The look on Wickham’s face was pure horror.
“I’ll not have any bloody sawbones cutting on me.”
“Blue Ruin, milord.” Barnet reappeared at the bedside at that timely moment, proffering a silver flask. Wickham, tight-lipped, looked at his henchman and nodded. The flask was put into his hand, his head was lifted, and he drank.
“ ’Twill be easier if he’s drunk,” Ormsby said approvingly, already removing his coat.
“I told you, I’ll not have. . . .” Wickham’s voice was a growl. He was once again lying back against the pillows, his eyes mere glittering slits, his jaw clenched.
Gabby’s lips compressed. It was an effort to remind herself that his recovery was as important as if he were her true brother.
“If the bullet is in there, then it must be removed for healing to occur,” she said shortly.
“If the bullet stays where it is, there can be little doubt that the wound will putrefy,” the surgeon agreed, handing his coat to Jem and rolling up his sleeves. “Is there hot water? Excellent.”
Gabby had indicated the pitcher and basin with a nod.
“There is really no choice,” she said to Wickham. He met her gaze for a long moment, during which she was silently given to understand that he considered his current situation to be entirely her fault. Then he looked at Ormsby, and nodded curtly.
“Very well. But be damned careful what you’re about.”
The surgeon inclined his head. “As I am always, my lord.”
Barnet proffered the flask again as Ormsby, with a great many self-important flourishes, began to lay out his instruments on a small table he directed Jem to carry to the bedside. This time Wickham drank deep. Then he looked at Gabby again.
“Time for you to leave,” he said.
Gabby, who could discover in herself not the smallest desire to witness the upcoming surgery despite a burning wish to be somehow revenged on his faux lordship, nodded. But Ormsby glanced around just then, shaking his head at her.
“I will need someone to assist me, my lady. Of course, if you care to send in one of the maids . . .”
“Barnet can do all the assisting that is required,” Wickham growled, having just downed another long swallow from the flask.
The surgeon made expressive eyes at Gabby.
“Damn it, man, don’t make faces behind my back. If you’ve some ob—objection to Barnet, tell me f—flat out.” The slight stumble to Wickham’s voice was, Gabby realized, an indication of the contents of the flask at work.
Ormsby looked pained. “It may become necessary, my lord, to employ your man—big, strapping fellow that he is—to hold you, uh, steady. I should not like to slip with the knife.”
The thought obviously appalled Wickham.
“If you should so slip, my good man, I assure you that the consequences will be extremely unpleasant.” Wickham all but bared his teeth at Ormsby, who took an instinctive step back from the bed, before being distracted by Barnet once again wordlessly proffering the flask.
“Very good notion, that,” Ormsby said in a low-voiced aside to Gabby as Wickham once again drank deep. “Very, um, forceful man, your husband.”
“He is not my husband.”
Ormsby gave her a rather surprised look. Obviously, in his opinion no lady would be caught dead in the bedchamber of a man—especially a half-naked one—who was not her husband.
“He is my brother.” Gabby’s voice had a snap to it as she was forced to utter the lie. Although, she told herself, she might as well get used to it. For the forseeable future, to all intents and purposes the shameless blackguard in the bed was her brother.
“S—sweet sister, I would still ask you to quit the room.” Wickham had obviously overheard her mendacious claim of kinship and found it amusing. Just as obviously, whatever was in the flask was doing its work: his cheeks were faintly flushed now, and his limbs sprawled heavily against the mattress. “Your servant—Jem—may render what as—assistance is required. I have no—no desire for you to witness the upcoming b—butchery.”
“Hardly that, my lord,” Ormsby replied, affronted. “Indeed, I’ll have you know . . .” My lord shot him a glittering look. Ormsby swallowed. “But that is neither here nor there.” He lowered his voice and glanced at Gabby again. “My lady, given that your brother is a large man, obviously quite strong, I fear that—in the thick of things, you know—more than one servant might be required to, er, hold him down.”
Gabby glanced at Wickham, who was regarding the pair of them suspiciously but was too occupied with draining the flask at Barnet’s prompting to interrupt. A servant could of course be summoned to take her place, Gabby thought—but under the circumstances, would that be wise?
