The Courtesan

As he parried one furious slash, the momentum of her lunge carried the deflected blade to the floor, embedding the tip into the wood. With a growl, Belle yanked the blade free—leaving behind the cork protector.

He should call the match to a halt, he thought as she drove him into a corner and tried to pin him. But before he could bring himself to end this curious, exhilarating contest, he gazed down into her eyes.

And encountered a look of such complete, blind hatred that it shocked him to the soul. Unable to imagine what he could possibly have done to have inspired so venomous an expression, for an instant he stood motionless.

In the next instant, he saw light dancing off a flash of blade, felt a blow to the chest followed by a searing, white-hot pain. As he looked down in bemusement, blood began seeping from a hole beneath his left shoulder.

For a long moment, he watched the pulsating flow while the voices from the gallery faded to a hum. His head grew light, his limbs clumsy. Dimly he noted the sword falling from his nerveless fingers.

As the room flickered and dissolved into black, he realized that he wasn’t going to win that kiss after all.

CHAPTER SIX

DEAR LORD in heaven, she’d just killed her soldier.

Her fury washed away with the flow of blood trickling down Jack Carrington’s chest, Belle dropped her foil and tried to brace him as he swayed. Then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed, taking her to the floor with him.

She scrambled out from under him to rip open his shirt. “Someone get a physician,” she cried, dimly aware of a chaos of shouts, overturned chairs and running feet.

Hands shaking with dread, she ripped the cuffs off her shirt and clamped them over the neat hole she had punched into Jack Carrington’s chest. Willing away the nausea brought on by fatigue and the scent of blood, she leaned her full weight against him.

Sweat dripped down her forehead and marred her view of Carrington’s face, now drained of all color. “Hold on, Captain!” she urged. “You didn’t survive Waterloo to die on a fencing-room floor.”

A hand closed over hers and she glanced up, startled.

“Edmund Darnley, Lady Belle—a friend of Jack’s. If you will allow me to hold the pads in place? I’ve several stone more than you to bear against them.”

“But I must do something,” she cried, needing some distraction from the horror that had just transpired.

Darnley’s lips curved into a grim smile. “I’d say you’ve done quite enough. But if you can find something to put under his head, ’twill ease his breathing, I think.”

Reluctantly Belle ceded him her place and scurried to grab a cushion from one of the overturned chairs. Dropping on her knees beside Darnley, she wedged the pillow under the captain. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to Darnley.

The captain’s friend gave her a short nod.

Then another gentleman—blond, exquisitely dressed, a bit stout, whom Belle recognized as one of the crowd that usually attended her lessons—knelt beside them.

“Aubrey Ludlowe, ma’am. How does he, Edmund?”

“Jack’s a tough old trooper. Is a doctor on the way?” Despite the calm words, Darnley looked grim and his gaze remained riveted on the still, white-faced figure whose chest rose and fell almost imperceptibly under his palms.

“Armaldi dispatched his assistant to fetch him,” Ludlowe said. “Damned if I want to see my best friend stick his spoon in the wall right in front of me when he’s scarce returned from battle!” Ludlowe inhaled abruptly, his eyes widening. “Besides, should he…not recover, Lady Belle might be forced to flee to the continent!”

“Unless she had the protection of someone very well connected,” Darnley agreed and then frowned. “Is Rupert still here?”

“The whole crowd is milling about.”

“If you wish to be useful, ma’am,” Darnley said to Belle, “escort Lord Rupert out. I fear he’d snuff Jack in a heartbeat if he thought it would give him an advantage.”

The truth of Darnley’s words made her shudder, but the last person she wished to entice was the persistent baron. “They should all go,” she countered. “The captain needs air and the doctor will need space to work. Armaldi!” she called. “Clear the room, please!”

The wiry Italian nodded. “Subito, Bella. Signore!” Clapping his hands to draw their attention, he waved the crowd toward the door. “You also, my lord Rupert,” he added when that gentleman looked as if he meant to linger.

“I will await the lady, who should be escorted from this distressing scene as soon as possible,” Rupert said.

