Pink replaced the pale worry on the apples of her cheeks. He’d experienced the same reprieve the day he’d returned to Portsmouth and resigned his commission. He’d vowed that day never to climb aboard another Navy frigate again, and heaven help him, he wouldn’t.
‘I’ll write out instructions for properly seeing to the wound while it heals and a recipe for a laudanum tonic to help ease any pain.’ He walked to the escritoire, the activity relieving some of the tension of having attended to a patient for the first time since his sister’s death over a year ago. He pulled out the chair, making it scrape against the wood floor, irked that a simple cut could affect him or dredge up so many awful memories. His reaction was as shocking as when he’d turned to find Miss Domville in the dining room asking him to help the same way his mother had asked him to intervene during Leticia’s travails.
Seating himself, he selected a piece of paper from the stack on the blotter. He paused as he laid the clean sheet over the leather. Blood darkened the tips of his finger and the side of his hand. He rubbed at the stains with the linen towel, but the red clung to his skin as it used to during a battle. He tightened his hand into a fist, desperate for water and soap to rid himself of the filth.
He looked up, ready to bolt from the room in search of cleansing when his eyes caught Miss Domville’s. She glanced at his clenched hands, then back to his face. It wasn’t his mother’s pity in the stunning blue depths of her eyes, but the same bracing strength she’d offered Lady Ellington before he’d begun his work.
He snatched up the pen, his fingertips pressing hard on the wood as he scratched out in shaky letters the directions for mixing the laudanum and alcohol. He pushed back the haunting memories of his cramped cabin below the waterline and focused on the proportions, determined not to get the dosage wrong and leave poor Miss Domville at fault for easing her friend’s pain for good.
‘My, it’s cold in here,’ Lady Astley’s voice rang out above the noise.
A poker clanged in the grate and Warren flinched, running a streak of ink across the paper. The scrape of rods shoved down cannon barrels echoed in the sound, the balls buried deep inside and ready to wreak a destruction his surgical skills could never hope to undo.
‘Ladies, I think Lady Ellington should be left alone to rest until the carriage is called.’ Miss Domville’s firm suggestion sounded above the clatter, silencing it.
Warren, pulled from the past by the steady voice, was surprised by the young lady’s ability to remain composed in the face of so many hostile stares. She reminded him of a seasoned seaman calmly watching the coming battle while the new recruits wet themselves.
Lady Cartwright huffed up to Miss Domville, not content with a silent rebuke. ‘I don’t think you should instruct us on how to behave. You didn’t even have the decency to tell us what was wrong, bursting in on the men and leaving us to think who knows what.’
‘It was an emergency. There wasn’t time for pleasantries.’ The twitch of small muscles around the young woman’s lips undermined her stoicism.
Lady Cartwright opened her mouth to unleash another blow.
‘She was right to summon me as she did.’ Warren rose to defend Miss Domville, tired of the imperious woman. Miss Domville had endured enough tonight worrying over her friend. She didn’t need some puffed-up matron rattling the sabre of propriety over her blonde head. ‘And she’s correct. Lady Ellington needs space and rest. Lady Cartwright, would you call for her carriage? Mother, would you escort her and Miss Domville home? I’ll send my carriage for you.’
‘Of course.’ His mother arched one interested eyebrow at Lady Ellington, who offered a similar look in return before her face scrunched up with a fresh wave of pain.
Lady Cartwright’s nostrils flared with indignation, not nearly as amused as the two ladies on the sofa. ‘I’ll summon Lady Ellington’s carriage. After all, we wouldn’t want to detain Lady Ellington or Miss Domville any longer.’
She struck Miss Domville with a nasty look before striding off in a huff.
The long breath Miss Domville exhaled after Lady Cartwright left whispered of tired resignation. It was as if she’d waged too many similar battles, but had to keep fighting. He understood her weariness. Aboard ship, he’d faced approaching enemy vessels with the same reluctant acceptance.
Her gaze caught his and he dropped his to the paper as if he’d stumbled upon her at her bath, not in the middle of these chattering biddies. Unable to stand the noise any longer, Warren snatched up the instructions and quit the room. In the quiet of the hallway, he spat into his palm and rubbed the handkerchief hard against his skin. It smeared the red across his hand, dirtying the linen as it had stained the rags aboard ship. There’d never been enough buckets of seawater to clean the grime from beneath his fingernails.
He screwed his eyes shut.
This is nothing like then. Nothing like it. Those days are gone.
The war against Napoleon was over, his commission resigned. He was no longer Lieutenant Stevens, surgeon aboard HMS Bastion. He was Sir Warren Stevens, master of Priorton Abbey and a fêted novelist.
A fêted novelist who’d be destitute and a disappointment to his family like his father had been if he didn’t finish writing his next book.
He opened his eyes and scrubbed harder until at last the red began to fade, cursing the troubles piling on him tonight.
‘Sir Warren, are you all right?’
Miss Domville approached him, the flowing silk of her dress brushing against each slender leg. Beneath her high breasts, it draped her flat stomach and followed the curve of her hips. She stopped in front of him, her eyes as clear and patient as when they’d faced each other before.
Humiliation flooded through him. He wouldn’t be brought low by memories. He clutched his lapels and jerked back his shoulders, fixing her with the same glib smile he flashed adoring readers whenever he signed their books. ‘Yes, why shouldn’t I be?’
‘I don’t know. You seem troubled.’ She studied him the way his sister, Leticia, used to, head tilted to one side, her chestnut curls brushing her smooth cheeks. It had looked so dark, matted against her forehead with sweat, her hazel eyes clouding as the life had faded from them. Hopelessness hit him like a jab to the gut.
‘I’m fine.’ He handed her the now-wrinkled and sweat-dampened paper, ashamed by this bout of weakness. It had been a long time since the memories of his time at sea had overwhelmed him like this. He’d thought he’d overcome them in the ten years since he’d left the Navy. Apparently, he hadn’t. ‘Follow the directions precisely, otherwise you may do more harm than good.’
‘I will, and thank you again for your help.’ Miss Domville folded the paper, pausing to straighten out a crease in one corner as she glanced past him to the fluttering women. ‘All of it.’
‘It was the least I could do. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’ He turned and left, ignoring the confused crease of her smooth forehead as he all but sprinted away from her and the study. He regretted the abrupt departure, but he’d embarrassed himself enough in front of her already. Despite the draw of Miss Domville’s presence, the faint desire to linger in her sweet smile and vivid blue eyes, he needed the solitude of home and his writing to calm the demons stirred up by tonight.
‘You entered the dining room where the gentlemen were?’ Lady Ellington’s cousin, Rosemary, Dowager Baroness of St Onge, gasped, clutching the long strand of pearls draped around her thin neck. ‘By yourself?’
Marianne gritted her teeth as she poured Lady Ellington’s tea. ‘It was a matter of some urgency.’
‘But,