by Lisa Kleypas
West looked back at her in surprise. “You’ve studied Latin?”
She sent him a sardonic glance. “I’m a doctor.”
A quick, apologetic grin crossed his face. “Of course.”
The ambulance cart came to a halt at the platform, where the Ravenel carriage and two other vehicles were already parked. The instant the brake was applied, footmen and a pair of porters rushed forward to begin the process of removing the stretcher from the vehicle.
“Be careful,” Garrett said sharply.
“I’ll manage them,” West told her, “while you board the train carriage.”
“If they bump or jar him—”
“Yes, I understand. Let me handle it.”
Frowning, Garrett descended from the cart and took in her surroundings. A reverse-painted glass sign beside the door listed the contents of each floor: mortuary rooms, crypts, storerooms, and third-class waiting rooms on the basement level; chapel, robing rooms, and second-class waiting rooms on the main level; and offices and first-class waiting rooms on the upper levels.
A second sign instructed mourners as to which funeral carriages on the train were designated for first-class coffins, and which ones were for second and third class.
Staring more closely at the sign, Garrett gave a bemused shake of her head at the discovery that corpses on the train were divided into social classes just as living passengers were. To a doctor, however, there were no class divisions between one unclothed body and another, whether living or dead. Every man, rich or poor, was alike in his natural state.
An amused male voice with a Welsh accent broke into her thoughts. “Aye, even a corpse must know its place.”
Garrett turned quickly. “Mr. Winterborne!” she exclaimed. “No one told me to expect you. I’m so sorry to have troubled you.”
Her employer smiled down at her. Little reflected lights from nearby gas lamps gleamed in his dark eyes. “No trouble, Doctor. This is close to the time I rise every morning. I wanted to make sure the train carriage was stocked and ready for you.”
Her eyes widened. “It’s your train carriage?”
“The passenger carriage is mine, but the locomotive and extra rolling stock belong to Tom Severin.”
“Sir, I’m indebted to you more than I can say—”
“Not at all. Lady Helen and I consider you one of the family. Helen sends her love, by the way.” Winterborne hesitated, his gaze chasing restlessly around the platform before returning to hers. “I was told about Havelock’s refusal to assist in the surgery. For what it’s worth, his decision doesn’t sit well with me.”
“Please don’t blame him.”
“You don’t?”
Garrett shook her head. “‘Faithful are the wounds of a friend,’” she quoted with a grim smile. “A true friend will tell you when he thinks you’re making a mistake.”
“A true friend will be making the mistake with you,” Winterborne said dryly. “As it happens, I don’t agree that you did anything wrong. Had I been in your place, I would have made the same choice.”
“You would?”
“If there were any chance of saving someone I loved, I’d take it and be damned to anyone who stood in my way.” Looking her over, Winterborne said frankly, “You’re at the length of your tether. There are two staterooms in the train carriage—try to steal a few minutes of rest before you reach Hampshire.” He reached into his coat and withdrew a weighty leather envelope. “Take this.”
Cautiously Garrett peeked inside the pouch, which was stuffed with hundred-pound notes. It was more cash money than she’d ever held in her life. “Mr. Winterborne, I couldn’t possibly—”
“Money doesn’t solve every problem,” he said, “but it never hurts. Send for me if there’s anything you need. When Ransom’s condition improves, let me know.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
As Winterborne escorted her onto the train, they passed a crew of shopmen busily removing the wheels of the ambulance cart to make its transport easier. The stretcher had already been conveyed onto the railway carriage, which was a virtual palace on wheels. It had two staterooms, each with its own connected toilet room equipped with hot and cold running water, an observation room, and a parlor with movable velvet-covered chairs and reading lamps.
Winterborne’s carpenters had devised a suspension of the stretcher on cross supports attached to the wall with heavy metal spring hooks. Garrett winced briefly as she saw that the hooks had been bolted directly into the carriage’s beautiful quartered English oak woodwork. However, the arrangement would work well to minimize shocks and jolts once the train started moving.
