Cherished Enemy (13 page)

Twenty minutes later, her pockets full of hastily cut and rolled bandages, Aunt Estelle's pot of salve, and her sewing scissors, she tiptoed down the stairs. All was quiet, and it was evident that the host and his lady were gone to bed. She could hear a drowsy murmur of voices from somewhere, but there was no light in the vestibule, nor any sign of life. The front door was locked—probably from a fear of wandering and desperate rebel gentlemen—but the key lay on the side-table and it was the work of a moment to open the door. She hesitated then, wondering whether to leave the door unlocked, or lock up again and take the key with her. It didn't seem right to abandon the occupants to the mercy of any roving brigands or Jacobites; but, on the other hand, to lock them inside and abscond with the key was equally dastardly. She decided that there was certainly another door by which they could escape did fire or some other disaster strike, and, tucking the key into her cloak pocket, she slipped into the blustery night.

The yard was deserted, and she ran quickly across it and turned into the lane. She stood still for a moment, straining her eyes, but there was no sign of anyone and with a sigh of relief she started to hurry along, keeping in the shadow of the hedge, peering through the darkness. She and the doctor had walked quite a long way with Trifle, but she was sure she would recognize the place where the fugitive had been struck down.

The moon hid behind fast-flying clouds and it was very dark. Frightened, she thought, ‘This is the first time in my entire life that I have been out alone at night!' Following that realization, she was immeasurably shocked to see someone standing in the middle of the lane a short distance ahead. Her heart thundered, and she stood motionless, scarcely daring to breathe. Perhaps he had not seen her. Perhaps he was neither bounty hunter nor soldier, but a highwayman, waiting for a carriage to come along the lane. It was not a very reassuring alternative. The moon escaped its cloudy shawl and she was sure the man must see her now, but still he did not move. Trembling, she thought, ‘It is likely only some local youth waiting for his sweetheart…' But it was awfully late for a clandestine meeting. How still he stood. She crept closer. Her heart gave a painful jump as a little owl swooped past her. The bird flew on and then settled on the man's head. Astonished, she tiptoed nearer and uttered a small moan of frustration. Her menacing figure was not a man at all, but simply the signpost where the lane divided! ‘Oh, what a feather-head I am!' she thought. Only it was so very different at night. Familiar objects like trees and shrubs took on strange and terrifying shapes. The shadows became black caves whence at any instant could step a trooper with bayonet levelled, or some bounty hunter devoid of conscience or humanity who would not hesitate to abuse a helpless girl alone and unprotected at dead of night. And there went the moon into hiding once more! She peered ahead nervously.

“Good evening,” growled a deep voice at her ear.

She gave a squeak of terror and jumped violently, her heartbeats clamouring in her throat, suffocating her.

A hand was clamped over her mouth. “For God's sake!” came a familiar snarl. “You can open your eyes. It's only me—not the Medusa!”

“Ooh…!” she panted, blinking at the despised and dimly seen countenance. “Ooh … Dr. Victor …
How
you … frightened me!”

“Good!” With a none too gentle hand he pulled her into the deeper shadows and in a low voice that fairly crackled fury demanded, “Be so good as to tell me what the
devil
you are about, ma'am. Playing Good Samaritan, perchance? I'd ha' thought you learned your lesson earlier! D'ye no ke
____
comprehend there are greedy men about who'd be jolly glad to meet a dainty miss tripping among the hedgerows? Damme, ma'am, but you fair
beg
to be raped! Or is it perhaps that you yearn for the notoriety of having your head cropped at the shoulders?”

One hand still pressed to her rapidly rising and falling bosom, she raged, “How
dare
you use such terms to … to me?”

“Aye, there's no end to my depravity, is there? Did it so much as occur to you that 'tis
me
would have to answer to your brother should you come to grief? And if I know Charles, I'd be called out before you could wink an eye!”

“Then you do
not
know my brother! Charles has never held sword or pistol in his life!”

“
Hah!
I think 'tis
you
who do not know your brother, madam!”

Her head high and resolute, she said, “You shall not divert me from my purpose. Say what you will, I mean to help the poor creature you so bravely knocked down.”

