Her voice broke on the last word, not from tears but from fighting increasingly unrelenting pain. Her breath began to catch in spasms as a burning sensation ripped through her shoulder with gasp-inducing zings.
This was all too much.
“She’s had quite enough,” said Titus, accepting a cool cloth from Higgins and crowding her family away. Towering over her, he bent to wipe a sheen of sweat from her brow and upper lip.
When he brought his face close like this, she could see every striation of metallic beauty glimmering in his eyes. She could make out the variations of color in his shadow of a beard.
She could marvel at the feel of a gentle hand on her brow. How novel it was. How necessary.
“Morley, you can interrogate her some other time. She’s in too much pain to be of use to you now,” he ordered.
Nora gaped up at him. How did he know she was in pain? She’d been so careful not to let on.
Because he was a good doctor. Probably the best.
“She’ll come home with us,” Prudence declared. “If these cretins are after her, then she should be somewhere she’s safe until Carlton has dealt with them.”
Nora shook her head, her stomach curling in relief to see that Nurse Higgins had passed Titus a syringe filled with welcome oblivion. “Your house is the first place they’d look for me after Cresthaven, Pru. I won’t put you and the Chief Inspector in danger.”
At that, Morley let out an undignified snort. “I’m entirely capable of protecting those in my own home.”
“But you cannot shirk your duties at Scotland Yard on my account,” she argued. “You’ll be away from home even more often if you’re personally after the brigands my husband apparently stole from.”
His expression was captured on the border between quizzical and offended. “I happen to know more than a few dangerous men who could keep you and my wife safe when I’m at the Yard.”
She turned to the head of the Morley family. “Pru, you’re with child. And until we know who my enemies are or how many—”
“She’ll recover at my clinic in Knightsbridge,” Titus announced before deftly sliding the needle into her arm and depressing the much-needed opiate into her vein.
Still, he refused to look her in the eye.
“You have a clinic in Knightsbridge?” Felicity asked from beside Nora, as agog as the rest of them.
Titus’s chin dipped in a curt nod as Morley elucidated. “The good doctor is one of the most prolific and progressive surgeons in practice today. Hospitals and universities alike are clamoring for his expertise, but he’s insisting on being a man of the people. You’re lucky, Lady Woodhaven, that this new charitable venture of his was operational, or I don’t know what we’d have done.”
“How impressive, Dr. Conleith,” Felicity marveled, staring up at him as if he’d hung the moon.
He took the needle from Nora’s arm and replaced it with a cloth, holding pressure there for a moment as he crooked a lip in Felicity’s direction. “I’ve told you to call me Titus, like in the old days.”
Nora almost burst into tears at the way a touch of warmth laced his voice with velvet.
It would be what she deserved, to have to watch him fall in love with sweet, young, darling Felicity. They had so much in common. They were both so true of heart and she was… well she was many things now.
An invalid. An adulteress. The penniless widow of a murdering thief. Barren, ill-used, and contaminated by scandal. She’d been barely younger than Felicity was now when she’d loved Titus.
When he’d loved her, in return.
They spoke around her as the medication pulled her back down into the void, their voices urgent and quiet at the same time.
A hollow ache lodged within her that the medicine could never touch.
Why would he keep her under his roof when he could barely bring himself to look at her?
Warlords and Dragons
What had he been thinking, insisting Nora stay beneath his roof when he could barely bring himself to look at her?
It was a question Titus asked himself every time he had to endure her presence on his examination table.
For twenty-three days, four hours and—he checked his watch—sixteen minutes, he had felt like some sort of mythic dragon with a captive maiden locked in his tower.
He didn’t want to see her.
And yet, he’d become a hollow sort of fiend at the thought of never seeing her again.
Initially, he’d assumed that in the five-story Gregorian mansion he’d turned into a private surgery facility, Nora would be easy to both protect and avoid.
Stashed in his personal suite situated in the lush living quarters on the top floor, she’d have her every physical and medical need addressed by an army of staff, and she would only require his presence to see to her post-surgical care in decreasing increments until she was healed.
It was the least he could do, under the circumstances.
For his part, Titus’s hours were so occupied, he barely had time to sleep, let alone think of her.
At least, that was the lie he told himself.
Using his current clinic to finance the start of five others dominated his every waking hour. He and Higgins visited at least one in each borough before the sun came up, and another at sunset, so they could spend the bulk of their time here at the Alcott Surgical Specialty Hospital.
He’d unfolded a cot in the corner of his first-floor office, and had defended the decision to Higgins’s raised eyebrows thusly, “It’s nearer the entrances in case of emergency, and deucedly convenient. I can’t imagine why I haven’t done so before.”
She’d pursed her lips and rolled her eyes, wisely neglecting to mention his guest rooms upstairs.
He didn’t have to remind her that to sleep in the same house as their guest would be scandalous and inappropriate.
To which she didn’t reply that no one in the world knew the former Viscountess of Woodhaven was in residence, and that she couldn’t possibly be the subject of more scandal than she currently was.
And he didn’t tell her to mind her own bloody business.
