by Paula Quinn
“That’s good fortune, friend,” Malcolm said.
“’Tis,” Harry agreed. “That’s why I must ask you to forget her. I know you and love you like a brother. You saved my life.”
“As ye saved mine,” Malcolm reminded him.
Harry smiled. “Once.”
“Once is all it takes to die, Harry.”
“Like I said,” Harry went on, “I love you like a brother. I know that you’ve no interest in love. Your reputation with women precedes you. The last time you were here—”
Malcolm forced his best smile but held up his palm to stop where Harry was going. He didn’t need reminding.
“You’re a rake,” his friend continued, granting him less detail. “Quite a notorious one. Stay away from my sister so she doesn’t get her heart broken.”
Malcolm didn’t argue. Harry was correct about him—as far as who he was four years ago. Malcolm didn’t bother correcting him. Harry wouldn’t believe him.
Malcolm pulled him under his arm and patted his back to reassure his friend of his sincerity. “Ye’ve nothin’ to fret aboot, Harry. I did this fer the dog. No’ fer her.”
Chapter Two
Emmaline Grey rushed up the stairs so that when she came to the next landing, she could drop to her knees and hug her dearest friend in private—or at least in private until Gunter reached them. She’d get Gascon cleaned and dried, but that could wait until after she greeted him.
“Oh, dear Gascon, ’tis good to have you inside again, where you belong.” He licked her face and the tears fell from her eyes. “Come, I shall feed you a feast tonight.”
She led him down the hall to her room, since he didn’t know the way yet. Thanks to Gunter, she didn’t bang into anything on the way. But now with Gascon around, she wouldn’t need her escort.
She hadn’t always been blind. She was struck with a fever that snatched away her sight in her tenth year—the same fever that had killed both her parents and her uncle a fortnight earlier, while they visited her uncle’s home in France. The fever that had kept her from ever seeing her home in England again. The fever that ultimately drove Harry to leave France and abandon her at the first sign that she was infected. She hadn’t blamed her brother for leaving her then, and she still didn’t. Harry had been ten and five at the time and afraid of dying.
Emma had been afraid too, and she came much closer to it. An old hag who lived in the woods, a rumored witch who knew how to heal people’s ailments, had found her in her bed, deathly ill with the fever. Dying, in fact. Clementine and her faithful hound, Gascon, never left her side and nursed her back to good health. But Emma woke from her delirium into muted light and darkening shadows.
Her world was fading.
Color had gone first, so she fought the hardest to remember the way a ten-year-old would: red, like an apple; green, like treetops in summer; blue, like the beautiful ocean hot under the orange sun. She tried to remember, but after the years, memories faded. Except for one. She remembered seeing the sea when she was on her way with her family to her uncle’s home. Those images of sunlight on the water, indistinct as they had become, had often drifted across her thoughts and kept her going while she grew up in the darkness. She’d never see the ocean again, and for her, that was what saddened her most about losing her vision. She wanted to see the water once more.
Clementine never allowed her to wallow in her loss. Instead, she taught Emma to see using the rest of her senses.
Colors had returned to her first, even more vibrant than the ones before. She still thought with her memory of the sky in reference to blue, because she knew it was correct. But blue had become so much more. It was cold like a stream running through a mountain or a brook babbling through a wintry forest.
She had a happy life growing up in Clementine’s small cottage made of stone and winding ivy, surrounded by trees and nature. She was sure her life would have been very different if not for the fever, but she didn’t want the life she could have had. She loved learning how to live by a wise old French woman who’d never harmed a fly.
With the help of Gascon, she’d learned to traipse and weave through trees. Under nature, and Clementine’s tutelage, she learned what the woods had to offer as food and as medicine. Familiar with every leaf, every petal, every tree, where to find any herb and how to recognize them from touch, scent, and taste. After a decade, she could heal most infirmities as well as her teacher could. But she didn’t want to. People didn’t deserve it, not after what they’d done to Clementine. So she left her home in the cottage in France before they strung her up next. Finally, she was going home.
