The Rakehell Regency Romance Series Boxed Set 6

by Sorcha MacMurrough

  She pointed at the man dangling from the hook, who began shouting the most foul execrations she had ever heard. She could only guess at the meaning of some of them, but his tone was more than enough to discern their import. The man was foaming at the mouth like a rabid cur, his teeth white and snarling. She shuddered as he ranted about what he was going to do to her ripe young body as soon as they cut him down.

  "And your sister!" he shouted. "You bloody pair of whores!"

  To her surprise, the man behind her squeezed her hand sympathetically, and rubbed the back of it with his thumb before removing his own from her clasp.

  She started as his hands both descended upon her shoulders and came around her. Looking down, she saw he was draping his miserably tattered scrap of towel around her bared bosom. She clutched the rough cotton to her gratefully, touched deeply by his thoughtful consideration. She tugged up the shredded flap of wool, lace and linen which was dangling down below her navel and covered her bosom as best she could.

  His hands had vanished as suddenly as they'd come, but she reached behind her to touch him to show her gratitude. Her hands had brushed along his lower abdomen, and she'd felt him shudder and jerk. He snatched her hand and squeezed it tightly in both her own, gasping under his breath.

  "Oh God," he moaned softly. "I must be dreaming. You can't be real, here and now, and touching me like this."

  "I am, I am real. They're about to attack you for harming me," she said, swallowing past the leaden sensation in her throat. "But you saved me. I won't let them harm you, any more than you let them harm me."

  She flicked a look at him over her shoulder, meeting the most remarkable pair of pale golden eyes she had ever seen. She caught a glimpse of a high brow, aquiline nose, generous lips, and a finely hewn chin with a cleft discernable under his heavy beard. If not for his gauntness, pallor, and the filth he was besmirched with, he would have been perfection.

  A big if, of course, but once again it made her wonder who on earth he was. For she felt sure she had met him before. Or someone very like him...

  Now she faced the two guards, who were still moving in to grab the huge man. "No! Leave him. Take up my sister and bring her to the infirmary. And you, get another man to help you remove this vicious brute from the common ward and confine him before he harms anyone else. What can the doctors and warders have been thinking?"

  Still they pressed forward.

  "No! Leave him. He's done nothing to me. He's fine. Please help my sister, before I'm forced to lodge a complaint against you for your appalling negligence."

  By now, the look on their faces had grown positively ugly. She had no idea what would have happened at that moment if a tall, sandy-haired man had not entered, and come running over to her side.

  "My God, Gabrielle, what's happened to you?" Dr. Herriot demanded, taking in her dishevelled appearance, white face, and darkening bruises on the her neck.

  "Antony. At last. Where were you?!" she rasped above the din. "Locked outside. Hold still and let me look--" She waved him away, "Never mind me, Antony. Lucinda's been cruelly abused. The baby--" She pointed.

  He immediately went over to the prone woman's side, and demanded of the still glaring attendants that they get help.

  "We're in charge of this prisoner," one of them rumbled, pointing at the tall man, who was shivering against the wall as though he had a fever, though as she ventured to touch his brow, she could see he was cool enough to the touch.

  Dr. Herriot shot them a lethal look of his own. "There are no prisoners here. Only patients. He looks to be fine. This one on the wall, however, is evidently a danger to all concerned, and must be subdued at once. At once, do you hear?"

  "You can't order us--"

  "No, he can't. But if you want to keep your job, you'll follow Dr. Herriot's orders. He is after all a very good friend of Alistair Grant the barrister, and the Duke of Ellesmere," Gabrielle said coolly, giving a sharp stare to the man she took to be the leader of the group.

  For all they knew, she could have been bluffing, but their posture changed completely. The man gave the rest of them a nod, and they went off without another word.

  Antony heaved a sigh of relief and turned his attention back to Lucinda. "God, he must have shaken her like a rag doll."

  "I tried to stop him, but-"

  She turned around as her companion began sliding down the wall and slumped to the ground behind her.

  "Thank God. You've come for me. Thank God."

  She stared at him in confusion. "I don't understand. Come for you? No, you came to help us. But-"

  "I'm not mad. I've never been mad. They know I know things. They've left me here to rot. Couldn't kill me in case they needed me. Please, I have to-" He clutched his head in agony now, and began to gurgle and choke.

  "Antony! What do I do?" she shouted in alarm as her enormous helper began to tremble on the ground.

  "It looks like a epileptic fit. Grab a spoon out of my bag and hold down his tongue so he doesn't choke. Then just stay with him."

  His whole body began to buck and jolt under her as though charged with electricity, and she could see froth fleck his lips. She dived for the bag and the spoon, and managed to do as Antony had instructed her.

  "Are you all right?"

