Page 75 of Lady Daring
“Charley!” Henrietta called.
“Not for a monkey!” Charley called back. He sat in the empty bedroom on the other side of her sitting room, the connecting door open, the back of his chair facing the door. “I’m here as chaperone and witness. That’s all the seconds needs to do. I don’t have to hold his hand in his death throes.”
“Death throes?” Henrietta stepped forward to push against Darien’s chest. Good heavens, his torso was as hard as marble too. His skin felt clammy. His heart thudded against her fingertips. His gaze flew up to meet hers, and she couldn’t look away.
“If I am able to extract the bullet, it is possible he may keep his arm,” the surgeon said, peering into the wound. Henrietta had expected something more gaping, more horrifying than a neat circle with a black ring of singed flesh and powder. “The collarbone appears to be cracked, but the shoulder is attached. Most of the damage is in the muscle. I’ve seen men recover from wounds like these.”
Hope entered Darien’s eyes until the surgeon added, “Unless infection sets in, of course. There is always that.”
Darien’s heart skipped a beat beneath her fingertips, echoing the trip in her own chest. If the wound grew infected, she would have days with him, a week at most. She raised her other hand to his cheek and felt the tiny brush of stubble, his ridiculously soft skin, the firm, clean bone beneath. It would not be fair to discover him and not have time to learn more. It would be the world’s cruelest joke.
And yet she knew as well as he that the world played cruel jokes daily.
“Ah, there you are,” the surgeon announced, and Darien gave a long exhale. The doctor held up a leaden lump in the tiny claws of his instrument. “And intact, too. That’s a help.” He laid aside the instrument and took up his spool of thread. “Now to close the wound.”
“You intend to clean it first,” Henrietta reminded him.
The surgeon blinked. “To what purpose? All that is required is a few stitches.”
“Forgive me,” Henrietta said, reaching for her bowl. She was glad to have a task to keep her from collapsing in a heap of nerves. “But our nurse at school always insisted on a saline rinse for wounds.”
“Don’t kill ’im,” Charley called from the next room. “He’s heir to Langford.”
“Lord Daring?” The surgeon paused, wide-eyed, scissors in the air.
Henrietta almost laughed, until she applied her sponge to Darien’s shoulder and he tried to scramble away from the sting. “Damn it, Henry, that hurts worse than his poking!”
“Yes, the salt stings for a moment,” she said. “Bear with me.” When the surgeon wasn’t looking, she dipped his needle in the hot water as she had seen the nurse do at Miss Gregoire’s.
The surgeon set his stitches, and Charley scavenged a shirt of Sir Jasper’s. The surgeon left with an additional fee in his pocket and instructions for the care of the patient. Henrietta brought Darien a glass of ale and a plate of bread and butter. He ate the bread and butter but traded the ale to Charley for the rest of the brandy. On the surgeon’s advice, Henrietta moved him to the spare bedroom, the one Charley had perched in, so that he might rest.
“You didn’t say yes,” Darien said, watching as she bustled about the room, pulling draperies, arranging blankets.
“We’ll discuss it later.” Gently she tucked another pillow against his side to help him rest upright. His skin felt warm again, not clammy as he was before. The surgeon had fashioned a sling and insisted he move as little as possible until the collarbone healed. Which meant she couldn’t send him home.
She didn’t want to. She wanted him right here where she could take care of him. She would persuade Lady Mama of the necessity. She hoped she would have the same luck persuading her father when he returned.
“You mean to say yes, don’t you?” The hoarse note in his voice curled around her heart and tugged.
“Hush,” Henrietta said, pouring a dose of laudanum. “Rest.”
With his good hand, he grasped hers before she could slip away. “Henry. Everyone saw us.”
“Yes, you made certain of that, didn’t you?” His eyes had swept the room before he’d kissed her. He must have seen people drawing near. “I think you meant for us to be found.”
He took the laudanum, watching her warily. His hand still clutched hers. “What I cannot conceive,” she said, “iswhy.”
“So you’d have to marry me, pea goose. I knew how it would go otherwise. You’d make me spend twelve months wooing you.”
She scowled at him. “So you chose to make me a spectacle like you did all the others! One more silly damsel ruined by Lord Daring. When I’m already ruined for far different reasons.”
“I couldn’t wait twelve weeks,” he muttered. “Twelve days.” He pressed her hand to his chest, his eyes dark. “Don’t leave me.”
His husky plea riveted her as nothing else could have. That certainty ran through her again, cool and clear. She passed a hand over his brow. “I won’t.”
The anguish in his eyes clouded as the medication took effect. Gradually his eyelids closed, and sonorous snores told herhe slept. For a long time, Henrietta sat with her hand against his heart, feeling the firm, steady beat.
Here he lay, the most beautiful, infuriating, haunted man she had ever met. She could count every beat of his heart, yet she had no notion what lay within those unknowable depths.