But her home was gone, sold by her brother four years ago so he could buy this brothel. She didn’t hate him for it. She couldn’t. He was all she had left.
It hadn’t taken her long to find Harry, since his brothel was famous. When she arrived at Fortune’s Smile with Gascon, her brother was suffering with a festering wound in his thigh. She had no choice but to heal him, hoping that Harry would never accuse her of being a witch. She agreed to help his girls too if any of them became ill in exchange for room and board while she and Harry got to know each other.
They still didn’t.
She’d realized that coming back to England to find her brother wasn’t such a good idea when he cast Gascon out of his establishment. She begged Harry to let her have her dog. He’d agreed, but Gascon had to remain outside. She thought of leaving many nights while she sat by her bedroom window, taking in the scents of jasmine and the sounds of her dog sleeping below her window. Where would she go? She could return to France but she had no coin.
She lifted her hand and ran her fingers over Gascon’s muzzle. So happy to have him inside.
She didn’t want to think about her past, or what drove her to leave Clementine’s cottage in search of Harry. Not now. She wouldn’t ruin a grand night with such a memory. She had Gascon back. That’s all that mattered. And she had that man—Had she heard his name?—to thank.
Emma didn’t know about men, nothing compared to the girls she lived with. But she knew she was forever indebted to this one. She told Gascon about him while she scrubbed him in a large basin carried into her room by three of her brother’s servants.
“He’s quite tall, and he smells like the rain.”
Gascon shook his large frame and splattered her with sudsy water.
“Goodness!” she exclaimed. “You could give a girl warning!”
The dog whined torturously, mollifying her temporary annoyance with him.
“He’s the reason you’re inside, Gascon. If you see him tomorrow let him pet your head as thanks. Of course, he’ll most likely be gone in the morning but I will remember the sound of his voice for a long time to come. It drifted across my ears like the melodic burr of the northern Scots, those they call Highlanders. There was one of them here a pair of weeks ago, but his pitch was different, not weighty and light at the same time like the man downstairs.” She sighed happily to herself and continued drying Gascon’s coarse coat. When she was done, she hurried off to the kitchen with Gunter to fix her friend a feast, as promised. She didn’t care if her escort swore the entire way down to tell her brother that she’d disobeyed his command to remain away from the patrons. Let him tell whatever he wanted. She would have gone alone if she had to.
Gunter led her down the back stairs to the kitchen and left her to her task.
Holding out her arms, she felt everything around her, the sticky surface of the chopping block, an axe, onions. She kept going, feeling her way around the familiar kitchen to a shelf with different sized wooden bowls piled upon it. Emma chose the biggest bowl for Gascon. She gathered carrots and searched for meat, following her nose and using her ears to hone in on the buzzing of a fly. She found some salmon, not too fresh, but not spoiled, a small, defeathered hen, and a slab of deer meat, from which she cut a small piece.
Ready to return to her room, she left the kitchen in search of Gunter. She knew her way to the stairs and up th
em, but Gascon’s bowl was heavy. The thundering collapse of a wooden table just to the left of her head halted the blood in her veins, and her feet. Her ears filled with the sounds of breaking bones and splintering wood. A fight! She whirled around.
“Gunter?”
Men shouted around her. Was that Brianne’s scream or Mary’s? From above stairs, locked in her room, she could hear Gascon barking. The smells of wine and ale filled the air… sweat, and blood too.
Someone fell into her, just barely, but almost knocked her down. His heart beat hard against her ribs.
This was the reason Harry didn’t let her come down without her escort, and only after the place was empty. He never let her out after dark. She understood that he’d lost his wife and he didn’t want the same fate to befall his sister. She didn’t want that either. But here she was in the middle of a brawl! Harry would be even more watchful over her now! She had to get to her room. She quelled the rush of fear and anger that boiled up within and gathered up her courage.
