by Rose Gordon
“No,” he agreed. “But there is another type of value in this box. Now get your hands off.”
Her hands didn’t budge. “Not on your life,” she hissed. “I shouldn’t have called you in here. I should have just lit it on fire and been done with it.”
“But you didn’t,” he pointed out smugly. “And now you’ll have to expose your secrets to me.”
“No, I won’t,” she said, tugging on the chest.
“Yes, you will,” he countered, pulling it out of her grasp. Holding it above her reach, he fiddled with the clasp and almost had it opened when his eyes caught Madison’s. “You really don’t want me to see what's in here, do you?” he asked softly, lowering the box.
She shook her head.
With a sigh, he held the box out to her and just before her fingers had a good grasp, he let it fall to the thinly carpeted stone floor, silently watching as it splintered apart. He knew it was a cruel trick, but hoped she’d think it was an accident.
All hope of her thinking it was an accident flew out the window when he saw her bend down and start scooping up pieces of paper.
He came to his knees to help and noticed they were letters. Letters from Robbie to be exact. He wasn’t going to be such a cad as to read her love letters in front of her, or at all. He murmured an apology and scooped them up. There were a ton of them. But then again, they’d courted for five years. His shock was more that the man actually knew to write them in the first place, not so much because she’d actually kept them. His eyes scanned a sentence here and there. His writing was messy and full of spelling errors. Benjamin knew that already though from the letters he’d received from Robbie explaining his sick relationship with Madison.
They were near the bottom of the stack and his hands were full of folded papers when he saw a corner of a picture. His interest now piqued by the picture more than it had been by the scribbled declarations of like from Robbie. Without saying anything, he put the notes in a pile next to her and grabbed for the corner of the drawing. His fingers barely closed around the edge when her cold, trembling hand found his wrist. He looked up into her face and saw her shaking her head before whispering, “Please don’t.”
“Let me see, Madison. Please,” he said, gently shaking her hand off his wrist. “I don’t care if it’s of him. I just want to see.” With her hand off his wrist, he yanked up the papers and didn’t see a picture of him. He saw a picture of him! Him as in Benjamin Archer Leopold Charles Robert Collins, Duke of Gateway, Marquis Channing, Earl Iversly, Viscount Clairborne, Baron Drake, also known to her as Leo.
He scanned the picture. He recognized it immediately. She’d drawn him leaning against the tree the day of the outing at the Hudson. His eyes traveled over his drawn form. She’d captured him perfectly. Well, perfectly for how he looked then, that is. Looking at the picture made it easier to see why she’d not recognized him. He’d been nothing more than a boy at the time. Everything about the image in the picture screamed boy. The expression on his unevenly bearded face. His posture. His body in general. It wasn’t until he’d come back from America that he’d taken up boxing and thickened up. He’d been nothing but a skinny pole with legs back then.
He flipped to the next picture and blinked. It was a drawing of them dancing. But they’d never danced. Had she drawn this because it was how she envisioned dancing with him? There were more pages and he wanted to see them all. What was he thinking? He wanted to frame them all.
“Could you please dispose of those in the nearest fire,” Madison said tonelessly.
“Why?” he asked hoarsely, looking into her sad face. She’d obviously remembered him if she’d known these were in the chest and hadn’t wanted him to see them. It was also clear to see she’d felt the same for him that he’d felt for her. Why did she want them destroyed?
She came forward and tried to take them from him, but he drew his hand back. She shrugged. “All right, since you want to know so badly, I’ll tell you. I fancied myself in love with him,” she said blithely.
“And he felt the same,” he said immediately, his heart pounding in his chest.
She snorted. “Not hardly. No, he termed me as a challenging courtesan or something of the like.”
“Excuse me?” he asked breathlessly. “I never—”
“Oh, don’t,” he interrupted coldly. “Don’t defend him. Brooke did enough of that back in New York,” she added offhandedly.
“Well, madam,” he drawled, “It just so happens that I know this man. And, believe it or not, you do, too. And, I know for certain he never said anything of the like regarding you.”
She paled. “You know him?”
“Yes,” he said with a grin. “And I know he never said that about you.”
“All right. What’s his name?” she asked with a doubtful expression.
“You’d know him as Leo,” he paused and smiled when he heard her gasp, “but his real name is—”
“Benjamin!” she screamed, cutting him off as a bullet zipped in the open window and hit him directly in the shoulder.
Chapter 21
Madison’s heart almost beat out of her chest as she tried to get Benjamin out of his clothes. “Would you just cooperate,” she said testily
He appeared rather irritated. “Well, excuse me,” he said sarcastically. “If I had known I was going to be shot at by your lovesick suitor today, I would have bothered to dress accordingly.”
“Next time, see that you do,” she countered sweetly, sliding his coat off his injured arm.
He shook his head and undid his cravat. “What was that window doing open?” he asked, frowning.
“I’m sorry,” she said hesitantly. “I needed some air and decided to open the window.”
“No more open windows,” he grumbled.
She went to work on the buttons of his waistcoat and shirt. “I said I was sorry. I didn’t think there was any harm in it.”
