No Other Love

by Candace Camp

  “Come with me.” He did not give her a chance to do anything but obey him, taking her by the arm with his free hand and leading her up the stairs.

  It was even darker upstairs, the only illumination besides Jack’s candle being a sliver of light coming from beneath a door at the end of the hall. It was toward this door that they walked, Jack’s steps growing faster and faster until he reached it. He opened the door softly, though, none of his impatience showing, and entered, leading Nicola in after him.

  The scene inside was dimly lit, but horrifying nonetheless. Heavy drapes covered the only window, and the air was close inside the room, thick with the scent of a poorly drawing fire, sweat, blood and whiskey. A man lay on the narrow bed, eyes closed in his unnaturally pale face, his chest laboring to breathe. The covers were pushed aside, and his dark shirt had been opened, revealing his bare chest. A bulky bandage lay over one side of his chest and shoulder, heavily stained with blood. His face was spotted with sweat, and his hair was dark with moisture. A man sat in a chair beside the bed, his elbows on his knees and his hands thrust through his hair, his face turned downward. A bottle of whiskey stood on the small square table between his chair and the bed, along with an oil lamp, which provided the feeble light in the room. On the other side of the bed stood a young woman, wringing her hands. Her eyes were wide with fear, and tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she repeated over and over in a dreary monotone. She turned at the sound of Jack’s footsteps on the floor. “Jack! Thank God you’re here!”

  The girl ran across the room to throw herself against Jack’s chest, sobbing. Nicola watched with distaste as Jack tried to untangle himself from the girl’s clinging arms. “How is he? Dirk?”

  The other man raised his head. He looked haggard. “It ain’t good, Jack. He’s having trouble breathing.”

  Nicola knew that this was not good news. If the ball had pierced his lung and it was filling up with blood, there would be little she could do to save him. However, when she saw Jack look to the bed, his body taut as a wire and an unmistakable flash of fear in his dark eyes, she said quickly, “It is no wonder that he would have trouble breathing, as close as the air is in this room. Open the door. Can we not crack the window? And I scarcely think we need a roaring fire right now, especially one that fills the room with smoke, as that one does.”

  Jack relaxed, a smile coming to his lips as he turned toward her. “Never one to mince words, are you, my dear Miss Falcourt? Allow me to introduce Dirk. He has been watching over my friend while I went to fetch you. And this is Diane. She, uh, is with another of my men, and she takes care of the house.”

  He had succeeded in detaching the girl from himself as he said this, but she continued to look at him in a way that made Nicola suspect Diane was far more interested in him than in any of his men—or his house. Whatever she was to Jack, she certainly was not of much use in a sickroom.

  “This is Miss Falcourt,” Jack said, talking to the man and woman. “She is here to help Perry. You are to do what she asks.”

  Dirk nodded, gazing at her with bleary interest, and the girl cast her a sullen look before nodding her understanding.

  “So put out the fire, Dirk,” Jack said crisply. “Draw the drapes and open the window, Di.”

  “But what about the light?” the girl asked, looking disgruntled. “Anyone could see it. ‘Sides, everyone knows the night air’s not good for a sick man.”

  “He isn’t sick, he is injured,” Nicola told her. “There is a difference. You are adding to his troubles by making him sweat and breathe fetid air. We need to help him, not make it harder for him.”

  “Do as I said, Diane,” Jack added in a voice that brooked no disobedience. “Leave the shutters closed and little light will get out, while some air gets in. The trees will hide it, too, and if it is discovered…” He shrugged. “I will not let Perry die so that we can remain undetected.”

  He turned to Nicola. “What else should we do?”

  “I have to clean the wound. I need the purest water you have. Granny Rose used distilled water, as she did for her decoctions and infusions, but we haven’t the equipment or time for that now. I have one bottle of distilled water—I will use that. But we need more. Boil some and let it cool. That will leave some of the impurities on the bottom of the pot. I’ll need more light. I can barely see the patient, let alone find a ball in his wound.”

