Leslie Lafoy (27 page)

“Got a bad one over here, lady!”

Yes, people were truly at their best in the worst of circumstances, she decided as she hiked her skirts and jumped over a fallen beam to answer the summons. A testament to—

Bad?
Dear God. The blood arced in a feeble spurt from the boy’s groin, spattering slowly across her skirt. Her mind clicking crisply through the certainties, her heart scrambling in frantic hope, she dropped to her knees beside the makeshift litter and plunged her hand into the mass of ravaged flesh. His eyes opened as she found the severed end of the vital artery and squeezed it closed. Blue eyes. A beautiful blue. So young. Maybe fifteen.

“What’s your name?” she asked, finding him a reassuring smile.

“Louis,” he whispered. “Have you seen my brother?”

No other critical injuries that she could see. “I’ll look for him after I help you.” With her free hand she smoothed a lock of dust-caked brown hair off his forehead, brushed bits of crumbled brick from the corner of his mouth.

“Please find my brother.”

“I will, Louis. I promise. What’s his name?”

He smiled and closed his eyes. For a second her heart sank and then the faint beat of his valiant heart pulsed against the palm of her hand.

“Move out of the way, lady, so we can get him to the surgery.”

She looked up into the dusty and grimy face of one of the rough and beefy men who had been carrying away the injured. “I can’t let go,” she explained. “If I do, he’ll bleed to death before you get him into the wagon. You’ll have to transport him with me attached.”

“Lady, let go.”

“No.”

“Damn, woman,” he snarled with a shake of his head. He bent down to grasp the corners of the door, saying, “Get the other end, Russ. I got his feet. Lady, you’re on your own for hangin’ on.”

She scrambled to her feet, one hand firmly clamped around the artery, the other fisted in her skirt, and then half stumbled and half ran beside the litter as Russ and his fellow angel all but sprinted for the back of a cart.

*   *   *

Ian flinched at the long, high-pitched splintering of timber and then instinctively leaned forward, covering his patient’s body with his own just as more timbers sang and another wall of brick roared down the mountain of those that had already collapsed. The dust rolled over him and he held his breath, his lungs already burning for having learned the lesson a half dozen breaths too late.

And then, as it always did, the worst of the airborne debris settled to the ground and the air became breathable. Ian pushed himself upright and went back to work on the man whose shoulder had been run through by a huge sharp wooden stave.

“Your Grace?”

He blinked and looked up in the same moment, stunned and instantly filled with dread. “What the hell are you doing here, Leon? I told you—”

“She slipped away while I was tending Cal.”

“What?” he demanded even as his soul was crying,
No, no, no
.

“I don’t know where she is, Your Grace. I’ve looked everywhere.”

“Look everywhere again!” he barked, half turning to scan what he could of the chaos swirling around him.

“Maybe she went on home, Your Grace. She wasn’t liking the screaming.”

Home? Not on a bet.
The gurgling sound penetrated his fear and he looked back at his patient, at the bubble of blood forming between the man’s pale lips. “She’s somewhere around here, Leon,” he snapped, furiously going back to work. “Find her!”

*   *   *

Fiona counted the beats of Louis’ heart, measuring the slowing cadence and willing his spirit to fight as they rolled up to the door of the hospital, one wagon in a long, long line of them bearing hope and desperation, the wailing and the silent. Two blood-spattered men dashed from a knot of others just as grisly and grabbed the end of the door on which Louis lay. In a heartbeat they were pulling him from the bed of the wagon. Fiona squeaked and scrambled, yanking at her skirts and stretching to keep her hold as they hurried to get the boy inside.

An arm clamped around her waist, lifted her up, and then roughly dropped her on her feet outside the wagon. She ran, holding on and glancing back over her shoulder to meet the gaze of the burly man who had told her she’d be on her own. “Thank you,” she mouthed. He dipped his chin and touched the brim of his wool hat, and then turned away to climb back into his wagon.

“Lady Fiona?”

She started, whipping her attention from the wagon to the chaos into which she’d blindly run. “Dr. Mercer,” she gasped in relief. “The artery’s been cut. He’s still with us, but just barely.”

