by Lara Archer
And Mary was quite startled to see Annabel’s finger stab straight at her.
“Why,” continued Annabel, “does he stare at Miss Wilkins so intently all the time, and why did he choose to dance with her in his arms on May Day night? Why are they alone together at every possible opportunity?”
A hush went over the crowd, and every head swung to look at Mary, the faces taut with astonishment. Cold and hot together swept up Mary’s body, from her toes to the very top of her head. She wanted nothing more than to turn and run.
No, she begged silently. No more, Annabel, you’ve said enough.
But the girl took one more deep breath and spat out the rest of what she had to say. “And why did he run off into the woods with her on May Day night—and stay with her there for more than an hour—and come back...disheveled. Just in time for Papa to announce our engagement?”
A huge gasp went up in the congregation, roaring horribly in Mary’s ears. Her knees turned to jelly, and she clutched the pew in front of her for support. At the pulpit, Thomas’s face went as pale as the Geneva bands about his throat.
“No, Papa,” concluded Annabel grandly. “I shall never be Lord Parkhurst’s lover. Because I suspect that Mary Wilkins already is!”
The room exploded with exclaiming voices, the sound buzzing and thundering through Mary’s skull. The air went hot and thick and hard to breathe, and all the light was fading to black. The floor seemed to rush upwards towards her face, and only Sam Brickley’s arm, coming around her waist, pulled her back from it.
She was vaguely aware of Thomas’s voice echoing from behind her. “And do you have anything to say to these claims, Lord Parkhurst?”
“Aye,” said John, his voice seeming to come from very far away. “I most certainly do.”
But whatever it was he was about to say, he didn’t get to say it.
The church doors banged open again, even more violently this time, and another figure staggered in.
It was Donald Evans, clearly deep in his cups again and listing heavily to one side.
His jaw was vivid black and blue where Thomas had punched him the other night after he’d handled Rosamund Lawton so rudely. The man looked wretched and pathetic and likely to topple over at any moment.
But in his hands, he held a musket.
And, oh dear God, the muzzle pointed straight at the pulpit, where Thomas stood.
Chapter Sixteen
“No one strikes Donald Evans and gets away with it, not even a parson!” cried the drunkard.
John spun quickly as his bruised leg and mud-encrusted trousers would allow. Even exhausted as he was, his battlefield instincts kicked straight in. “Donald!” he said, using his sternest command voice, while positioning his own body between the gun and Mr. Wilkins. “Put that down!”
Donald stopped, uncertain for a moment, and the barrel of the gun wobbled towards John in the man’s unsteady hands. “No disrespect to you, my lord. But my head’s not stopped clanging since the preacher hit me,” he complained, “and I’ll not stand for such treatment!” His eyes were red with drink and outrage.
Damn it—reason wasn’t going to get them anywhere. Mary had been hurt enough; John damned well wasn’t going to let her brother be killed.
He sprang towards the gun.
But it was already too late. With a grimace, the drunkard pulled the trigger, sending up a flash of sparks and a thick cloud of smoke that stunk of bad eggs.
If Donald had been shooting straight, the bullet would have hit John square in the chest. But as fate—or drunkenness—would have it, the gun’s upward kick took the man by surprise, and the shot whizzed over John’s head.
A pained cry came from the pulpit, a scream came from Mary, and Donald puffed out his chest and said, “I know I may drink a spot or two now and again, but I deserve respect as much as—”
The rest of the man’s declaration was cut off by Old Mr. Dockett whacking Donald on the back with his cane, and then silenced entirely as John tackled him bodily to the ground.
Holding down the still-struggling sot was no easy job—drink really did seem to give him supernatural strength—but John still managed to turn his head back over his shoulder to see if the bullet had hit home. Indeed, the vicar was slumped over the pulpit, apparently still conscious, but with his eyes squeezed shut in pain.
“You can’t keep me down! ” Donald was shouting, wriggling with all his might.
John gave him another fist to the face so he could have a matching bruise on the other side of his jaw.
