A Matter of Grave Concern

by Novak, Brenda

  As she had hoped, he seemed to reconsider his pique. “Then I will try to safeguard that, as well.”

  When he ran a finger along her cheek, she didn’t jerk away as if she found his caress unacceptable. There was a magnetism about this man that made his attention feel like some kind of gift. She feared the charisma he wielded would get the better of her if she wasn’t careful, but she couldn’t pretend she didn’t like his touch. Not while he was being so gentle.

  “Will you comply?” He beseeched her with his eyes and the timbre of his voice. “Tell me you will, Abby. Because I won’t be able to protect you if you don’t.”

  Did she have any choice? What were her other options? As long as he was with her, she couldn’t escape. And she certainly couldn’t trust Jack. She didn’t want to let Jack or any of the other three members of the London Supply Company, with their filthy clothes, rotting teeth and ogling grins, anywhere near her.

  “I took care of you last night, didn’t I?” he asked.

  It was true that last night would have ended much differently if he hadn’t stood by her in the end. And he hadn’t ravished her. That had earned him some credibility.

  “I will do as you say,” she conceded, “until you prove to me that my trust has been misplaced.”

  “As long as you obey, you will come to no harm.”

  Swallowing hard, she nodded. For better or for worse, they would be joining forces in order to survive the next day, two, maybe more—a frightening prospect, given he was nearly a stranger to her. But having such a capable man as a shield while in Jack’s house was also reassuring.

  Accepting that nod for the acquiescence it was, Max sat up to untie her. Then he massaged her palms and fingers to help the blood flow back into them. When the tingling grew so painful she could no longer withstand his ministrations, she pulled away.

  He slid some of the hair, which had fallen from her topknot while she slept, out of her face. “I wish we could have come to this agreement last night.”

  She focused on something else, so she could tolerate the terrible throbbing. “My father will be looking for me. You realize that.”

  “He won’t be looking here.”

  “He will if Bransby tells him about you and the others.”

  “The porter you told me about last night? What might he say?”

  “He was waiting in the hall, as you guessed. No doubt he overheard the whole exchange. I don’t remember any of us mentioning the London Supply Company by name, but there can’t be too many Big Jacks—not in London and not engaged in the same business.”

  “Did you tell Bransby you were coming here? Because if you did, I can’t believe he wouldn’t stop you.”

  She had just agreed to trust him, but . . . how much? At what point did she begin to do herself a disservice? “I didn’t tell him. He would have gone straight to Mrs. Fitzgerald.”

  “So it should take a day or two for your father to trace Jack to this house. And I will handle the inquiry when it comes.”

  “You expect me to hold my silence, to sit up here, while my father is at the door?”

  “Do you value his life?”

  She didn’t answer that. There was no need to. She simply watched Max warily.

  “If he becomes a threat to Jack,” Max went on, “he won’t be any safer than you are.”

  Tears gathered in her eyes. “I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to him.”

  “Then you will not only maintain your silence, you will do everything else I ask, just as you promised.”

  “What if you are wrong? What if you are unable to protect me?”

  “I am your best chance,” he said. Then a knock at the door interrupted, and Max pressed a finger over her lips to indicate silence.

  Chapter 8

  “Blimey, Max. What happened last night? You kept the surgeon’s daughter all to yourself, just like I thought you would.”

  Abby grabbed Max’s arm in an act of panic and appeal as the young man with the harelip called through the door.

  “What I do is none of your business, Tom,” he responded. “Go back to bed before you make me angry. ’Tis early yet, and we had a late night.”

  “Give her to me!” he insisted, ignoring everything except the fact that Max had refused. “I haven’t had a woman in so long my bollocks ache. And be quick about it,” he added, lowering his voice to a harsh whisper, “before Jack wakes up an’ asks for her himself.”

  Max started to massage her hands again. Abigail guessed it was his way of trying to reassure her, his way of keeping her calm. She couldn’t say it was helping, but she was far too anxious to stop him. Pain or no pain, she wasn’t about to do anything he could construe as a rejection when she needed him to be her champion as badly as she did.

  “You heard what I said!” Max called out.

  “Jack won’t like it,” came Tom’s response. “Wait and see. He’s gonna put you in your place once and for all.”

  A muscle flexed in Max’s cheek. “That would be my concern, not yours.”

  “Come on!” His voice changed to a high-pitched whine. “Why do you have to be so niggardly? With a face like yours, you can get any woman. You don’t need one who can’t say no.”

  “I’ve decided I like her. And you know how I am. I won’t allow you or anyone else to touch anything I consider my own.”

  “She isn’t your bloody coat, Max!”

  “True, but there is no way I would want Miss Hale back in my bed after she has been in yours. Why would I risk giving myself the Pox?”

  “I don’t have the Pox!”

  “So you say.”

  “But you can’t just keep her,” he complained. “We gotta return her to her father. Might as well let me have a toss before that. She’ll be no worse for the wear. I’ll scrub her up clean as a whistle when I’m done, I swear it.”