He glanced down, nodded crisply, and stepped to her side saying, “Slide to your left and let me get my hand in there.”

“His name is Louis,” she supplied as she did as instructed and the doctor smoothed his hand downward along hers. “He has a brother somewhere.”

“I have it,” he replied. “You can ease away.”

Fiona willed her hand to slowly relax, willed a deep breath into her lungs, and stepped back.

“Jonas!” the doctor called as he motioned for the men bearing the litter to move along. “Clear us a path!”

Fiona stood and watched them go, vaguely aware that her knees were shaking and the world was swaying gently to and fro.
He’ll be all right,
her heart whispered.
Dr. Mercer is very good.

And then the men bearing Louis’ litter slowed and her heart knew. They stopped and she watched Dr. Mercer ease his hand away and bow his head. She closed her eyes for a second and then opened them, lifting her chin and squaring her shoulders. Gazing up at the plaster ceiling, she sternly reminded herself that crying wouldn’t bring Louis back, wouldn’t accomplish anything other than to add more tears to the flood that was already too deep. There was more work to be done, more people to be tended and brought here. Crying wouldn’t help them, either.

The gentle hand on her shoulder almost undid her. “You did everything right, Lady Fiona, and everything within the power of man. Or woman.” She nodded because she knew she was supposed to and Dr. Mercer added, softly and kindly, “Let me get someone to take you home.”

“I need to go back to the accident,” she said, stepping out from under his caring hand. She dragged a breath into her too-tight and aching lungs. “Ian will be worried if he can’t find me there.”

“Then let me find someone to escort you.”

“That’s very kind of you, Dr. Mercer,” she countered, stepping backwards toward the door. “But I think that everyone here has more important things to do. I’ll be fine on my own.”

She could see that he had doubts, but he nodded anyway and gave her a gentle smile. “You did everything you could. No one could have done more or done better.”

“Thank you.”

Someday, she told herself as she went in search of a wagon heading back to the collapsed building, someday his assurances and approval would make her feel better about failing. Someday she’d be able to look back and accept that the span of a life was written and that no man or woman could change it. But that day wasn’t today. No, today she was angry at the injustice of a young, barely begun life being over. At the unfairness that such beautiful blue eyes were closed forever. If only she’d been faster … Stronger … If she’d willed him to hang on harder …

*   *   *

“Your Grace!” Leon exclaimed, stumbling over a pile of bricks in his haste to reach his side. “There she is!” he added, reeling and pointing wildly. “Over in that wagon!”

It took Ian a heart-thundering second to find the one Leon meant. At the sight of her, the air flooded out of his lungs in a shuddering sigh of relief. He locked his knees and threw his shoulders back to keep himself upright, willed his mind to look past the blood to critically appraise her from hair pins to hems.

She was a mess, he allowed, quickly making his way through the rubble toward her, watching her check the damage on a man being loaded into another wagon. There weren’t any hair pins left. Her dress was torn and stained and caked. She looked a bit dazed, like so many soldiers did when the heat of the battle was over and the reality of having survived was hard to grasp. But she was moving well, no halting steps or shortened gestures that would suggest she’d been injured in the course of her ill-considered dash into the maw of a bloody, god-awful disaster.

Which was good, he allowed, as she looked in his direction and found his gaze. Because he’d have felt terrible about chewing her up one side and down the other if she’d been hurt. He ignored her faltering smile, pretended he didn’t see her lean toward him and raise her arms.

“I told you to stay in the carriage!”

She blinked once and then let her arms fall back to her sides as she shook her head and replied, “I couldn’t.”

So soft, so certain of herself and the rightness of her defiance. So damned oblivious to the danger she’d put herself in and how mercilessly she’d battered his heart and wrenched his soul. He clenched his hands into fists at his side, struggling hard against the the urge to grab her by the shoulders, shake her, and then haul her against him and never let her go.

“It is my duty and my responsibility to keep you safe,” he ground out. “What if you’d blithely walked up to one of the walls just before it collapsed?”

“Blithely?” She arched a brow. “
Blithely?
”

“How the hell would I have faced your family if you’d been killed?”

