by KJ Charles
Yours
Philip Rookwood
Guy stared at the words. “Broken leg,” he repeated. His voice sounded odd.
“I fear so, sir,” the servant said. “Sir Philip and Mr. Raven found Miss Frisby in a field, I understand.”
“But—is she all right?”
“No, sir. Her leg is broken.”
Mr. Welland gripped Guy’s shoulder and gave it a little shake. “Come on, young fellow. Your sister needs you. May I—?”
Guy handed him the letter. Mr. Welland read it, brows rising. “The lady is at Rookwood Hall? Well, that won’t do from what I hear. No offence,” he added, with a nod to the man in black, which was superbly ignored. “But she’ll have to come home from that place quick smart.”
“I believe Dr. Martelo feels that moving her would be unwise,” the servant said, apparently unmoved by the slur on Rookwood Hall and its inhabitants. “He is in attendance on the young lady and will be available whenever you wish to speak to him.”
“I’m coming,” Guy said. “Mrs. Harbottle, please pack what Amanda might need for the night, just in case. And—can you come with me, for attendance?”
The housekeeper grimaced. “Now, Master Guy, you know there’s Harbottle laid up with his rheumatics.”
“Jane, then.”
“I couldn’t ask Jane to go to such a place, Master Guy, not even for Miss Amanda.” She gave the black-clad servant a minatory glare, as though he were poised to ravish the maid-of-all-work. “You bring her home, that’ll be best.”
“I’ll see what needs doing when I get there,” Guy said, unable to waste more time. “Please, pack now. I need to go.”
IT WAS ALMOST FOUR miles to Rookwood Hall. They rode at a brisk canter. Guy would have liked to gallop, but he wasn’t sufficiently familiar with the horse or, really, the lanes. They’d gone around by other ways for most of his life.
The servant, who was named Cornelius, rode with him in silence, for which Guy was glad. If he’d talked he’d have started babbling, he knew. How bad is her leg? How bad is Sir Philip? Is she in danger? What’s going to happen now? Cornelius couldn’t answer any of that, or wouldn’t, most probably, so Guy concentrated on his seat and tried not to think about terrible things. Amanda in pain. Amanda in the clutches of Sir Philip Rookwood, with his hellfire club and his orgies. Anyone, anyone at all and most especially Aunt Beatrice, finding out that Amanda was at Rookwood Hall, the place from which everything wrong with their lives had sprung. Mr. Welland’s reaction had been quite enough, and he probably didn’t even know the old story; it would be unthinkable for any gently bred young lady to spend the night at Rookwood Hall with its master in residence.
If he’s laid a finger on Amanda... Guy thought, then realised he didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
It was still light, though the shadows were long and the evening sun gold. If Amanda was well enough to travel, Guy would have her home tonight, he told himself. It was only four miles, some sort of pallet could surely be arranged. If not, well, he’d stay by her side all night, awake, and get her back in the morning. The Rookwoods wouldn’t cast any further blight over her life. He wouldn’t let them.
The ride seemed interminable but at last he was cantering up the drive to Rookwood Hall. He had an impression of glowering grey stone wreathed with ivy. The great oaken door gaped open, and two men waited in front of it, both perched with shocking casualness on stone parapets.
A groom came forward as Guy brought Daffodil to an awkward halt. He slid off the horse, feeling the ache in his legs and backside from the unaccustomed exercise, and walked, stiff-legged and ridiculous, up to the house’s entranceway, towards the men.
One of them was a lean sort a few inches taller than Guy, with fairish hair and a sneering look, and the other was a black man. Guy had never in his life seen a dark-skinned man except in pictures, where they were clad in outlandish flowing gowns, or lion skins, or beggarly rags. This one wore breeches and a coat like any gentleman might, and was smoking a cigarillo. He pitched it away as Guy approached and said, in a voice that had nothing of exotic shores about it, “Here you go, Phil. Outraged brother. Have fun.”
The fair man gave him a scathing look. That would be Sir Philip Rookwood, then, whose family had ruined Guy’s life.
