Sins of a Virgin (12 page)

“Do you have much experience dealing with knife wounds?”

She was silent.

“I thought not. I’ve treated them before. Let me help you, then you’ll be free to throw me out.”

Her shoulder twitched in what he supposed was a shrug of agreement. Despite her quips, she was in too much pain for much else. Her face hadn’t regained color and her lips were compressed in a thin line.

He entered her room. Next to an ornate mahogany bed, a single candle had been left burning on the nightstand, no doubt in preparation for her return. The small flame did nothing for the dark greens in the room except make them appear more forbidding. The color proclaimed it the bedchamber of the former master of the house rather than its mistress. “Why not use the lady’s rooms?”

“The bigger bed has its advantages.”

He didn’t need images of why Madeline might require a larger bed. He laid her gently on the mattress. “I need to remove your stays so I can examine the wound.” He pulled his knife from the sheath in his boot.

When she nodded, he grasped the top edge of her undergarment and carefully sliced the fabric to where it ended at her waist. He peeled back the wet, bloody cloth, revealing her crimson-stained shift.

The door opened behind him. Canterbury rushed in with a basin of steaming water and a stack of neatly folded bandages. He stiffened when he saw the blood, his hands trembling as he lit all the candles in the room. “What do you need me to do?”

To not pass out and add to Gabriel’s list of patients. “Put the supplies next to me. Then get me towels.” Canterbury complied and then fled the room.

Gabriel’s fingers hovered only for an instant before untying the ribbon at the neck of her shift and then slicing the garment from her upper body.

He made only brief note of the lush perfection of her pink-tipped breasts before focusing on the bloody mess below.

The cut still bled, but as Madeline had claimed, it wasn’t mortal. However, she would need the wound sewn shut. “I’ll call a doctor.”

“No. You said you’ve dealt with wounds before. Can’t you help me?”

“I can.” As a Runner, he’d dealt with enough of his and his associates’ wounds to be able to handle them without a second thought.

But then she shuddered, a tiny quaking that she tried to disguise as an attempt to shift on the bed. His gut clenched. The thought of piercing her time and time again with a needle and thread sickened him. He couldn’t. Not to her. Not to Madeline.

“I’ll call a doctor, regardless.”

She grabbed his arm, her bloody gloves wet on his sleeve. “They’ll just botch things. Please. You help me.”

Hell. He owed her that much. He’d failed abysmally at protecting her. Gabriel swallowed, forcing the nausea to a tolerable churning. He peeled the bloody gloves from her hands, then wiped them clean.

Canterbury reentered with towels.

“I’ll need needle and thread. And brandy, if you have it.” He looked at Madeline, giving her a chance to rethink her mad request, but she simply nodded in agreement.

Canterbury returned with the other supplies, then quickly skittered from the room. Gabriel removed his waistcoat, then rolled back his sleeves to just below the elbow.

“See? So much more pleasant than a doctor would’ve been.”

He glanced up to find her intent gaze on him and a half smile playing on her lips, but her seductive expression couldn’t mask the fear in her eyes. He tucked towels under her, then spent far too many seconds ensuring the towels were straight.

He exhaled through tightly clenched teeth.
Get it done already
. He dipped a cloth in the steaming water, then wrung out the excess. “I’m sorry for this.”

She closed her eyes. “So am I.”

He wiped off the excess blood as well as he could, then picked up the crystal decanter from the bedside table and poured brandy into the cut.

Her quickly stifled cry of pain echoed in his chest until he had to struggle for his next breath. He concentrated to ensure that none of his fury at her attacker translated into the cleansing strokes of the cloth, but another whimper escaped her lips.

He rinsed the cloth in the porcelain basin, darkening the water to that red-orange color particular to drying blood.

Gabriel wiped away the remaining blood with quick efficiency. A gunshot wound to his thigh had taught him it was better not to have the process drawn out. He poured her a glass of brandy. “Drink this. It will dull the pain.”

She shook her head. “I can’t keep the stuff down.”

“Madeline—”

“I can handle it.”

