Chapter Twelve

P hoebe sailed into the house late in the afternoon, staggering beneath the weight of an armload of books. Her latest excursion to the bookstore had been an unqualified success, though she'd still shelves and shelves left to fill within Chris' library. Brooks came jogging down the stairs and into the foyer, and she breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank God," she said. "Could you send some footmen out to the carriage? There's dozens of books left—" She paused abruptly, her brows knitting. Something about the strange tightness of Brooks' jaw troubled her. "Brooks? What is wrong?" "If you would come with me, Madam," he said, his voice grave. "The surgeon, Mr. Fisk, is here already." "The surgeon!" The books fell from Phoebe's hands with a succession of thumps as they piled up on the floor around her feet. "Whatever for?" "There's been an incident," he said, and turned once more for the stairs, gesturing for her to follow. "I am given to understand that Mr. Moore met with foul play on his walk home this afternoon." His walk home, Phoebe thought, a skirl of guilt churning in her gut. Because she had had the use of the carriage. Brooks was worried. Phoebe could hear it in his voice, in the strain within it. However little he and Chris might get along, however much they might bicker, Brooks was still worried for him. "What sort of foul play?" Phoebe inquired. "The sort that comes when someone discharges a pistol in one's direction." Brooks rounded the corner sharply and proceeded up the next flight of stairs. "A pistol." Phoebe's knees trembled and she nearly missed the step. "He was shot?" "Yes. The surgeon is removing the ball from his side as we speak." A ragged, rueful sort of laugh. "The damned fool had some business on Bond Street," he said. "I suppose he had the misfortune to cross paths with someone bearing both a grudge and a gun." Phoebe swallowed down the strange lump that had risen in her throat. "However did he make it back home?" "Madam, I've told you. The damn fool walked. It wasn't the first time he's been shot." Those scars . So many of them, peppering his skin like birthmarks. But they hadn't been that at all—someone had given him those marks. Many someones, most likely, and over a great many years. "And the man who shot him? He was caught?" "No," Brooks said. "I'm given to understand the shot caught him unawares, and anyone who had been on the street scattered with the sound. In the chaos of a crowded street, I doubt anyone got a good look at who fired." From down the hall, a pained groan split the silence, and Brooks redoubled his pace. "But you must have some sort of inkling as to who might have wished him dead." "Madam, it would be a far easier task to prepare a list of those who do not." Brooks gave only a cursory rap upon Chris' door before he flung it open to admit them. And there—the greying hair of Chris' valet, Haddington, came into view alongside a man who was wearing a bloodstained apron more suitable to a butcher. Both were bent over the bed, intent upon the body stretched out upon it. For just a moment, in the terrible stillness that lingered, Phoebe thought she'd arrived too late only to find herself suddenly a widow. And then— "Ouch! Christ," Chris swore. "Are you trying to kill me?" "I believe, sir, that he is trying to stitch you back up," Haddington said, in an unflappable dry voice, as if nothing of much import was occurring. "Hold him down, will you?" The surgeon growled to Haddington. "Liable to stitch him straight to the bed if he keeps squirming." A rough sound, severe and annoyed, as he redirected his attention to Chris. "Poured enough laudanum down your throat to kill a horse and you're still flailing." "Of course I'm damn well flailing! You're stabbing me with a needle!" Phoebe could have cried with relief. As wretched as the wound might be, she could not believe that he was in any true danger if he could still complain so mightily. Her shoulders sagged as she approached the bed, wedging herself there at the end near his legs. His flailing ceased as she laid one hand upon his thigh. "Chris," she said, "you have to be stitched up." Up close he looked worse. A huge red stain marred the parted fabric of his white shirt, and his face was too pale with the loss of blood. There was just the tiniest ring of icy blue around the massive black circles of his pupils. Sweat had bloomed upon his brow, plastering whisks of his blond hair to his forehead. And still he strained against the press of Haddington's hands upon his shoulders and the small, neat stitches that the surgeon placed in his ruined skin. No one had helped him, she thought. He'd been shot in a public street and had still walked the rest of the way home. No one—not one person—had thought to offer him aid. 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 never seen 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 his business 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 an outside turtle," 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." "No, you aren't." Phoebe flicked a page. "Would you like some tea?" "I'd like to get up ." "The surgeon was quite clear," she said lightly. "You're to be kept still and calm for the foreseeable future." "Fuck the damned surgeon," Chris snarled, and his fingers tangled in the velvet counterpane draped over him. Phoebe leaned forward and placed one hand upon his chest to press him back down. "You'll disturb Hieronymus," she said. "And you're in no condition to rise at present. I shall be extremely displeased if you tear your stitches." "They're my stitches to tear." "Yes, but if you do, I'll have to summon the surgeon again to replace them. Do you want to be stitched up again?" Hell . Chris glared at his wife. He glared at the turtle. And then he glared at the damned ceiling, because his head had already begun to swim with the effort it had taken only to shove his elbows beneath him. Probably he'd lost a great deal of blood, then. "Would you like some tea?" Phoebe repeated as he dropped his head back to the pillow once more. "Yes," he grumbled. "And something to eat. A proper meal," he said. "God help you if you try to feed me beef tea and porridge." "I wouldn't dare." She rose briefly, setting down her book to give a firm yank to the bell pull, no doubt to summon a servant to bring up something to eat. "The tea's gone tepid," she said as she poured a cup from the teapot