Decided, she took hold of the opened shirt front and ripped it left and right off the broad shoulders. It took three tugs to rent the fine fabric; the third tore the cloth from neck to waist, exposing a wide expanse of chest matted with hair the same raven-black color as that which covered the gentleman’s head. For an instant her eyes registered surprise. The silk cravat, the richness of the exquisite fabric of waistcoat and frockcoat, the patrician features, all had concealed the measure of the man’s muscle. It gave her hope for a full recovery. Such a well-exercised physique would stand him in good stead; but only if the wound could be staunched, and at once.
Julian suffered these ministrations with great fortitude; surprised the girl possessed such strong constitutional powers. It seemed that the sight of blood did not bother her in the slightest. She merely wrinkled her nose, not in response to any feelings of squeamishness, but in an enquiring, interested sort of way. He was about to make a quip about the dual sensibilities of being female and a musician but the quip died on his pale lips and was replaced with a guttural oath from deep within his throat, for suddenly his whole being convulsed with an unbearable pain.
Deb had carefully peeled away the sodden shirt from the wound, exposing a deep gash under the rib cage in the gentleman’s right side. Examining it, she said in a detached voice,
“I don’t think he meant to kill you, or your opponent has no notion of anatomy. The slice is deep but if he’d wanted to kill you he’d have pinked you on the left…”
Then, without warning, she pressed a wad of folded cloth over the wound, and so firmly that to Julian it was as if her whole fist had been thrust through the slit to mingle with his entrails and meet up with his spine. Disorientated with pain, he fought to remain conscious. His limp hand was placed over the dressing and he was told in a strident voice to keep it there with a firm pressure until the makeshift bandage was securely about his chest to hold the padding in place.
It was no easy task to bind up the wound. Deb managed to slip the bandage once around her patient’s taut stomach, but having achieved this much the gentleman’s eyelids fluttered and he promptly fainted. Quickly, she scrambled up, roughly pulled aside the layers of her petticoats to free her long stockinged legs and straddled the man’s inert thighs in time to catch the full weight of his upper body against her shoulder as he pitched forward. She was almost knocked off her knees but managed to put her shoulder into his upper chest and at such an angle that it permitted her arms to remain free. This enabled her to pass the bandage freely across the width of his wide bare back. She did this several times, each time pulling the binding tighter so that the wound was sealed and the padding secure under the wrappings.
Certain that her shoulder was bruised and her back about to buckle under the man’s weight, she quickly groped about the tangled tree roots for the diamond-headed stickpin she had set aside. With the pin secured through the top layers of her makeshift bandage, she used her remaining strength to set her patient upright and gently leaned him back against the birch tree. But he did not look at all comfortable and so without a thought to modesty she stripped off his frockcoat, folded the embroidered silk garment up into a bundle and successfully placed this soft pillow behind his strong neck, thus avoiding his raven head banging back against the tree trunk with a great thud.
Exhausted and feeling the need to catch her breath, Deb just sat there in her thin cotton chemise: straddled atop her patient’s muscular thighs, petticoats bunched up over her knees and exposing her long stockinged legs to the world. She felt bruised, battered and on the verge of tears.
“How dare you do this to me!” she demanded of the unconscious gentleman and picked up the flask, uncertain whether to force the rest of its contents down his throat or dash the liquid in his face. “You’re probably a notorious criminal and well served to be left to bleed to death! My misfortune to stumble across you.” She leaned forward and poured a drop of brandy between the parted lips. “I’m a fool,” she murmured, scanning his angular face. “I don’t think you can be a criminal. Your eyes are too honest… and you are far too swooningly handsome to be—Oh! You ungrateful brute! Unhand me!” she yelped, for Julian had her hard by the wrist and the flask fell into the grass. “That hurts!”
Julian looked into the flushed face close up to his and blinked. “Promise me you won’t run off.”
Deb gave a twisted smile. “Afraid I mean to leave you to the footpads?” she goaded, plying at the strong fingers about her wrist.