She could stand there, or she could keep herself alive. She knew she was bold. She’d already been through the worst kinds of fears anyone, especially a child, could face, and was still alive to think about it. She wasn’t frail. Harry didn’t know her. Refusing Gascon’s entrance into the brothel proved it.
Someone came near. Senses heightened, she smelled wine on his breath and the fragrant aroma of basil coming off the rest of him. She didn’t wait to figure out what else she could smell, but lifted Gascon’s bowl over her head and brought it down on his with all her might. He fell at her feet. Her heart pumped madly in her chest, making her feel ill. Did she just kill someone? Was he still alive and angrier than ever?
“Miss Grey.” The stranger’s voice, heavy, urgent, and welcoming behind her. “M’ brother Cailean will escort ye upstairs. Go! Now!”
Someone grabbed her elbow and led her out of the path of her victim. He hurried her toward the stairs, making her head spin. Everything was happening so quickly.
Who was pulling her up the stairs? Was he truly the brother of the man who’d saved her dog? “You are Cailean?” she breathed out as they ascended.
“Aye, lass. Ye’ve nothin’ to fear. We’ll keep ye and the others safe.”
She remembered his voice now. “Ye agreed with your brother about letting Gascon inside. You have my utmost thanks for that.”
He didn’t speak for two more hurried steps up.
“And your brother?” she asked. “What is he called so that I might properly thank him when this is over?”
“Malcolm… Malcolm Grant,” he told her, and then left her on the landing.
Grant. She’d heard the name before. The girls whispered of him every time a patron was dull in bed. Malcolm Grant, who knew how to make a woman lose her wits, her words, and her will to live without more of him.
Emma doubted he was any kind of man who’d ever win her heart. She wasn’t fond of his type, the kind who took every woman in a skirt to his bed. But his voice, she would admit, had been sultry and mesmerizing to her ear when he said her name and promised Cailean’s help.
Harry had spoken of him too. They were friends, but Harry assured all the girls that Grant broke hearts. He might win them, but he never kept any. He was a silver-tongued rake known throughout Scotland and parts of England. If she remembered correctly, Harry described Malcolm Grant as the snake that tempted Eve in the Garden.
Emma could understand how that could be true. If he went about rescuing animals the way he did for Gascon… Well, how bad could he be? Besides, one thing she learned about Harry since they’d been reunited was that he was overly dramatic.
Mr. Grant didn’t seem like a rake, or a cad, or whatever women called men like him these days. But what did she know of such things?
She heard bone snapping against flesh coming from below—bones or more tables. How would Harry pay for everything to be repaired?
She moved against the wall and returned to her room and to Gascon, where it was safe.
A shot rang out from downstairs. Harry! Where would she go if he were killed? She shook her head. He wasn’t fool enough to lose his life. He’d proven that in France.
Another shot, followed by more screams, shattered her nerves and she backed up to her bed and pulled Gascon close to her while she stared toward the door. Would someone come for her? Kill her? Or worse?
She waited until silence resounded through the brothel and made the hairs on her arms rise. Her heart pounded like a drum when she heard someone outside her door. Beside her, Gascon’s low growl chilled her blood.
No! If someone was coming in here, they wouldn’t find her cowering in a corner waiting for whatever he was bringing. She was made of tougher stuff than that.
Leaping to her feet, she hurried around her bed, snatched up her candle stand, and blew out the flame. Equal ground.
A knock. She held up her bronze weapon and prepared to swing. Gascon’s growl grew louder, more menacing. The door opened and her dog lunged.
“Miss Grey!” Gunter shouted behind the door after he slammed it shut again. “Your brother needs you. Call off that beast!”
She swallowed, doing all she could not to panic. “He is hurt?”
“No,” he called through the door. “His two friends have been, though, and he wants you to help.”
“The Grants?” she asked, opening the door and slipping out into the hall with him. The desire to help overwhelmed her. She was a healer. She didn’t want to be killed because of it, like Clementine had been, but she couldn’t stop the need to save someone’s life. “Both of them? How badly? Who is responsible for this?”