“I'll say this much,” he responded through clenched teeth. “You may play the sainted martyr to your heart's content once you're back with your family. But you'll not flirt with death whilst
I
am answerable for your silly changeable impulses.”

During this exchange the moon had escaped the clouds again and by its light Rosamond saw that the doctor was far from neat; she could smell strong spirits and he looked so wild that she guessed he had been drinking—probably with Billy Coachman, since he was just the type to find the company of that crude individual acceptable. “I hope Dr. Butterworth
does
report you to the College of Physicians,” she said, her eyes narrowed with wrath and her little chin thrusting at him. “As a doctor, sir, you would make a good dibbler!” And with a toss of her curls she marched off. About four steps.

She was seized then in iron hands, spun around, and thrown over a broad shoulder for all the world like a sack of meal. An impassioned squeal escaped her.

“Do that again,” he invited harshly, “and you can explain your errand to the dragoons I just passed!”

She felt chilled, but hissed, “Put me down,
at once!
”

“I wish I might,” he retaliated, “for you're far from skin and bone, alas.”

Humiliated, frustrated, and her nerves severely tried, she struggled furiously, but stopped, her eyes as wide as her mouth as one masculine hand came down hard in an area that had not received such chastisement since she had escaped the nursery.

With a squeak of outrage she kicked as hard as she could and had the satisfaction of hearing him gasp. Then a second blow struck home; harder than the first. “Another sound out of you, my girl,” he said pithily, “and I'll stop and tend to your punishment in the approved fashion, dragoons or no dragoons!”

Tears of helpless fury scalded her eyes. “You—you—
you
—” she sputtered, clawing her way around until she could peer up at him.

He stopped and stood with his hand ominously poised.

Rosamond closed her lips, and with a grim nod he walked on.

After some way, he halted. “Well, Madam Martyr? An I restore you, can you behave yourself?”

“The shoe, Sir Depravity,” she riposted, “is on the other foot!”

He put her down and sneered, “Have no fears. I think your virtue is safe from me.”

He meant, one gathered, that she repulsed him. “You are all consideration,” she said with heavy sarcasm.

He gave a faint snort. “You must go first, ma'am. I don't trust you not to run back and be about your momentarily inspired saintliness again.”

She had begun to walk regally away but, stung, she whirled on him. “Horrid, brutal savage! Does that block of ice you call a heart tell you 'tis martyrdom to want to help a suffering boy who may be dying this very minute?”

“More likely dead.”

“Oh! How I
despise
you!”

He bowed ironically and made a graceful gesture towards the bend in the lane beyond which was The Galleon. She stalked past him, averting her face, but this violent night had taken its toll on her nerves, and the moonlight awoke bright gleams on her cheeks. He caught her arm and began in a kinder voice, “Miss Rosamond—I—”

Revolted, she tore free. “Do not
touch
me,” she flared. “I only wish—” She stopped.

He had turned away, but there was an odd hunching of the shoulders, a rigidity to his stance that brought a sudden blinding suspicion. She fairly sprang in front of him, peering up into his face. He recovered very fast, but she had seen the harshly down-drawn brows, the gleam of his teeth clamped onto his lower lip.

“I've—not the time to grant wishes tonight,” he said rather breathlessly, “but—”

He was gripping his wrist, and she pounced to seize his right arm. “Let go!”

For a moment he did not move. She tugged at his hand and he relaxed it, the fingers trembling a little as he drew them away.

The moon slid behind a cloud again, but just before its light dimmed she saw that his left hand was all blood. She was not a missish girl, but under normal circumstances there was that about the sight of blood that rendered her weak in the knees and brought a wave of nausea. Now, however, a strange elation swept through her. She looked up at his closed and enigmatic face, her eyes radiant.

“You
helped
him!” she whispered. “
That
was all the shouting I heard earlier! You went back and helped that poor rebel, didn't you?”

“Nonsense,” said Dr. Robert Victor.

6

“Seems ter me, miss,” said Billy Coachman, holding the lantern and surveying Rosamond's efforts sceptically, “as y'might better've did that inside.”