on a silver tray positioned upon his dresser. "But you'll have to wait a bit for a fresh cup. I imagine you're only after something to wet your throat at the moment." That much was true; he felt like he'd been gargling sand. She slid one arm beneath his head and supported his shoulders as she placed the cup to his lips, and he drank—and drank—and drank until the cup was empty. "Emma's been by to see you," she said as she reclaimed her seat. Christ . "Next time," he said, "don't let anyone in to see me like this. It's damned humiliating." "How could it be? You weren't conscious for it. Besides, she's your sister. Of course she would want to assure herself that you were all right." She reclaimed her seat, settling in as if for a visit. "How many next times am I meant to expect?" she asked. He grunted, "As many as it takes to kill me, I suppose." "Have you truly got so many enemies?" Probably he had more than he was even aware of. "Comes with the territory," he said. "You shake enough desperate men down for what they owe to you, and you're bound to come up with a few willing to kill to erase that debt." And that was to say nothing of the men he'd roughed up for one trespass or another, or the ones upon whom he'd informed for the government. "Possibly you'll be a wealthy widow ere long." "Don't say that," she chided. "Wealthy widows are much sought-after among fortune hunters. I'd hate to find myself maneuvered into a less friendly marriage." Despite the pain in his side, Chris managed a chuckle. "I suppose I could at least put some stipulations upon your widow's portion," he said. "Make it a bit less convenient to marry you for it." "Or perhaps you could simply endeavor not to perish in an untimely manner," she suggested. "Does your knee ache?" "Always does." It was a pain he'd learned to live with. But one he could do nothing about at present, considering the burn of his side precluded much movement, and the turtle who had wandered down to his stomach showed no signs of vacating his position anytime soon. Hieronymus nuzzled the velvet counterpane with his beak in a manner that suggested he'd mistaken it for something edible and was determining how best he might consume it. Phoebe slid her chair closer to the bed, fished for the edge of the counterpane, and tossed it up. Cool air rushed over Chris' legs. At some point between when he'd stumbled home and when he'd woken again, he'd been stripped of his clothing. Her soft fingers slid across the flesh of his knee. "It must have hurt terribly," she said, as she found that muscle that tended toward an unbearable tightness, using the tip of her thumb to dig into it and massage away the pain. Gradually, the tightness loosened, relaxed. It wouldn't last; it never did. But God, it felt good in the meantime. For a moment, he tipped his head back and closed his eyes, content to experience a relief he hadn't had to give himself. "Do all men have such hairy legs?" she asked. "Hell, I don't know. Don't much go round asking other men to show me their legs," he grumbled. "Have you never seen a man's legs before?" "Of course not," she sniffed. "A gentleman would never bare any portion of his anatomy usually covered by clothing in front of a lady." He might've laughed at her prim tone, except now that she'd eased most of the pain in his knee, it was all too easy to imagine those soft fingers elsewhere. Sliding up his thigh. Wrapping around his cock. Just the thought was enough to provoke a rush of blood to his groin, which was rather infuriating when one considered that he'd not been able to sustain an interest in his mistress, who had been willing. And Phoebe was not. Or at least, not yet. He doubted that the tide of their marriage had turned in the last few hours, and he hadn't even given her the bracelet yet. The bracelet . Where the devil had it gone? "Hell," he said. "I had a box on me—" "Oh, don't worry," she said. "I had it sent on to Charity." "Charity!" Hieronymus tumbled down into his lap as Chris shoved his elbows beneath him once more. "Why the hell would you do that?" "I—well, I assumed—a man gives jewelry to his mistress, yes? Who else might it have been for?" With a groan, Chris collapsed back onto the pillow. "Lord Jesus," he said. "It was meant for you." "Me?" She sounded genuinely perplexed. "Whatever for?" "Hell if I know now," he said, and cast his arm over his eyes. "I suppose I thought it would go well with your stolen cravat pin." And he'd spent such an unreasonably long time searching for something he'd thought would suit. All that effort, wasted. "Oh," she said, though there was the edge of amusement in her voice as she gently collected Hieronymus, who had gotten stuck upon his back with his small turtle-legs churning in the air, and righted him once more. "I'm sorry. At least Charity will be pleased." "She damned well ought to be," he groused. "She had a ruby necklace from me not too very long ago." "Perhaps she'll thank you for it tomorrow," Phoebe said. "Tomorrow?" Chris peered at her suspiciously from beneath his arm. "She's coming to visit," Phoebe explained. "She asked if she might come round today, but I sent a note back to tell her that you hadn't woken yet and it would be best to wait until you had. So she's coming tomorrow. We're taking tea." "Are you mad? You can't take tea with my mistress." "Whyever not? She seems a pleasant enough woman." "Because—because—" Chris flailed his hands in the air in a surfeit of unexpected temper. "Because it isn't done !" Blast and damn. How many times had she said the very same to him? How many times had he laughed at the thought, as she laughed now? "Well, it is now," she said, her lips still curled in amusement. A scratch at the door prompted her to rise, and she took Hieronymus with her, cradling the creature in her hands. She admitted a servant, who entered with a tray to lay across his lap. "I'm taking Hieronymus back out to the garden," Phoebe said blithely. "Enjoy your dinner. And I wouldn't recommend rising; the staff have been instructed to inform upon you if they catch you wandering about." "They're my damned staff!" The affronted growl availed him nothing. Phoebe waltzed clear of his room and Chris was left alone to a dinner of white soup and braised beef, contemplating how he was meant to prevent his wife and his mistress from taking tea together when he wasn't certain he could manage to keep his feet long enough to piss. Fucking women .

