Not Gertrude. She’d proven only devoted and loving, and yet what if he’d made yet another costly misstep?
Edwin spun on his heels and took off running for his son’s rooms. His feet pounded a path along the floor that matched the chaotic beat of his heart.
Not bothering with a knock, Edwin tossed open his son’s door and stormed in.
Oh, God.
The bed, turned down, remained untouched.
Empty.
“No,” he rasped. Impossible. There had to be another reason for Stephen and Gertrude’s absence. Mayhap they were in the kitchens. Or somewhere else.
Edwin staggered back several steps, until his back collided with the mattress. Oh, God. He threaded his fingers through his hair and yanked. This was his hell. He’d lost his son all over again. He’d trusted where he shouldn’t. The lesson long ago should have killed all trust and cemented the evil in people’s souls, and yet it hadn’t.
Stop. Stop.
There had to be a reason. They had to be safe.
They . . .
A tortured moan spilled from his lips. It was that prayer and hope of long ago, alive still, all these years later.
Shoving to his feet, he took off running. “Marlow,” he shouted, his voice booming off the corridor walls. “Marlow!”
And devoted as when he’d first found Edwin in the streets, drunk and praying for death, his butler was there.
“My son. Gertrude.”
His brow creased in confusion, the younger man shook his head. “I don’t—?”
“They aren’t in their rooms.”
All the color leached from Marlow’s cheeks.
Oh, God. No. Edwin’s legs went weak under him, and he shot a hand out, catching the wall to steady himself. “I want my horse readied,” he bellowed, and took off running. “I want Bow Street called.” Marlow struggled to match Edwin’s pace. “I want Runners here now. I want her found, and I want my son back,” he thundered as he raced through the hall.
From the front of the townhouse, furious shouts emerged. Calls for Marlow. For Edwin.
“My lord,” Marlow was saying over and over, yanking on his arm.
The world whooshed through Edwin’s ears.
With a thunderous, incoherent shout, he took off for the din that grew louder with every step he took. “Summon the damned constable,” Edwin bellowed. He reached the top of the landing, and a wave of relief so strong, so potent and gloriously wonderful, overtook him that he couldn’t so much as breathe.
He was here.
With her.
They were both here. In the middle of his foyer . . .
Gertrude in her cloak. And Stephen . . . in his threadbare garments.
They were here. Both of them. Relief snaked through him.
And then he registered his son’s attire.
“Where in blazes did you go?” he shouted, taking the steps two at a time, nearly tripping over himself in his haste.
Stephen took a step closer to his sister, and she rested a hand on the little boy’s shoulder. Edwin only gnashed his teeth at that protective gesture.
Furious with himself for doubting her. Furious with her for having given him reason to do so.
She stared at Edwin with pained eyes, stricken ones.
She’d heard him. It was stamped there in her features. By God, he’d not feel guilty. She’d gone off without a word, without asking him or telling him . . .
And yet, despite his resolve to feel no shame for his response, he did. It clawed at his gut.
Without so much as a word for him, Gertrude returned her focus to Stephen. Whatever she said was too hushed, near silence that Edwin, an interloper once more, could not make sense of.
“I asked you a question,” he said in steadier tones. The servants around them jumped as if he’d bellowed that statement. Gertrude, however, remained stoic, unaffected. She’d been the only person in all these years to not shrink in fear from him. “Did you defy my wishes and bring him to your family?” he asked, his muscles tightening in fear of her answer.
The already grey pallor of Gertrude’s skin went white as parchment.
And he knew. Betrayal. It wasn’t the first time, but this cut the sharpest. Edwin sank back on his heels. “You lied to me,” he whispered, the evidence of her treachery striking like an arrow. He’d believed they’d formed a bond, one where he could trust her. He’d confided in her. And all along she’d set out to deceive him. Yet again, his judgment had proven so very flawed.
“Leave her alone!” Stephen barked. “She didn’t do nothing wrong, Marquess.” He hurled that title that one day would belong to him as though it were an insult.
