The Hourglass (29 page)

She heard more scuffling in the brush, and the flapping of wings. “Olive! Coryn!”

His tall form strode into the clearing, the bird overhead. He appeared so angry that Genie was surprised the leaves beneath his feet did not catch on fire. She would have been afraid, except she was so relieved to see that he was safe. She lowered her weapon and started to run toward him, but she tripped on a hidden root.

Bang!

Ardeth went down.

“Ar fall. Ar fall,” Olive screeched.

Awful? It was beyond dreadful! Genie had shot her husband.

Chapter Twenty-One

In her rush to Ardeth’s side, Genie dropped the gun. She shot a tree this time.

This time? But her pistol held only the one ball. So she did not shoot Coryn, thank goodness.

Except if she did not shoot him, someone else had. The innkeeper’s son was shouting and running, so she did not worry overmuch that someone would shoot again, not with so many witnesses, people to give chase. Just in case, she threw herself on top of Ardeth to protect him.

Except he was already shot. He moaned.

The crow was moaning, too. “Shut up, you sapskull.”

“Sorry. It hurts.”

“Not you!” she shouted, rolling off Ardeth. She pulled his cape away, then his waistcoat. No, this was not right. Ardeth never wore bright colors! There was so much blood his shirt was soaked red. “Oh, Lord.”

She took off her own cape to press against the wound. She’d seen many bullet holes, thanks to him, and knew
she had to stop the bleeding. Clean cloths were better, but her petticoats had been dragged through the damp muddy grass, and there was no time to be particular, not at the rate his life’s blood was flowing. She cradled him against her chest so she could press harder.

He stared up at her. “This is not…how I wanted to spend the night in your arms.”

“You mean you did not get shot on purpose so you could again avoid making love to me?’

She thought he smiled, as she’d intended, but then his eyes drifted shut. “Don’t you dare die on me.”

He opened his eyes again. “I cannot. My six months are not up.”

“If you think that is a comfort, you are crazier than I thought, and you would have to travel a far piece to get there.” She was babbling but could not help it. She could hear the boy thrashing through the woods and called out to him to hurry. Meantime, to keep Ardeth’s mind—and hers—off his wound, she said, “I did not do it, you know. I thought I had, but my pistol was not the one that shot you.”

“I never…thought it was. The shot came from behind me.”

“It did?” She tried to lift him up, to see. More blood stained the back of his waistcoat. “Oh, my God.”

“Not going to swoon, are you, my Genie?”

She felt like fainting, crying, casting up her supper, and running away, all at once, but mostly crying. She would not let herself. Ardeth needed her. “No, I am not going to swoon.”

“That’s my good wife.”

“I think you said it was good when the pistol ball went through.”

“Oh, excellent. As long as it did not nick the heart, lungs, or arteries on the way out.”

“How would I know?”

“I expect I would stop breathing.”

“Can’t die,” Olive was moaning from atop Ardeth’s cape, pecking at the fabric in despair. “Can’t die.”

“Now is not the time to look for candy, you greedy bird,” Genie yelled, worried that the innkeeper’s son might not be strong enough to help her get Ardeth back to the wagon.

“No, the twit is looking for a lucky charm. Inner pocket.”

Genie could reach the cape while still keeping Ardeth pressed against her, one hand on the wound on his chest. With her other she pulled out a small, hard, white root or something. “It looks like a dried-up turnip sprout. You say this is lucky?”

“Only the Devil knows.”

“Do you rub it or touch it or taste it?” She tried to put the thing in his limp hand. “What should I do?”

“Pray. That is called hedging one’s bets.”

Somehow they got Ardeth out of the clearing and onto the inn’s wagon. Halfway back, they met Campbell coming with the earl’s newly repaired coach. He drove on, following the boy’s directions, to fetch a surgeon.

Back at the inn, the surgeon announced that yes, the ball was out. Of course he had to dig around some to make sure, causing Ardeth excruciating pain, from his curses.