If all should be revealed, she would lose as surely as Wickham.
“Go now,” Wickham said, lowering the flask from his lips and scowling at her.
“ ’Tis best that I stay,” Gabby replied firmly, meeting his gaze with quelling intent. Wickham apparently either deciphered her message, or no longer felt inclined to argue. In any case, he made no further protest.
Having finished his preparations, the surgeon glanced at Barnet and nodded. Looking grim, Barnet put the flask aside and then sat down heavily on the edge of the bed.
“Bite on this, milord,” he said, twisting a linen handkerchief between his fingers until it formed a tight coil. Despite his deepening inebriation, Wickham appeared to comprehend the significance of that. He grimaced, then opened his mouth so that Barnet could insert the handkerchief between his teeth. Barnet then wrapped his big arms around his master’s arms and chest.
What followed was unpleasant in the extreme. Ormsby probed for the bullet; Wickham writhed and made guttural sounds of pain through the handkerchief clenched between his teeth. Blood flowed like claret at a wedding. As Ormsby had predicted, Barnet alone was not enough to hold the patient still. Jem, looking disgruntled, was called upon to sit on Wickham’s ankles, and press his hands down tightly over his knees.
By the time the bullet was extracted, Gabby was sweating almost as profusely as Wickham.
“Hah! Got it.” Ormsby held up the bloodied, mishapen lead ball with an air of triumph, then deposited it in the basin Gabby held for him. Wickham, groaning, having arched his back clear off the bed at the crucial moment despite the combined efforts of Barnet and Jem to hold him down, shuddered as the bullet left his flesh. Then he collapsed limply upon the mattress as blood welled like water into the hole Ormsby had left and overflowed. Clucking importantly, Ormsby began to try to staunch the blood. Panting, his head resting back against Barnet’s shoulder, Wickham spat the twisted linen rope from his mouth.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” he said in a guttural tone. As Jem scooted off his ankles and Barnet held his head over the side of the bed, he was, indeed, violently ill. Gabby barely managed to get the basin in place in time.
10
By the time Gabby emerged from the earl’s chamber, she was lightheaded with weariness. Having cauterized the wound, dusted it with basilicum powder and bound it up, and left behind a goodly number of potions to be administered at various times under various contingencies, Ormsby had left, promising to return on the morrow. Wickham, exhausted from all that had been done to him and still very much under the influence of Blue Ruin, had already drifted off. Barnet had expressed his intention of remaining at his master’s side for the duration. Jem followed Gabby out into the corridor, which was, thankfully, deserted, the gathering of servants who had been there earlier having presumably escorted Ormsby out en masse, so eager were they for news.
“If you have anything to say, and I can see that you do, you may just save it for later. I am too tired to hear you out,” Gabby said grumpily to Jem, reading his intention in his eyes. A purpling bruise showed very distinctly amongst the salt-and-pepper bristles on his jaw. Gabby was reminded of the blow that Wickham had struck him. Fiery for all his small size, Jem wasn’t likely to forget or forgive that any time soon.
“This be a nice sort of bobbery for a lady to be gettin’ herself mixed up in, Miss Gabby, and you knows it.” Jem, too, spoke in a lowered voice, but his words were no less vehement for all that. “Them in there is as fine a pair of hang gallows as I’ve ever cast me peepers on. Shooting the villain was the best notion you’ve had. He . . .”
“Think what you like, but you’ll keep your tongue between your teeth,” Gabby interrupted ruthlessly. “Whoever he is, he cannot be worse for us than Cousin Thomas.”
“A right idiot Mr. Thomas may be, but at least wi’ him we wouldn’t have to fear being murdered in our beds,” Jem retorted. “Them rascally thieves deserves to be transported if not outright hanged. Only let me be sendin’ to Bow Street . . .”
He broke off abruptly as Mary came along the corridor bearing a can of hot water. Spying Gabby, she dropped a quick curtsy.
“Good morning, Mary.”
“G’ mornin’, mum. Mrs. Bucknell thought you might be wishful of having this in your room about now, mum,” Mary said.