Though he did employ orderlies and security on his staff, he still felt it necessary to keep an eye on things. If someone was coming for Nora, they’d have to get through him and a bevy of sharp implements first.
It was the dragon in him that made such foolhardy decisions. The same one that blazed with the instinct to wrap himself around her and breathe fire on whomever would put her in danger. He’d done so in many an exhaustion-induced dream.
But he woke to reality—and an aching back—each morning. And in said reality, he was no dragon.
And she was no maiden.
Which was why he never allowed himself to be alone with her. When Nora wandered down to the surgery as she did every evening, he made certain she was accompanied by one of her sisters, or Higgins. Titus would check her wound in this partitioned examination room, divulge the prognosis and progress, and then leave her to dress and be escorted discreetly back.
Because he couldn’t trust himself to remember what sort of woman she truly was. A victim. A liar. A patient. A lover. A formative portion of his past he’d done his utmost to turn his back upon, lest he become lost to bitterness and regret.
Yes, to invite her here was to court trouble. Not only because she might be in danger, but because, despite everything, he’d come to live for these moments with her.
Moments when his fingertips found her flesh and the contact electrified him like nothing and no one else on this planet.
A doctor shouldn’t feel like this, he reprimanded himself.
Shouldn’t enjoy the silken strands of her hair as he pushed the midnight curls aside. Shouldn’t thrill to the undoing of the intricate silk-covered buttons of her nightdress, if only to expose something as innocuous as her shoulder blade.
People were just parts. Just machines of intricate design, and he was like a machinist. A student of whatever chaotic engineer crafte
d such imperfect structures capable of miraculous feats of healing. He wondered sometimes that a supposedly benevolent being might build such an instable system that one tiny shift in the mechanisms and the entire thing turned on itself.
But Nora.
She’d always been something more. She wasn’t simply an apparatus, she was a work of fucking art. In a world where nothing seemed to shock or thrill him, where he’d thought himself incapable of incredulity anymore. Just the sight of the improbable precision of her symmetry struck him with a sense of awe he hadn’t known since he was a child discovering the newness of the entire world.
It affected him tonight just as utterly as it had done on the night he’d brought her here. Even though they’d both endured this odd routine for over three weeks, each time she appeared on his examination table elicited a strange sort of tremulous emotion. Something caught on the border of anticipation and antagonism.
Today, Mercy had kept Nora company, and was now holding a lively chat with Higgins as he examined Nora’s shoulder from behind.
Titus enjoyed Mercy’s company and appreciated her vivacity, especially now. She kept them from saying anything important to each other. Which was vital, because if he and Nora were alone, he might ask her why she seemed increasingly morose today.
And she might ask any one of the cryptic questions he’d seen lurking in the dark hollows of her eyes.
She might ask him what he thought of her, or how he felt. And he…hell, he couldn’t answer that question in the mirror, let alone now. Furthermore, he wasn’t about to unleash any sort of emotion on a woman who’d been through the trauma she had.
“Are you in pain?” he couldn’t help but inquire.
“Very little,” Nora replied, not even turning her head to address him.
“Is the mobility improving still?” He stabilized her shoulder with one hand, and lifted her elbow with the other, testing the movement. She winced a little, but not until they passed a threshold of motion greater than she had been previously capable.
“I see no sign of recurring inflammation and it seems the wound itself has achieved proliferation, at least superficially. I should think we could remove your stitches tomorrow.”
“That is, indeed, a relief Dr. Conleith.”
They were both so serene. So polite.
It was beginning to drive him mad.
“What is proliferation?” Mercy’s inquisitive voice cut through the building tension as she leaned against the wall facing both him and Nora. She’d been tracing the cheek of an articulated skeleton he’d displayed in the corner, but dropped her hand and turned her full attention upon him.
“It’s the stage of healing where new tissue forms along with vessels and sinew. It’s too early for comprehensive proliferation, but we are well on our way. It will take the nerves the longest to heal, in my experience. But I’d say we are completely out of the woods.”
Nora merely nodded her understanding.
“That’s marvelous news,” Mercy declared, adjusting her slim chocolate-colored vest and fluffing her cream lace cravat. She’d obviously spent a great deal of money to adopt the appearance of a student or an intellectual, including the adornment of wire-rimmed spectacles sans any lenses. A castoff of Felicity’s, he’d wager. However, the garnets in the comb adorning her intricate coiffure, the matching ear bobs, and the sparkle of her watch undermined the effect. As did the fact that she was obviously educated more in the feminine arts than anything else.
She was a lovely girl if one was drawn to the wholesome vigor of youth, complete with wide oceanic eyes and gestures so animated as to be considered violent in some parts of the world.
“Felicity is pretending to take a nap as herself so she can accompany Mrs. Winterton on an errand as me, so I could come here alone,” she announced, her wide mouth quirking with her specific sort of mischief.
“Why alone?” Nora asked her sister. “Mrs. Winterton is not so insufferable, as chaperones go, and seems to allow you both more freedoms than anyone they hired for Pru or me.”