  "I've got him. I've got him," Gabrielle insisted, waving her cousin away. "See to my sister."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Aye. Make sure the baby isn't harmed. And I want to see about getting her a private room. I don't care if they are in short supply, or what they cost. Lucinda's husband is going to pay if it's the last thing he does."

  His expression was grim. "You know he's notoriously cheap."

  She grimaced. "True, but also excessively concerned with what people think of him. He'll pay, or face the prospect of a scandal. With him trying to win himself a name in the House of Lords, I think we can convince him to part with some of my sister's dowry to provide better than a cot in the common ward.

  "My God, they don't even divide the genders in here. Half of them are swiving, and the other half are abusing themselves right out in public!"

  "Or bloody killing each other," Antony grumbled as a new fight broke out in the corner. Screams could also be heard echoing all the way down the corridor to the tiled bathing chamber she knew lay at the end.

  "Where the hell are those attendants?" she complained as her helper bucked and writhed under her, his eyes tightly closed, one hand pressed to his head.

  "Evidently not wanting to have to wrestle with this beastly chap dangling here."

  "But still, where the hell is everyone?"

  "Now, now, language, my dear."

  "Don't, Antony! I can't stand it when you become all protective and missish on me."

  "Maybe if you were more missish, I wouldn't have to be so protective," he rejoined with a bitter smile. "Your bruises--"

  She glanced up at him, her expression serious. "Don't start. You are not to blame, though you definitely take the weight of the world on your shoulders for every instance of suffering you come across. It was the madman's fault, not yours."

  "I should never have let you go on ahead of me--"

  "It was my choice--"

  "And sent one of the other nurses to this hellish place rather than--"

  "Let me tend to my own sister? Don't be silly, Antony. If anyone is to blame it would be me for committing her here in the first place."

  "And working in my clinic, a young lady of good family--"

  "With no real means of support that would be deemed respectable by anyone. So you helped me more than I can ever repay you for, no matter what happened just now. You and this man here. He saved my life." She began to stroke the thick dark hair back from his brow, and his agitated thrashing began to subside.

  "I don't know what happened. One minute I was following you in and the next, one of the warders barred my way and locked the gate. I had to threaten to send for Alistair and his law enforcement offices before they finally let me
in."

  "Poor Lucinda. The baby--"

  "Poor you as well. What was I thinking, suggesting you come work for me--"

  "I was a self-centred little belle until you took me in and began to teach me. I don't want to go back to that life. So please stop treating me like I'm made of fluff."

  "I'm only sorry you didn't come to me sooner. You know myself or Randall would have..."

  "I know," she said curtly. "But after everything my brother did to Randall and Isolde, I just couldn't."

  "But just look at what that man has done to your sister. Even if Lucinda did marry Oxnard of her own free will, it's a most unsuitable match. He's had three wives already and he's scarcely even thirty! You mark my words, there's more to that than meets the eye."

  Her brows knit as she continued to stroke the man's hair until he was so quiet she wondered if he had fallen asleep, exhausted by the prolonged fit. "I know that now! The trouble is, he seems so respectable. You would be the first to admit from all you've learnt at the clinic that the mortality of women in childbirth is very high. One riding accident, one miscarriage, one death in the childbed..."

  "I know, I know. But I can't help having my suspicions all the same. I mean, we only have his word for it regarding those three deaths, after all."

  "Never mind that now. He's far away and no threat for the immediate present. How is she?" Gabrielle asked.

  He sighed heavily. "Staining at the moment. I need to get her to a proper bed where she can rest. I don't want to leave you again, but no one else seems to be coming. Do you think you can manage once more while I try to find help?"

  He ducked and threw himself over Lucinda's prone body as a chair flew into their corner and crashed apart into splinters.

  Gabrielle grabbed one leg and flung it to him, then took another to try to protect herself and Lucinda. "I'll manage, never fear. I have a good weapon now."

  Antony caught the wood with an appalled look, but she insisted, "Take it. Go now. Hurry."

  He opened his mouth to argue, but he was damned either way. Gabrielle was in danger if she stayed. But if he let her run for help, she might get into an even worse predicament. At least she was with the tall dark-haired man who had helped them, that is, if he came to and could function after his odd fit.

  The ward exploded into violence all around him as Antony made his way to the main gate. He knew it was especially bad in Bedlam on the nights when there was a full moon, but he had never seen the inmates so agitated before. It was almost as though something were whipping them up into a frenzy. He had to batter his way through to the iron bars at the far end of the ward with the aid of his makeshift weapon, and shouted above the din, "We need some help. Two people are injured."

  "Ain't got enough people to help us now. We need to stop them killing each other."

  "Then send for some Bow Street Runners. I'm a friend of Alistair Grant the barrister." He fished a card from his pocket. "Take this to them, tell them I need help. My young female cousins are trapped in here if you won't open this gate."

