Passion Favors the Bold
Page 16
“That’s what a man does for his woman,” said Mr. Lowe.
“I would have done it for anyone,” Hugo protested.
“Would you? See if I thank you again, then,” Georgette sniffed, but the caress of her fingers over his hand was gentle as ever.
From the corner of his eye, Hugo saw Mrs. Lowe hand off the younger children to Matthew. She came to press against her husband’s side. “Good God. I never thought they’d . . .” She covered her mouth, muffling the words. “Doctor, you’re innocent. You’ve nothing to do with the affairs about here.”
How mysterious. Not that he had attention for mysterious at the moment. “It appears I do now.”
“Hugo,” said Georgette. “I have cut your shirt a little, and the waistcoat, so the wound is exposed. It looks as if the bullet went into the muscle above your shoulder bones—”
“The trapezius.” Ha. He knew it.
“—and stuck there.”
And stuck there? Damnation. “Then we shall have to dig it out.”
“Dig it out? Um. What if we don’t?” Georgette sounded tentative.
He looked steadily up at the ceiling of the small house. It was a nice ceiling, pitched high and solidly beamed. “I will die slowly of lead poisoning.”
A chorus of gasps followed.
Hugo tried to smile. “Only joking. I don’t know. I might be all right. But I’d rather not have a bullet in me, so the wound can close. And if the bullet carried any cloth with it, that could cause infection.”
Georgette replied first. “You’ve convinced me. What do you need?”
“A looking glass, if one is available.”
“There’s the one I shave by.” Mr. Lowe limped to fetch it.
“Are you going to take a bullet out of your own shoulder?” Georgette bent over him, her features sharp with strain.
“Trapezius.” His jaw clenched. “I can do it. I don’t want to ask you for help.”
The words slipped out easily, too familiar after hearing them time and time again from Georgette. How many times had she said she didn’t need him? Didn’t want him to help her? She had wounded him long before a bullet lodged itself in his body.
“Oh.” Her cheeks went the sudden pink of one who had been slapped. “What do you mean by that? Are you—is this pride, or do you distrust me?”
It was pride, but not entirely of the I don’t need you if you don’t need me sort. He simply didn’t want her to see him bleeding.
And he did want her help, even though she never wanted anything of him. He wanted her to care whether he recovered or whether he bled out on the blacksmith’s table.
He wanted a damned lot more than that. But all he could do was shake his head.
The vivid color in her cheeks began to subside. She pulled in a deep breath, then blew it out slowly. “Strong spirits. We’ll need that.”
“For the wound?” asked Mrs. Lowe.
“And for me.” Again, Georgette brushed Hugo’s hand gently. “Guide me through this. I will do it for you.”
Her gaze was steady, unblinking. Her eyes were like a glass in which a man might see reflected whatever he wished. I care for you, a man might see. I will be brave for you, to give you solace. I want to spare you pain.
He turned his head as far to the right as he could, catching sight of the bloodstained edge of his shirt and the torn muscle. It hurt more when he looked at it.
“Fine, then,” he said. “Get the medical bag, and I’ll show you what is needed.”
Lowe returned with a hand-sized glass, and his wife brought a bottle of something spiritous. Georgette held it up, giving it a little shake—then she took a quick belt from the bottle, shuddering at the liquor’s strength. “That ought to cauterize a wound on its own.”
“No cauterizing. Cleaning to prevent infection.” Hugo gritted his teeth, then said, “At the count of three, pour. One. Two.”
She splashed the wounded muscle with the alcohol.
Fire ripped him, a shock of burning pain that raced all over his body. His scalp prickled, his legs spasmed, his hands clenched into fists. For several seconds, he could only struggle for breath—then he growled: “Good God! I said wait until three!”
“Would it improve the effect if I had?” She stood over him, bottle tipped at what Hugo could only view as a threatening angle.
“This is no time for you to throw my words back at me.” He eyed the bottle. “Again. But gently.”
“Right. Gently. I’ll remove the bullet gently, shall I? As if such a thing is possible.” She disappeared from above him, the sound of her footsteps crossing the main room. “Mrs. Lowe, might I have that laudanum?”