“I shall be very glad of it indeed, thank you, Mary. You may take it inside. I shall be with you directly.”
As Mary did as she was told, Gabby once again looked at Jem.
“If we reveal that the man in there is not Wickham, he will reveal that Wickham is dead,” Gabby said flatly. “With Wickham dead, Cousin Thomas succeeds to the title. You know what Cousin Thomas is: with him as earl, we—all of us, my sisters and I, you, the rest of the staff—would soon be in the direst of straits. This way is not good, but it is better than the other, believe me.”
Jem frowned, then shook his head doubtfully. “If you be bound and determined to do this, Miss Gabby, then you knows I’ll stand buff,” Jem said. “But to my way of thinkin’ it be a bad mistake. Them thievin’ rogues . . .”
A chambermaid appeared at the top of the stairs, walking toward them with her back bent under the weight of the coal bucket she grasped with both hands. Jem broke off what he was saying. Seizing the opportunity thus afforded her, Gabby moved toward the door to her chambers.
“I am going to bed,” she said to Jem as the girl passed with a quick bob. “And I suggest you do, too.”
“I doubt I’ll ever close me eyes peaceful-like again with this house full of rogues and rascals like it is,” Jem said bitterly. “And with me bunkin’ down in the mews like I am, who’s to keep a watch on ’em for you, eh, tell me that?”
“Fortunately, there’s no need for anyone to keep a watch on them at the moment. They are bound by the heels. The one is wounded, and the other must wait on him. Which means that they will hardly have the leisure to trouble themselves about us.” On this optimistic note, Gabby put her hand on the doorknob.
“Aye, that’s true enough, unless they decide that riddin’ the world of those who can testify to their crimes be more urgent than carin’ for their wounded, in which case we’ll be regularly dished. You keep your eye out, as I will do, and don’t you go a-trustin’ of ’em an inch, Miss Gabby, you hear?”
With that grim warning ringing in her ears, Gabby made it inside her apartment at last, and gave herself up to Mary’s care. Shortly thereafter, she surrendered to utter exhaustion and lay down upon her bed. Within minutes she was fast asleep.
“You’ll wake her. Come away at once.”
“But it is past midday.” The dismayed whisper belonged to Beth.
“She is clearly very tired then.” Claire’s cooler tones were equally low-pitched.
“Gabby never sleeps this long.”
“Her rest is usually not disturbed by a gunshot in the middle of the night.”
“Pooh. Gabby is not such a milk-and-water creature as to sleep the day away for such a cause as that. You and I were disturbed by it too, and we’re up. I am persuaded that she would not wish to miss our first day in town.”
“You just want to get out and see the sights,” Claire retorted. Gabby’s lids lifted just enough to allow her to perceive her sisters hovering near her bedside. Claire was holding onto Beth’s arm, trying to drag her away. Beth, scowling at Claire, resisted. Of course, neither of them had any notion that she’d been awake the entire night. Claire continued, “Don’t waste your time trying to tip me a rise.”
“And to think Twindle is always scolding me for using cant terms.” Beth shook her head. “You just never use them when she’s about.”
“Come away, do.” With what Gabby considered true nobility, Claire ignored the temptation to launch an answering salvo. “Let Gabby sleep. We can go shopping tomorrow.”
“Shopping?” Beth practically hooted. “If that’s your notion of a day well spent, I think it’s pretty flat. I . . .”
“All right, I’m awake,” Gabby intervened with a groan, opening her eyes fully and easing onto her back. The curtains were still tightly drawn, leaving the bedroom gloomy with shadows. Still, it was obvious from the glow around the edges of the windows and the noises that she could now hear quite clearly from the street that the day was well advanced. For a moment she felt a fluttery little thrill that went a long way toward erasing her exhaustion: they were actually in London. . . .
“Now see what you’ve done,” Claire said on a scolding note to Beth as they both turned to look at Gabby. “Would it have hurt you to let her sleep?”
“Indeed, I have far too much to do to sleep the day away. What o’clock is it, anyway?” Gabby said, rubbing her tired eyes with both hands.
