“. . . so much blood. God, Marcus. Marcus.” The soaking of the wound appeared to cause great discomfort, and Wickham half awoke, crying out in seeming anguish and fighting to free himself from the ties that bound his limbs. Jem and Barnet both stood by to assist the surgeon. As Wickham began to flail and call out, Barnet appeared more and more apprehensive. Gabby’s own alarm at the revelatory nature of Wickham’s ramblings increased with every passing moment. When he said, plain as anything, Damn, the little witch shot me, she was sure, from the heat she could feel creeping into her cheeks, that her face was turning guilty scarlet. And when he began to moan once again about blood and Marcus, her alarm was assauged only by her reflection that the surgeon, not having the least acquaintance, as she supposed, with the family, could have no notion of the import of what he was hearing.
But in this she proved to be mistaken.
“I beg your pardon, Lady Gabriella,” Ormsby said, when he had gathered together his belongings and was preparing to leave. “But is not . . . That is, I was under the impression that Marcus was His Lordship’s given name.”
Gabby felt her blood run cold at this unlooked-for perspicacity, but managed to keep her countenance under control.
“It is indeed,” she said coolly, as though she wondered, but was too polite to ask, how he felt that such a circumstance was any concern of his.
“But then—when he keeps calling out to a Marcus, who I gather has been severely hurt or killed. . . .” The surgeon’s brow knit, and he broke off under the force of Gabby’s look. “Not that it matters, not at all. It just struck me as . . . But never mind.”
“As it happens, my brother had a good friend, also named Marcus, who, uh, unfortunately suffered a fatal accident not many months previous. My brother witnessed it.” If she had not been wishful of allaying any slight suspicion the surgeon might be harboring, she would not have said so much. Certainly, if it had been her brother Marcus who actually lay in that bed, she would not have felt it incumbent upon her to have replied to Ormsby’s curiosity at all.
“That explains it, then,” Ormsby said, sounding relieved. Gabby bestowed a rather tight smile on him as she personally escorted him to the bedroom door.
“That was a near-run thing,” Barnet said when Ormsby was gone. Wickham, no doubt exhausted from the painful mauling he had endured, was perversely silent now that there was no one outside of their immediate circle to hear him, and in fact appeared to be asleep. Barnet continued, with a reproachful glance at Gabby: “Did I not warn you that the Cap’n’s mouth would be the undoing of us? I don’ min’ tellin’ ya, I was in a sweat the ’ole time.”
“There be no us in this, you oaf,” Jem said furiously from the opposite side of the bed. “This be you two criminals alone, and my poor mistress only gulled into lendin’ you her aid.”
“You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head, you dwarf, or . . .” Barnet’s fists clenched.
“Enough!” Gabby said, glaring at each of the combatants in turn. “There will be no more of this fighting between the two of you. Like it or not, we must pull together if we are not all to come a cropper over this. Barnet, when is the last time you slept?”
His face softening only slightly from the dark scowl he had turned on Jem, Barnet knit his brows in thought. “I dozed a bit in the chair, not long afore I came to wake you, miss.”
“Then you will oblige me by taking yourself off to your bed. Return in eight hours, if you please.”
“But, miss . . . but, miss . . .” Barnet cast a harried glance at Wickham, who appeared to be sleeping peacefully.
“Jem or I will stay with him until you return. It seems clear to me that the three of us will have to bear the burden of the nursing. You are right, he is too given to saying unfortunate things when he is out of his head to trust him to the care of any who do not know the—the particular circumstances.”
Jem stiffened indignantly, shooting her a look that said as plainly as if he’d spoken it aloud that, in his opinion, she’d lost her mind.
Barnet stiffened at the same time, and, staring very hard at Jem, said, “If it’s all the same to you, miss, I’ll not be leavin’. Though I thank you for your kindness in considering my comfort.”