After the stretcher was settled into its makeshift berth, Garrett pushed a chair to the place beside it. She laid her palm tenderly across Ethan’s forehead, which was dry and hot to the touch, and took up his wrist to check his pulse. He was flushed and restless, his breath fitful.
Coming to stand at the other side of the wounded man, Winterborne regarded him with a deep frown of concern. “He’s always seemed indestructible,” he said quietly. “He’s made powerful enemies. I don’t like it that you’re in the cross wires with him.”
“He didn’t like it, either. He tried to keep a distance between us.”
Winterborne looked sardonic. “Not hard enough, it seems.”
Garrett smiled faintly. “I made it difficult for him. I can be stubborn at times.”
“I’ve noticed.” But Winterborne’s gaze was kind.
Staring down at Ethan’s face, Garrett said, “He expected from the beginning that it would come to this. He thought there was no other possible path for his life to take.”
“Perhaps you should prove him wrong,” she heard Winterborne murmur.
“I will,” she said. “If I have the chance, I will.”
Chapter 18
As the train headed southwest to Hampshire, the subdued grays and blues of London gave way to a palette exploding with brilliant color. A pink-and-orange sunrise melted to reveal a pristine blue sky. To the eyes of a lifelong city dweller, Hampshire looked like a storybook land, with winding streams, ancient old-grown forests, and green pastures divided by endless miles of hedgerows.
Ethan had fallen into an uneasy sleep, lulled by the constant subtle rocking of the train’s motion. Garrett had to restrain herself from reaching over to fuss with him constantly, like a finicky artist working on a clay sculpture. She turned her attention to West Ravenel, who was sitting by a window and watching the passing scenery with keen interest.
“How did you find out about Mr. Ransom?” Garrett asked.
West’s gaze was warm and audacious, far different from Ethan’s secretive and penetrating one. He seemed to be at ease with himself and the world, a rare gift at a time when men of his class were faced with economic and social upheaval that threatened the loss of their traditions.
“About his connection to the family?” West asked easily, and continued without requiring an answer. “Recently I learned about a secret bequest of land that had been made to him in the old earl’s will. A longtime family servant confirmed that Ransom was Edmund’s by-blow with an Irish girl, who was likely a prostitute.” His mouth twisted. “Since Edmund wouldn’t provide for the girl or her babe, she eventually married a Clerkenwell prison guard. I’ve no doubt it was a hard life. The fact that Edmund could leave both the child and the mother to the wolves, and live with that on his conscience, should tell you something about what kind of man he was.”
“Perhaps he doubted the child’s paternity?”
“No, Edmund confided to his valet that the child was his. And Ransom bears the obvious stamp of his sire.” West paused and shook his head. “My God, I never expected to be bringing Ransom to Hampshire. When I met him in London a few weeks ago, he couldn’t have been more hostile. He wants nothing to do with any of us.”
“He was devoted to his mother,” Garrett said. “It’s possible he feels that forming an attachment to the Ravenels would be disloyal to her m
emory.”
West considered that with a frown. “Whatever the old earl did to Ransom and his mother, I’m sorry for it. But Ransom should know that the abuse was hardly limited to him. Edmund’s children were his favorite victims. Ask any of his daughters—they’ll tell you that living with him was no picnic-party.”
A jolt from the train caused Ethan to groan in his drugged sleep. Garrett smoothed his hair, normally so satiny, now rough and stiff like a dog’s coat.
“We’ll be there soon,” West said. “I can’t wait. I nearly left London a few days ago, pining for the place.”
“What did you miss about it?”
“I’ve missed every turnip, every hay bale, every chicken in the poultry yard, and bee in the box-hives.”
“You sound like a born farmer,” Garrett said, amused. “But you’re blue-blooded.”
“Am I?” West glanced at her then, the tiny fan-lines at the outer corners of his eyes deepening. “Although I tried not to look, it seemed quite red to me.” Stretching out his long legs comfortably, he laced his fingers together over his midriff. “My brother and I are descended from a far-flung branch of the Ravenels. No one ever expected us to darken the doorstep of Eversby Priory, much less for Devon to inherit the title and all that came with it.”