“Most men would have passed out by now,” the surgeon muttered as he started to stitch one wound, then the other. “’Tain’t proper, your lady wife here and all.”

Genie had insisted on staying, along with Campbell and the innkeeper. Now she told them all to ignore his lordship’s vocabulary. She did not understand half the words, anyway, and doubted that Ardeth was aware of what he was saying. If swearing made him feel less pain, then she would curse, too.

The surgeon stitched, Ardeth swore, Genie held back her tears and her fears, and the innkeeper sweated. “Will he live, do you think?” he asked. Dead earls were not good for business, not good at all.

“I expect if he was strong enough to survive that other injury, he can get through this,” the surgeon answered. “Barring fevers and infections, of course.”

“He will live,” Genie insisted. “He promised. What other wound?”

The surgeon pulled the sheet lower from the upper chest he was working on. Genie could see a wide expanse of angry-looking, puckered red flesh. She tried not to gag at the sight.

“Too jagged for a sword thrust,” Campbell, the former soldier, stated. “Too wide for a bullet. Might be a piece of cannonball shrapnel. Or a spear. His lordship did say how he’d fought in foreign wars.”

“Not even stitched, looks like,” the surgeon told them. “See how ragged the edges are? Just healed up on its own, all higgledy-piggledy.”

“But, but isn’t that right over where his heart is?”

“In every body I’ve ever seen.”

The innkeeper thought the earl must have been wearing some kind of armor, to take the brunt of the thrust

The surgeon directed Campbell to lift the patient again so they could see his back, and a corresponding scar. “How’d it go through armor? Better question is, how’d he live? I’ve never seen the like.”

Now Campbell was swearing. The innkeeper was drinking the brandy intended to deaden Ardeth’s pain. Genie finally fainted.

*

The following day, Ardeth was in terrible agony, despite the laudanum he had permitted Genie to pour for him. He tossed and turned, half-aware, tearing open three of the stitches. He had no fever, thank goodness, but he was weak and trembling with the pain.

“Go to sleep, dash it,” Genie yelled at him, hoping he could hear from whatever hell he was in. “Sleep can heal you. That’s what you told the soldiers.”

Glassy-eyed and dry-mouthed, he whispered, “Need to figure it out.”

Genie wiped his forehead with a cool cloth. “No, you can rest. There is no mystery to unravel. It was Willeford, of course.”

He wanted to talk about it, though, to warn her. He struggled to raise his head, despite the searing pain. “No, can’t be. I saw him on a ship myself.”

Genie hurried to prop a pillow behind him, then held up a cup of lemonade for him to drink, to ease his parched throat. “Very well, he hired someone to do his dirty work. That would be just like the miserable dastard.”

He swallowed, then said, “No. Willeford does not want me dead. I made sure.” He tried to smile, but grimaced instead. “I gave back his gambling debts, but I also promised to pay him a yearly competence to stay gone, every year of my life. Great joke, eh? He thinks
he will be collecting checks for forty years.” The six mo
nths, now more like four if Ardeth lived through the week, stayed unspoken.

Genie did not see the humor. “You paid him to leave?”

“That seemed the easiest way to be rid of the vermin. You could regain some of the investment by selling his house if you run out of cash. It comes to you in my will.”

Ardeth’s will being right there with his life span on the list of topics Genie did not wish to discuss. “Then you do not think he was taking revenge for his banishment?”

“No, I had him watched. He had no chance. Besides, he was going to have to flee London soon anyway, with the money he owed the usurers. He thought I did not know about those debts. I just saw no reason to pay the bloodsuckers. Oh, and I did numb his hand, mentioning that as a symptom of heart failure.”

He was exhausting himself, Genie saw, and making no sense, so she said, “If not from Willeford, then the shot must have come from a poacher in the woods. That means there is nothing to worry about.”

“No! The wheel.”