“Sir Philip,” he said, cheeks feeling rather stiff. “I’m Guy Frisby.”
“Thank God you’ve got here,” Rookwood said. “Your sister seems to have taken a very nasty fall while riding uninvited over my east meadow for reasons I cannot imagine. Have you not brought someone to attend her?”
“I’m here.”
“I meant a woman,” Rookwood said impatiently. “This isn’t a female household, hence I specifically told you— Oh, for God’s sake. You’re going to have to take her home tonight if we can’t sort something out. Cornelius! Can you organise a woman?”
The black man snorted. Rookwood swung round to him. “Contribute or shut up.”
“Contribute? What else do you want me to do?” He slid off the parapet to his feet, proving to be a little taller than Sir Philip and very solidly built, and nodded to Guy. “John Raven, at your service. Your sister’s with the doctor now, so why don’t you have a word with him first.”
“Because David Martelo doesn’t run this house,” Rookwood snapped. “If Frisby wants to take his sister home, he shall, and should.”
“I do want to,” Guy said. “Very much. And I wish to see her at once, and if she has come to any harm—”
“—it is hardly my responsibility.” Rookwood spoke over him. “I did mention that she was trespassing, I think.”
“Twice,” Guy said. “You’ve made it entirely clear that she is not here at your invitation and the sooner I can take her away the happier I dare say we shall all be. I would like to see her now.”
Rookwood lifted a sardonic brow. “This way.”
Guy followed him into the house. It was rather bare inside and rather dark, with panelled walls. He could smell wine and cigars and spirits, and as they passed one closed door there was a burst of masculine laughter.
“She’s in the Blue Drawing-Room,” Rookwood said, walking past. “Here.”
He knocked at the door. A man’s voice said, loudly and with a slight accent, “Clear off.”
Rookwood opened the door, just a crack. “David? The lady’s brother.”
“Good. Come in.”
Rookwood opened the door and waved Guy forward. He went in and saw Amanda.
She lay on a trestle of some sort, white and unconscious, her hair loose. Her skirts had been cut away, baring her legs to the tops of her thighs. One leg was bandaged, the visible skin purple-red and swollen, the bandages soaked scarlet. A dark man stood by her with his hands on her bare skin, and the room stank of brandy.
Guy made a strangled noise and started forward. A powerful hand gripped his arm from behind. “Hoi,” Rookwood said. “Frisby, calm down. That’s the damned doctor!”
“What the devil—” Guy struggled, trying to wrench his arm free from the painful grip, and failed.
The doctor had his hands up. “Mr. Frisby, is it? Your sister has sustained a bad fracture of the thighbone. If you start a fight in here and knock her leg, you will kill her.”
That got through as nothing else might have. Guy said, “What?”
“The bone broke badly,” the doctor said. “It tore the skin and came very close to the great femoral vein. She has lost a lot of blood. The leg was not easy to set, and if the bone shifts out of place it will probably do a great deal more damage—perhaps too much for her to bear. So you will calm yourself, or you will leave this room. Do you understand?”
“Why does she look like that?” Guy demanded. He couldn’t take his eyes from her white face. Amanda always had a high colour, no need for rouge on her cheeks, and was far more sun-kissed than any conventional lady would be thanks to long walks and rides, and to not caring for her complexion any more. This ashen, unmoving statue wasn’t Amanda.<
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“Pain,” the doctor said briefly. “And also laudanum and brandy. Setting the bone was an unpleasant business. She fainted, which was just as well.”
Guy moved forward, shaking off Rookwood’s restraining hands, and looked down at his sister. She was cold and still and pale, and panic clutched his heart. She’s breathing, he told himself. You can see her breathing. Stop.
“Thank you for—for helping, Doctor,” he managed.
“We’ll see if I have,” the doctor said. “My name is Martelo. I think you have brought an attendant?”
“No,” Guy said. “We don’t—her maid wouldn’t—there’s our housekeeper but her husband isn’t well. I’m here. I’ll do what you need.”
“What I need is a skilled nurse. Is there any such to be summoned here? Your doctor?”
