A smile also tugged at the corner of her lips as she listened to a sonorous baritone soothe and encourage as the tall man made a sling and secured his patient’s arm to his chest.
Years at Cambridge still never trained the Yorkshire out of Titus’s voice. His vowels were as long and lush as ever.
Nora knew she had any great number of things to be agonizing over. Her life had fragmented in one catastrophic explosion, and she lay in the crater with the damage yet to be entirely assessed.
And yet, even though the pain in her shoulder became increasingly insistent, she allowed herself the sweet gift of this unguarded moment to listen to a voice she’d never expected to hear again.
Titus Conleith.
His manner was everything she remembered, both aloof and kind. But there was a gruffness to his tone that she didn’t recognize, as if fatigue had paved his throat with gravel and pitch.
After finishing with his patient, his shadow drew closer, and Nora couldn’t say why she feigned sleep before he approached.
Perhaps she wasn’t ready to learn what he thought of her after all these years.
He paused at her bedside for a moment too long, and she simply listened to the breath he drew into his lungs and exhaled over her.
They were once again sharing the same air. She could hardly believe it.
In response, her breaths became shorter, less constant, catching as he reached down and pulled the bedclothes away from her shoulders.
Strange, that this should be happening again. That he’d brought her back from the edge of death a second time.
Had he bathed her as he had when they were younger? Did he care to?
She clenched her jaw against the pain as he ever so gently checked beneath the clean bandage that the astonishingly strong nurse had applied a few hours ago.
Her eyes cracked open of their own accord, hungry for the sight of him.
Nora had always known he’d make an even more handsome man than he’d been a lad, but she’d never guessed he’d grow even taller than he’d been at seventeen. His wide jaw and sharp chin were buttressed by a perfectly starched collar. The cream of his shirt made brilliant by a bronze vest that looked exquisitely tailored to his deep chest and long torso.
In contrast, he wore no jacket, his tie was charmingly askew, and his cheeks wanted shaving. His shadow beard was tinted more russet than dark, advertising his Irish roots.
He didn’t notice her assessment of him as his gaze inspected her wound with absorbed thoroughness.
Evidently gratified by what he found, he replaced the bandage and, with utmost care, tugged the hospital gown back into place. Lingering, he pulled the bedclothes to cover her and smoothed the edge over her good arm with a large palm, as if unable to abide a wrinkle.
It was the first time anyone had touched her with deference in as long as she could remember.
“Titus.” His name escaped as a rasp from a throat dry with disuse and tight with emotion.
He straightened, yanking his hand away as if she’d burned him.
Their gazes met for a moment so fraught with intensity, it would have struck her down had she not already been prone. Every word ever said and unsaid between them overflowed the filmy white chamber with a tension so thick she could have plucked entire expletives out of thin air.
In the space of a blink, all expression evaporated from his face, and a shutter made of iron slammed down behind his eyes.
“Doctor Conleith,” he corrected with careful dispassion.
With those two words, he drew the boundaries between the continents separating them, and erected fortifications that would have protected against an entire fleet of Viking invaders.
It was what she deserved, but it still devastated her.
Don’t hate me. Please.
She opened her mouth, unable to truly believe they had a moment alone.
“Higgins, it seems Lady Woodhaven is awake,” he clipped, effectively cutting her off.
“Is she now?” The sturdy nurse appeared at the head of her bed as if quite by magic, and leaned over to press a hand to her brow before taking a lantern from the side of her bed to shine in her eyes. Both doctor and nurse bent to check in each eye with an almost comical thoroughness.
For what, Nora couldn’t begin to guess.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Lady Woodhaven.” Nurse Higgins gave an endearing, gap-toothed smile that took years from her square features as she lifted Nora’s head to allow her a few sips of cool water. “Looks like you’re going to pull through.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Nora?” The wall of sheets was batted aside as if they barred the gates to a keep. Mercy, of all people, charged in like a battering ram beribboned in sapphire silk.