“Where?” demanded Victor, glancing up at the saturnine countenance, his own rather pale. “I certainly could not ask Miss Albritton to come to my room to help me. No more could we have gone to hers. And to use the pump in the kitchen would—” He gave a gasp and his hand jerked a little.

Rosamond, fighting a squeamish weakness, coaxed the torn shirt-sleeve from the deep wound above his wrist and whispered, “I am very sorry, but it was—it was stuck.”

“You're a doctor,” said the coachman. “Whyn't you do it yer ownself, mate?”

“As I was saying,” went on Victor, fixing him with a level glare. “To use the pump in the kitchen would rouse the house, and someone might well be seized by the same fool notion as inspired Miss Albritton.”

Rosamond contented herself with a derogatory sniff, and began to bathe the wound using the bowl of water Billy had brought from the stable-yard pump.

“Looks ter me as how some lively dragoon made a push at yer wi' his bay'net,” observed the coachman.

Rosamond ceased her ministrations and looked up at Victor accusingly. “You see?
He
had the same ‘fool notion' as did I!”

Victor said with bland nonchalance, “I do not recall denying that a dragoon was to blame for this nuisance.”

“Wh-what?” she gasped, frightened. “But—but you said—”

“Not I. You assumed I had been helping that dog's-meat Jacobite, which—”

The lantern jerked. Billy Coachman exclaimed, “You never did? Be damned! Did the dragoon see your face?”

It was a quite different voice. Glancing sharply at him, Rosamond had the brief impression that she saw also a different man, for the vacuous leer was gone from his mouth, the lazy grey eyes were suddenly intent, the chin set. Then Victor snapped, “You forget yourself, fellow,” and once again it was Billy Coachman who grinned and mumbled an apology, but added, “If you been messin' wi' them rebs, I don't want none o'this, guv'nor.”

It must, thought Rosamond, have been only the way the light from the lantern struck his features, plus the fact that her nerves were considerably frayed. “Do you think the soldier would recognize you, Doctor?” she asked.

Victor pursed his lips. “I doubt it. We were in amongst trees and the moon was behind a cloud, luckily.”

“I wonder that there dragoon didn't fire orf his pop,” murmured Billy. “Wot you do, mate? Run like—” He glanced at Rosamond and added coyly, “Fast as you could go?”

“Had I done so, he most assuredly would have—er”—Victor's lips quirked slightly—“fired off his pop.”

“Ar,” said Billy Coachman. “So you popped
him
instead, didya, sir?”

“A good one in the breadbasket,” confirmed Victor.

Rosamond moaned. “You attacked a soldier of the king? They could
hang
you, Dr. Victor!”

He grinned. “Over my dead body!”

Exasperated, she shook her head, took some lint from her pocket and placed it over the ugly gash. “I fancy I have no need to tell you that this should be stitched.

“Good an' deep, is it?” Billy peered curiously. “If I was you, Doctor, I'd pour some o' what you got in yer pocket over it.”

Rosamond stared at him in mystification.

Victor removed the lint and drew a bottle of Holland gin from his pocket, which he handed to the coachman. “
This
is what involved me in a quarrel with one of His Majesty's troopers, ma'am,” he explained drily. “Not any ill-advised kindness towards a traitor.”

It should not have been so unexpected, but her disappointment was as deep as it was illogical. “Well! What rank hypocrisy!” she exclaimed contemptuously. “And you were the very one ranted about smugglers and their wicked circumventions of the laws of the land!”

“Dreadful,” put in the lugubrious coachman, and sent a stream of the potent liquor flooding over the doctor's injury.

Victor stifled a breathless exclamation and jerked his head away.

“Awful, ain't it, mate?” sighed Billy. “All that good blue ruin goin' ter waste! Enough ter fair stop yer heart.”

Despite her hostile feelings towards The Arrogant Physician, Rosamond eyed him rather anxiously. It really was a very nasty gash, and to have the strong spirits splashed over it must be frightfully painful. His head was still turned but he managed a rather unsteady laugh and said, “By God, are you ever one of my patients, Billy, your heart will stop, I promise!”