She took a step back. “Do you think I’m that stupid?”

“I think you’re reckless and foolish—”

“
Foolish?
”

“And presumptive!” he finished, purposefully closing the distance she kept trying to put between them. “You’ve attended a few goddamned medical lectures, taken some notes and drawn some pretty pictures. That doesn’t make you a doctor. The only thing it qualifies you to do is follow instructions.”

Her chin came up. Fire danced in her eyes. “I’m perfectly capa—”

“To sit where you’ve been told to sit and stay where you’ve been told to stay,” he snapped, his heart hammering and tears clawing their way up his throat. “Out of the way and out of harm’s way.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Jesus Christ. Do you have any idea at all of how—”

“Doctor!” someone called from the rubble. Ian whipped around just as a man was dragged out from under a heavy beam. “Over here, Doc! Hurry!”

In that instant, Fiona felt a certainty wrap around her heart. It was neither hot nor cold. Neither good nor bad. It just
was
. While his back was turned and his tirade was stemmed, Fiona turned on her heel, lifted her chin and her hems, and walked away.

“Where are you going, Fiona?” Ian shouted after her. “The carriage is that way!”

She knew exactly where the carriage was. She also knew that that way lay compliance and docility, forever lived inside a comfortable, pretty little box with no doors or windows. She kept moving, not looking back, stepping over bricks and skirting the pools of blood and shattered glass.

“Fiona! Don’t you dare leave here! I have work to do!”

And she wouldn’t keep him from it. It was important work; lives depended on him. It was perfectly understandable that he wouldn’t come after her. He couldn’t. And just as she knew that he had no choice, she also knew that even if he did have a choice, she wouldn’t be his first one. And what hurt most of all was the certainty that no matter how much she learned, no matter how good she was or what kind of help she could ably provide, he would never see her as anything but a woman who kept his bed warm and made his less important life easier.

She swallowed back hot tears, putting one foot in front of the other and telling herself that crying over the loss of Ian wouldn’t change the inevitable course any more than crying would bring Louis back to life.

*   *   *

Fiona noted Simone’s footman’s wide-eyed shock and stepped across the threshold saying, “I’m fine. Where might I find my sister?”

He stammered and then gestured toward the drawing room. With a muttered thanks for his assistance, Fiona made her way there. She was all of two steps into the room when Simone dropped the book in her hands and ran toward her.

“Oh, my God! Where are you—”

“It’s not my blood.”

Simone grabbed her by the shoulders and looked her up and down. “You’re sure it’s not yours?”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill Ian?”

For some perverse reason, the thought amused her. She chuckled and arched a brow. “Not yet.”

“What happened? Whose blood is it?”

“Mostly Louis’,” she answered, the memories flooding back.

“Who’s Louis?”

She tried to breathe, tried to swallow, tried to lift her chin and banish the tears.

“
What
happened, Fiona?”

Words wouldn’t come. But the tears did. And as they poured in a hot torrent down her cheeks, Simone wrapped her in her arms and murmured, “Such a brave, tender heart.”

Chapter Fifteen

Yes, he might have handled the situation with a bit more patience, Ian admitted, shooting his cuffs as he walked up to the Rylands’ townhouse door. But the basic facts were the basic facts: Fiona had endangered herself. And while her intentions had been kind and noble and good, he had absolutely no intention whatsoever of spending the rest of his life trying to do his best in a crisis while worrying that one of the mangled victims presented to him would be his beautiful wife.

The door opened and he was bowed inside, his coat and gloves taken without a word. Escorted to the parlor and left to wait, he lifted his chin and silently framed, yet again, what he needed to say. A genuinely caring inquiry into her well-being. An apology for having been curt with her that afternoon. A clear and succinct explanation of how her actions had led to his very natural reaction. At that point he’d pause to let her express her regret for having been so short-sighted and unthinking. Then he’d lay down carefully detailed parameters for her conduct should anything like today ever happen again. Once that was all done, he’d accept her invitation to stay for dinner and afterwards they’d go for a lovely private stroll in the garden where they could put all of today’s ugliness and tensions behind them.