  Jack nodded and went to turn up the lamp. He added his candle to the table beside the lamp, then went in search of more lamps. Nicola walked over to the table and looked down at the man lying in the bed. Her eyes went first to his wound, covered by the lumpy, amateurish bandage. It was soaked with blood, but it was brownish and much of it dried, rather than fresh, which indicated that at least the bleeding had stopped. She feared that when she pulled off the bandage to look at it, the bleeding would start afresh, so she decided to wait until more light arrived.

  Her eyes went to the man’s face. Like Dirk and the girl, he wore no mask, and Nicola could see that he was a rather good-looking man in his late thirties or early forties, with a Norman nose, long face and reddish-blond coloring. He opened his eyes as she stood there.

  “Hullo.” His voice was thick and weak. “I would swear you were an angel, but I doubt that would be the place I’ve gone.”

  Nicola smiled. “You are far too ready with your tongue to be approaching either heaven or hell right now, sir. My name is Nicola Falcourt, and I am here to help you, if I can.”

  “Ah…Nicola Falcourt…” The man’s eyes wavered. His face was flushed, and an overpowering smell of whiskey hung over him.

  Jack walked into the room, carrying an oil lamp in each hand, and Nicola turned to him accusingly. “Is this man drunk?” She cast a critical glance at Dirk. “This one certainly seems to be. Not exactly the one I would entrust a wounded man to. Did you all sit around drinking before you came to get me?”

  “No,” Jack answered. “I gave Perry a shot or two of whiskey for the pain, and I will give him more before you begin to work on him. But most of the smell of alcohol comes from his wound. I poured whisky on it. I have seen it done before to cleanse a wound.”

  “It sounds as if you have had more experience than I in that regard,” Nicola replied. “Perhaps you should be the one who digs the ball out.”

  “I will if I have to,” he replied evenly.

  Nicola nodded and turned back to her patient. “Perhaps you had better give him a drink, then, for I need to remove the bandage. I am afraid it will stick.”

  Without a word, Jack took the bottle in one hand and cupped the other behind the wounded man’s head, lifting it. “Here you go, old boy. Take a drink. It will make it seem easier.”

  “But I don’t want him drunk to the point of vomiting,” Nicola cautioned. “That will only make it harder on all of us, including him.”

  The man in the bed took a slug of whiskey, then another, and Jack eased him back down onto the pillow. Nicola glanced at the girl, still standing beside the opened window, then at Jack. He nodded briefly in understanding.

  “Go down to the kitchen and boil a pot of water for Miss Falcourt, Diane. Dirk, you go down, too, and send one of the other men up…one who hasn’t been nipping at the whiskey bottle the past hour or two.”

  “Yes, sir.” The other man gave Jack a hangdog look. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to. Only—it was hard just sittin’ there watchin’ ‘im try to breathe.”

  “I know. It’s all right. But I think we need someone with a steadier hand and eye right now. So send Saunders up, will you?”

  The other man nodded and left the room, taking a reluctant Diane by the arm and hauling her out with him. Jack and Nicola turned back to the patient. He lay now with his eyes closed. His breathing was still heavy, but Nicola was relieved to hear none of the gurgling sounds that would indicate blood in his lungs.

  Taking the bottle of distilled water out of her bag, she poured some of it on the bandage, dam
pening the crusted blood to soften it and cause less tearing when she took it off. Then she carefully peeled the bandage back. The patient drew in a sharp breath of pain as the bandage came off with a tug. Nicola sucked in her breath almost as sharply at the sight of the red, puckered wound. Fresh blood welled up out of it.

  Nicola poured more of the water on one of the rags she had brought, then began to gently wash away the dried blood all around the wound. With the same care, she poured more of the water onto the man’s chest, letting it flow down across the wound. She knew that it was painful, but she also knew that it was imperative to leave nothing in the wound. Granny Rose had always stressed that. Any bit of foreign material left in the wound was an irritant to it, she had said, and would work against the healing, creating an angry, pus-filled wound.