“It is not all the same to me,” Gabby snapped. “You will do as you are told, if you please. And, though it pains me to say it, it is not your comfort that is at the forefront of my mind. It is your master’s survival.”
Barnet looked alarmed. “But miss . . .”
“You are of no use to him if you are dropping with fatigue. Come, you may safely leave him to Jem’s and my tender mercies.”
“Yes, miss,” Barnet said miserably.
“Go then.”
Barnet cast a pained look at his master even as he began to move toward the door. Before he reached it, he swung around, his gaze fixing threateningly on Jem. “If anythin’ should befall ’im while I’m gone . . .”
“Go.” Gabby interrupted, her eyes shooting sparks at the malingerer. Barnet shut his mouth, swallowed once, and went.
“That’s the way to tell him, Miss Gabby,” Jem said exultantly when they were alone.
“If you do not wish to see me fall into strong hysterics, please leave off doing battle with Barnet. Do you not see that we are stuck with him, and him,” Gabby nodded at Wickham’s still form, “just as they are stuck with us?”
14
Wickham’s condition stayed much the same throughout the next two days. The wound was surrounded by a red, swollen circle of flesh that was ominously hot and firm to the touch; the dark hole where the bullet had been dug out oozed putrefaction and bled afresh with each treatment. Wickham remained out of his head with fever. Which was probably just as well, Gabby reflected as she pressed a steaming poultice to his injured side for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last three hours. At least he was oblivious to most of what was being done to him—and her modesty was, to some degree, spared. If he had been awake and watching her while she did this—well, she just could not have done it, that was all.
Keeping him decently covered while at the same time treating his wound was a neat trick, and one she had not yet completely mastered. Although he wore a nightshirt, a fresh one—Barnet had changed the earlier sweat-stained one just before she had taken over from him—it was rucked up well past his waist for the treatment. She had draped—and redraped—his private parts with a blanket, but his restless movements continually dislodged the concealing cloth. The flesh that was thereby revealed intrigued her most shamefully, but she refused to give in to her baser urgings and satisfy her curiosity by actually looking at it.
What details she caught with the occasional stray glance were quite embarrassing enough.
As she sat on the side of the bed applying the poultice, she determinedly focused her gaze on the area around the wound and above, which in itself provided plenty to occupy her eyes—and her senses. To her dismay, she had already discovered that the muscular contours of his torso affected her strangely. Sometimes she would be looking at him, idly, her mind, as she supposed, quite elsewhere, when the sheer masculine beauty of the well-toned body beneath her hands would insinuate itself into her subconscious, causing her pulse to speed up and her breathing to quicken before she realized what was happening. In such cases she would immediately avert her gaze and force her thoughts to take a more proper direction. But the lowering truth was that she found the scheming blackguard physically appealing, and however much she tried to hide from it, deep inside she knew it was so.
To make matters worse, she could not help but touch him in the course of caring for him. With the best will in the world for it not to happen, she nevertheless found herself enjoying in a way that had nothing to do with nursing the sick the sensation of her hands against his flesh. His stomach, she discovered almost guiltily, was firm and resilient, with smooth swarthy skin that was as appealing to the touch as the finest kid leather. It was bisected by a trail of fine black hair that widened considerably l
ower down, where she was bound not to look. That stomach hair, as she learned quite by accident, was considerably silkier than, say, the hair on his chest. His navel was a secret, inward-curving oval, into which she had more than once been forced to dip a cloth-wrapped finger to wipe out liquid pooled from her poultice. His hips were narrow, with little flesh over the hard bones.
Following the line of dark hair upward—it was necessary to dry him after mounding the dripping poultice on the wound, after all—she found that his chest widened in a vee shape as it rose toward his shoulders, and that it was also heavy with muscle beneath smooth flesh. The line of dark hair widened, too, at the height where his ribs began, and coarsened, and began to curl. Although his nightshirt obscured the upper half of his chest as well as his arms and shoulders, enough was revealed so that she knew that it was covered by a thick wedge of curling—and crisp to the touch—black hair.