  Abigail covered her mouth so she wouldn’t whimper or do anything else to reveal her terror. Tom acted as if he were talking about a horse or . . . or a dog. In light of that, she was beginning to think she had made quite a bargain, arranging for Wilder’s protection. There was little doubt that she was completely at his mercy, anyway. She would have traded just about anything before allowing him to hand her over to the likes of Tom.

  “Go back to bed,” Max said again.

  There was a long pause. Then Tom cursed, smacked the door that much harder, and stomped away.

  “Will he give us trouble later?” Abigail asked.

  Despite everything that was going through her mind—all the panic and uncertainty—when Max looked at her, she couldn’t help appreciating the unusual color of his blue-green eyes. He was far more attractive than the others. There wasn’t a woman on earth who could argue that he wasn’t.

  “We will have to watch our backs,” he said. “But so long as you don’t get caught alone with him, you should be fine. I’m not particularly worried about Tom, Bill or Emmett.”

  A knot formed in the pit of her stomach. “Just Jack.”

  “Yes. He will be a challenge.”

  It made her even more nervous that Max seemed to be concerned. “What are we going to do?”

  “Get up and go before we have to deal with him,” he said and rolled out of bed.

  “We’re leaving? For good?” she asked hopefully.

  “No.” He pulled fresh garments from the trunk in the corner.

  Rather than watch him dress, she got up too and walked over to the window, where she stared down at the weeds in the narrow separation between this house and the next. “Think of that poor woman on the settee downstairs,” she said.

  “Trust me, I have thought of her.”

  “And?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I know resurrectionists make far more than the average . . . silk weaver or what have you,” she said, “but you
could be much more than what you are now.”

  “You feel confident of that because . . .”

  She took heart when he sounded more amused than offended. “I may not know your background or what brought you to these unfortunate ends, but you are obviously educated. You are handsome and charming as well, when you want to be and—” She turned, so intent on convincing him that she forgot he might not be fully dressed, and felt her jaw drop when she saw his bare backside. “And handsome,” she repeated, suddenly too flustered to remember, until the words were out, where she had left off on his list of attributes.

  He was so busy dressing he didn’t notice that she was gaping at him. “Handsome serves me so well that I don’t need to make a living?” he asked wryly.

  When she couldn’t seem to draw more words to her mouth, he glanced over his shoulder.

  Feeling her face flush when he caught her ogling him, she whipped back around. Why was she trying to convince him of anything? What he did with his life was none of her business, and talking about his many physical assets made her a little short of breath. Seeing them had an even stronger effect. “Take me to Aldersgate,” she said.

  “We won’t be going to the college, Abby. Not today.”

  She hadn’t given him permission to use her first name, let alone the shortened version of it. Only those closest to her called her Abby. But nothing about this situation was usual. He had his trousers on now, but dear God, he was pulling the chamber pot out from under the bed. She could hear him. Considering that she had never been in the same room when a man urinated before, it hardly seemed she should comment on the fact that he was growing far too familiar with how he addressed her.

  Fortunately, he had spoken with a touch of exasperation—like a brother might address his younger sister—and had the fortunate effect of offsetting her discomfort.

  “And I won’t have you constantly pleading with me,” he added, scolding her.

  “I’m not supposed to ask you to take me home? How am I to avoid it?”

  He talked as casually as if he wasn’t standing there, emptying his bladder. “We decided that I am in charge here, remember? You said you would listen to me, that you would trust me. Have I not kept you safe so far?”

  The memory of Tom pounding on the door raised gooseflesh on her arms. But that only brought her thoughts back to the same old circle: How much gratitude did she owe Max when she wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t dragged her back into the house?

  “It has been one night,” she pointed out.

  “I will keep my word. You can rely on it.”

  “Forgive my skepticism, but I barely know you.” She had quite a bit more to say about how outrageous it was for him to expect so much of her, but she couldn’t think straight with what was going on in the background. “Must I be subjected to hearing you . . . relieve yourself?” she snapped.

  “Since I must keep you with me at all times, I have little choice.” He didn’t sound the least penitent—or even shamed.

  “You could have used the privy. Surely you have a key.”

  “Everyone on this court uses that privy. I find it disgusting and only force myself to go there when . . . absolutely necessary.”

  “But I’m standing right here!”

  “As close as we will be for the next couple of days, you may see and do a great many things you would prefer not to. You slept with me last night, didn’t you?”

  She relaxed, marginally, when he finished and started dressing again. “Should I have continued to suffer on the floor?”

  “No. You made the better choice, and it didn’t hurt you. I am merely saying that we will both have to be flexible. When this is over, you will go home in one piece—but that is all I can promise.”

  “How generous of you.” She was pretty sure he was shrugging into his shirt.

  “Perhaps I will be generous in other ways.”

  “Meaning . . .”

  “I saw you watching me a moment ago.”

  “That was an . . . an accident. I turned too early.”

