“Gavin,” Millicent breathed through a lip that was swollen and cracked.
Gavin, her brother. The physician. If he were here, she would put Gavin beyond any physician’s help. “Get two footmen to carry her upstairs,” Katherine ordered. “Quickly. Call for a doctor and ring for Mrs. Hibbard. Have her bring soup and a compress.”
“Right away, your ladyship.” Dodd hurried away, and within moments two young men from the mews rushed into the foyer. Upstairs, Katherine directed them to the room Millicent had occupied before she’d left, and by the time they laid her across it she had lost consciousness.
Immediately Katherine began pulling at Millicent’s clothes. “I will kill him.”
“We’ll do it together,” Phil said, moving in to help. There were more bruises on Millie’s arms and chest, and Katherine heard Phil breathe a prayer.
“I should have stopped her,” Katherine said.
Phil tugged at a sleeve, freeing Millie’s arm. “You know better than to think you could have, stubborn as she is.”
“I could have ordered her to stay.”
“And she would have defied you. We’re not on the ship anymore.”
And Millicent would scarce have listened to her even if they had been. But the bruises and cuts were horrible, and the blood— “Perhaps she would have been better off in Malta,” Katherine said in despair.
“Now you’re being ridiculous. Even if she was admitted to that school in disguise, it would take nothing more than a man determined to avail himself of what he thought was some fresh, male flesh to discover the truth, and then she would be out. She would have fallen into prostitution within the week.” Phil peeled away one stocking, then the other, revealing more bruises on Millie’s legs. “The bastard ought to be skinned alive and hung on a pole.”
Mrs. Hibbard whisked into the room followed by a maid who set down a tray with a teapot, soup tureen, cups and bowls. The maid left, and Mrs. Hibbard bustled to the bed. “It’s a terrible, terrible thing, this. I’ve got compresses, but little good they’ll do for all this. Lord above.” Her soft, round face was pinched and angry. “Whoever done this ought to have twice as much done to him.” She laid a compress across Millie’s black eye and another across a nasty bruise on her shoulder, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Millicent would need a compress for her entire body. “I’ll go make up some more,” Mrs. Hibbard said, shaking her head. “Let’s hope the doctor gets here right quick.”
A hole opened up in Katherine’s chest as she stared at Millicent’s battered body. “I’ll never let her out of my sight again.”
“She’ll be delighted to hear that, I’m sure. She’s a grown woman, Katherine.”
“She’s not yet twenty.” And her time aboard the Possession may have sturdied up her muscles, but she was still short, and slightly built, and more delicate than a country physician’s daughter should be.
“Which is plenty old enough to be acquainted with the ways of the world,” Phil pointed out. “She’s not as delicate as she looks, Katherine. You know that. She’s got the spirit of ten sailors.”
“Which didn’t save her from this.”
“But it will.” Phil reached for Katherine’s hand. “She’ll survive this. I know she will.”
HE’D FORGOTTEN THE preservative.
At home in his bedchamber, James stood with his waistcoat in one hand and the preservative—pristine and unused—in the other. What utter stupidity to have thought he could touch Katherine and maintain enough coherence to take precautions. She’d been pure intoxication from the moment he’d set eyes on her.
Hell and damnation! At this very moment, his child might be growing in her womb. Enraged, he flung the preservative across the chamber. It hit the wall with a soft thwack and fell to the floor.
And even his own stupidity didn’t keep him from growing hard—again—at the memory of being inside her.
His “solution” had been entirely, completely illusory. Rather than slaking his thirst and clearing his head, making love to her in that coach only made him want her more. He had buried himself inside her, possessed her as completely as was physically possible, and still he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted her naked. Here. On his bed, without stays and hoops and yards of fabric.
Instead, within the hour he would see her at this bloody rout Lady Effy was giving, where he would smile politely and make conversation with the very devils who dreamed of foraging inside her skirts exactly as he had. It was not to be tolerated.
He paced the length of the chamber, restless and unsated. There was a chance she hadn’t conceived. His thoughts strayed into the queasy territory of a woman’s monthly flow, and he sat on the edge of the bed. Even if she had, within weeks she would be married to Deal. He leaned forward and covered his face with his hands.
Marry me, Katherine. The whisper of his own words taunted him.
Good God—what had he been thinking? The answer, of course, was that he hadn’t been. Thinking. He’d been rutting like a stallion in heat. Katherine was everything he didn’t want in a wife. She was combative where he wanted peaceful, commanding where he wanted submissive, fiery where he wanted mild.
He got up and snatched the preservative off the floor and tossed it into the drawer in his dressing table. He should be thanking every bloody star in the sky that she’d rejected his reckless proposal.
In the looking glass, the man who had so blithely anticipated resolution before mocked him now. You’ll have a high time lying awake nights while Lord Deal tries to sink his half-wilted cock into that tight, wet heat. He slammed the drawer shut and glared at himself. The staff in his breeches wasn’t the only idiot in this bedchamber.
Was that it, then? A hasty farewell as he buttoned his breeches and stepped out of her coach two streets away to avoid being seen? Sod it all, he’d made a bloody mess of things. He needed to talk to her.
About what? his reflection sneered. Arranging another tryst before she becomes Lady Deal?
About...them. Their relationship. The debt. Yes—the debt! He pushed away from the dressing table and turned, shoving his hands through his hair. That bloody, goddamned debt that he’d failed to repay. The one she said she’d forgiven him for. The one, in fact, she didn’t truly believe he owed—that much had been there in her eyes this morning when the truth behind his rescue had emerged.
There was a knock on his door—Bates’s knock—and he let his hands fall. “Come in.”
The door opened, and Bates handed him a small, sealed note. “This just arrived, your lordship.”
“Thank you.” He ripped open the seal and read Philomena’s words. Tossing the note aside, he rang for his valet.
* * *
AN HOUR AFTER sunset, Katherine sat by Millicent’s window in the fading light with Anne playing cat’s cradle on her lap with a length of yarn. Millicent lay with her black-and-blue face stark against the white pillows and a dark prognosis. The doctor had done what he could—which was bloody little—but speculated that she might have sustained internal injuries and that only time would tell. Phil had sent their regrets to Lady Effy, and all that was left was to wait.
William paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, while Miss Bunsby dabbed Millie’s forehead with a damp cloth and cast him frequent looks of disgust. That alone should have been reason enough to dismiss her—to actually dismiss her, this time.
“Doctors,” William muttered, jabbing at the fire with an iron. “Never have an answer about anything.”