“I’m not leaving until the captain has been treated,” Belle replied.

“Ah, he arrives, il dottore!” Armaldi cried.

“The doctor had a colleague visiting, a military physician, Major Thompson,” the fencing master’s assistant called to them as he entered. “Thought it might be best to bring him.”

“Oh, yes, Dr. Thompson, we’ll be glad of your experience!” Ludlowe said, relief in his voice.

After having to push his way past several groups of bystanders, the doctor ordered, “Out with you all, now!” Setting down his bag, he knelt beside the captain while Darnley described the injury and Armaldi shepherded out the remaining lingerers. Even Rupert, with a disdainful glance at the physician, walked toward the door. “I shall wait outside to escort you home, Lady Belle.”

“I may be here some time,” Belle warned.

“Nonetheless, I shall wait,” he said, and to her vast relief, finally exited. When she returned her attention to the captain, the doctor had begun examining the wound.

“Why don’t you go change, ma’am?” Darnley asked, glancing at her. “I’m sure you’ll want to…freshen up.”

Only then, following his gaze, did Belle notice the blood spattering her breeches and shirtfront, soaking the ragged edges of her torn sleeves.

Carrington’s blood. Blood, welling still around the doctor’s probing fingers, from a wound her carelessness had caused. A wound that might yet cost Carrington his life.

Despite a sudden dizziness that made her faint, she shook her head. “I can’t leave. Not until we know…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

“Remain if you wish, ma’am,” the doctor said, “but no attack of the vapors, if you please! There’s a frightful lot of blood, but his pulse is steady. If he’d severed an artery, he’d have bled to death already. Much will depend on how seriously the lung is affected.”

With that not-so-comforting assessment, the doctor continued probing. And so Belle remained in her gore-spattered garments, gaze fixed on the captain’s too-pale face, trying to form a prayer for his recovery out of the tumult of anxious thoughts tumbling about in her head.

She had almost killed a man. Whatever had possessed her to attack him so? The protector must have become dislodged from her blade. She should have noticed it, would have noticed, had she not been in such a rage.

Remembering the ferocity of that anger chilled her. For years she’d felt herself the victim of another’s unfeeling, heedless action. It dismayed her to find within herself a similar strain of thoughtless single-mindedness.

Her mind recoiled from the possibility that Carrington might die. The captain would recover. He must.

His probing apparently complete, the doctor sprinkled a powder over the wound, drew a roll of cotton from his bag and began binding up the wound.

Though she knew the doctor could make no promises, Belle couldn’t prevent herself asking, “Will he recover?”

“Though the lungs appear intact, he will have some difficulty breathing, and I can’t tell yet whether the blade touched anything vital. Of course, there’s always the danger from fever, but he will do for the present.”

The captain wasn’t going to die—yet. Belle almost sagged in relief. “Thanks be to God,” she murmured.

“I’ve bound up the shoulder to keep it immobile. I trust you have lodgings nearby? You’ll need to move him carefully to avoid disturbing the wound. Don’t worry if he takes a while coming to himself. I’ll leave you some laudanum, but on no account administer any until you are sure he is clearheaded. Watch for fever, and if the lungs were damaged, a pleurisy might settle in.”

Belle must have paled, for the doctor patted her hand. “Don’t distress yourself, my dear. Your husband appears to be a strong fellow, and from the looks of that scar on his shoulder, has weathered worse. Send a servant to fetch me in Curzon Street and I’ll check him again this afternoon.”

Belle opened her mouth to deny the relationship, then closed it. There seemed no reason to correct the doctor’s misapprehension and make this incident more embarrassing for the captain than it was already bound to be.

“Thank you very much, Doctor,” she said instead.

Hauling himself to his feet, Thompson laughed and shook his head. “Pricked in a fencing match! You’d think he would have gotten his fill of that in Belgium. Doubtless he’ll soon recover and go haring off on some other fool stunt, causing you to doubt your joy at his deliverance. I shall see you this afternoon, ma’am.”