“I don’t need it,” called Hugo. “Come back. Let’s finish this.”
When Georgette returned, she held a little bottle fashioned of brown glass. “Are your patients this terrible to you? Drink it or have it dashed in your face. Thirty drops, isn’t that what you suggested to Mr. Lowe?”
“Aye, it is,” said the blacksmith. “I’ll—I’ll be off in the corner. Or the other room. I’ll—right, then.”
His limping footsteps faded away. Mrs. Lowe mumbled something about watching the children, and she, too, fled.
And it was just Hugo and Georgette and the bullet. And the laudanum.
So be it.
“Hold up the glass where I can see the entrance of the bullet,” he ordered. “Thank you. Yes, it’s much as I thought. This ought to be straightforward. You’ll need access to both the front and back of the muscle, in case the bullet has fragmented.”
She hoisted his shoulder, easing her own beneath him. “You’re not as heavy as I expected.”
“I was heavier before I lost some blood.”
“So saucy. It is also possible that I’m very strong.” She wedged something beneath him—his wadded coat, he realized, now used as a bolster. Then she took up the bottle again and counted out drops of laudanum into a large spoon. “. . . twenty-nine, thirty.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Do take it, Hugo. Please. I don’t want to hurt you.”
He was powerless, always, against a please. Swallowing the drug, he mumbled, “You will. You already have.”
The laudanum was bitter on his tongue, so bitter it covered the taste of his words. Maybe she thought he meant the prodding at his raw wound. He hoped she did not; he hoped she understood how much more he intended.
As the laudanum began to pull him away from the present, thickening his speech, he gave her scrambled instructions. “Remove the bullet with that—no, the next instrument. Yes. That one.... No sutures on the skin. It needs to heal from the inside out.... Clean the wound with boiled salt water and cover it. And then . . .”
And then . . . though it was hardly midday, he sank into twilight.
Chapter Thirteen
Removing a bullet from a man’s shoulder—beg pardon, trapezius—was, Georgette decided, not much different from carrying laundry and books beyond the point of exhaustion. One kept in mind what one had to do, and one did it without thinking or feeling. Because if one thought about it, or allowed oneself to feel, then it would all be too much.
But when the bit of surgery was done, and the lead ball wrapped in gauze and the wound cleaned and covered, she felt emotion aplenty. Mostly relief: that the bullet had not fragmented; that she had got out the shreds of cloth it carried into his flesh. That Hugo’s slumberous breathing was strong and steady, and that she had not injured him further.
The Lowes came back into the main part of the house then, and Georgette apologized for the disruption to their day. She was cleaning the used medical instruments with more of the boiled salt water when Jenks came into the cottage with a slam of the door and a stomp of booted feet.
“Couldn’t find any sign of the assailant,” he said, “beyond some footprints at the other side of the forge. The ground didn’t even hold the shape well. Too muddy. This everlasting mist is the worst.”
Right, right. Jenks had been trying t
o find the person who had fired the gun at them. And before that, he’d been looking for gold in the blacksmith’s workshop. And he had found something? Some evidence?
Right now, she did not care, for Hugo was asleep and bleeding.
“You, Mr. Lowe.” The Runner leveled a piercing glare at the blacksmith. “I see you’re moving about. Been on your feet long?”
“He’s been in the house.” Mrs. Lowe had returned to her pot of stew over the fire. She stirred at furious speed, not looking around. “Only just got up when the doctor and his missus came back in, like.”
“I asked your husband.” Jenks folded his arms.
If Hugo had made the same gesture, it would mean he was about to change his mind. Georgette ventured a touch to his right forearm. How long before he would be able to fold his arms? To throw? To embrace?
“I didn’t do anything to the doctor!” The burly blacksmith pressed against the wall of his small house, as if trying to vanish.
“Then who would?” Jenks pressed. “Who would want to hurt the doctor?”
Or me—or you, Jenks. The bullet could as easily have struck the Runner, or Georgette herself. Was it a warning? A threat?