“They are not moving,” he told her. “’Twas the Winthers. There were a dozen of them. Some had pistols. Even so, many are dead down there, so step carefully.”
Grasping Gascon’s scruff, Emma followed with extra caution. She’d never stepped over dead bodies before and the thought of it made her head spin. Sensing her unease and imbalance, Gascon guided her steadily. Trusting him, she let go of what was around her and focused on what she’d been called to do.
She would save Harry’s friends. She owed Malcolm Grant much. He’d brought Gascon back to her, even if just for tonight. She would do her best to make sure her dog stayed… and Mr. Grant lived.
“Emmaline.” Harry stopped her with a hand to her arm when she moved to pass him. “The Grants, my friends, have been wounded. It is bad enough that they killed Andrew Winther in my brothel. Trouble is coming, I can promise you that. But if the Grants die, it will bring something worse.”
“Worse than the Winthers?” she asked. Everyone knew the Winthers. They controlled everything in Newcastle and Hebburn, and parts of Durham. She’d heard rumors of the baron’s lust for blood and power.
Her brother nodded to himself. “Malcolm Grant’s kin are enemies no one wants to have—most of all, me. Save my guests, Emma. I beg you.”
Chapter Three
Emma said a silent prayer that she could help them. Of course, she would try, but why not use this as a bit of leverage for Gascon. “Let Gascon stay and I’ll do my best—”
“Emmaline—”
“Let him stay, Harry. He’s all I have.”
“You have me.”
She hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings, but she barely remembered him, they’d been separated for so long. She was certain they would grow to care for each other in time, but right now, she needed Gascon. “Let him stay.”
“Very well,” he grumbled, seeming to ignore her enthusiastic thanks.
She would help his friends and began with an examination. She knew what she was doing. Clementine had taught her much and Emma learned how to keep men snoring while she removed a pistol ball or sewed up a wound.
Rather than move the brothers without knowing a bit more about their injuries, she checked them on the ground where they fell. The other girls helped.
With Mary acting as her eyes, Emma discovered that Malcolm Grant had been shot in the neck, more
toward the collarbone than the jaw. The shot had exited from his back so at least Emma wouldn’t have to go digging around to find it. She guessed that what had rendered him unconscious though was a blow that, according to Bess, had been inflicted with a loose wooden table leg. It left his skull swollen and dripping blood down his face.
“Emma!” Alison stifled a tight sob from where she waited on her knees beside Mr. Grant’s brother. Emma remembered his voice when he told her his name, Cailean, and the name of his brother, his gentle yet firm hand while he’d escorted her up the stairs when the fight began. “He has stopped answering me!” Alison shouted at her.
Emma made her cautious way over and knelt down in a pool of Cailean’s blood.
Alison sniffed but there was no time to comfort her. “Where are his wounds?” Emma commanded, skimming her hands over his body.
“He has a shot in his belly. Here.” Alison guided Emma’s fingers to the bloody wound.
Emma wiped her hands on her skirts, then gently slipped her fingers behind the wound. Her hands returned to her dry. No blood. The metal ball was still in him. With the help of Alison’s further examination, she concluded that he had sustained no other wounds. She was glad, since the one he had was bad enough.
“We need to get him upstairs and into bed quickly.”
“Whose bed?” Gunter asked, ready to carry him.
“Mine, of course. ’Tis clean. I don’t think the ball damaged anything vital according to where it is on his body, but he has lost much blood. I believe by his shallow breath and cool, clammy skin that he’s in shock. We need to get him warm. And we need to move him very, very gently. I’ll need another bed brought in for his brother. I shall sleep in a chair between them.”
“Absolutely not, Emmaline!” Harry refused. “I’ll not have you sleeping in the same room with two men.”
“They need ’round the clock care, Harry. Would you have them die?”
“Emmaline,” her brother lamented, “they cannot die.”