“No. I want… I want to talk to you.”
“Save your strength for the physician. Oh, do let me go! You’ll bruise my flesh.”
He released her and she sat up.
“I haven’t the strength to make you stay. But I’m apt to decline into a blue melancholy without you.” He swallowed and closed his eyes and spent a few moments regaining his breath. “That would wound my pride far greater than any wound to my body.”
Deb was suddenly curious. “Who did this to you?”
“Men of little consequence.” He sighed his annoyance. “They weren’t particularly good swordsmen. Uncle Lucian will be disgusted with me.”
“Uncle Lucian?”
“Premier swordsman in France and England in his day. He thinks I lack grace in my movements. He’s right.”
“You should have shot ’em!” Deb said savagely.
Julian smiled. “Uncle Lucian? I know he thinks me a sad trial on my parents and never has a good word to say on my behalf but—”
“Silly! Not Uncle Lucian, the cowardly curs who did this to you. Why didn’t you use pistols? Much quicker result and you need not break a sweat.”
“Precisely. Uncle Lucian deplores the methods of chivalry employed by the modern youth.”
“But you’re not exactly—Sorry!”
“I’m hardly in my dotage, dear girl,” Julian drawled. “And to a man in his sixties, five and twenty is barely of an age to be out of leading strings.”
“Oh! Well, that’s not old at all,” Deb agreed. “Actually, I thought you older—Oh dear! I have the most wretched tongue and am forever saying the first thing that comes to mind.”
“Don’t let it bother you,” he said dryly, gaze flickering across her bare shoulders and slim arms. “I expect you thought me older because I’m graying at the temples?”
Deb met his gaze. “How—how many swordsmen were there?”
“Three.”
“Three? That’s unfair and dishonorable.”
“Yes. Tell me your name.”
“Name?” she repeated with downcast eyes, suddenly feeling selfconscious. “My name is unimportant.”
“I’m sorry you had to ruin your shirt,” he apologized after a short silence. When she looked away, out to the forest, unable to meet the steady gaze of his clear green eyes he said gently, “Won’t you tell me why you and—Jack? Yes, Jack, are fiddling in the forest at this hour? Wouldn’t the schoolroom be a more appropriate place?”
“I-I—must go…”
“My name is Julian,” he continued. “I can’t thank you if I don’t know your name.”
“I told you. It’s not important. I’d have done the same for-for—Oh! Anyone.”
“I see. Is it necessary for you to carry a pistol?”
Deb threw him a sullen look. “You’re very busy.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
“If you are, I’d like to offer my assistance.”
“Is that so?” she said with a twisted smile. “When do you think you will be in a position to offer your services? A month; two months from now?”
“I’m not about to beg,” he replied mildly.
“I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful,” she apologized; face a mask of hard indifference. “It’s just that you can’t help. So, please, forget you ever saw us or that I have a pistol. If Gerry ever found out… I’ll go and meet up with Dr. Medlow; show him the way through the forest.”
“Must you
carry a pistol?” he persisted in the same gentle tone.
Deb regarded him steadily then made up her mind that there could be little harm in confiding just a little bit about herself, especially to such a willing ear. Besides, it might just take his mind off the pain in his side. “My brother Gerry—Gerald—doesn’t know about the pistol. It belonged to Otto who gave it to me just before he died and said that I must keep it on me always when I am out alone. Otto was my other brother and my best friend and Jack’s father. He was a splendid musician and Jack has his talent. If Jack is to go to Paris to be tutored under Evelyn Ffolkes, then he must practice. But as Gerry has forbidden us to play our violas, Jack and I come out here to be alone, and so the servants won’t report back to him. So you see, that’s why I carry a pistol.”
“Gerry has no ear for music?”
Deb’s brown eyes lit up. “Gerry is tone deaf.”
“Hence he has no appreciation of Jack’s talent.”
“Precisely!”