Suddenly, as her mind followed where her hands and gaze roamed, Gabby felt an almost irresistible desire to curl her fingers in that thicket of hair.
Shame on you, she scolded herself, snatching her hands, towel and all, into her lap for safekeeping. Worry and exhaustion must be causing her subconscious to run amok; otherwise it would not continually present her with improper images that caught her all unaware.
You have the most kissable mouth.
Wickham muttered something then, turning his head toward her, eyelids fluttering, and for one horrified moment Gabby thought that she had spoken the words aloud and he had awakened in time to hear them. But no, she realized with relief as his lashes dropped to rest once more against his cheeks, that was only her own guilty conscience at work. He remained unaware.
“You are a complete scoundrel, you know,” she told him crossly. “And I do not feel in the least bit guilty about shooting you.”
She did, of course, and knew she would feel guiltier yet—quite the murderess, in fact—if he should die. If the poison from the wound should spread throughout his system, or his fever could not be brought down . . .
Well, she just would not think about that.
From somewhere below, a clock chimed the hour. It was one a.m. The rest of the family, even the servants, were asleep. Keeping them all out of Wickham’s bedroom for any except the most mundane of housekeeping chores had been quite a trick. Oh, excluding the girls had been easy enough: Gabby had merely said that there were sights involved in nursing Wickham that were not suitable for their tender eyes. Explaining why the servants were not allowed to share in the nursing was tougher: Gabby had finally been forced to claim that she trusted no one, save herself and Jem and Wickham’s own servant Barnet, to care for Wickham as they ought.
And had endured many a hurt look as a result.
Afraid to keep Wickham bound to the bedposts continually—he could not rest easily tied so, and circulation in the limbs was a concern—Gabby had had Barnet untie him late on the previous day. It seemed to answer admirably: he slept, and Gabby credited his relative lack of agitation to the increased comfort that went with no longer feeling himself subject to constraints.
“Hot,” Wickham said quite clearly, stirring anew. For a moment Gabby looked at him with bated breath. Again she wondered if he would waken; he had seemed on the verge several times since she had taken over from Barnet. But he settled down again, and seemed to sleep. For a few moments the only sounds were the soft rasp of his breathing, and the crackle and pop of the fire.
The room was very warm, Gabby realized, glancing around, as it had been shut for some time now with a fire blazing in the hearth. Indeed, she quite felt the heat herself. Her high-necked, long-sleeved mourning gown seemed stifling suddenly, and she discovered tiny beads of moisture dotting her hairline as she thrust a wayward lock back into the cumbersome knot at her nape. Grimacing, she fanned her face with the towel in her lap. Besides being over warm, the room was also redolent of not altogether pleasant scents, including the sharp mustardy smell of the reeking poultice, and, beneath it, the duller but equally pervasive odor of a feverish male body. The only illumination besides the fire came from the branch of candles on the bedside table, which added the scent of hot tallow to the rest.
The trio of candles had burnt well down, Gabby saw at a glance, and liquid pools of tallow gleamed at the base of crooked black wicks. Leaning over, she blew the candles out, one by one. The extra illumination was unneeded, and even if they added only a small degree to the baking heat and nose-wrinkling smell it was still an extra mite that she could do without. She had treated his wound so often now that she was quite sure that she could do it, if necessary, in the pitch dark.
“. . . briella,” Wickham said suddenly, drawing her eyes back to him with reflexive swiftness. Had he actually said her name, or was he just muttering more nonsense in his sleep?
“Are you awake then?” she asked with some asperity.
No answer. Not that she had really expected any. His eyes remained closed, and his breathing was deep and regular. Perhaps he was getting better, she thought, checking the temperature of the poultice with a careful prod. His face was not as flushed as it had been, and he seemed less restless tonight.
