Page 55 of The Soldier's Scoundrel
“Often am,” Jack said matter-of-factly.
“But why? You just said she has piles of money.”
“The terms of the marriage settlement gave it all to Wraxhall. She only has pin money and I reckon she had an urgent need of funds.” There were reasons a lady might need money, none of which he wanted to discuss in Oliver’s arms. So he rose to his feet.
“Jack. Where are the letters now?” Oliver was still sprawled languidly on the chaise.
Jack needed to get out of this room before he started saying things that would later embarrass him. “Follow me and I’ll show you.” He dearly hoped he was right, because getting this wrong would make him look a right clod.
They crept down the dark corridors without even a candle. It was a tricky business, feeling your way around a strange house, but Jack had paced out the distance earlier in the evening. The house was quiet. Even the servants were likely in bed at this hour, and the only sound was the scuff of their boots against thick carpeting. But when they turned into the final corridor, Jack heard an abrupt and very out of place sound. A soft metallic click, the unmistakable sound of a pistol being cocked. He didn’t need to turn to know who held the weapon.
“Rivington!” He threw himself on top of Oliver immediately before hearing the pistol’s report.
Only after the two of them landed on the ground did Jack realize that he had been shot.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“It’s only a scratch,” Jack protested as Oliver dragged him through the darkened passageways. Behind them, he could hear doors opening and the raised voices of guests who had been startled awake by the shot.
“I don’t give a damn what it is,” Oliver growled as soon as they were safely back to his room, the door closed behind them. He sounded as fierce as Jack had ever heard him. “Either you let me tend to it or I’m summoning a surgeon, and that’s final.” With that, he proceeded to efficiently strip off Jack’s blood-soaked clothes.
Jack could clearly see a little hole on one side of his arm. Likely there was a matching wound on the other side. The thought made him go a little faint.
“Damn,” he heard Oliver say, and the next thing he knew he was being shoved into a chair. Oliver was pressing a piece of toweling to the wound in order to staunch the blood. The acrid aroma of smelling salts wafted into Jack’s nostrils.
“Christ, Rivington. Do you travel with those?” he asked after his head was clear enough to speak.
“I put them in my case in the event you got sick in the carriage.”
“Oh, very funny.” But the salts had done away with his wooziness, and now Jack could study Oliver’s face. He was ashen. “I’ll be fine, you know.” Jack put his uninjured hand on Oliver’s arm.
They sat in silence for several minutes, Oliver’s hand pressing the cloth hard onto Jack’s wound. In the distance, there was the sound of voices and footsteps. Jack hoped the shooter had enough presence of mind to deliver the usual falsehoods about improperly cleaning one’s weapon. “Did we leave a trail of blood leading back here?”
Oliver gaped at him. “That’s what you’re thinking of right now?”
“Never mind, I remember that the carpets are red.”
“Are you going to tell me who did this? I assume you know.”
“Yes. Obviously. But I don’t want to talk about it now. Tomorrow.” First he would get the letters back, then he’d talk to Mrs. Wraxhall, then he’d go to London and spend about a week in bed. He’d let Sarah fuss over him as much as she cared to.
“I’m afraid I’m being very tiresome,” Oliver said with a rare edge to his voice, “but do we need to worry about being shot in our beds while we sleep?”
“No.” An insufficient answer, but the best he could do right now.
Oliver gingerly lifted the cloth. The bleeding had slowed. “You’ll heal better with a couple of stitches,” he said, his voice strained, “but I’m not fool enough to ask whether you’ll let me call for a surgeon. And the truth is that I’ve seen worse wounds heal without being sewn up.”
The pistol had likely been one of those tiny weapons women carry in their reticules, and it hadn’t been fired at close range. Jack closed his eyes and heard Oliver rummaging around in his valise. A few moments later he felt a glass pressed into his hand. He sipped tentatively. Brandy and the unmistakable bitterness of laudanum. “I don’t need—”
“Oh, yes you do. In an hour or two when your nerves wear off, the pain will hit.” Oliver began unwinding his cravat with one bloody hand. “Do you often have people shooting at you?”
Sometimes. “No.”
“I don’t like this at all.”
Jack drained the glass of laudanum-laced brandy. “This is what I do.”