  The water washed out a tiny fragment of black cloth, probably his shirt, and a few grains of gunpowder. Nicola continued to clean the wound with cloth and water until the pink-stained water ran clear of any other matter.

  “Hold a lamp as close to the wound as you can,” she told Jack, and when he did, she leaned down to examine the torn flesh. “I can’t see the ball. I will have to probe for it.”

  She swallowed, her stomach roiling at the thought of what she was about to do, and looked at Jack. His face was a trifle pale, too, she thought, but he merely nodded. “Saunders will help hold him down.”

  The man named Saunders knocked on the door and entered a moment later. Nicola took her tweezers from her bag, doing her best to ignore the jangling of her nerves and the icy fear in the pit of her stomach. She knew that this procedure would be incredibly painful for her patient, and the less skillful she was, the worse it would be. She could not let her hands shake, could not allow herself to feel or show doubt.

  Saunders sat down on the patient’s legs and took the lamp from Jack, holding it as close as he could to the wound. Jack went around to the head of the bed and leaned over the wounded man, placing his hands firmly on the man’s arms. With the patient thus pinned, Nicola leaned over the bed and began to probe for the ball with her tweezers.

  A bellow escaped the patient, and he began to twist and jerk, trying to get away. Jack and his helper clamped down even harder. As Nicola continued to feel for the metal ball, the man’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he passed out. After that, it was easier.

  Nicola could feel the beads of sweat rolling down her face and neck. Blood was welling up out of the man’s wound now in a seeming flood. Her instrument clicked on metal. Biting her lip until it bled, Nicola manipulated the tweezers until she could clamp down on the bit of metal. Carefully, slowly, she lifted the tweezers, scared that she would make a false move and the ball would fly out of her grasp.

  But now the tweezers were free of the wound, and clamped between them was a misshapen lump of metal. Nicola drew a shaky breath that sounded very much like a sob and dropped both tweezers and the mangled ball of lead onto the bed. She sat down on the side of the bed, for the room was suddenly spinning around her, and lowered her head to her hands.

  “You did it.” Jack’s voice was low and close to her ear, and his arm went around her shoulders, pressing her close to him.

  As if his very warmth had brought home to her how cold she was, Nicola began to shiver. Quickly he stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around her, holding her in his arms and rubbing his hands up and down her arms.

  “It’s shock,” he told her. “The aftermath of danger.”

  He nodded toward his man, who sprang up and poured a shot of whiskey into a glass, the bottle rattling against the rim. Jack took the glass from him and pressed it to Nicola’s lips. “Here, drink this. It’ll help you.”

  “I can’t. There are still things I have to do.” She turned vaguely toward the patient.

  “You’ll feel better if you take a drink of this.”

  Obediently she took a sip of the amber liquid. It roared like fire through her mouth and down her throat, bursting in her stomach. Nicola gasped and shuddered.

  “Are you insane?” she managed to squeak out.

  He chuckled. “Perhaps. A little. Take another sip.”

  It did not taste quite as bad this time, and Nicola realized after a moment that her trembling had ceased and she no longer felt as if she were freezing from the inside out. In that same instant she realized how close she was to Jack and how good and warm it felt to have his arm draped around her shoulders, protecting and soothing her.

  She stood up abruptly. This was not at all the sort of thing she should be thinking. “Thank you.”

  She turned back to the man on the bed. Once again, she washed the wound clean, then held a bandage against it to stop the bleeding.

  “Hold this here, hard,” she told Jack, turning over the bandage to him, and went to her bag. Taking a vial of oil and a small pot, she returned to the bed. “Has the bleeding stopped?”

  Jack nodded, lifting the bloodied cloth so that she could see. “What are those?”

  “This is a cream of marigold mixed with marsh woundwort,” she explained, holding up the small pot and taking out a dab of it, which she applied carefully to the wound. “It helps prevent pus from forming. The other is oil infused with comfrey, to help it heal quickly.”