With Ludlowe and Darnley echoing Belle’s thanks, the doctor departed. “Signore Armaldi, have you anything that can be fashioned into a litter?” Belle asked.

“Sì, mia Bella, I go prepare it,” the fencing master said. Gathering his assistant, he walked out, leaving Belle alone with the injured captain and his friends.

“Where should he be conveyed?” she asked them.

Darnley and Ludlowe exchanged glances. “I’m afraid that’s a bit of a problem, ma’am,” Darnley replied. “Jack just arrived back in England and is staying in borrowed rooms. His family is still at their country home, and at present, he hasn’t even a valet to attend him.”

“I suppose my valet could undertake Jack’s care,” Ludlowe said, “though he has no experience in a sickroom.”

“I’ve nothing better to offer,” Darnley said with a frown. “My mother would gladly take up the task, but she, too, is not yet in London. I suppose we could ask the physician to recommend a competent nurse, but…”

Both men stared at her. A panicky foreboding added to the mix of fear, regret and worry churning in her gut.

Though she would be more than willing to pay for the services of a competent nurse, it would be unconscionable to send the captain back with only a hired stranger to watch over him. ’Twould be best for his own family to supervise his care. But in the absence of his relations, his friends clearly expected her to volunteer for the task.

“I…I have some sickroom experience,” she admitted. “However, I am sure that his family, who will be most distressed to learn of his injuries, would be even more upset to find he was being tended by one of my…reputation.”

“They’d be more upset to find he’d died from lack of care,” Darnley said bluntly.

It isn’t fair, she thought despairingly, torn by guilt and anxiety. Not now, when she could at last begin searching for something that might lay to rest the torments of the past and offer her peace—or absolution. She’d rather introduce a viper into her house than invite the disturbing captain to reside within her walls.

At present, though, his ability to disturb her would be limited. Besides, she could not escape the fact that, having been the cause of his injury, she must do whatever she could to assist in his recovery. Though she dreaded what she must say next, she knew there was no alternative.

“Transport him to my house. I shall manage the captain’s care until the doctor declares him well enough to be moved to a more…suitable location.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Darnley said quietly. “I know how great an imposition this will be, and if there were any other practical alternative, I should embrace it. You will be doing Captain Carrington a very great kindness.”

“I sincerely doubt, when they hear of it, that the ladies of his family will agree,” Belle replied grimly.

To her surprise, Darnley smiled. “His mother, Lady Anne, is a fair and reasonable lady who will feel only appreciation for the kind woman who assisted her son.”

Even the infamous Lady Belle? Belle shook her head. “Let us hope the captain’s sojourn in my care will be brief enough to escape general notice.”

Darnley made no reply, but Belle knew, as his friends must also, that such a hope was vain. The titillating news that Lady Belle had wounded a soldier in a fencing match would by midday have become the ton’s latest on-dit. The information concerning that soldier’s current location probably wouldn’t remain secret much longer.

Captain Carrington would just have to deal with the problem later, Belle thought with a sigh. One could only hope that his mother had the strength of mind Lord Darnley claimed—and that he didn’t have a fiancée waiting somewhere with a tendency to be missish.

Grimacing at the sticky residue of blood on her hands, Belle wiped them on her ruined trousers. “Gentlemen, with your leave, I will go make myself presentable. Ask Armaldi’s staff to have my coach made ready. I’ll return shortly to help you transport Captain Carrington. Thank you again for your prompt assistance.”

Darnley and Ludlowe bowed. “Jack is one of my oldest friends. I would do anything for him,” Darnley affirmed.

Including never forgiving someone who’d done him an injury, Belle thought as she walked out.

Pensively Belle paced back to the small room Armaldi allotted her as a dressing chamber, thankful that an errand had prevented Mae from accompanying her this morning. As she rang for a maid to assist her, another sigh escaped as she considered what her excitable companion would have to say once she learned of this morning’s work.

