Chapter Eight

W hen they arrived at Number Sixteen Wickham Circle, Anthony jumped down from the carriage and offered her his hand. Without looking at him, she ignored his help and brushed brusquely passed him to her door, unlocking it with a small key she pulled from her bodice. He was momentarily startled that no servant answered the door, and that the entrance hall and staircase of her home were lit by only a few oil lamps. Surely she did not live alone? The stories of her family's wealth were astounding.

"Shall I summon your butler, or perhaps your maid?" he asked, following her up to the door, unwilling to leave her entirely alone. Unwilling to give up the small chance of bedding her tonight he still hoped he had.

She turned to him and placed a hand firmly on his chest. "I thank you for your aid, Lord Stirling," she said, her voice brittle, "but now I must ask that you leave me to myself."

"No," he said, pushing his way through the door.

"You would enter a lady's house uninvited?" Her eyes blazed. "Leave me be, please."

"My conscience will not allow me."

"Your conscience is not needed here," she admonished him, making her way quickly up the stairs. The limp. Again. Why was she limping?

"But I clearly am."

She turned back to face him, her eyes sparking with anger. "Leave my house! Leave me be. Before my patience runs out!" she shouted, then faltered, steadying herself on the banister. Anthony made a step towards her, but stopped when she sobbed, "No!"

He watched in confusion as her hands gripped the balustrade at the top of the stairs, knuckles stark white against the mahogany. Only a half-an-hour before, it had been his intention to follow the flustered woman all the way to her bedroom, and once there… His breath quickened as his mind wandered to their scandalous meeting three evenings prior. That night, even this night, she had seemed ripe for the picking, encouraging his advances, flirting with a sort of desperate confidence that he'd assumed could only mean one thing: she wanted him, or perhaps any man, badly. But the carriage ride to her home, her behavior now, had him puzzled far beyond the state of confusion he'd ever encountered on account of a woman. Hell, he'd never encountered confusion because of a woman. Lust, scorn, amusement, and pity had all found their way through his hard heart during his career as one of Bath's most prolific rakes, but never confusion. Women were easy to predict and easy to manipulate. The kinds he took advantage of at least: the willing virgins and the bored society wives. He had assumed she was of the former type, but her current haste to get rid of him, and her almost venomous annoyance at his insistence to stay by her side belied more than the mere moral objections of a virgin. That, added to the look he'd seen in her eyes as she was speaking to that man not half-an-hour before, a look of fierce, lip curling hatred, her strange physical reaction when the man had grasped her thigh, and then her obvious distraction in the coach, had him paralyzed with indecision. What was this creature that stood before him, resembling an ill-fated Cassandra watching Troy burn, who three nights before had been a warm, passionate Cressida, her body responding uninhibitedly to his lips and hands? Dear gods, now she had him recalling Shakespeare, though he'd spent the better years of his adult life attempting to wash away his gentlemanly education in the various grimy bathtubs of whorehouses.

Above him on the stairs she shook, eyes tightening in pain. With the movement, the cloak she had kept tightly wrapped around her since their departure from the Harrington ball spilled from her shoulders.

A strangled gasp died in his throat. Blood pooled through her dress from the point on her left thigh where the man had pressed his thumb into her flesh. As Anthony watched in horror, the red stain spread further down her white skirts, soaking the hem of her dress and dripping onto the carpet. He tore his gaze from the livid stain to her face, now deathly pale, as she stared blankly at the blood seeping down her dress. Then she looked at him, her eyes empty and unemotional, and murmured, "Oh, damn." She swayed, eyelids becoming heavy, and as her fingers weakly released the balustrade, she toppled down the stairs towards him.

He remained paralyzed for another moment as she began to faint, his mind unable to wrap itself around what he had just seen. But as she fell, his body leapt into action, racing up the steps three at a time to catch her before her head hit the stairs. She slumped into his arms, her form heavier than he'd anticipated. He lifted her and was surprised again to feel the hardness of muscle in her back and legs, rather than the soft flesh he was so accustomed to on a woman. Her head nodded limply against his shoulder and she opened her mouth, a soft whimper escaping. He leaned close to catch her words. "No… doctor." she whispered.

He carried her up the remaining steps and towards the room she had been heading to, which he assumed was her bedchamber. He struggled with the doorknob, unwilling to put her down to turn it, then finally kicked the door open and laid her swiftly on the bed. She remained motionless. He pressed his fingers to the side of her neck. Her pulse was shallow and fast, but she was alive. He moved to her side, kneeling beside the bed, hands hovering over her bloody skirts. Call a maid , he told himself. Call a doctor . But before he could do the sensible thing, he was pulling up her dress to find the source of the bleeding. Her stockings and garters were red and soaked through as well, though he noted with an inappropriate tightening in his breeches that the satin garters had already been red, a delicately erotic contrast against her milky skin. He took a deep breath to calm himself. Though his reputation might be shocking, no one could accuse him of ever having ravished an unconscious woman, let alone one bleeding so profusely. Cautiously, he pushed the dress higher up on her thigh, and noted with another self-conscious jolt of lust that she was not wearing any bloomers. Her upper thigh, however, was wrapped in a coarse bandage now drenched with blood. His curiosity rather than his lust was now peaked. He lifted her knee gently and unwrapped the bandage from her leg. Underneath, her skin was slick with blood. He looked around the room for something to aid her, then grasped the basin of water and washcloth beside the bed and began to clean her leg.

As the blood was wiped away, he found the source of the bleeding. Just on the inside of her thigh was a small, ragged hole, the skin around it red and blotchy. He wiped the cloth over the wound and looked closer. He had seen just the same sort of wound two years before, when one of his friends had been fatally shot during a duel. The bullet had made the same sort of small livid hole in his friend's chest. He rocked back onto his heels and squeezed his eyes shut in confusion. What, in the name of everything sacred, was the daughter of a Duke doing with a bullet wound in her leg, and who had shot her?