“Nora, thank God.” She made her way to the bedside, clutching at the headboard and hovering as if she wanted to do something but couldn’t figure out what. “Are you in very much pain? Do you require anything? Please don’t fret. Pru and Morley will be here in…” She checked the silver watch she kept on a chain in the pocket of a velvet cobalt vest. “Four minutes ago.” Her dark gold brows drew together. “Odd, it’s not like them to be late.”
As was often the case, Felicity followed in Mercy’s wake, though she hung back, clutching a book to her chest as if it could shield her from conversations with people.
“Traffic on the bridge is insufferable this time of day,” she managed helpfully before flushing scarlet when she noticed Mercy, Titus, Nora, and Nurse Higgins all turned to listen to what she’d said.
As Felicity held the sheet aside with one hand, Nora was able to see past her to what she noticed was only one rather large but ramshackle room. A waiting area consisted of six chairs in a circle, one of which was just vacated by a roughshod woman who was helping the man with his arm in a sling out the door.
The proximity to the windows told her she might occupy one of two or three beds in the entire place.
She blinked back to Titus, who lingered at the foot of her bed, having made room for her sisters to stand opposite Nurse Higgins.
It distressed Nora to find him in such a dilapidated clinic. With his brilliance, he could have secured a dignified position anywhere in the Empire. He’d such dreams when they were young, such ambitions. To alleviate suffering. To fight disease. To advance scientific medicine.
Well, they were neither of them young anymore.
She’d always hoped that life had been kinder to him, because of what she’d done.
And now, it seemed, even that hope was dashed.
Hot tears stung her eyes and, for the first time since she’d awoken, she was glad he wouldn’t look directly at her.
Apparently interpreting her expression incorrectly, Mercy repeated, “Are you in very much pain?” She looked imploringly up at Titus. “Should we give her something?”
Nora was in enormous pain, but it had less to do with her shoulder than the aching heart beneath it. “I-I’m all right, Mercy.” She managed, with great effort, to lift her cheeks into the weak semblance of a smile. “I’d like to clear my head a little, I think.”
“I agree that’s best,” Titus addressed Mercy rather than her, directly, as if her vivid sister could act as a conduit between them. “Though if the pain becomes untenable, I’ve found it can hinder healing.”
“So, don’t you suffer needlessly,” Mercy ordered, stroking a lace glove over her hair.
Oh no. Her hair. Nora swallowed a pained groan. She couldn’t bear to imagine what she looked like, and with her first love looming over her like some disheveled Adonis.
It shouldn’t matter. But it did.
“Can you believe this is the Titus Conleith who used to work at Cresthaven?” Mercy presented him with the ease of someone who’d become well acquainted whilst she was asleep. “He saved your life not once but twice! Surely you remember, Nora? He and Felicity used to exchange books, and sometimes he’d carry our things out on picnics and shopping.”
Nora’s stomach turned abruptly sour at the words. Even as they’d carried on together, she’d treated him like the servant he was. He’d saddled her horses and carried her parcels, and she’d taken the assistance for granted.
“I remember everything,” she whispered, hoping the hollow note in her voice didn’t reveal her.
His expression never changed, though the hand that had been resting on the iron footboard of her bed now tightened.
Felicity, dressed in a more subdued blue gown than her twin, adjusted her spectacles before reaching down to brush tentative fingers over Nora’s hand. “Do you remember what happened before you were…injured?”
A dreadful gravity washed her in pinpricks of pain, starting at her scalp and trickling down her spine to land in her gut. “William…”
She couldn’t force any more words around the growing lump of emotion in her throat.
If her father was the architect of her misery, then William was the engineer. For over a decade, he’d hurt, manipulated, and humiliated her. He had killed five men because Nora had allowed them to touch her.
Thank God he hadn’t known about Titus. Thank God. Thank God.
“They cremated your late husband’s remains,” Felicity said gently, “and I took the liberty of having them interred at the family cemetery in Shropshire, without much ado.”