“Yes, well…” She darted an awkward glance to the far wall. “In light of recent events, Papa’s rather put the lid on anything resembling freedom, I’m afraid. And today I’m intent upon attending a suffragist meeting.”
At the mention of the scandal, Nora’s bare shoulders visibly sagged, though her sister didn’t seem to notice.
So that he didn’t succumb to the temptation to comfort her, Titus said, “I don’t know why you’d want to vote; politics is a terrible business.”
Mercy’s gasp conveyed a startling pitch for a surgery. “You don’t vote?”
He shrugged. “You forget, I’m Irish and have no love for the government here. Besides, the parties are all corrupt and self-serving. In the end, they’ll all send you to war to line their pockets. They’ll all vote to occupy countries we have no cause to be in, whilst ignoring the immigrants and denizens of their own empire, who live in squalor and pain. Politics is a waste of my time, Miss Goode, when I have lives to save without much help from any politician.”
At that, her lips twisted sardonically. “Well… if women voted, I’m certain there would be a great deal less war and a great deal more help for those in such need.”
“Would that were true,” he muttered. “But I don’t see men allowing that to happen anytime in the near future.”
Her eyes turned to chips of ice as she balled up her lace-gloved fist and punched her other palm. “Then we make it happen. We crush their opposition and bend their will until—”
“Careful. You’re starting to sound like several warlords I know,” he teased. “That’s not very merciful of you.”
Instead of taking offense, she threw her head back and laughed. “All of us are rather ironically named, it seems. Prudence is often impulsive, Felicity is serious, I’m merciless and—” She stopped, gulping back the next words.
“And I am without honor,” Nora finished without inflection.
“No!” Mercy knelt at her feet and snatched her hand. “No, no, no, that’s not at all what I was—” Her features crumpled. “Oh, Nora, I don’t think that about you. No one does.”
Nora squeezed her sister’s hand. “It’s all right. Honor is…well it’s difficult to define.”
“At least none of us were named Chastity,” Mercy grimaced.
Before Titus could consider her statement, Nurse Higgins charged into the examination room, saving anyone from having to reply. Her cap was uncharacteristically askew, and her cheeks as red as a ripe apple as she visibly seethed with wrath. “Mr. St. John is here again,” she huffed. “He’s demanding to see his wife. Has some papers she needs to sign, apparently, and when I told him she’s not to be disturbed, he dispatched me to find my betters.” She eyed him with mock disdain. “I suppose he means you.”
Titus chuckled, used to the ribald banter he and Higgins enjoyed.
Elias St. John was a solicitor of no small means who’d often donated to the hospital. His wife was frequently ill and was often at the surgery being treated for a variety of ailments, from intestinal to nervous. One time, he had to operate a forearm snapped clean through.
A carriage accident, or so the police report stated.
“Inform him that Mrs. St. John is asleep. He can come back during visiting hours.”
“He’s threatening to take her home!” Higgins stomped her feet like a recalcitrant child.
“Impossible,” he said, fighting to keep himself measured as he secured Nora’s dressing. “The woman has an egregious head wound. She can barely stand without getting dizzy and falling over, nor can she feed herself through that broken jaw. I’m not releasing her until I’m certain she’s out of the woods.”
“If you send her back to that man, he’ll kill her.”
Titus’s heart stopped and Mercy’s eyes widened. “Nora? Did you just say…”
For the first time that evening, Nora craned her neck until her chin touched her shoulder, looking up at him with chillin
g certainty. “He did that to her.”
Her words evoked that cold, bleak pain that lived alongside any other emotion regarding Nora. Twelve years of marriage to a man ultimately capable of attempting to take her life.
What else had she endured?
The question landed like a brick to the stomach every blasted day.
She rarely interacted with his patients, as they waited until visiting hours were over to attend her for the sake of discretion. So how could she know about Mrs. St. John’s plight? Was this paranoia caused by a decade of mistreatment? Or…did she see something only a refugee of such a life could understand?
As a man who’d been to war, Titus knew that certain experiences could only be fathomed by those who’d shared them. Like Dorian Blackwell and those young lads who’d been locked in Newgate with him, or Morley and their blood-soaked battles together.
He finally looked her in the eyes, only to be unraveled by the beseeching look he found there.
“She won’t survive the next time,” she said with absolute conviction.
“I’ve thought it, meself,” Higgins agreed. “There’s something in that man’s eyes makes me bones feel like they’ve been replaced by snakes.”
As the surgeon, Titus rarely met his patients’ families. He’d simply performed Mrs. St. John’s procedures and moved on to the next patient who needed him, letting his resident doctors and the head nurse deal with kin.
“Why did no one mention this sooner?” he demanded irritably.
“What would you have done?” Higgins eyed him as if his very gender made him dubious.
“I’d go to the police. Demand an investigation. It’s been illegal to hurt your wife for a handful of years now, I think.” How violence against a woman had ever been protected by law aggravated him in the extreme.
Higgins actually scoffed. “Men are never convicted without another male to bear witness. Women are rarely believed. They’d only send her home to him where he’d punish her for her trouble.”
Courting Trouble Page 9