Marquess. That was all Edwin was again. Just like that, the tenuous bond between them broke, and they were restored to that same adversarial role.
“Enough.” Gertrude clutched at her sides like she’d run a great race. “Stephen, go to your rooms,” she whispered.
His son stepped around her, complying when he only ever resisted Edwin’s requests or overtures at a relationship. It was petty and pitiable, but envy at the ease of their relationship sluiced through him. Edwin seethed. “Did you take my son when I expressly forbade it?” And when she remained silent, he slammed his fist onto the nearby foyer table. “Did you?”
Stephen drew his knife and pointed it at Edwin. “Oi ain’t leaving ya alone with ’im,” he promised, slipping back into his Cockney.
That only sent another healthy wave of fury jolting through Edwin. “By God, I asked you a—”
Gertrude swayed on her feet, and Stephen instantly dropped his dagger. It clattered noisily upon the floor, forgotten, as he wrapped an arm around her waist, keeping Gertrude upright.
Stephen paled. “You’re hurt,” he whispered. “Did he get you?”
Did he get you?
And consumed by his earlier rage and panic, Edwin now looked on, noting those details that had previously escaped him, the drawn lines at the corners of Gertrude’s mouth, the agony pouring from her eyes.
Edwin dropped his gaze to where Stephen held her. And the earth shifted from under Edwin’s feet. The dark shade of her muslin cloak had previously obscured that bright stain soaking the left portion of the fabric.
Stephen drew his hand back and cried out. “You’ve been stabbed.”
“Oh, my god,” Edwin whispered. She’d been stabbed. “Oh, my god.” It was a litany that poured out of him, over and over. Incoherent and irrational. “You are hurt,” he said dumbly, his voice hoarsened. Bleeding. That was blood marring her garments. Her blood.
I’m going to be ill.
“I’m fi—” Her lashes fluttered.
He was across the foyer in three strides. He caught her to him as she collapsed.
“Fine,” Gertrude finished the lie she’d been determined to utter.
“Get a damned doctor,” Edwin shouted, sweeping her into his arms, and she went unprotestingly, and panic swelled. Gertrude was never compliant. And certainly not when he was shouting out directives. “Water. Bandages. Clean linens,” he croaked out order after order in fragments. Taking the steps two at a time, he bounded up the staircase. Her door still hung ajar from when he’d stormed inside earlier. When he’d allowed himself to believe that Gertrude had performed the same act of treachery as that nanny and made off with Stephen.
As he set her down on the untouched bed, shame burnt through him, and he fought it back.
There’d be time enough for that later. Nothing useful could come from that emotion—not now. For now . . . Gertrude was hurt. His focus belonged there. “Where are you injured?” he asked hoarsely, already reaching for the clasp at her throat. His fingers shook so badly, he couldn’t get a proper grasp on the clasp.
“I have it,” she said, her voice weak, and terror threatened to spill over and consume him. Ignoring her protestations, Edwin made another attempt at the hook, and this time it gave way with a slight click.
“Let me see,” he murmured, removing the artic
le. He tossed it down on the floor and urged Gertrude to lie down.
This time, she didn’t resist.
He struggled to draw a breath, but it lodged somewhere between his chest and throat. “My God,” he whispered. A crimson stain marred the entire left side of her gown and had begun to spill over across the middle. Or what if she’d been stabbed there, in the middle of her belly? An animalistic moan tore from him.
“I’ve been injured far worse,” she said with her usual pragmatism, but this time her voice was so very threadbare, so faint.
It sprang him into action. Mindful of her wound, Edwin rolled her slowly onto her opposite side. “I need to see it,” he said, talking himself through each action to keep from giving in to an all-consuming panic. “And apply pressure.” He started at the row of buttons down the back of her gown.
“You need to cut the fabric. Get my dagger,” she whispered. “It’s strapped to the bottom of my left leg.” She doled out those instructions, methodical, one who’d been so injured before and tended like injuries herself. And all over again, he felt wholly useless, unable to protect those in his care.