Hugo’s eyes were closed in sleep, deeply shadowed. He seemed larger, laid out the length of the table. It was strange that a little ball of lead could have caused a strong man to bleed so, or that thirty tiny drops of liquid could have knocked him on his arse.
He had trusted Georgette to help him. He’d placed himself, literally, in her hands. Thank heaven she had proved worthy of his trust.
This time. She could not forget the shade of his voice when he’d said she’d hurt him, or that he didn’t want her help. He might not have trusted her if the need were less immediate. She was not, after all, able to teach him anything he did not know.
Replacing the final medical supplies in the leather bag, she snapped it shut.
“I would never hurt the doctor,” Lowe was saying. “He saved me life.”
This was not an answer to Jenks’s question, but it must have been satisfactory enough for now, for he turned his attention to the prone Hugo. Quickly, Georgette described what had passed. “The bullet is out now, but he can’t live on this table until he’s fully healed. Somehow, we’ve got to get him back to Raeburn Hall.”
“There’s no ‘somehow’ to it. I will walk.”
This from Hugo, of course. His eyes remained shut, but he sounded perfectly alert. At his voice, Georgette’s heart gave a startled kick. Curse the man; bless the man.
“I don’t think that’s wise,” she replied. “Especially because you’re meant to be asleep.”
“I don’t do things merely because I’m meant to. I do them if I believe there’s good reason to.” His eyes opened; then his lips curved. No one had ever looked so peaceful and so bullheaded at the same time.
She was not quite able to prevent her own lips from returning his slight smile. “I’ve no doubt of that. But as a personal favor to me, let us have one of Sir Frederic’s carriages sent over for you.”
Jenks sighed. “Mr. Lowe, I will return to speak with you another time. When you haven’t the distraction of a man being chopped up on your table.”
Georgette stuck out her chin. “I did not chop up—”
“Pax, please.” Hugo swung his feet to the side of the table, then gingerly rolled upright. “No one chopped me up. I cannot stay on the table forever. I am awake and can walk back to the Hall. Everyone is correct, including me.”
Without his coat on, his shirt and waistcoat clung to the lines of his chest. The sliced fabric over the right shoulder hung loose, showing the bandaging packed over his bullet wound. He looked like a pirate who had gone through battle.
The sight was, to say the least, appealing.
“I’ll have more questions for you, Mr. Lowe,” Jenks repeated. He eyed the man’s wounded foot, and when he spoke again, his tone was less harsh. “When you’re up to it. I believe we could help each other.”
“Aye, then,” Lowe agreed cautiously.
“In the meantime, I’ll speak with Mr. Keeling,” Jenks said. “Which is his cottage?”
“You’ll pass it on the way back to Raeburn Hall.” Brow puckered, Lowe gave the Runner directions. “But surely—he wouldn’t—do you suspect him of doing . . .”
The remainder of the question was crushed beneath the weight of Jenks’s stony stare. For a second time, farewells were exchanged. Hugo slipped his uninjured left arm into his ruined coat, and off they set.
The Keeling cottage was a slog along a muddy path. Low and thatch-roofed, it was nearly the same size and construction as the Lowes’ house. Yet everything looked a little different. Maybe it was the scragginess of the smoke from the chimney, or the rust on the edges of the tools leaning against the side of the building. The house itself looked wary.
Georgette kept to Hugo’s side in case she should be needed for support. They both hung back as Jenks knocked at the door. When it opened, a worn and sour-looking woman confronted the Runner. He questioned her briefly.
“Me man’s with Sir Frederic, much good will it do him.” Mrs. Keeling stood in the doorway, one shoulder hitched against the frame. “He’s trying to get that bondager back from the Hall, but I won’t have her here again for love nor money.” With that, she shut the door in his face.
Jenks did seem to have that effect on people.
He rapped at the door again, then tested the handle. Mrs. Keeling wouldn’t answer, and she had evidently latched or braced the door from the inside.
Eventually, then, on they went.