“How did it fall to you to manage the land and tenant farms?”
“Someone had to. Devon was better suited to handle a snarl of legal and financial matters. At that point, my impression of farming was that one was obliged to arrange hay in picturesque stacks. It turned out to be slightly more complicated than that.”
“What do you like about farming?”
West considered the question, while the train puffed and clambered resolutely up the incline of a broad hill covered with golden-flowered furze. “I like clearing a new field and hearing the roots crack and watching stumps being pulled under the plow blades. I like knowing that after I sow three bushels of wheat on an acre, the proper mixture of sun, rain, and manure will yield sixty-four bushels. After having lived in London for so long, I’d reached a point where I needed something to make sense.” His gaze turned absent and dreamy. “I like living in the seasons. I love the summer storms that come in from the sea, and the smell of good soil and mown hay. I love big breakfasts with new-laid eggs boiled until the yolks are set but still a bit soft, and hot buttered muffins spread with comb honey, and rashers of fried bacon and slabs of Hampshire ham, and bowls of ripe blackberries just picked from the hedgerows—”
“Please,” Garrett said thickly, beginning to feel nauseous from the train’s oscillation. “Don’t talk about food.”
West smiled. “After some rest, and a day or two of fresh air, you’ll find your appetite.”
Instead of stopping at the public station in the market town of Alton, the special train proceeded to a private railway halt located on the east side of the vast Eversby Priory estate.
The halt consisted of a single platform covered by a wooden-and-iron scrollwork canopy. The two-story signal box had been constructed of brick and wood, with multipaned glass windows and a green tiled roof. Having been built to service a nearby hematite quarry on Ravenel land, the private station included a number of small buildings and freight facilities. There were also wagons for quarrying, tramways that led to and from the quarry site, steam drills, pumps, and boring equipment.
A mild early-morning breeze swept inside the train carriage as West opened the door. “It will take a few minutes for the ambulance cart to be unloaded and reassembled,” he said. After a pause, he added apologetically, “You’ll probably want to give him something extra for pain during the last part of the journey. Not all the roads are paved.”
Garrett’s brows rushed down. “Are you trying to kill him?” she demanded in a scathing whisper.
“Obviously not, or I would have left him in London.”
After West left the railway carriage, Garrett went to Ethan, who had begun to stir. His eye sockets appeared bruised and sunken, and his lips were dry as chalk.
She held a flexible rubber tube to his lips, and he sucked in a few sips of ice water.
Ethan’s lids cracked open, and his unfocused gaze found her. “Still here,” he said in a hoarse whisper, not appearing entirely happy about the fact.
“You’re going to be better soon. All you have to do now is sleep, and heal.”
Ethan looked as though he were puzzling over some foreign language, trying to interpret it. There was a brittleness about him, as if spirit and flesh were coming unstitched from each other. He trembled with fever chills despite the dry-baked heat of his skin. Traumatic inflammation, the clinical part of her brain noted. Wound-fever. Despite the abundant use of antiseptic fluids, infection had set in. The rigors would soon be accompanied by a rapid elevation of temperature.
She coaxed him to take another sip of water.
“I’m in a bad takin’,” Ethan whispered after he’d swallowed. “Need something.”
God only knew what it had cost him to complain.
“I’ll give you morphine,” she said, and swiftly prepared another syringe.
By the time the injection took effect, the ambulance cart had been reassembled and hitched to a broad-backed, placid-tempered dray. The ride to Eversby Priory manor seemed interminable as the cart’s India-rubber wheels rolled gingerly over the rough terrain.
Eventually they approached a massive Jacobean house on a broad hill. The brick-and-stone residence was dressed with parapets, arches, and long rows of diamond-paned windows. Rows of elaborate chimney stacks gave the flat roof the appearance of a birthday cake covered with candles.
