Page 41 of A Deal With a Notorious Devil
His foot twitched, his leg drawing up in a spasmodic motion she’d seen before, and a muscle in his jaw clenched with it. It wasn’t only his side that pained him. She found his knee with her fingertips, searching lightly over the muscle and bone, until she found the spot she’d most frequently seen him rub and dig at, feeling the tight pressure within it. With the pad of her thumb, she pressed lightly—and then harder when his jaw relaxed and a sigh of relief slid between his clenched teeth. “There?” she asked.
“God. Yes.” The fight went out of him in a rush, and he collapsed back upon the pillow at last, his lashes fluttering.
“That’ll be the laudanum,” the surgeon said, as he went back to work. “At last, thank God.”
On a saucer upon the nightstand rested an unassuming fragment of the lead ball that had wrought so much damage. How strange to think that something so small could come so close to killing a man. “Is that all of it?” she asked, as the surgeon snipped off the thread. “I mean to say—are there any fragments left?”
“Not any left within his ungrateful hide which I could find,” the surgeon said. “He was lucky there. Plucked out that bit with a pair of tweezers, though you’d have thought it was a hot poker by how he carried on.”
What a terrible bedside manner. Phoebe watched the man withdraw several gauze pads from his bag, pack them around the wound, and secure them into place with a long length of bandage. “I’d have carried on, as well,” she said, aware of the vaguely defensive tone of her voice, “if someone went poking about my insides with a pair of tweezers.”
The surgeon gave a tiny sniff. “One would think he’d be accustomed to it by now. I’ve patched him up a dozen times at least.” And then, as if it had occurred to him that he had neverseen Phoebe at Chris’ bedside, he offered, “Don’t worry. He’ll outlive us all; he’s far too stubborn to die of a little thing like this.”
“A little thing!” Phoebe cried. “He was shot!”
“Hardly more than a graze, when one considers the sort of wounds he’s already survived,” the surgeon said. “Looks worse than it is. He’ll bleed like a stuck pig—that bandage must be changed every two hours, by the way—and he’ll be weak for a while. Keep him quiet and calm, and he’ll recover within a month. Call me again if the wound putrefies.” With a small nod, he collected his bag and headed for the door.
“He’s a brusque sort,” Brooks offered, in what Phoebe assumed was meant to excuse the man for his foul temperament. “But he’s a damn fine surgeon.”
And he’d stitched Chris up a dozen times at least, or so he’d said. “This is…a regular occurrence?” she inquired.
“When one’s got as many enemies as Mr. Moore has, one learns to expect such things.” As he and Haddington got to work cleaning the mess that had been leftover, Brooks added, “The last such attempt was…oh, three weeks ago, now, I expect.”
Just three weeks? Three weeks between one attempt upon his life and another? “He was shot less than a month ago?”
“No; don’t be ridiculous. He’d hardly have been in a fit state to do much of anything if he had.” He and Haddington wrestled a fresh, clean sheet beneath Chris’ unconscious form. “He was abducted off the street, relieved of his valuables, and tossed into the Thames. I’m given to understand that perhaps a year ago he could have fought the villains off himself, but he doesn’t move as fast as he used to.”
Quite frankly, it was a miracle he moved as well as he did, with the damage that had been done to his knee. Did he take his life into his hands every time he left the house? She could not imagine the burden of knowing that any move might be his last,that his ability to defend himself had been heavily curtailed through no fault of his own.
That if he were to be shot in the street, no one would bother to render him aid.
It wasn’t pity, exactly, that wrenched at her heart, but rather the inherent sympathy for a friend in a bad way. One who happened to be her husband.
“If you don’t mind, Madam,” Brooks said, with a gentle clearing of his throat. “We’ve got to make him comfortable.”
Comfortable, she supposed, involved removing the rest of his clothing. It was meant to be her cue to leave the room, permission to absent herself at last. “I’ll stay,” she said. Because someone ought to. Brooks had brought her up not merely to inform her of what had occurred in her absence, she thought, but because Chris had the marked tendency to fight everyone only on principle.
Except her. And she’d calmed him enough that the surgeon had been able to complete his unpleasant task without more fuss. “I’ll stay,” she repeated. “At least until he wakes. Someone—someone will have to inform Emma.”
Together Brooks and Haddington wrestled Chris free of his ruined clothing as Phoebe wrestled a heavy chair from its position before the fireplace to the side of his bed. “I’ll see that she is notified at once,” Brooks said, straightening the lapels of his coat as he headed for the door. But he paused just before the threshold, and patted at his pockets, withdrawing a small box. “Here,” he said, turning once more to offer it to her. “He had this on him.”
Settling into her chair, Phoebe accepted the box and lifted the lid. A diamond bracelet sparkled against a backdrop of crimson velvet. A lovely piece; clearly quality.
There; the address of the jeweler had been printed in gilt-embossed lettering upon the box.Bond Street. This had been hisbusiness there, then. A pretty bit of jewelry no doubt purchased for his mistress had nearly cost him his life.
∞∞∞
Chris woke with a burning pain in his side and a terrapin upon his chest.
“What the hell?” he rasped through his dry throat.
“Shh.” The soft sound came from the side of the bed, and he turned his head to see Phoebe settled in a chair beside his bed, reading by the low light of a lamp placed upon his nightstand. Squinting, he read the title upon the spine.Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.“You’ll scare him,” she said.
What? Oh, yes, the turtle. “Hieronymus is anoutsideturtle,” he said in a gritty rumble.
“He is, mostly,” she said. “But he likes to explore. I brought him for a visit, since it’s unlikely you’ll be up and about to see him anytime soon.”
The hell he wouldn’t. “Get the damned turtle off of me,” he said. “I’m getting up.”