In later days, the process of getting a wounded, woozy, and stubborn Hugo back to Raeburn Hall was not one on which Georgette would prefer to dwell. He continued to refuse help, insisting that his feet were fine and could carry him where he needed to go.
So they made progress along the path, slow and then slower. Jenks walked ahead on his own. Georgette held an umbrella over herself and Hugo to block drizzle, so she knew the trickles at his temples were the perspiration of effort. He was pale, and his breath came short and labored.
Yet he would not let her help him again, save for holding the umbrella. Which hardly counted as help, for he carried the bag of medical supplies in his left hand.
“Your stubbornness will be the death of me,” she grumbled.
“That is medically impossible,” he said. “I know my health well enough. This walk won’t be the death of me, so it certainly won’t be the death of you.”
By the time they arrived at Raeburn Hall, they were all cold. Georgette’s knuckles were a frozen vise from clutching the handle of the umbrella, and likely Hugo’s were the same from carrying the medical bag.
After handing over these possessions to the capable butler Hawes, they found Sir Frederic in the study. With a generous fire built up, the small room was warm and soporific and pleasantly dim, scented of tobacco and coal. Their host was dozing, his head lolling against the upholstered back of the grand chair behind the polished desk. His hands were folded across his padded waistline, the picture of comfort.
Until Jenks called his name.
“What’s that?” Sir Frederic jerked upright, his graying hair mussed and wild where it had pressed against the back of the chair. “Resting my eyes, that’s all. What—Jenks? Mr. Crowe, what has happened to your coat?”
Hugo’s jaw clenched. “I regard the damage to my coat but little.” Once Georgette was seated, he eased himself into another chair with a groan that betrayed his fatigue.
“As you ought,” Georgette retorted, “considering that a part of you was damaged as well. Surely that is far more significant.”
“What’s this?” Sir Frederic’s brows lifted. “You’ve been hurt?”
Jenks held up a hand, seating himself on the edge of the baronet’s desk with feet braced on the floor. “Hold a moment. Before we start reading out each other’s diaries and wailing with sympathy, I need to speak to Mr. Keeling. We were told he was here.”
“I doubt that,” Hugo said mildly.
“Let me see . . .” Sir Frederic shuffled about some of the papers on his desk. It was huge, ornate, beautifully varnished to a mirror-deep gloss. Georgette could hardly look at it, for it threw her own reflection back horribly distorted.
The bookshelves were old and lovely, though, full of books in a scatter of different colors and heights. Unlike those in the library, it looked as if these had been collected over time from different sources, chosen according to interest and actually read.
“Ha, there it is.” Sir Frederic laid hands on a sheet of foolscap and flourished it at Jenks. “Keeling has been plaguing the life out of me today, trying to get his bondager to move back into his house. Wrote me a note about it and everything.”
Mouth a flat line, Jenks took the paper from him and skimmed it. Georgette craned her neck to try to read it—and as if noticing, Jenks held it up higher and closer to his chest.
Hmph.
“This says,” the Runner commented at last, “that you owe him recompense. For what?”
“Why, for housing Miss Linton. What else could he mean? I warned him before, he needs to be patient. Wait for the harvest and not try to reap his oats earlier.” Sir Frederic paused, blinking. “I say, that’s a clever one.” With this inscrutable observation, he pulled forth a small pocketbook and scribbled a few lines in it.
When he looked up from his writing, he was all solicitude. “Now, what happened to Mr. Crowe? And his coat? His coat looks dreadful.”
Hugo looked at Georgette. It was a speaking look, one she easily interpreted as I lived it. I haven’t the slightest urge to tell it. Especially if we’re all to talk about my coat again.
A fair point. “Just this,” Georgette began, and she told Sir Frederic everything that had passed.
Almost everything. When she mentioned that Jenks had searched for clues while Hugo was treating Mr. Lowe’s foot, the Runner kicked her in the ankle from his perch at the edge of the desk. This was both unnecessary and ungentlemanly. She hadn’t planned to mention the scatter of fine gold droplets Jenks had noticed in the foundry. That seemed like a knowledge he and Hugo and Georgette had earned for themselves. With bullets and blood, no less.