Nora started, then winced as the slightest movement sent a burning sort of pain through her shoulder. “How long have I been here?”
“Four nights,” Mercy answered.
“We’ve been taking turns watching over you so Dr. Conleith can see to his other patients, but he examines you every morning and is here every evening.” Felicity dared a glance up at him before her gaze darted away. “And we all meet here for tea or supper, just as Dr. Conleith does his final rounds.”
Nora did her best to blink away confusion. “We all?”
Mercy gestured expansively to the clinic at large. “Felicity, Prudence, and Morley, of course. Did you know he and Dr. Conleith fought in the war together?”
“Morley did most of the fighting,” Titus said with a self-effacing grimace. “I was merely a medical officer.”
He was never merely anything.
Nora had known he’d left Cambridge for a while before returning, but she hadn’t discovered why until now.
Had war crafted the boy she’d loved into this man of brutal strength and sinew? Had it hardened his gentle eyes and deepened the brackets beside his mouth?
“I’m touched,” Nora whispered. “That you were all here by my side, despite…” Despite the damage her husband had wrought on the entire family.
“Of course we were!” Mercy exclaimed. “Nora, had we known what William was like. What you had to endure—”
“Mercy.” Felicity seized her twin’s hand, looking as if she wanted to brain her sister with the tome she still held. “Let’s not speak of that now, she’s only just regained consciousness.”
“Right.” Chagrined, Mercy dropped her hands to her sides and clutched at her skirts as if she could contain herself that way.
“Mama and Papa send their…good wishes,” Felicity said with an unconvincing smile. “They’ll be ever so relieved to hear that you’re out of the proverbial woods.”
Would they be? Nora wasn’t so certain. It might have been easier for them if she and William had both perished on the docks.
They could bury her shame forever.
Mention of the Baron and Baroness of Cresthaven seemed to galvanize Titus into action. He pulled a notebook from a pocket hanging at the foot of her bed. “The bullet created a small tear in your axillary vein, through which you lost a great deal of blood,” he informed the notes as he flipped through them with industrious fervor. “That can be blamed for your lengthy lack of consciousness. However, there have been no signs of further bleeding nor infection. I see no reason you cannot return to Cresthaven Place tomorrow to recover. I’ll send notes and diagrams of my surgical repair for the attending doctor and—”
“Actually.” Mercy held up a finger as if trying to get the attention of a teacher in class, though she looked nonplussed when it worked.
As if she didn’t want to say what came next.
“Father mentioned… well, he thinks it’s best you do not convalesce at Cresthaven Place. Not until William’s crimes are all uncovered, and the extent of the scandal is known. There was no talking him out of it. You know how he is.”
After so many years, her parents’ lack of concern shouldn’t hurt so much.
And yet…
Nora sighed. Perhaps she’d woken up too soon, after all. “It’s all right. I would like to sleep in my own bed before I have to relinquish it to whomever will become the next Viscount Woodhaven.”
“Do you know who that will be?” Mercy asked with an anxious wrinkle between her brows.
“I haven’t the faintest idea. William had no siblings nor cousins, and was still convinced that I’d eventually give him an heir.”
A soft clack rang in the silence that followed, sounding very much like teeth crashing together. Had that vein been so prominent in Titus’s forehead before?
Mercy blew a ringlet away from her eye. “I hope he’s not some strident old grump with a shrew for a wife. They can’t take your rooms in town, can they? I mean, you’re allowed a dowager stipend, are you not?”
Nurse Higgins adopted a rather protective posture over Nora, eliciting from her the most ridiculous urge to crawl into the matronly woman’s lap and sleep for days. “Now inn’t the best time to be concerning her ladyship with such things, child,” she gently reproached.
Sufficiently chastised, Mercy winced. “You’re right, of course. Do forget all about it, Nora. I’m certain it’ll work out.”