Yet as he attempted to thread the needle, Gabriel’s hands shook so badly he had to stop until he regained control. Perhaps he should have drunk the brandy himself.

When Gabriel poised to begin, she jerked under his fingers. “I lied. Please, I need something to distract me. Talk to me, Gabriel.”

M
adeline sincerely hoped she looked better than Gabriel did right now. Perhaps she should’ve let him call the doctor.

But then she would have given up the perfect opportunity for interrogation. Guilt was far too valuable a tool to waste.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

“Where are you from?” Start simple. That was the first rule of interrogation. Ease them into it. It was amazing what men would let slip before they realized the questioning had gone too far.

“London.”

She flinched as the needle sank into her flesh, and his jaw tightened still further until she could see muscles bunch.

“Cheapside,” he continued as he pulled the thread. “My mother teaches deportment to the daughters of rich merchants.”

She focused on the way his lips formed the words as he spoke, distracting herself from the friction of the thread slithering through her flesh.

“She taught you your manners?”

The worried furrows knitting his brow eased a fraction. “She taught, I just didn’t learn.”

“Does she enjoy”—she closed her eyes at the next stab—“her work?”

“I suppose. She doesn’t have many other choices. She’s too wellborn for trade but not wellborn enough to have connections to help her.”

Madeline could imagine how difficult it would be. It must eat away at her, knowing she’d been seduced, then cast aside. To have to raise the children of the man who had betrayed her.

Madeline never intended to have children. No child would want her for a mother. “And your father?” she asked.

“He was fortunately out of the picture by the time I was born.”

Two quick stitches robbed her of the ability to speak. The embarrassing squeak wasn’t feigned. “He passed away?”

He hurried on, his voice gruff. “No, he was never . . . married to my mother. He seduced her, then refused to do the right thing after he’d . . . done what he did.”

His words were awkwardly chosen for so well-spoken a man. He hadn’t told this story often, if ever, before. She’d found that once a person told a story, he called on the same words again and again without having to search for them. In fact, the more emotional the memory, the more he relied on his memorized phrases to get through it. Like the lieutenant in Corunna who’d had a leg blown off by a cannon. He kept referring to a resounding blast, first to her when he thought her a tavern wench. Then later as he begged for mercy before he was hanged for selling secrets to the French.

Her hands gripped the sheets until the taut wrinkles imprinted on her palms. “Who was your father?”

He dabbed a warm trickle of blood off her stomach. “The brother of her employer.”

She wanted more of the story so she moaned.

“He was already promised to another woman.” Gabriel’s eyes swept her face. “I don’t think I’ve ever related this story before.”

An unwelcome sensation gnawed at her chest. He wouldn’t have shared the story with her if she hadn’t manipulated it out of him. The pain in her stomach was preferable to her guilt, so she focused on that. Besides, it wasn’t as if she’d asked to be stabbed. And the agony of his ministrations was far too real. “Don’t worry, your secret is safe. Did you . . .”
Have any brothers or sisters
had been what she was going to ask, but the words stuck in her throat. Curse it all. Madeline wasn’t without a conscience, but she normally did a far better job of quieting it. For some reason she couldn’t ask him about his sister. At least not like this. Shame flickered in the corner of her thoughts.

Why?
the cold, logical voice in her head asked. She’d done far worse as a spy. She had pried men’s most private truths from them. Gabriel was no different. He was hiding information from her. That was unacceptable at best and life-threatening at worst.

The ill-timed pause in her scheming left her with no distraction. The next poke of the needle sent the hot tears she’d been willing into nonexistence dribbling down her cheeks. She pressed her eyes tightly closed, hoping Gabriel was too involved with his task to take note of her humiliation.

A soft, smooth cloth skimmed over her cheek, drying it. “We’re almost done.”

She turned her face away from his hand. She didn’t need her tears dried. Ian and Clayton had never tried. They’d given her food when they were starving, saving back none for themselves. Once Clayton had waited for her at a rendezvous point to warn her they’d been compromised even though that had allowed the French to capture and torture him for two days before she’d been able to free him.