  When she had applied the remedies, she stitched the wound and placed a clean, soft folded cloth on the wound, and, while the two men held the patient’s torso up off the bed, she wrapped a long strip of cloth around the man’s chest to hold the bandage in place. Then she pulled the covers up over her patient’s chest and stood for a moment looking down at him.

  “That is all I can do right now,” she told Jack. “He may get a fever. They often do. I will leave some powdered meadowsweet, which you can steep in hot water for a tea. It will ease his fever and pain. Change his bandage at least once a day—I will give you some clean ones. Reapply the marigold cream and comfrey oil when you change it.”

  She glanced back at her patient and sighed. “I am afraid it could be some time before he is out of the woods. He is still in a great deal of danger from fever and infection. If he does get delirious from fever, you will need to hold him down to keep him from reopening his wound. He will have to be watched round the clock.” She frowned, thinking of the girl who had been set to look after him before she came; she had little faith that Diane would make an adequate nurse. “If you care for this man, you will make sure that someone competent is looking after him.”

  “I do care for him,” Jack replied. “That is why you are going to stay.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  NICOLA SIMPLY STARED AT HIM. “Excuse me? What did you just say?”

  Jack turned toward Saunders and jerked his head toward the door. Saunders left without a word, and Jack turned back to Nicola. “I said that is why you will have to remain here. To nurse Perry.”

  “You cannot be serious.” When he said nothing, just gazed back at her blandly, Nicola went on. “I cannot stay here. It’s impossible.”

  “Of course you can. Nothing easier. There is an extra room down the hall. It even has a lock—in case you doubt my intentions. You and I can take turns keeping watch. And you will be here to change the bandage and give him whatever medicine he needs.”

  Nicola cut in on his words. “Now I am certain of it—you are indeed mad. I am not remaining here.”

  “Why? Because it will damage your reputation?” he asked sarcastically. “Does your reputation matter more to you than a man’s life?”

  “Of course not. I was not thinking about my reputation. But I cannot simply disappear. Have you forgotten that I am staying with my sister and her husband? Do you think they will not notice when I don’t come downstairs tomorrow morning? That no one will wonder what happened to me or where I am? My sister’s health is precarious and my disappearance might aggravate her condition. Also, I might point out that you will be the first person Richard blames when I turn up missing. He already would love to have your head on a platter, and he will be more than happy to add kidn
apping to your list of crimes.”

  “I am sure he will. But it cannot be helped. It is more important that Perry have the proper care.”

  “If you are so concerned for your friend, perhaps you should have thought of his welfare before you pulled him in on this escapade of yours,” Nicola retorted. “Exmoor hates you, but I can promise that his efforts to find you so far are nothing compared to what he will do when he realizes that you have abducted me.”

  “Oh, I am certain that he will move heaven and hell to find you,” Jack spat back, his mouth twisting bitterly.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Nicola asked, indignation rising in her at his tone.

  “Why, that the Earl if very fond of you, of course,” he replied. “Any man would be.”

  “I must say that you work very hard at being insulting. Whatever you are implying about Exmoor and me, I can assure you that it is not true. However, I am his wife’s sister. Abducting me out of his very house is tantamount to spitting in his face. He will not rest or spare any expense until he finds me. Nor, I think, will you find the people in the village quite as reluctant to talk about you when he tells them that you have kidnapped me. For all any of them will know, you could have killed me. And, however much you may despise me, I can tell you that I am not without friends in the village.”

  “They may tell him all they want, but none of them knows where we are. I have taken great pains not to let them know the location of my home. None of the villagers has been here. And I have made sure that this house is very difficult to find.”

  Nicola crossed her arms and looked at him. “You are a reckless man, but heretofore you had not struck me as a fool. Do you think they will not comb these woods? Do you think that no one will remember the existence of this house? Someone built it. Someone used to live in it. You may think that you have hidden yourself from everyone, but I’ll warrant there are one or two people in the village who have some idea where you live. It may take them a few days, but I can assure you that eventually they will find it. With Exmoor and my cousin offering rewards—as they are sure to do—they will make the effort.”