  “Most people don’t accidentally stare, Abby. But, be that as it may, next time I disrobe, if you ask me nicely, maybe I will turn and let you satisfy that avid curiosity of yours.”

  Her cheeks grew even hotter. He had so easily recognized the degree of her interest! “That won’t be necessary,” she said, trying to save face by convincing him he was wrong. “Because it is easier to study the musculature of the human body on a male specimen, the college pays a premium for them. I have seen more men than women.”

  “Dead men,” he pointed out.

  They had been dead—and partly deteriorated. There was information to be gleaned there, of course, but a corpse didn’t make a pretty sight. She had a feeling Max would look far more appealing, although she wasn’t about to admit that. She had never discussed the male form with anyone else. It was indecent of her to discuss it now, especially with him.

  And yet . . . she was intrigued. How many nights had she gazed at the ceiling of her bedroom, wondering what it would be like to have a man’s hands on her body? To take a lover? She had no interest in a man’s control. But his love? She couldn’t say she didn’t crave that.

  “Dead men, yes,” she conceded, “but by cross-referencing what I have seen with the diagrams in my father’s books, I believe I have formed an accurate picture of the male penis and how it works. What I don’t understand is why everyone makes so much of it.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Men, mostly. The students . . . that’s all they joke about.”

  “But you are not impressed.”

  “Should I be?”

  He chuckled. “Maybe your opinion would be different if you knew the pleasure it brings a woman to ride a hard cock.”

  No one had ever used such language with her before. She wasn’t offended that he had been so candid—he had said it matter-of-factly—but she was titillated all the same, and that somehow enhanced the taboo nature of the topic. Although she should have ended the conversation right there, he seemed so marvelously open and nonjudgmental that she couldn’t help continuing. “I admit I can’t imagine what . . . what sexual union would feel like, but one book had a—”

  “To hell with your father’s medical journals,” he broke in. “If you have never been with a man who wants you, if you have never experienced real intimacy, you have no idea what any of it is about.”

  Why did he suddenly sound so impatient? Did her naïvité annoy him? “I can only learn from what is available to me, sir.”

  “Your education will be complete when you marry. Then you will understand.” He spoke as if he would leave it at that, but she could hardly accept such an answer.

  “I told you. I don’t plan to marry.”

  “You also told me what you do plan to do.”

  “And?”

  She expected him to point out how unlikely it was that her dream would ever come true. She knew he was thinking it. But he merely sighed and sat on the bed to pull on his boots.

  “There is no reason a woman wouldn’t make a fine surgeon,” she said.

  “Especially someone as relentless as you. So, if you behave yourself while you are here, maybe I will teach you a thing or two. At least you will go home wiser than when you arrived.”

  “Teach me a thing or two? You mean by exposing yourself? I’m not sure I can allow myself to participate in something so . . . improper!”

  “Are you really going to let propriety stand in the way, when we are so far beyond the bounds of that? Once word gets out that you were held captive by a gang of resurrection men, most people will assume the worst. You might as well get something out of it.”

  “You are quite practical, sir.”

  “I think you are as practical as I am. Too practical to forgo such an opportunity.”

  She felt torn about what
her response should be. Her father would be mortified, her aunt positively apoplectic if she took advantage of her capture in such a way. But how could looking at a live specimen be that much worse than looking at a dead one? “I’ll consider it,” she said.

  “I thought you were scandalized.” He laughed out loud. “You are an interesting woman, Abigail Hale.”

  She pressed her forehead to the glass of the window. “Don’t say that.”

  From what she could tell, he was now brushing his teeth, but because she had seen too much before, she wasn’t going to risk turning around.

  “Say what?” he asked when he could speak.

  Folding her arms to ward off the morning chill, she watched Borax, Jack’s dog, dig in the dirt. “That I am interesting.”

  “What’s wrong with interesting?”

  “It means different.” And experience had taught her that wasn’t a compliment.

  “Different isn’t always bad.”

  “Of course it is. I’ve heard it enough to know.”

  “You called me a lout,” he pointed out. “And a deceitful pig.”

  It sounded like he was combing his hair. “That was before we became . . . friends, of a fashion. I have since told you that you are an educated man and a handsome one. That is far kinder than alluding to my . . . uniqueness, especially in such a patronizing tone.”

  “There wasn’t anything patronizing about it. I like a woman to be unique.”

  “No one likes a woman who is too unique.” Because she refused to adopt the role society tried to press upon her, she had always fought to fit in, even at the college. Lecturers and students alike couldn’t understand why she couldn’t be content to sit in the corner and darn socks.

  He set down whatever he had been using. “And why is that, pray tell?”

  “She might have ideas and opinions of her own.”

  “I don’t see a woman’s ideas and opinions being a problem.”

  “They can make a man feel threatened.”

  “Certain men, perhaps. I am not so easily intimidated.”

  She was hardly convinced but wasn’t angling for an argument. “If you say so.”