“It’s not your fault,” he muttered. “I just can’t believe he found us.”
“You don’t know that it was him,” she pointed out, pulling his shirt off and sucking in her breath at the sight of his wound.
He looked doubtful. “Who else would it be?”
She shrugged. “Andrew, Papa, Paul, just about anyone in England has a grudge against you,” she said with smirk.
“It was him,” he said flatly.
“How can that be?” she asked, grinning. “You said yourself this place was secreted off. And, if by some chance, he got the direction, you seem to think him too dull to be able to use a map or any other navigational tool to find this top secret place. So how do you propose he found us? Stuck his nose to the ground and sniffed?”
“That’s enough of your insolence, woman,” he said in mock irritation. “I’m really not sure how he did it. But I know it was him.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because he missed,” Benjamin teased.
Madison blinked at him. “You cannot tell me that you hit dead on every time you aim.”
“Always,” he said with a smile.
She bent her head closer to his wound, not that she really needed to, it was as big as Brooklyn. “I hope you have a lot of brandy available,” she said with a wobbly smile.
“Fresh out,” he mumbled. “Is it that bad?”
She nodded. “The ball didn’t come out.”
He swore.
She swore.
They grinned at each other. There was nothing like bonding with your spouse through swear words.
“All right. Since I’ve no alcohol, there’s no reason for either of us to leave the room. You’re not squeamish are you?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve volunteered in one hospital or another since I was fifteen. Your paltry wound is nothing.”
“Thanks,” he muttered.
She pushed him back on the bed and started ripping his shirt into strips. She took one of the strips and folded it several times and pressed it to the wound. “Here, hold this.”
She brought his other hand up to hold the linen against his shoulder. “Keep pressure on it. I’ll be right back. I need to go look for something to dig that ball out with.”
He quickly sat up on the bed. “Do not leave this room,” he barked.
She shot him an annoyed look. “What?”
“I said you may not leave. I don’t want you out of my sight. For all we know he could be stalking about waiting for another opportunity. I want you to stay in my sight.” His words were starting to slur together as dark red blood soaked through the cloth and trailed down his arm, leaving a nasty stain on the counterpane.
“Fine,” she said, shaking her head in exacerbation. “Lay back down. I’ll just use your knife. But if you get an infection and die, you may not blame me.”
“I won’t,” he said with a weak smile. “I’ll be dead.”
She rolled her eyes at his asinine comment and grabbed the water pitcher and basin from off the vanity. She brought the two items over and put them on the table next to the bed. “Where is your knife?”
“In my pocket.”
She picked up his coat and checked his pockets. There were all sorts of things from keys to coins to matches, but no knife. “Not here,” she called, putting his coat back down.
“In my trousers,” he said with a hint of a smile on his face.
“Of course it is,” she said, shaking her head. “Any opportunity you can find for me to touch you.”
“You know it,” he returned.
She dug out into his pocket and pulled out his knife. “All right. I’m going to put some cold water on your shoulder, then dig out the ball.”
He nodded. His skin had gone quite pale and he truly didn’t look so good.
Perhaps he should have considered the proximity of the nearest doctor before he brought her here, she thought cheekily, pressing a cool, wet linen to his wound. Once the blood around it was wiped away enough to see where she was digging, she pulled the blade from his knife and stuck the point into his wound to try and fish out the ball.
Ideally she would have preferred forceps, or even needle-nose pliers, to get this out, but since His Bossy Grace wouldn’t let her leave the room, she had to make do.
Angling the knife blade just so, she was able to slip it under the ball, which fortunately was lodged in muscle and not bone. Using slow movements, she carefully brought the ball up enough to be able to reach it with the tips of her fingers. Even though it wasn’t normal hospital procedure to dig ones fingers into a wound without at least rinsing them off first, she just shrugged and plucked the ball out of his wound, grimacing when she heard the squelching sound it made as it emerged from his body.
She put the ball down on the table so she could clean it later and give it to him as a souvenir like she did for the few men in Brooklyn she’d helped treat for gunshot wounds. Truly, it was absolutely amazing what men wanted to keep. If it were a woman, she’d just be glad she was still alive. But not a man. Men liked to admire the nasty scar and wanted to carry the bullet that injured them in their pocket to show everyone. Go figure.
Cleaning his wound with another wet cloth, she looked around for something she could use as a bandage. Aside from wrapping clean strips of his shirt around it, there wasn’t anything. That would have to do, she decided right before her eyes landed on her reticule. She had a needle and several spools of thread in there. It was just skin. It couldn’t possibly be any more difficult than sewing silk.
Quickly, she ran across the room and grabbed her reticule. Dumping the contents on the bed, she smiled. Who knew they were both walking emporiums? Selecting the black thread, she went back up to his side. She pulled the needle out of the end of the spool where she kept it, and willing her hands to stay calm, she threaded the needle. At the hospital, the extent of her experience had been cleaning and dressing wounds, never sewing. But she’d seen it enough to have a good idea what she was doing.