In the next moment, Sam Brickley came barreling down the aisle to keep Donald pinned. “I’ve got the blighter. You go to Mary.” The man’s dark eyes locked meaningfully with John’s. “She’ll be needing you.”
John rushed to the pulpit, where already a small crowd, including Mary, the local baker, and, of all people, Rosamund Lawton were easing the wounded vicar to the floor. Wilkins was half in a swoon, but groaning, so he still clearly lived. His loose, dark vestments made it hard to gauge the seriousness of his wound, though his white neckcloth was spattered scarlet with blood.
John called out to the congregation, “Who can ride to Middlethorpe for Dr. Ausland? My horse is outside. Take him.”
“I’ll ride!” answered Ben Brickley, Sam’s equally strapping younger brother, already running for the door. “I’ll have the doctor back in a trice. God keep Mr. Wilkins!”
John knelt to help with the fallen vicar. He glanced at Mary, but she wouldn’t look at him. Her whole focus was on her brother.
And blood was seeping out onto her hands from somewhere near Wilkins’ right shoulder.
“Don’t lay him flat!” said John. “Keep his head and shoulders up.”
“But he’s in pain!” cried Mary.
“He’s losing blood,” said John, calmly as he could. “We need to keep the injured place raised up. Trust me. I’m quite used to bullet wounds.” He glanced at her again. “Army man, remember?”
For a moment, Mary met his eyes, and he thought he detected a flicker of relief there. “Of course,” she said.
John motioned to the baker. “Get behind him. Let him lean back against you.”
“No!” said Rosamund Lawton, elbowing the baker out of the way. “I’ll do it.” And she slid quite efficiently behind the slumping Mr. Wilkins and knelt there, her arms holding him gently about the waist, pillowing his shoulders on her bosom, nestling his head in the crook of her neck. Blood stained her lovely sprigged muslin frock, but she seemed to pay it no mind.
Mary put one hand to the back of her brother’s head and clutched his fingers with the other, weeping silently, while John worked to loosen his neckcloth and preaching bands.
Rosamund, too, had tears rolling down her cheeks. “Help him, Lord Parkhurst, please!” she begged, then leaned close to the vicar’s ear and whispered, “Hold on, Mr. Wilkins. You must hold on.”
At the girl’s words, Wilkins’ eyes flew open. “Rosamund,” he murmured, in a sleepy, marveling tone, as though he’d been awakened by a disembodied angel voice.
“Yes, Mr. Wilkins,” she answered fervently, pressing her cheek to his temple. “I am here.” Her cheeks flushed with color. “I mean, we all are here. And you—you must stay with us. We will not let you go.”
“Mr. Wilkins will be fine,” said John, tugging the bloodied neckcloth free, and hoped he was right.
The local barber, Mr. Short, appeared by John’s side now, pulling what looked like a rather rusty old knife from his boot.
“Careful what you do with that!” said John.
“Just cutting loose his robes, my lord,” said the man, and busied himself doing just that.
As the barber cut through the fabric, John felt Mary’s hand on his shoulder.
“Please,” she said softly. “Don’t let him die, John.”
Their eyes met fully for the first time since they’d parted in the woods on the first of May. A torrent of emotion seemed to pass between them—pain, regret, passion
, hurt. A powerful need swept through him to gather her in his arms, to make her finally, finally listen to the truth of everything. He wanted to beg her forgiveness, tell her he loved her, but he knew that wasn’t what she most needed to hear right now. “I won’t let him die, Mary,” he said. “I swear it.”
The moment the barber was done his work, John leaned in again, stripping away the bloodied robes and examining the flesh beneath. Indeed, the outer curve of the shoulder was badly torn, the all-too-familiar gash of a musket ball. A small bore one, by the looks of it, thank heaven, though blood was welling up at a sufficiently alarming rate.
No fragments of bone, no sign that the cloth of Wilkins’ robes had lodged in it.
“A flesh wound,” John declared. “Good and clean.”
Rosamund looked at him with beseeching eyes. “But there is so much blood.”
Indeed, Wilkins looked terribly pale. Roused again by Rosamund’s voice, he looked about him, caught sight of his own wound, and instantly went limp again, eyes rolling back in his head.
