Page 78 of One Night with a Prince
“Oh, for God’s sake, let her look at it,” Gavin seconded, coming up beside the women. “Lady Haversham spent years traveling with the army. I’m sure she’s dressed a wound or two.”
“Indeed I have,” Christabel said. “Come now, it won’t hurt to let me look.”
Though Eleanor’s expression was mutinous, she didn’t resist as Christabel drew her leg out and examined it with surprising gentleness.
“It looks like just a flesh wound, but it will have to be cleaned before I can be sure that the ball didn’t fracture a bone.” Christabel lifted her gaze to Stokely. “You should call for a surgeon. This is beyond my limited skill.”
“It shall be done at once,” Stokely said, looking a bit green about the gills as he called a footman over and ordered him to Salisbury to fetch the surgeon.
“We need to get her inside,” Christabel said, turning her gaze to Gavin. Muttering a curse, he bent and picked Eleanor up, then carried her down the hill toward the house. He could have told one of the footmen to do it, but Eleanor was already accusing Christabel of shooting her—if anything happened to her between Christabel’s brief treatment of her and the surgeon’s arrival, she’d blame that on Christabel, too. He wasn’t about to allow that. Eleanor glared up at him. “Your new friend is a nuisance, Byrne. She doesn’t belong here.”
“No, she doesn’t,” he answered tersely. “She’s too good for the likes of us. But she happens to be excellent at whist, and I happen to be fond of her, so I intend to keep her around. And that means I will be decidedly irritated if something were to happen to her.” He cast her a cold glance. “Understood?”
Eleanor’s face whitened before she glanced away. “Understood.”
Thank God the bitch knew better than to cross him. Because right now, he could easily strangle her for threatening to shoot Christabel.
Once they got her inside, and the surgeon finally arrived, the man’s examination revealed that the ball had only nicked the bone, but her flesh would require stitching. Although the surgeon advised her against participating in outdoor activities for a few weeks, he said that a night’s rest would probably be all it took to get her up and around enough to play cards. He insisted that she not do any card-playing that night, aGenerated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmldecree that sent Eleanor into wails of outrage, since the eliminations were to begin then. Only after she’d elicited Stokely’s promise to suspend the eliminations—and all whist games entirely—for one night did she agree to let the surgeon administer laudanum for the pain. Then Gavin and Christabel followed Stokely, Talbot, and the surgeon out of Eleanor’s bedchamber. As the other three men walked ahead of them down the stairs, in deep conversation with the surgeon, Gavin offered Christabel his arm.
“Congratulations,” he quipped. “You managed to eviscerate Eleanor without turning a card.”
She glared at him. “It isn’tmy fault that the woman shot herself. And you know perfectly well I won that match.”
“I’m only teasing you, my sweet. Trust me, no one blames you. If anything, I blame myself. Eleanor isn’t usually that foolish, but she was smarting over how I humiliated her lover. Since she chose to take it out on you, I concede that I probably shouldn’t have pushed Markham so far last night.”
“Or slept with every woman in creation,” Christabel muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing. But now that we don’t have to worry about cards tonight, I have the perfect way for us to spend the evening.”
He took one look at the gleam in her eyes and groaned. “Please tell me that what you’re thinking of involves bed-sheets and a chilled bottle of good Madeira.”
She eyed him askance. “I know where the letters are. They’re somewhere in Lord Stokely’s room. I went there to search earlier, but the door was locked. So all we have to do is pick the lock—”
“We? Do you have yet another skill I was unaware of?”
“Well, no, but surely you could—”
“I’ve had a relatively checkered past, I’ll admit, but thievery wasn’t part of it.” That was perfectly true, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t pick a lock. Not that he wantedher to know that. He meant for her to be sound asleep when he searched Stokely’s bedchamber. If Stokely was fool enough to keep the letters there.
“But you said you could get into any safe—” She broke off at the sight of a footman rushing up the stairs toward them.
He held out a sealed note. “An urgent message has come for you, sir.”
His heart thundering in his chest, Gavin murmured a thank-you and took it. He read it quickly, then tucked it in his waistcoat pocket so she couldn’t get a look at it. “I have to go to Bath.”
“Now?” she asked. “But, Byrne, the eliminations—”
“They won’t start until tomorrow. I can be there and back before then.” He chucked her under the chin.Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
“Don’t worry, my sweet, I won’t abandon you to the wolves at the card tables.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And while you’re gone, I can search Lord Stokely’s room. I suppose I could try sneaking in while he’s asleep—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, his heart skipping a beat at the very thought of her in Stokely’s room in the dead of night. “And that won’t be possible anyway. Because you’re going to Bath with me.”
Chapter Eighteen