But they hadn’t dried her tears.

Not that she’d cried much after the first year. She would’ve gone mad.

“I’ve told you one of my secrets, you tell me one of yours,” Gabriel said, clearing the tears from her other cheek.

She would have done anything to avoid the feelings stirred by his simple touch. Trapped by her own machinations, she spoke. “What do you want to know?”

“Where are you from?”

“London.”

“Then where were you six months ago?”

The pointed question cleared the weakness from her mind. Apparently, she shouldn’t have felt guilty over her interrogation. “I only agreed to give you one secret.” And she was a fool for giving him that.

“Yours hardly equals the one you were given.”

“But it does. You told me something that no one else knows and I have done the same—” She sucked in a sharp breath at the jab of the needle.

“Done.” Gabriel knotted the thread and pulled back from her with a weary sigh. He rubbed his hands over his face, then picked up the glass of brandy. “Just once more. It will help keep infection from the wound.”

She nodded. As the cool amber liquid ignited her skin, she writhed in pain, her fingers locking around his forearm as if she could stop what he’d already done.

With his free hand, he brushed strands of hair from her face. “It’s almost over. Almost,” he whispered.

She clung to the deep murmur of his voice to maintain her sanity.

Gradually, the burning began to fade, ebbing back to the bearable agony of the wound itself. As it did, she became aware of the weight of his arm where she clutched it to her naked breasts. The hard masculine strength of it. How the dark hair sprinkled over the back tickled her with each breath.

She loosed her hold on his arm, wincing at the red crescents imprinted by her nails. “Sorry.”

He glanced down. “After what you endured, you expect me to complain about those?”

She managed a smile, but then his gaze focused on the breasts on either side of his arm. The smile faltered on her lips. Eager for his attention, her nipples contracted into hard nubs.

His eyes darkened until the pale green was nearly obliterated by the black of his pupils.

The muscles in his arm contracted, and even that small shift stole the air from the room. For a moment, she thought he’d lower his hand and caress her. Thought. Hoped. Prayed.

Instead, he jerked toward the supplies beside him, retrieving another cloth.

The air became breathable again, and Madeline exhaled. She must’ve lost more blood than she thought.

She’d wanted him to touch her.

Oh, she’d desired men before, but she’d never allowed it to go further than that. She’d enjoyed the novelty of the sensation but then she’d noted her body’s reaction for future use and moved on.

It was past time she moved on. She would get the information she sought about Gabriel, and then if satisfied, allow him to continue working on the auction. If not, she’d be rid of him.

Using her pain as an excuse, she closed her eyes, blocking Gabriel and his accursed jade eyes from her sight. Guilt was no longer the most effective tool. She’d wasted that.

He hadn’t taken advantage of her when he had the chance. But not only hadn’t he taken advantage, he’d turned away. He was trying to resist her. A man didn’t need to resist something he didn’t want.

He’d handed her a weapon just as potent as the one she’d thrown away.

Desire.

She’d relished not having to entice Gabriel. She no longer had that luxury.

She would do what she did best—seduce the truth from him.

Chapter Eleven

K
eeping his hand light, Gabriel dabbed the wound dry again.

Madeline lifted her head a few inches and peered at his work, the row of thin, black lines, fifteen in all, that held the edges of the knife wound together. “If you ever desire to cease being a Runner, you have a chance at making a tolerable tailor.”

He unclenched his aching jaw. “For a moment I feared you were going to say surgeon. If this ever happens again, I’m sending for a doctor.”

“Don’t worry. It’s my intent to avoid all knife attacks in the future.”

The question remained why this attack had occurred in the first place, but he’d finish dressing her wound before addressing that. Gabriel pressed a square of cloth against her stomach. “I need to bandage the wound. Can you hold this?”

She kept the pad of fabric in place as he removed the wet towels, cut off her bloody bodice, then draped a long strip of cloth over her stomach. When he slid his hand under her back, his palm skimmed over the satiny skin at the base of her spine. As he worked, he kept his eyes on the bandage, refusing to note that it only highlighted the round, firm contours of her breasts.