It didn’t take more than just a couple passes with the needle to get him closed up. She realized he probably didn’t even need to be stitched, but she wanted to do it for him anyway. For some reason it felt good to just be near him and help him, even if he had abducted her in her sleep.
Wrapping his shoulder in clean strips of linen, she heard him mumbling some incoherent words. Something about strangling Robbie and not saying something derogatory about someone else. She smiled. He may be somewhat unconscious and mumbling nonsense from his considerable loss of blood, but at least he was still alive. She brought her fingers to his neck and felt his pulse. It was there. Weak, but there.
Without thought, she leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.
“That didn’t count” he mumbled, startling her.
“What do you mean?” she asked quietly so not to wake him if he was just dreaming.
“That kiss. You still owe me one. That one didn’t count.”
She laughed. “All right.”
A faint smile touched his lips. “Madison, about earlier—”
She pressed a finger to his lips to stop him. “Don’t tax yourself. We’ll talk later.”
Weakly, he reached up and took her fingers from his lips. “No,” he said, barely able to shake his head. “I want to explain.”
Embarrassment flooded her. She shouldn’t have acted like a lunatic when she’d seen that chest. She should have just tossed it into the empty fireplace and lit a match. Instead, she’d gone into hysterics like a little girl and embarrassed herself. “Please don’t,” she whispered. “I know you said you know Leo. But please don’t tell him anything. It was a long time ago and I don’t want to relive the past.”
He closed his eyes. “What if you were wrong? What if he hadn’t said those things? Would it matter?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not one whit. I’m yours now.”
He nodded slowly. “All right. I’ll leave the past alone. But please save the pictures for me.”
“Why?” she asked, flabbergasted. Why would he want pictures she’d drawn of another man. Especially one she’d thought herself in love with.
He opened his eyes and looked at her with a very serious expression. “Because you drew them.”
Chapter 22
Benjamin’s last rational thought before slipping into a deep sleep was about Madison and if she’d heed his advice and stay put. Under any other circumstances he’d physically make sure she didn’t leave the room. However, his extreme amount of blood loss made it difficult to control the little slip of the woman he called a wife. She might be small, but she was mighty, he thought while falling deeper into a dreamless state.
Using all the energy he could possibly muster, he tried his hardest to pry one eyelid open just to glimpse her one more time to make sure she was still sitting in the chair he’d made her put in the hidden corner of the room. It was the only place that Robbie couldn’t possibly put a bullet unless he was directly in the room. He doubted Robbie would be bold enough to make another attempt to shoot him today. Knowing that weasel, he’d probably shat his drawers when the gun fired and he realized he was still alive. And then he probably did it again when he realized so was Benjamin.
After Madison had bandaged his shoulder, one of his few servants that worked here came in and Benjamin directed him to secure the house and stay close in the unlikely event Robbie dared come back again today. If not for his weakness from the loss of blood, he’d have gone out and run Robbie down and torn him apart with his bare hands. But he never did like to enter into a fight he didn’t think he’d win; and just now, he didn’t think he’d win against that twerp. It was a sad day when one had to admit that a man no thicker than a broomstick with all the starch of a cooked noodle could best him in a fight. Quite frankly though, Benjamin was a realist and at this moment, that was the reality of the situation.
Tomorrow was a different story, however.
Tomorrow, he’d hunt him down and in less than a minute the world would have one less pest polluting the air.
Tho
ughts ceased and time evaporated. Only blackness surrounded him. He heard noises and voices around him, but didn’t know who they belonged to or what they were saying. He felt gentle fingers touching his body. He felt a cool cloth come to rest on his forehead. He felt his arm being moved and the pressure around his wound easing. He heard murmurs he didn’t understand. He felt a hand come to rest on his chin and a bottle touch his lips. He felt the bottle move from his lips and the hand on his chin pull away. He felt fire being poured on his shoulder.
His eyes snapped open. “What the hell is going on?” he shouted, using his free hand to bat away the hand that was pouring liquid fire on his shoulder.
“Sorry, Your Grace,” a grey haired man with a Welch accent said.
Benjamin’s eyes shifted to Madison. She looked very serious. Too serious. “Madison, what’s wrong?” he asked raggedly. She did not look good.
“I’m sorry, Benjamin,” she said softly. “Your wound is infected.”
“Infected?” How could that be, it had only been a few hours? How were there already signs of infection?
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I knew that knife wasn’t clean.”
Benjamin shook his head. “Don’t,” he said hoarsely. “It’ll be all right. It’s not your fault.”
She picked up a bulb filled with water or some other clear fluid and squeezed it, flushing out his wound. “The doctor says it was a mild infection and you should be well in a day or two.”
“A day or two,” he repeated, nodding. “And dare I ask how many days it has been already?”
Madison cleared her throat and handed the doctor some cotton. “Do you want the truth?”
He closed his eyes. “That long?”
“Three days,” she said hesitantly.
He groaned. He’d lost Robbie’s trail for sure if three days had passed.
“You don’t even know it was him,” Madison said calmly. “I was thinking about it. Isn’t it possible it could have been a hunter? We are surrounded by forest. And I daresay, forests seem to have plenty of animals lurking about, just waiting to be shot.”