Julian’s breathing became labored again and he half-closed his eyes. Deb thought he was about to faint again until he smiled and said in a contrived tone of disinterest, “I dare say Gerry has the same lack of appreciation for beauty. If you were my sister I’d take better care of you. I certainly wouldn’t allow you out of the schoolroom, dressed in a man’s shirt and without a corset.”
“You obviously have no idea what it’s like to be spied upon!” she said indignantly. “I can’t be expected to sneak out of the house with Jack if I must first wake my maid to lace me into a corset. Brigitte would have the whole house up within five minutes of my departure.”
“Well then, that certainly excuses you.”
“And you are a bad judge of age. I will be one and twenty very soon.”
“Accept my apologies. You look much younger. Perhaps because you aren’t wearing your corset…?”
Deb gaped at him. “Because I’m not wearing my corset?” she repeated incredulously. “Your manners are appalling. If you weren’t wounded I’d—I’d—”
“Yes?” he asked expectantly, shoulders shaking with silent laughter. “You would…?”
A crimson flush washed over her breasts and up her throat but Deb bravely looked him in the eyes to tell him what she thought of his insolence when she noticed a spot of fresh blood on the bandage and that he was trembling.
“You’re shivering!” she announced, all embarrassment forgotten.
“Yes. I’m cold and can’t move my legs. No matter, the physician will be here shortly.”
Only then did she realize that as well as being practically naked from the waist up she was still straddled atop the injured duelist’s thighs and had been comfortably seated on his lap for quite some time. Hiding her embarrassment behind anger, she admonished him as she scrambled off his long legs and brushed down the layers of her crushed petticoats.
“You should’ve said something instead of letting me sit there rattling on at you!”
“And cut short our tête-à-tête? Now that would’ve been bad mannered.”
“You must be a lunatic!”
“Yes, I must be,” Julian answered with a private smile and closed his eyes.
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He saw her from across the ballroom.
A striking beauty was staring straight at him.
Jonathon brought himself up short and stared back.
He couldn’t help himself.
He could count on three fingers the occasions he had crossed paths with exquisite feminine beauty that it stopped the breath in his throat; twice on the Indian subcontinent, once in the East Indies, and now here, this very minute, in this ballroom, on this green wet island. So it was only natural he should give himself the leisure to drink her in. His admiring gaze wandered from her honey-blonde hair that fell in heavy ringlets over one bare shoulder, to the porcelain skin of her décolletage glowing flawless against the bottomless black of her gown. He would not have been male had his gaze not lingered on her ample breasts, barely contained in a square cut bodice. He tried to find fault with her heart-shaped face, with the small straight nose and determined chin, and with her unusually oblique eyes, but what was there to fault?
Smiling to himself, he fancied everything he saw, and everything he could not he was sure was just as alluring.
He wondered at her age. Not that it mattered. It was a game he played to pass the time at social functions such as this. Dressed all in black and wearing no jewelry about her slender throat or wrists he supposed she was a widow, and thus not in the first flush of youth.
What was a widow doing here?
His fascination increased tenfold.
For all his limited experience of the London social scene, Jonathon knew well enough that widows did not attend social gatherings of this sort, particularly not such a renowned event at the height of the Season. Perhaps her mourning was almost at an end and she was chaperoning one of the young things here tonight? Surely, she was not old enough to have a daughter of marriageable age? Jonathon pulled a face. For some unfathomable reason he did not like the idea that she may have been a child-bride.
Why was she staring at him?
She stood so still, with her hands clasped in front of her, it was as if she was a statue carved of alabaster draped in black cloth; as much a fixture of the ballroom as a blazing chandelier or the enormous, richly woven tapestry hanging behind her. And so it seemed when dancers began pairing up and passed her as if she was indeed no more than part of the furniture. Why? Perhaps she was so well known in Society that her incredible beauty was taken for granted? In a ballroom awash with beautiful young things draped in silks of soft creams, pinks, and blues, she was a real head turner.