“It’s gone eleven.” Beth’s tone was scandalized, as if sleeping so long was the most depraved thing she had ever heard of. Indeed, their father, an insomniac for years, had never allowed any member of his household to sleep much past dawn. Even though he had been gone for well over a year, ingrained habits were, they had discovered, hard to break.
“So late,” Gabby mocked, and gestured at Beth to open the curtains. As Beth obeyed and bright daylight flooded the room she blinked off the last remnants of drowsiness and hoisted herself up against the headboard. Her troublesome hair, never very secure in its pins, tumbled down around her shoulders as she did so, and she became keenly aware of various newly acquired aches and pains. The dull throbbing in her hip and leg was the worst. As she winced at it she remembered all too clearly the fall that had caused the ache. Coupled to that memory was another, even more unpleasant one: in the next room was a man pretending to be her brother; a man, moreover, who had bullied and threatened her and whom she had most deservedly shot. A man who was a dangerous criminal, and whose dark secret she knew . . .
At the thought Gabby shivered. She supposed she should consider herself lucky that she had been awakened by her sisters, rather than his henchman come to murder her in her bed.
But such thoughts were best saved for another time. There was no doing anything about the man in the next room just at present. And the speediest way to be rid of him was obviously to carry on with her original plan to get Claire creditably established. Then the situation would be very different, and the scoundrel would be well advised to look to himself.
“See how tired she looks. You need to learn to think of others besides yourself sometimes, Beth.”
Beth swelled with indignation.
“Beth is right, Claire. I should not like to miss our first day in town,” Gabby said hastily, before the argument could begin.
“See?” Beth said with lofty dignity to Claire.
Claire, appearing to forget for the moment her status as a young lady, stuck out her tongue by way of reply.
“Pull the bell, would one of you? I must get up. We’ve a call to pay on our Aunt Salcombe, for one thing, if not today then as soon as possible, and no doubt we’ll soon be receiving calls ourselves . . .”
Gabby’s gaze ran over the pair of them. Both were clad in more of the outmoded mourning, which was all she had to wear herself. That deplorable state of affairs she meant to remedy without delay. The sooner Claire was properly dressed, seen, courted and wed, the easier she would breathe. No matter how she tried
to rationalize the situation in her mind, there was no getting around the feeling that she was sitting atop a powder keg that could explode in her face at any moment. “Claire, you need clothes. Indeed, we all do. A pretty dash we should cut in what we own now.”
Claire, who was in the process of crossing the room to pull the bell cord, nodded in emphatic agreement.
Beth groaned. “Never say we’re going shopping.”
Gabby threw back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed, determinedly ignoring the pain in her hip and knee as her feet hit the carpet. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
By the time Gabby was dressed, she had quieted Beth’s protests about the day’s itinerary by promising that she should view all the sights of London just as soon as she and her sisters were fit to be seen. Which, in their present apparel, even Beth, who was peering out the window ogling fashionable passersby in what Claire termed the most vulgar way, was brought to own they were not. Then, in response to Claire’s inquiry, Gabby was obliged to give an almost entirely mendacious account of how she and Jem had come to be first on the scene of Wickham’s wounding. As the three of them left her apartment and headed downstairs, they had a most unfortunate encounter with Barnet, who was emerging from the earl’s chamber, a frown on his face and a tray containing an untouched bowl of broth and a glass of ale in his hands.
“How is Wickham faring?” Beth asked him, when Gabby would have passed by with a curt nod.
“Not so good.” Barnet looked anxious. “ ’E’s weak as a kitten, and as you can see, ’e won’t eat.”
“I won’t eat that bloody dishwater, you mean.” Wickham’s voice, thin but belligerent, could be heard through the open door.
Barnet looked helplessly at Gabby. “You ’eard Dr. Ormsby yourself, miss: ’e said ’e’s to ’ave naught but liquids until ’e checks ’im again.”
“Perhaps if we . . .” Claire began, reaching to take the tray from Barnet’s hands.
“Gabriella! Is that you? Come in here,” Wickham ordered peremptorily.
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