“The carriage wheel that broke loose?”

“Tampered with. Hire guards.”

Genie almost spilled the lemonade. “You mean this was neither Willeford nor a stray shot?” She’d known at heart the shooting was no accident, not in a clearing, not from the back. But to think that someone else was trying to injure her husband was more horrific, even, than the idea of Willeford acting so despicably. Who should she guard him against? Which direction would trouble come from next? “Good grief, who else have you offended, Coryn?”

He tried to smile again. “As many as I could. There are men who do not wish the poor educated, who do not want to see the government spend money on serving the needs of the downtrodden. Why, the owners of some wool mills and mines see their profits diminished if the reforms pass, protecting the workers. They despise me.”

“Enough to kill you?”

“Keep your pistol on hand, Genie. Who knows what they might do to keep me from speaking? I did not mean to put you in danger.”

“Me?” she squawked like Olive.

“My wife.”

“I know that, silly. I just never thought I mattered to anyone.”

“You…matter to me.”

She kissed his cheek, but he winced, so she turned serious again, not sentimental. “Well, you will not be speaking anytime soon. Not until you regain your strength. And you better hurry, for I cannot protect us all from the rest of the world. If you slept instead of fretting, you would do better, I know you would. At least the surgeon would not have to keep coming back to stitch you up again.”

“You will take precautions? You will stay indoors? I need to know you are safe.”

“I will be fine. Campbell sits outside the door with a loaded rifle. The innkeeper’s son has declared himself your savior, so he will look out for strangers. And Olive can cry a warning of any intruders. All right? Can you sleep now?”

“One kiss good night.”

He fell into a deep slumber halfway through the kiss.

The surgeon worried he had fallen into a fatal coma, and the innkeeper was near to panic, that a would-be murderer was on the loose, and a would-be-dead nobleman was on his best bed. Genie reassured them both. Ardeth was resting, she said, healing.

She took advantage of his deep sleep to get him back to London. No matter how carefully Campbell drove the coach, Ardeth would have been jostled unmercifully if he were awake. This way he did not suffer for the short journey, and scores of menservants were waiting at home to help him to bed. Others were stationed outside, armed with enough guns and swords and sticks to guard the crown jewels. Ardeth had been looking for ways to employ former soldiers. Genie found it.

She had to take Lorraine and her husband into her confidence, to make up some story about the earl’s injury, since they had no proof and no suspects. Rumors flew about town, saying a duel had taken place after all, although no one knew the other combatant. Or Willeford had shot Ardeth before fleeing bankruptcy. Or worse.

Luckily Ardeth still slept, so he could not be troubled by gossip about jealous husbands, errant wives, or, thanks to Willeford’s rumors, sorcery gone awry.

Genie decided they would leave for the country as soon as Ardeth was able to travel. They would be safer there, and safer from scandalmongering. He did not develop fevers or chills, and the skin around the wounds looked clean. They could hire extra servants to attend him, and extra guards to ride alongside the carriage.

Genie thought about leaving him asleep during the move to save him pain, but the journey was a long one. Besides, she worried he was not getting enough nourishment in his torpid state. Mostly she worried that he might forget to wake up at all. Wasn’t Merlin supposed to be in a deep trance inside some dark cave? Who knew how Ardeth’s mind worked? Surely not his wife.

She whispered to him. She pulled on his sleeve and squeezed his hand. She spoke louder. “It is time to wake up, Coryn. The wounds are healing well.” She cleared her throat, clapped her hands, and then she set a cup down
hard in its saucer. “Wake up, my lord. We have plans to make.”

If not for the steady rise and fall of his chest, she would fear he was gone. He was not even snoring. She told Olive to make some noise.

“Meow.” That would have woken the crow in a flash.

“Not a cat noise, peagoose.”

Olive tried again. “Cockanoodle?”

“Well, that was almost a rooster’s sound, so you are doing better. Try something louder, to get him up.”