“Thomas!” cried Mary.
“It’s all right,” John assured her, even as he looked around for something with which to staunch the bleeding. “That’s the normal response—better than being awake for the pain. Pressure will cut off the flow of blood. I need a pad of clean cloth.”
“Here,” said Mary, pulling the linen fichu off from the neckline of her dress.
“Good. Make a pad of it, and press it to the wound,” he instructed her. “You’d best be the one to do it—your hands are far cleaner than mine.”
She did as she was bid, but at the first pressure, Wilkins’ eyes fluttered opened again. “Damn me,” he groaned softly. “Hurts....”
Horrified, Mary began to withdraw her hand. John pressed his fingers down on top of hers. “Keep pressing. With the heel of your hand, Mary. Hard as you can. Or he’ll lose more blood. He’s young and strong. You must have confidence.”
Steeling her expression, Mary did as she was told. Good, sensible Mary. He could feel the power of her concentration, as though she were willing her brother to live. As if she were determined that the fierceness of her heart, her love, her loyalty, could bear her brother up and fight off death itself.
And surely she was right about that. Death, frankly, wouldn’t stand a chance against Mary’s heart.
A fierce wave of love for her welled up in his own.
John glanced around at the others. “Now we need a longer strip of cloth to bind that tight until the doctor comes.”
“My shawl might do,” said Rosamund, and she wriggled a bit so the length of fine woven silk slipped from her shoulders.
“Perfect,” he said, catching it. “Now, Miss Rosamund and Mr. Short, lean him forward a bit, gently as you can, so I can wind this around him. Keep that pressure on, Mary, until the shawl holds the pad, then press again from the outside.”
John wrapped the length of silk around Wilkins’ torso twice, trapping the pad against the wound, and drew it tight. His arm brushed Mary’s side as he worked, and he couldn’t deny the simple pleasure he took in the contact. It felt so good to touch her, even that little bit, as if he’d been deprived of oxygen the last few days, and was finally able to take some in.
“There,” he said at last, making a knot. “That will hold him.”
Mary looked at him with searching eyes. “He will truly be all right?”
“No doubt it hurts like the devil,” he answered, “but you must trust me. I’ve dressed many wounds, and this should end in nothing worse than a dashing scar.” Unless serious infection sets in, he thought, but he wasn’t about to mention that part aloud.
“Thank God,” whispered Rosamund, and pressed her cheek once more to the vicar’s—who, John suspected, would have gladly accepted full awareness of his pain could he have been awake enough to feel the girl’s touch. Clearly, one Lawton girl at least was capable of deep affection—though she’d face a long, hard fight against her father if she truly had her heart set on a poor, untitled clergyman.
John heaved a tired sigh. “All right then,” he said, “we should get Mr. Wilkins off this cold floor, and under blankets, in a room with a fire. Shock is still a risk. The less we jostle him, though, the better. If we had a blanket here to carry him on, something sturdy—”
“The altar cloth,” said Mary. “It’s long enough, and a strong brocade.” And, not bothering to ask anyone else’s opinion, she stripped it off with her usual efficiency. “I’ve no doubt the Lord would give His blessing.”
With the help of Sam and yet another Brickley brother, they carried Wilkins the short distant to the vicarage. Mary helped, but stayed on the opposite side of her brother, away from John. The two of them stayed in step the whole way, moving smoothly, her skirts even brushing the toes of his boots once or twice, but she would not meet his eyes again.
Chapter Seventeen
Hours later, Dr. Ausland leaned over Thomas’s bed, securing a clean new linen bandage. He’d given them good news: the ball glanced off bone without causing fracture, and the major arteries were untouched. Thomas would miss the late-May sheep-shearing this year, but he might be healed enough to help his parishioners with the last of the haymaking in July. “And no passionate sermons for a while,” the doctor joked, though Thomas seemed too dazed by laudanum to hear him. “We can’t have you waving your arms about, exhorting your flock to mend their ways. Stick to quiet bits like the Beatitudes.”