∞∞∞

Phoebe had forgotten her book. It had long been a habit to read a few chapters before bed as a pleasant end to the day. Only, when she'd returned to her bed chamber after feeding Hieronymus his regular midnight snack of half a strawberry and a curled leaf of cabbage, she'd realized—she had left it upon Chris' nightstand. He'd spent the remainder of the evening sending the staff running for one thing or another, hollering at the top of his lungs, and if it had irritated her to the back of her molars, at least it had also reassured her that the worst she ought to expect of him in the coming weeks was a poor temper. She'd heard nothing at all in the last hour or so, and so she supposed he must've gone back to sleep. Soft and silent, she eased open the door, blinking into the darkness within, a candle held in her hand. "Chris?" she whispered, just in case. Only a low drone of a snore answered, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she slipped inside. The curtains around the bed had been drawn half-closed, and through the shadowy void within, one of Chris' arms had flopped out to dangle over the edge of the bed. As she crept closer she skirted the bed as widely as she was able, her imagination conjuring up a strange unease that he might be only pretending to sleep, lying in wait to grab at her as she passed. Probably she'd let the Gothic horror of Frankenstein slip a little too deeply into her mind. But it did seem like the sort of thing he might do. Just for the fun of it. There . She snatched the book off the edge of the nightstand and turned—and the light of the candle slipped through the bed curtains, sparkling off tousled gold hair, carving shadows beneath high cheekbones and into the cleft of his chin. He really was an attractive man, she thought. It was just so unfair that he, who was so prone to growling and shouting and who seemed perpetually short-tempered in his waking hours, should appear so positively angelic in sleep. As if he'd never set a toe upon the wrong path in the whole of his life. Phoebe half-expected to find a halo hung up upon the bedpost, waiting for its owner to reclaim it upon waking. There wasn't a bit of the sinister in him when he was sleeping. But that idle musing slipped away from her as his brow creased and he squeezed his eyes closed tighter against the disturbance of the low light of the candle. His hand, draped down the side of the bed, flexed and shifted, and as he threw it up over his eyes, the velvet counterpane slipped down his body, settling about his hips. And she was reminded that the sinister had been done to him. His bare chest was covered in an assortment of scars; some neat white lines that suggested shallow wounds and some with thick raised edges indicating deeper ones. A study in suffering, carved into his skin with each line. How strange it was to think that any of them might have ended his life; if not the wound itself, then an infection taken afterward. How much more bland and boring the world would be without him. Cautiously, she eased a step closer, but his breathing had evened out once more into a low snore and he'd turned his head away. He'd been given another dose of laudanum when Haddington had changed out his bandage an hour or so ago, she knew. Probably there would be little that could truly wake him. Through the sparse gold hair scattered across his chest, she found a scar over his heart with the tip of one finger, tracing the raised edge. This one had been deep. Not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to leave a dreadful scar. The straight edge of it suggested a knife, perhaps a dagger. Probably he'd come out of this scrape only a centimeter from occupying a casket. And there, just above the edge of the bandage wrapped round him. Less obvious than others, but the skin was shiny in a small, round patch, unnaturally smooth beneath her fingertips. A burn? Above the jut of his hip, another imprecisely round mark, like a divot carved into his flesh. A lead ball, she thought. So this mustn't have been his first tangle with a pistol. In the silence, she— Silence? Silence . Not even the muted rhythm of a snore. Slowly her gaze drifted up, her muscles tensing as she found him staring back at her, blue eyes open, curious, and without even the slightest glaze of the drugged stupor she might have expected. "Lower," he said. "And a bit to the right." Startled, she gave a squeak reminiscent of a frightened mouse, leaping back as if he'd singed her. In her haste to absent herself, she nearly dropped the lamp altogether—and his dark, knowing laugh followed her all the way down the hall.