Edwin lifted her skirts, and finding the jewel-encrusted dagger, he unsheathed it.
“Start at the top and work it down the middle,” Gertrude managed in between labored breaths. How was she so calm? Instructing him on how to tend her wound, when any other person, man or woman, would have been reduced to a sobbing heap of panic and pain. There wasn’t another woman like her.
Edwin’s fingers shook as he cut away the fabric of her dress. Her chemise followed. And when he at last had the garments removed, the room dipped and swayed.
He briefly closed his eyes.
Her skin was soaked from the gash that continued to seep copiously. Gertrude lay sprawled upon a crimson blanket of her own lifeblood. Yanking off his cravat, he pressed the article to her side and applied pressure. Blood immediately soaked through, staining the useless cloth.
I’m going to throw up.
“Goddamn it, where in hell is the doctor?” he thundered. Grabbing at a pillow, he tugged free the white linen case, and made another makeshift bandage from it. She cannot die. Please, not her.
“That bad?”
“Worse,” he directed at the wound commanding his attentions.
And God love her, Gertrude began to laugh. That clear, bell-like expression of her amusement immediately died. A little moan spilled from her lips.
“Tell me what I can do,” he entreated. He’d give anything to ease her pain.
There was a lengthy pause, the silence so long and pronounced that, for one agonizing moment made from terror, he believed she’d died. Edwin yanked his head up, forcing himself to look at her.
“I want my family.”
And in that instant, he discovered something far greater than the hatred he’d carried all these years—his regard for this woman.
Edwin shouted once more, this time calling for the unlikeliest of guests to his household—the Killorans.
He’d fetched her sisters.
It was a request she’d have wagered her very life he would have declined, and yet he hadn’t. That sacrifice, however, allowing the Killoran clan inside his household, was wholly at odds with the man who’d been shouting down the household with calls for a constable.
He hadn’t trusted her. He’d believed her capable of harming Stephen. Nay, what was worse: for everything they’d shared, for the bond they’d struck and the intimacy that had passed between them, none of it had mattered. In one instant all that had been erased, and she’d been presented with the truth: Edwin would never trust her. Not truly. And she might love him, and he might have cared for her, but there could never be any relationship when one person so doubted the honor of another.
A single tear fell down her cheek, followed by another, and another.
The doctor drew the needle through her side.
“You’re doing splendidly, Gertrude,” Cleopatra praised, giving her fingers a light squeeze. “He’s nearly finished.”
Her sister would construe those tears as weakness over her injury. This time, however, Gertrude preferred that underestimation. She welcomed it, for it prevented either of her sisters from asking probing questions she didn’t want to answer.
“What happened?” Ophelia pressed from the spot she occupied at Gertrude’s other side.
Cleo shot her a look. “We’ll talk when she’s able.”
“There’s questions that need answering,” Ophelia persisted.
“And she’ll answer them later. Not now. This isn’t the time.”
They’d heard nothing of what she’d said earlier. Her sisters still sought to make decisions and determinations for and about her. “I can talk,” Gertrude said tightly, and winced as the needle pierced her skin. God, how she’d always despised sewing a person’s flesh up and having her own done. The sensation of that piece of metal traveling through one’s skin, and the drag of the needle. Her stomach roiled.
“Did you recognize him?”
In between the hurt of Edwin’s mistrust, she’d sought to identify the masked attacker . . . to no avail. “I didn’t.”
“Connor caught him and is in the process of . . . interviewing him now.”
Interviewing him. Gertrude shivered. She well knew in St. Giles what that entailed. “His mask slipped loose enough that I saw him. He’s not a patron of the club. He’s not a previous employee, and he’s not one of Diggory’s rogue gang members.” Those ruthless men and women who continued to surface, seeking retribution for some imagined crime against the greatest criminal.
“So . . . a foreign adversary.”