The ambulance cart stopped at the entrance. Four footmen and an elderly butler emerged from the oak double doors. Without preamble, Garrett explained how to detach the stretcher and unload it from the cart. She was annoyed when West interrupted her instructions.
“They’re footmen, Doctor. Carrying things is nine-tenths of their job.”
“He is not a thing, he’s my . . . my patient.”
“They’re not going to drop your patient,” West said, escorting her past the front threshold. “Now, Dr. Gibson, this pleasant-looking lady with the gaze of a brigadier general is our housekeeper, Mrs. Church. And all those capable young women are housemaids—we’ll introduce them later. For now, all you need to know is that we have two Marthas, so that’s the name to call out if you want something.”
The housekeeper curtsied hastily to Garrett before directing the footmen to carry the stretcher bearing the wounded man upstairs. Her matronly form bounded up the stairs with unexpected agility. As Garrett followed, she had only a cursory look at her surroundings, but it was enough to allay any concerns about the manor’s condition. Despite its venerable age, the house appeared scrupulously clean and well-ventilated, the air scented with beeswax and rosin soap. The soft white paint on the walls and ceilings showed no trace of mold or damp. Garrett had been in hospital wards that had been maintained in far worse condition.
Ethan was carried into a small but tidy room. A screen had been fitted into the open window space to filter out insects and dust and allow cooling breezes to flow into the room.
“Did they know in advance of our arrival?” Garrett asked, noticing that the gleaming wood floor had been divested of rugs and the bed covered in white linen, as appropriate for a sickroom.
“Telegram,” West said succinctly, helping the footmen set the stretcher on the floor near the foot of the bed. On his count, they lifted Ethan with great care, keeping him supported at a horizontal angle. Once he was settled, West turned to Garrett, rubbing the pinched muscles at the back of his neck. “You haven’t slept at all. Let Mrs. Church watch over him for a few hours while you take a nap.”
“I’ll consider it,” Garrett said, although she planned to do no such thing. The room was clean by ordinary standards, but it was far from a sterile environment. “Thank you, Mr. Ravenel. I’ll take charge now.” She ushered him from the room and closed the door.
> Mrs. Church helped Garrett to draw away the sheets and blanket that had covered Ethan during the journey, and replace them with fresh ones. He was dressed in a thin cotton nightshirt donated by Lord Trenear. Later Garrett would change him into one of the garments obtained from the clinic, a patient nightshirt made to open in either the front or the back.
Ethan awakened just long enough to give her a bleary glance, his eyes vivid blue black in his fevered complexion. He was shivering from head to toe.
Garrett weighted him with another blanket and gently touched his bristled cheek. She’d never seen him a day past a shave. More by force of habit than necessity, her fingers slid to his bare wrist to find his pulse. His hand moved, twisting until his long fingers curled around hers. He blinked once, twice, and sank into slumber.
“Poor, handsome lad,” the housekeeper exclaimed softly. “How was he injured, Doctor?”
“Gunshot wound,” Garrett said, slowly disentangling her fingers from his.
Mrs. Church shook her head. “The Ravenel temper,” she said darkly. “It’s been the end of more than one promising young man in his prime.”
Startled, Garrett shot her a questioning glance.
“I know a Ravenel when I see one,” the housekeeper said. “Those high cheekbones and the long nose, and the way the hairline grows in that slight peak.” Staring down at Ethan thoughtfully, she continued, “The old master Edmund’s indiscretions were hardly a secret. I’d guess this is a natural child of his. Probably not the only one.”
“It’s not for me to confirm,” Garrett murmured, tucking the covers more closely around Ethan’s still form. She felt protective of him, defensive on his behalf. Not only had he been made physically helpless, but also one of his deepest secrets was now being discussed over his sickbed. “However, his injury is not the result of an unruly temperament. He was attacked after risking his own life to protect a great number of innocent people.”
Mrs. Church regarded Ethan for a long, wondering moment. “A good, brave man, then. The world needs more like him.”