“That’s Dr. Bewdley.” Guy contemplated the man in front of him. Dr. Martelo was very dark, with huge tangled black eyebrows over sloe-black eyes, a prominent nose, extremely black hair, decidedly brown skin. His powerful bare forearms were liberally coated with dark hair too. He was surely no more than thirty, and he looked and sounded foreign, and Guy couldn’t begin to imagine Dr. Bewdley’s reaction. “Er.”
“Send for him and tell him we need a nurse,” Martelo said. “In the meantime, can you obey orders?”
“Yes?” Guy managed.
“Good. Summon your doctor, and anyone else you can to make her comfortable. Philip, we will need a truckle bed in here for the nights.”
“Wait a moment,” Rookwood said. “I think, and I believe Frisby agrees, that the lady should be moved to her own home as soon as possible.”
“Naturally,” Martelo said. “I’ll let you know. Meanwhile—”
“By as soon as possible, I meant today.”
The doctor made an indescribable noise of mingled incredulity and scorn. He sounded like an outraged horse. “Today? Nonsense. A fortnight at the earliest and only then if I am quite satisfied the bone has knit well enough.”
“A fortnight?” Rookwood and Guy said, in horrified chorus.
“At the very earliest. Not one moment before I am satisfied. Not one, Philip.”
“But she can’t stay here,” Guy said.
“No, she can’t leave. Have you not listened to me?”
“This house is not appropriate for a lady’s sickroom,” Rookwood said levelly. “It is a bachelor establishment.”
“Then bring in some women, if the lady’s reputation is at risk while she lies on her sickbed,” Martelo said.
“Of course it’s at risk,” Rookwood snapped. “Her state of health has nothing to do with it.”
“And is all that concerns me. Find a way to satisfy the proprieties if you must, but summon me a nurse, and get out of my sickroom.”
“It’s my drawing-room,” Rookwood pointed out.
“It’s mine now. Go away, both of you. I need to look at this leg.”
Guy found himself standing outside the drawing-room, slightly stunned, with the evicted master of the house, whose expression was distinctly sour.
“Well,” Rookwood said, mouth pursed. “This is a cursed business. Naturally you will consider my house as your own until your sister can be removed.” That was perhaps the least sincere-sounding offer Guy had ever heard. “There is plenty of space in this barrack, at least. I suppose you will stay in the sickroom, but she must have a woman with her too. Can you send for her maid?”
“She wouldn’t set foot in this house,” Guy said. It was a statement of fact, not intended as an insult, but when he saw Rookwood’s brownish brows shoot up he realised how it had sounded. He opened his mouth to stammer an apology but Rookwood got in first.
“I do beg your pardon, Mr. Frisby. Had I known Miss Frisby intended to trespass on my land and then colonise my house for an infirmary, I should have conducted myself differently.”
“Had my father known your brother’s intent to—to trespass on his land, I dare say we should all have conducted ourselves differently for the last few years,” Guy said furiously. “But we all have to live with the consequences of his actions, don’t we? I want my sister and myself in your house no more than you do, Sir Philip, so perhaps you will do me the favour of summoning Dr. Bewdley and his nurse now. I should like Amanda examined by someone I have reason to trust.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Dear God,” Philip said, collapsing into a chair some time later. “The boy is a plank. An utter plank. Possibly the most outrageous specimen of plankhood I have ever encountered. A fortnight! God damn Martelo, and Amanda Frisby with him.”
“Have a drink,” Corvin said soothingly. He didn’t actually get up to pour one, but it was a kindly thought, which Philip acknowledged with an obscene gesture as he went over to the decanter. “That’s the way,” Corvin said. “Pour me another while you’re there.”
“What are we to understand by ‘plank’?” enquired Sheridan. He was short, sharp, cocky as a schoolboy, and still, after a year’s partnership, running rings round Philip’s old friend Harry, who constantly looked as befuddled and proud as any bridegroom on his wedding day. Philip felt a vague urge to say something avuncular every time he saw the pair of them.
“Oh, the obvious,” Corvin answered on Philip’s behalf. “Straight, unbending, wooden, and only suitable to be walked on.”
