When a maidservant appeared in the doorway, Isabella beckoned her to fetch warm water, linens, and the entire medicine chest. “And send for a doctor!” She hovered over the bed and peeled back the sticky fabric of his tailcoat then shirtsleeves.
Sweating, she swallowed down more sickness. The gaping hole left his insides exposed, and a fresh flow poured forth onto the clean bed.
Dear mercy, he was dying.
Despite any wrong he had done Father, she would do almost anything in the world to stop that from happening.
A dark room. Solitude again, but this time worse, because he could no longer hear his aunt’s footsteps trailing away, or Horace chuckling, or Miss Ettie promising him it would be over soon.
He was alone in the blackness. No one lingered on the other side of the door.
If therewasa door.
He groped, but everything was heavy. The air was heavy. He touched a hundred things but couldn’t feel any of them. Where was the door?
Get me out, dear God.He opened his mouth and his tongue nearly choked him. Thick, dry, swollen.Please let me out.
As if in answer, a light hand swept across his brow. Pain prickled through him as the hand pressed harder, dabbing at his hairline, then dragged down the length of his face. He smelled blood, rusty and repugnant. What had his aunt done to him? Or had it been Horace?
He couldn’t remember.
The room was too black, too heavy, for memories. He waited in the solitude for so long he thought he’d die if he didn’t find the door—then the hand returned.
This time it didn’t scrub at him or hurt him. Just fingered into his hair, easy and gentle, as if comprehending his hurt.
As if whispering that he would not be locked in the black room forever.
He looked different now.
For the third time in an hour, Isabella dipped a cloth in the water basin, wrung it out, then placed it across his burning forehead.
With the doctor come and gone, the wounds dressed, the tattered clothes replaced with a fresh nightshirt, he appeared less like some ghoulish creature in a nightmare.
Less like death too.
Yet scratches and cuts marred his face, his neck was bandaged, and an uncommon pallor stole his otherwise tanned complexion.
Pity pooled deep inside her. He could not die. Perhaps she should not feel so strongly. Were it one of Father’s friends from Parliament, or even roguish Lord Livingstone, would such fright have washed over her?
She didn’t know, nor did she understand her reaction. She stared at him now, watched his blue lips mouth something without sound, and remembered how often he had smiled and teased her in London.
They had been nonsensical together.
In an idyllic way, they had talked and laughed and forsaken the customary conversations for words that were not feigned. Words that meant something. She had been herself in his presence, and when they spoke to each other, they had been real in the fullest sense.
Did she really believe he had betrayed them? Or did she only pretend she did for Father’s sake?
Behind her, the bedchamber door creaked open. “Miss Gresham?”
Isabella glanced up and nodded Bridget into the room.
With timid steps, Bridget inched closer. “How fares the poor thing?”
“The doctor has cleaned the gunshots with alcohol and turpentine. The one to his neck was but a graze, and the other not far into his side. He is lucky to have no broken bones.”
“Then there is hope of recovery?”
“Yes.” She swallowed hard. “Though I daresay but a little.”