Another hour, she thought with a sigh, testing the poultice again, and she would be relieved by Jem. Aghast at her continuing determination to, as he put it, aid the bloomin’ criminal, Jem nevertheless performed his duty with grim efficiency. Of course, when he arrived to take over he would spend every minute until she left the room scowling and grumbling, and peppering her with warnings each more daunting than the one before it. Still, she would be glad when he came; she was tired to the bone, and—and grumpy in a way she did not like to try to analyze. The man who lay half naked and helpless beneath her hands was a stranger, a criminal, and one moreover who had insulted her and threatened her and actually done violence to her person. But he was also disturbingly handsome, charming in the way she guessed all successful rogues must be, and all too blatantly masculine. It really should not have come as such a surprise to her that she should find him attractive, but she was surprised, and she could not like it. It was—disconcerting, to say the least.
His head moved restlessly on his pillow, his tousled black hair in stark contrast to the white linen it rubbed against. He started mumbling, saying something long and involved under his breath, his voice so low that she could understand not so much as a single syllable. Her gaze moved to his mouth in an instinctive attempt to make out the words. Even parched with fever, it was a beautiful mouth, she noticed, a little thin, perhaps, but with lips that were well-shaped and firm, as she knew from forcing a wide variety of liquids between them over the past two days.
You have the most kissable mouth.
So, she thought, did he. How would it feel if she were to press her mouth to those beautifully shaped lips?
He stirred again, lashes fluttering, as the thought formed in her mind with as little volition as storm clouds swirling into a tornado. As she realized what she was thinking, then met his suddenly open eyes on top of it, Gabby jumped as if she’d been shot. For a startled moment she stared into indigo depths. But on closer inspection it was clear that his eyes still bore the glazed look that meant he was not really aware, and his lids closed again almost immediately as if to clench the matter.
She let out a sigh of relief. Horrified to discover that her mind was capable of entertaining such a thought as pressing her mouth to his, she dropped her gaze to her task, nudged the wet mass with an impatient finger, judged the treatment complete, and scooped the poultice that she now considered quite cool enough from the wound. Thankful to be finished, she deposited it in the basin that she had set for just that purpose on the table by the bed. In a moment she could go sit safely by the fire, and wait there, perhaps perusing the book she had brought with her, until Jem arrived to take over.
At least, if she were reading Marmion, she would not catch herself glancing Wickham’s way.
In a hurry to get away from him now, she sprinkled the wound with the basilicum
powder Ormsby had left and began to bind it up, wrapping strips of linen all the way around his midsection and tying them in place. Working her arm beneath his body required considerable effort, but if the bandage was not secured in that way, she had discovered, he inevitably managed to dislodge it.
In response, perhaps, to her arm burrowing beneath his back, he moved, more sharply than before. His legs shifted—the blanket was dislodged again, of course; not that she looked down to make certain—and he said please quite clearly. As Gabby had no idea what he meant by that, and was in a hurry to get away from him besides, she ignored the mumbled entreaty, and worked on securing the bandage without letting her eyes drift either above or below the immediate vicinity of the wound.
“Please,” he said again, the word husky but perfectly distinct. Gabby couldn’t help it. She glanced up. His eyelids were fluttering, but his eyes did not open. His mouth—those beautifully shaped lips—curved in what looked like the merest suggestion of a smile.
He wanted water, she guessed with some impatience. There was a half-full glass on the table; she had given him several spoonfuls each hour. When she was done with the bandage, she would tilt a few more spoonfuls between his lips before retiring to fire and book.
“Confounded nuisance,” she muttered under her breath, flicking him a severe glance that he, of course, didn’t see. Her hands brushed across the too-warm skin of his abdomen as she pulled the last linen strip into place and tied the ends with a flourish.
On some level he must have been aware of her touch, because his hand moved then, finding hers, closing around it. Like the rest of him, his hand was blazing hot, large, and strong. Gabby cast another quick glance up at his face. Was he perhaps trying to communicate? Possibly. It was hard to be certain. In any case, his eyes were still closed.
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