumb and forefinger. She swallowed a gasp of pain and writhed, nearly sliding under the chair. Gently he pulled her back.
“Stings, I know. Apologies, darling.” He ducked to kiss her temple before he could stop himself. It came so naturally. “I ordered brandy brought down. You shall find yourself in a drunken stupor shortly. Won’t take much, considering your blood loss.” He bit down on his tongue as soon as he’d said it. Smooth, Wil. Calm the patient.
Sophia muttered an oath, her eyes squinting and her breath shallow. He chuckled to cover his discomfort as he threaded the needle, willing his hands to remain steady so as to fool her into feeling confident in his patchy skill as a surgeon.
Finally the housekeeper came with a bottle of brandy and a glass, creeping gingerly as though Wilhelm tended a rabid animal instead of the Countess of Devon. With a quelling look for the housekeeper, he left the glass and took the bottle, handing it to Sophia. She grabbed it by the neck and gulped greedily, reminding him of a sailor with one day’s shore leave.
If not for the danger, he would wait until she was thoroughly drunk before sewing, but at the rate she bled, she would be dead by then.
“So, Philip and I were off chasing LeRoy. You caught me. What else do you want to know?” Anything to distract her. She probably didn’t realize he had to sew two layers, the flayed flesh inside the cut and another to close the skin. Not to mention he couldn’t tie the thread in a simple knot — damned contrary motion. No, he had to cross the threads then roll them between his fingers to make a knot.
She said through clenched teeth, “The telegrams, night and day. What is going on?”
He decided to tell her, as simply as he could. “Three separate matters. Philip and Colonel O’Grady — do you remember him?” She nodded, likely recalling the ginger-haired portly man who came with the Crimean officers’ club. “They are helping me track Vincent LeRoy and his mob of bounty hunters. Someone seems to be feeding them information, which explains how they tracked us here. I am also communicating with Lord Chauncey’s creditors in Bombay. I’m in the process of purchasing his promissory notes.”
Her breath caught as he made another stitch — vicariously he felt the sickening resistance of the needle sympathetically in his own arm, then the ghostly sensation of it scraping across his chest by sheer force of memory. He knew the methodical nerve-drilling sensation well and it conjured too easily, far too clearly. He shoved the thought away, afraid of falling into a defensive trace.
Instead of commenting on the significance of her husband becoming her father’s creditor, she bit her lip then asked, “I counted two matters. What is the third?”
“I’d hoped you would miss that. I am embarrassed to confess a shortage of cash for the transactions. Lord Courtenay and his son are helping me liquidate assets to fund the, ah… project. And I am in a hurry about it.”
Lord Chauncey had gambled and lost the equivalent of half a dozen noblemen’s fortunes. It had become no small matter to appease his hawkish creditors, accounting for the accumulated interest many seemed to inflate simply because Wilhelm was rich and they knew he wanted the notes. What they didn’t know was that Wilhelm still worked to replenish his own fortune after Roderick had abjectly sunk it. Without the help of Andrew Tilmore, his good friend Lord Courtenay’s financial prodigy son, his would be a lost cause.
Sophia shook her head, and he nearly speared her in the ribs with the needle. “Hold still, love.”
“Sorry. My arm is on fire, and I can barely feel it now.” Her words slurred, from weakness or the brandy he didn’t know. She was also beginning to shake, a bad sign.
He’d seen soldiers bleed out on the battlefield, trembling violently and complaining of an icy feeling everywhere except for the burn of their injuries. He needed to finish faster and bind her arm, but his blasted fingers slid down the needle, slick with blood, and he already worked as quickly as he could to roll the string into knots.
“You can own the note on my father’s underwear if you please, but he will still come after me.”
“I know.”
“In fact, with you as his creditor, he
will want me back all the more. He doesn’t know I am barren, and more than anything, he wants a grandson to break the entailment. He is counting on it. He needs the money, and he will do anything…” She gasped as though a realization had just flashed in her mind. “Oh, no. After the disaster with Vorlay, he will know we married. He will want to kill you for revenge, thinking he has stolen your unborn child when he abducts me.”
He breathed slowly, fighting to keep his hands steady. Sophia didn’t know it, but the talk about her father dangerously riled his temper. He had once prided himself on his ability to carry out the gruesome task of disposing of human offal with cold detachment, but he already knew when the time came for him to reconcile with Chauncey, there would be a great deal of passion about it. He feared he would enjoy it, prolong it, and that would make him irrevocably into the damned creature he’d resisted surrendering to these many years. It meant crossing the fine line an assassin walked between justice and murder.
He didn’t care, but Sophia would know. She would sense the darkness. She would feel it when he succumbed to the ghosts. They hovered near these days, kept at bay only by her presence. Without her, he was lost.
Nevertheless he sewed carefully, betraying none of his concern, listening as she spoke.
“Beyond that, it’s a matter of vengeance now, not just money. I made a fool of him. He will never forgive it.” He heard hatred and bitter resolve in her voice though the tone sounded weak. There would come a day when she would have no call for speaking in such an ugly tone. He vowed it.