  "I don't bloody dare," the orderly replied, backing away. "Those loonies will kill us all. You'll just have to take your chances in there until help arrives."

  Chapter Two

  When Antony saw that he was trapped on the ward in Bedlam, he raced back to his cousin Gabrielle through the melee of heaving bodies, beating his way through the insane inmates with his makeshift wooden club.

  When he finally got back, he found her defending both her sister and her tall strange helper from a huge woman with meaty fists who was insisting she was the Queen of England and had to be obeyed.

  The madwoman had a huge bench upraised in one hand like a Scottish caber about to be tossed. No matter where she threw it, one or all three of them were going to be seriously injured.

  "Your Majesty," Gabrielle said, dropping a curtsey. "Your courtier awaits with some pressing matters of state." She pointed at the doctor.

  Antony rolled his eyes in despair. He had hoped to sneak up on the woman unawares. But the balance of the bench had shifted. Gabrielle had been sure she was just about to hurl it.

  As it tumbled and bounced, she threw herself over the unconscious man's head, cradling it against her bosom as the heavy weight smacked into her back. She only prayed the spoon she had depressed his tongue with after his strange fit didn't make him choke as she flattened against him.

  The pain seared her, making her already injured ribs jar, so that she gasped and arched her back like a scalded cat. She lay there stunned, and listened while Antony coaxed the woman away from the shattered remnants of the wooden missile.

  Even now, days later, Gabrielle blushed heatedly at the recollection of what had happened next.

  The fellow under her had stared up at her with wonder, gazing at her breasts like a starving man suddenly presented with the most exquisite banquet.

  "Mon Dieu! I've died and gone to heaven," he sighed around the spoon, which he now removed from between his teeth. "It's like presenting a feast to a starving man."

  The towel he had given her to try to cover over her bosom after her gown had been torn had spun round her neck, baring her fully to his ardent admiration.

  "Oh, er, um--"

  She twitched the towel back into place and tugged it down, brushing her fingers against his as he tucked the ends into the torn edges of the bodice.

  "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have looked. Or, if I did, I shouldn't have said anything to embarrass you."

  "It's not your fault," she said, stroking his shoulder. There it was again, that spark she had felt when she had touched his well-muscled abdomen a few moments before.

  She had stroked his rippling muscles, and would have kissed him on the mouth had he not said, "I'm sorry, cherie. I have yet to complete my toilette. Please, for your own sake, don't."

  She stared at him, completely at a loss. He was the strangest madman she had ever come across.

  He groaned now. "I can't believe I just refused to kiss you."

  "I can't believe I'm in a madhouse fondling a half-naked man," she admitted with a blush.

  "It must be the shock of all that's happened to you. You're romanticising me as your rescuer."

  "Except you look as though you need to be rescued even more than me," she commented as his teeth began to chatter. "Oh, God, I'm so tired. Please, can you help me?"

  I can try," she gasped as another pair of inmates began to wrestle not too far from where they lay.

  "We need to get out of here," he insisted.

  "I've been told they usually lock the gates if there's trouble in the ward."

  "I know. But your sister is injured and I'm going to fall asleep soon. I always do after one of my seizures. Your gentleman over there is a good man, I'm sure, but I don't think he's much use as a pugilist even with that chair leg for a weapon.

  "I can try to hold her up if you can try to hold me up. We need to get to the bathing chamber at the end of the corridor. There are linens, supplies in there, things we can use to help make your sister more comfortable, and see to your injured throat." "I'm fine." "No, you're not, but you're being very brave. But we need to be practical. We're locked in, and to use a cliche, all hell has broken lose. We all four of us stand a chance of holding off the others if we try to barricade ourselves in. That is if no one else has the same idea first."

  Gabrielle was stunned at how much sense he was making for an inmate at Bedlam. But he was right. The situation was getting worse and Antony, brave though he was, was a healer, not a fighter. The question was, did they dare lock themselves IN with a madman?

  "I don't blame you," he said, giving her a piercing look. "I wouldn't trust a madman like me either."

  "No, it's not that," she denied hastily.

  "Well it should be," he said through tight lips.

  "No, I was just thinking if we could all manage together," she said, which was only a partial lie. "It's quite far, and away from the gate and any rescue they might try to effect from there."
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  "I will escort you there and make sure you are all barricaded in safely and then take my chances--"

  She shook her head. "No, no, don't be ridiculous. You save us both. I'm not going to throw you to the wolves. We'll all go together," she insisted, squeezing his hand once more.

  She called to Antony's back, "How is she now?"

  "No worse than before. But I need supplies, quiet--"

  "The bathing chambers," she called.

  "But they're all the way over--"

  "I know. But he's feeling better and will help us."