“His sister’s in a bad way,” John said. “That leg was nasty.”
“You don’t know anything about it,” Philip snapped.
“I helped set it.”
“You pulled where David told you to pull. Stop pretending you’re a bonesetter. Brute strength, that’s what you provided.”
“Strength and a bit of common sense, which is why he didn’t ask you.”
Philip held up a hand in acknowledgement, partly because John had won that round, partly because he was damned grateful not to have been asked. The woman had been screaming and sobbing when she’d been brought in, dress soaked in blood, and David had insisted there was no time to lose. John had acted as his assistant to pull the leg straight without causing any more damage, and emerged from the room with bloody hands, stained cuffs, and his normally rich complexion gone the colour of dry earth. The idea of wrenching a broken leg around made Philip feel queasy, he had not enjoyed John’s vivid description of the sound of bone-ends scraping together, and in any case, the woman in the drawing-room was Eleanor Frisby’s daughter, and Philip wouldn’t have touched her at gunpoint.
The Frisby children, in his house, for a fortnight. “Oh God,” Philip said aloud. “Someone tell me David was exaggerating. Tell me she’ll walk away tomorrow.”
“Her foot was all but pointing backwards,” John said. “You’re stuck with them. Well, you’re stuck with the girl, and you won’t get the plank out of here while he’s got her virtue to protect.”
“I’m not letting the plank out of here,” Philip said. “I’ll bar the doors if I must. The last thing I need is to find myself accused of compromising Eleanor Frisby’s daughter.”
John’s lips rounded in silent surprise, then he started to laugh. “Oh, my God, I didn’t think of that. Oh, that’s a good one.”
“Hit him, Corvin,” Philip requested.
“You have to admit, it has a certain piquancy,” Corvin said, but he leaned over to swipe a hand. John ducked sideways mostly as a formality.
“Who’s Eleanor Frisby?” Sheridan asked. “The girl’s mother? Do you know her?”
“Phil’s brother did,” Corvin replied on his behalf. “In the Biblical sense, you understand.”
“Shut up.” Philip looked around the room. They lacked Isabella Crayford, since her Marianne had a theatrical engagement, and David Martelo was still attending the Frisby girl, but otherwise they were all here. Corvin and John, his lifelong companions and the heart of the Murder, impossibly dear and endlessly exasperating in their very different ways. Harry with that perennially surprised look of his, and Sheridan resting his head against the bigger man’s shoulder. George Penn the com
poser, and Ned Caulfield, deeply reserved and extraordinarily gifted, who played the violin for him. These were Philip’s closest friends. They were here for comfort and safety, to think and talk without constraint, to touch as they chose, or sleep in the same bed without worrying about it. That was what the Murder offered, it was a rare privilege for some of them—for all of them, really, except Corvin, who could afford safety—and Philip was furious that the Frisbys had arrived to ruin it.
He sighed. “Eleanor Frisby, the mother of the girl and the plank, was the woman with whom my brother ran away.”
That ought to have been a startling revelation. It wasn’t, because Corvin and John remembered it all, and the others, not being in Society, clearly had never heard of the great Rookwood scandal. Sheridan glanced around at the other blank looks and offered, “Well, that’s...awkward, I suppose?”
“It was a great deal more than awkward,” Corvin said, taking over as always where there was drama to be found. “Sir James, as he had recently become, was some five years older than Phil, which made him twenty-one when he distinguished himself by absconding with his neighbour’s wife, the famous Frisby. She was thirty if she was a day, and by all accounts merely passable in looks—”
“The plank is well enough,” George observed. “If that’s the pretty boy who was shouting at Phil in the hall.”
“I dare say, but in any case, the mother swept young James off his feet, age and beauty or no, such that he was not content to make it the usual discreet affair. Well, he couldn’t if he wanted. Her sister had married extremely well—Easterbury’s younger son, a shocking dullard—and that aristocratic connection was all that was needed. The scandal spread like wildfire. James and la belle Frisby fled to the Continent, abandoning on his part an estate—in which we now sit—and on her part a husband and two children. The husband took it poorly.”