Despite the doctor’s good nature, no one in the room laughed. Rosamund Lawton stood like a carved Madonna at one bed post, her expression distressed as if her own life hung in the balance. Sam Brickley hovered at the foot of the bed, hat in hand, in quiet guard dog stance.
John was with them, too—dressed in fresh clothes one of his footmen brought him—but he hung back in the shadows near the door.
Mary herself sat by the bed, tightly clasping her brother’s hand, but her mind could not settle with the viscount in the room. Against all good sense, his presence tugged at her. The weight of him there seemed to make the floor slant in his direction. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to weep.
She had no idea what to think.
John wasn’t marrying Annabel Lawton now, that was true. He hadn’t objected in the slightest when Annabel threw him over. And when Annabel said it was Mary he truly wanted, he hadn’t denied the claim.
But...but...he had entered into the engagement to Miss Lawton in the first place.
And he had made love to Mary under false pretenses while knowing full well that engagement was in effect. And if he hadn’t done so, Mary wouldn’t have had to stand in front of all her friends and neighbors and publicly be branded a harlot, within the walls of her own church.
Without question, she had every cause to hate the viscount.
Heaven knows, if Thomas hadn’t been shot, all of Birchford might be pillorying her right now, and Thomas would be looking at the end of his career.
Of course, Thomas had been shot.
And John had quite probably saved his life, staunching the flow of blood from his wound.
He’d stepped in front of Donald Evans’ gun, for pity’s sake.
Oh, Lord. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to push John down the stairs, or pull him into her arms.
So lost was she in these thoughts, when Dr. Ausland laid a hand on her shoulder, she jumped nearly a foot.
“Your brother should rest, now,” the doctor said. “Lord Parkhurst prevented the worst of the blood loss, so I shouldn’t worry for him through the night. We must expect fever of course, but I’ll be back first thing in the morning to check on him, and I expect I’ll remove his bandage then and let the wound drain—that should lessen the chance of serious infection. Meanwhile, keep the fire built up in here, and have someone with him to be sure he keeps still, but otherwise leave him alone.”
He held out his arm to Rosamund Lawton in offer to escort her from the room.
But Rosamund shook her head. “I can sit up with
him,” she insisted. “He has only his sister here, and she can’t be expected to stay up all night alone.”
When the doctor blinked at her in surprise, Rosamund blushed. “Laudanum,” she said, “is as good as a chaperone.”
“I suppose that’s true,” said the doctor, chuckling. “The vicar’s not likely to wake at all before morning. And Miss Wilkins could use the help.”
“I would be thankful for it,” Mary said, smiling at Rosamund. “I’ll just see all the gentlemen out, and make some tea for the two of us, then come back and sit with you, Miss Lawton.”
“No need, Miss Wilkins,” insisted Rosamund kindly. “Please get some rest, at least for an hour or two. I shan’t be able to sleep tonight in any case. I promise to wake you if there’s the slightest trouble.”
The poor girl. Tear streaks were still visible on her cheeks, which looked dreadfully pale with worry. Blood covered the bodice of her dress and spattered her skirts. They’d all washed up a bit using water Mary heated over the fireplace grate, but Rosamund’s once-pretty dress was a lost cause. “First let me find a clean frock for you,” said Mary. “You shouldn’t sit in those clothes any longer.”
Rosamund glanced down as though she just now realized what a mess she was. Her cheeks went even more pale at the sight. “Thank you, Miss Wilkins. I’d be grateful for that.”
“Though I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything near as fine as your own clothes.”
Rosamund blushed again. “I promise I shall not mind.”
“All’s well, then,” said Dr. Ausland cheerily. “Two ministering angels for your minister, and all the gentlemen get to sleep.” He offered Mary a courtly bow. “Your brother really should come through this nicely, Miss Wilkins. You’re lucky the viscount was a veteran of battle. He did well in staunching the wound.”
She glanced at John, who gave her a dark, unreadable look.
What was going through his mind right now?
She couldn’t very well speak to him with other people in the room, and he couldn’t remain in the house with her and Rosamund after the other men left. Mary’s reputation was in tatters as it was.