Jonathon found it impossible not to stare.
He watched as some of the guests even went so far as to go out of their way not to look at her, passing in a wide arc, eyes fixed forward or down to the polished floorboards. The one or two young ladies who did cast a curious, furtive glance in the beauty’s direction were instantly reprimanded in furious undertones by parents and guardians alike and quickly cast their gaze away, heads hung, as if in shame at having committed a grave transgression.
Why was she being deliberately avoided?
Why did no one acknowledge her?
Why did no one stop and talk to her?
Why was she being neglected?
It burned him up to see her alone and forsaken.
It was unlikely the beauty had a sordid past or lived openly as some lucky nobleman’s mistress for she wouldn’t have been invited amongst this august company. The Duke of Roxton was an incorruptible prude and devoted family man, a rare bird amongst his preening peers. The King couldn’t praise the Duke’s example highly enough; a compliment that was so much sniggered about in Society drawing rooms that even Jonathon, just six months in the capital, had heard it repeated often enough. Whatever the reason for her social ostracism, it was of supreme indifference to him. He was determined to make her acquaintance, curiosity and allure compelled him.
A burst of wild laughter close by brought him out of his reverie. Tommy would know the beauty’s identity and her story. He always had the latest gossip. Collecting social minutiae about Society that families desperately tried to suppress was Tommy Cavendish’s favorite pastime, second only to eating. And so with no regard for the two turbaned dowagers who were filling Lord Cavendish’s insatiable appetite for scandal with the latest wicked crumbs, Jonathon caught at the stiff skirts of the nobleman’s frockcoat and unceremoniously pulled him backwards to stand at his side.
“Tommy! Tommy, attend me!” he demanded without taking his gaze from the beauty. “She’s in widow’s drapery and she’s being ignored. Why? What is she doing here?”
“Good Lord, don’t tell me one of the fairer sex has finally piqued your interest? Bravo! Who, old dear?” asked his lordship, a wave of his lace handkerchief to the departing dowagers
who flounced off in disgust at being so rudely interrupted by a tanned colossus of undetermined social consequence. He hurriedly plastered his quizzing glass to a watery eye and swept an eager roving stare out across the ballroom, the first minuet of the evening underway, before running his eye down to Jonathon’s large feet, then up to his head of thick, shoulder-length hair. “Are you truly six feet four inches?”
Jonathon pulled the quizzing glass out of Lord Cavendish’s chubby fingers and let it drop loose on its riband. “Have done with that silly affectation, Tommy. And that hideous black patch, if that’s what it is, is also beyond enough. A wart at best.”
“Brute,” Lord Cavendish responded without offence as he touched the corner of his mouth with a fat pinkie to assure himself the heart-shaped mouche remained in place. “Those of us who can’t be Samsons must attract Delilahs in other ways.”
“Patch and paint doesn’t do it for you, Tommy. Trust me. What would Kitty say?”
Lord Cavendish shrugged and patted his portly belly, very snug in its tight-fitting Chinoiserie silk waistcoat. “M’wife? Told me to wear a half-moon rather than a heart, and at the temple not the mouth. But what would dearest Kitty know about patches and paint? And, I’m not the one who needs a wife—”
“Tommy, don’t start.”
Lord Cavendish pretended ignorance and swept a silken arm out towards the crowd gathered on the edge of the dance floor. “Start? My dear friend, the bridal campaign started in earnest months back, if you hadn’t noticed. And where better to find a nice little wife than at this august gathering. Pick of the grapes, this bunch. No one with a relative below the rank of Viscount and it’s not as if you have to marry money. There’s a few dainty dishes with a pedigree as long as your arm and no funds to match. Kitty thinks—”
“No, Tommy! No.”
“—that there are at least five delicious puddings for you to choose from; all in their early twenties and in their second Season. Although, I wouldn’t discount the Porter-Lewisham pikelet, even if she is eighteen.”
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