Nora closed her eyes, wishing for all the world that Titus was not here to witness this. Did he know about William’s crimes? About the wrongs she’d committed and the lovers she’d taken?
Likely.
She didn’t care who the next Viscount Woodhaven was. She pitied him. All her husband had left him was a title tainted by scandal and weighted by untold debts.
“I—I should like to go home,” she said, hating the plaintive wobble in her voice.
“That won’t be possible, I’m afraid.” A second masculine voice announced the arrival of Nora’s recently acquired brother-in-law, Sir Carlton Morley.
He’d pulled the sheet behind Titus aside, and held it so his wife could duck around and rush to Nora before he reached out to greet Titus with a firm and familiar handshake.
Prudence, striking in a fitted day dress striped with gold and burgundy, took her place next to Nurse Higgins on Nora’s uninjured side.
“There’s so much to say,” she whispered, kissing Nora’s knuckles in a very uncommon display of affection for members of the Goode family.
Prudence had always been like that, however. Just a flower in need of rain, one who’d bloomed beneath her husband’s protective, demonstrative care.
“Why can’t Nora go home?” Mercy asked, cutting to the salient point as she was wont to do.
Though Titus stood a few inches taller than Morley, the Chief Inspector maintained the air of a man who commanded not only a room, but the largest and most organized police force in the civilized world. His midnight blue suit turned his glacial eyes an impossible, arresting color, and, unlike Titus, his cravat was perfect and not a single strand of fair hair would dare disobey.
The Chief Inspector was a famously contained man, but he’d demonstrated that his heart was true, and his love ran deep. He’d been prepared to die for Pru.
He’d killed for her without hesitation.
Nora wondered if he blamed her for her husband’s actions. If he suspected her of involvements in William’s crimes. As it was, his sharp, angular features were softened with concern as he delivered distasteful news with care. “We obtained a warrant to search your house for evidence of your husband’s cohorts, and we found it ransacked.”
A sudden dizziness had her tightening her grip on Prudence’s hand. “Was anyone hurt?”
“No. Needless to say, your butler’s resigned his position, as have your housekeeper and several other staff. It’s not safe for you to return home, Lady Woodhaven.”
A sudden headache stabbed Nora behind the eye, and her shoulder throbbed in earnest now, a burning pain adding to her discomfort.
But she’d been hurt plenty of times, and had to pretend that everything was fine.
She could do it now.
“What cause have you to worry that the burglars will return?” Nora asked.
He glanced at his wife, who threw warning daggers at him with her eyes.
“Tell me,” Nora demanded. “I must know.”
“There…was a note left by the invaders,” Prudence conveyed with palpable reluctance. “One demanding the crate that William had apparently neglected to deliver to them. They threatened to take it out of his flesh, Nora. Who is to say if they’ll come for you now that he’s…” She didn’t say the word dead.
“Lady Woodhaven.” Morley clutched the lapel of his coat, the only sign he had to fortify himself for the next question. “Do you know where your husband hid that money?”
“There’s never been any money,” Nora croaked, her anxiety dashing to the surface. “I’d taken to selling my jewels to pay the staff, and William squandered whatever salary he drew from the shipping company. He bragged that his newest venture was profitable, but I never saw the proof of it. I didn’t believe him, all told.”
She’d thought this was over. That she was finally free of him. How typical that even in death he could still threaten her safety and any chance at peace or happiness.
Morley’s critical assessment was more invasive than any medical examination she’d endured, but she was too tired and soul-weary to be troubled by it. “You truly have no idea who would be after your husband?”
Nora searched the white sheet draped as a canopy above her bed for answers, noting some of the plaster from the ceiling had dislodged and peppered shadows on the fabric. No doubt, the reason the canopy was hung in the first place. “I knew he had a new venture, but he wanted to keep his whereabouts a mystery to me, and I didn’t care to pry. I was stupid, I realize, but whatever took him away from the house…I encouraged it.”
Courting Trouble Page 8