“You’re assuming he wanted to harm me. He sought my valuables.”
“Stephen said you handed them over and he made no move to take them.”
And through the mayhem and action out on the streets of Mayfair, for the first time that incongruity hit her. He hadn’t tried to collect the brooch. He’d simply left it there.
She sat upright and promptly gasped as she pulled in the opposite direction of Dr. Carlson’s efforts.
“Easy,” he soothed.
“He knew about my knife.” Gertrude resettled herself against the mound of pillows and cushions the doctor had arranged at the start of the process.
“Did you flash it?”
“No.” She shook her head frantically, this time ignoring the pain. “I didn’t reveal that I had it. I didn’t draw it.” He’d known.
Which meant . . .
“It’s someone who knows you’re a Killoran,” Cleo finished that thought, her brown eyes grave with the implications of that revelation.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean that,” Gertrude put forward, even as her gut intuition—which had saved her and her siblings countless times—screamed that there was more to that meeting on the street.
“It usually does, though,” Ophelia pointed out. “Connor will send one of his men to serve as a watch.”
“I don’t need a watch.” They were imagining bogeymen where there were none.
“Are you certain of that?” Ophelia countered.
Except . . . Gertrude wasn’t certain of anything anymore.
A pall fell amongst the sisters, and the only sound to fill the room was the softest whisper of Dr. Carlson drawing his needle through Gertrude’s injury.
Gertrude troubled her lower lip between her teeth, concentrating on that slight discomfort to keep from focusing on the drag of that needle. After Dr. Carlson had passed the thread through her flesh, she allowed herself the breath she’d been holding.
“Breathe in slow through your nose,” he murmured, his baritone so very soothing it served as another distraction. “Then release the breath slowly through your lips. Focus on your breathing.” He went back to his masterful sewing. Gertrude squeezed her youngest sister’s hand.
“He seemed upset,” Cleopatra noted, and she welcomed that distraction.
To the contrary, Stephen had displayed his usual strength
, one that she wished he didn’t have to rely upon so often. For no child should be required to be strong at all times. “He handled himself perfectly. He ran when I said to and did not remain for the fight.” That brashness which had always been Stephen’s weakness had not been there.
Her sisters exchanged another glance. “Not Stephen,” Ophelia clarified. “She’s talking about the Mad Marquess.”
Gertrude’s patience with that callous insult they continued to level at Edwin snapped. “He’s not the ‘Mad Marquess,’” she bit out, then squeezed her eyes shut as another rush of pain burnt along her side. “He’s a father who desperately loves Stephen and who has done nothing but attempt to make life more comfortable and familiar for him, and I’ll not have you disparage him.”
That effectively silenced a pair who were never given to backing down from a debate or discussion. And if it fueled further questions, so be it. With his lack of faith in her, he might as well have ripped out a piece of her heart. But regardless of Edwin’s distrust of her motives this evening, she’d not cast aspersions upon his character, and she’d not begrudge his having become the man he had, not after the losses he’d suffered.
“Try not to move,” the doctor said needlessly. “I’m nearly finished. There,” he murmured, cutting off the thread and tying the last stitch. “You’ll need to keep the wound clean, to avoid infection.”
Cleo frowned. “What does that do?”
“There are some schools of thought that any dirt near the open wound can lead to infection, which could poison the blood and kill a patient.”
“If that were true, then the three of us would have been dead long ago,” Ophelia muttered.
“As that is true, you three should consider yourselves very fortunate,” he drawled, a little twinkle in his eyes. With that, he took himself off to the workstation several maids had set up in the corner of Gertrude’s temporary chambers. Pouring a pitcher of water, he proceeded to wash his hands.
Ophelia spoke in hushed words that barely reached Gertrude’s ears.
“Very well . . . Lord Maddock, then.” And that was the belated moment Gertrude realized she’d stumbled directly into another trap, and for a second time that night. She’d revealed her hand. “Let us speak about Lord Maddock.”
The Bluestocking Page 27