A few moments later, suitably dressed and outwardly composed, Belle returned to help Armaldi and the captain’s friends carefully convey his still-unconscious body into Belle’s waiting carriage. Settling herself beside him, she ordered the coachman to drive them slowly home.

Though she tried to close her mind to the possible consequences of having the captain under her roof, as she gazed at Carrington’s pale expressionless face, Belle knew the queasiness in her gut was only partly due to the shock of the morning’s events and the stench of blood lingering in her nostrils.

CHAPTER SEVEN

AWAKING GROGGILY to the sensation of his chest aflame, as he struggled to consciousness Jack tried to summon the words to rebuke whichever trooper had been clumsy enough to knock a flaming brand out of the campfire and nearly incinerate his officer.

As he instinctively turned from the heat, a blast of pain engulfed him, so searing that it drove every vestige of sleepiness from his head. His eyes flew open, the half-formed words tumbling out in an unintelligible gasp.

“Awake at last!” said a cool, soft voice. “I was beginning to fear you would never come back to yourself.”

Narrowing his focus against the agony radiating downward from his shoulder, Jack halted his gaze at a candlelit face haloed against the room’s darkness. A face of such perfect, classical beauty he was momentarily distracted from his pain. Then memory flooded back.

Lady Belle. His challenge. The protector on her blade coming loose.

Lady Belle trying to kill him.

As he gritted his teeth and cautiously shifted to see her better, he noted that she had very nearly succeeded.

“You must be thirsty. At least, the doctor said you would be when you finally reached consciousness.”

He was thirsty, he discovered. His tongue seeming too thick for speech, he nodded. As Belle put a glass to his lips, he leaned forward and drank greedily, ignoring the immediate protest from his shoulder. Before he’d barely slaked his thirst, dizziness assailed him and he sagged back against his pillows, his eyes fluttering shut.

Damn and blast, he thought in disgust. He had about as much strength as a newborn kitten.

“Dr. Thompson said I could give you laudanum for pain, once you were fully conscious. You…are conscious?”

He opened his eyes, as much to prove it to himself as to reassure her. “Yes.”

Picking up a spoon and a small brown bottle from a tray beside the bed, she asked, “Do you want—?”

“No,” he said, recalling the nightmarish narcotic-induced sleep he’d endured after being wounded at Corunna. “Pain is…tolerable. Don’t like being cloth-headed.”

“As you wish. The doctor also said you might have difficulty breathing, if the injury affected the lung.”

“Hard to tell,” he said with a grimace, “but I can breathe.” Inhaling deeply enough to utter more than a few words at a time, however, was a different matter.

“Praise heaven!” She opened her mouth as if to say something else, then hesitated.

Jack might be in a sorry state, but he wasn’t half-dead enough not to feel a spark of masculine response as she ran the tip of her tongue over those plump lips. “Do you remember…how you became injured?” she said at last.

Why she had tried to kill him? he asked himself. A disturbing vision of her lovely face contorted with hate flickered through his mind and he inhaled sharply, then gasped as another surge of pain seared his chest.

He struggled to regain his concentration. If he could induce her to describe what had happened, maybe he could find out what had prompted her violent response.

“It’s all…rather hazy.”

“It cannot possibly be sufficient, given the injuries you’ve suffered, but I owe you an enormous apology. You had challenged me to a fencing match—you remember that?”

He nodded, prompting her to continue.

“Sometime during the match,” she said, moistening her lips again, “the protector on my blade became dislodged. Being unaware of this, when you chanced to drop your guard and I saw a chance to score a hit, I took it. I never dreamed…!” She stopped again, her eyes and expression mirroring a clear distress. “The fault is entirely mine.”

“Had I done you some injury,” he asked, gritting his teeth against the increasing pain of each inhaled breath, “that you felt moved to attack?”

Her face coloring, she didn’t immediately reply. So she knew her response had been disproportionate. Why? he wondered anew.

“Of course you had done me no injury,” she said after a moment. “I—I merely wished to test my skill against one who was accounted a superb swordsman.”

“Our relative positions now…argue against that,” he observed wryly.

“There is no way I can make restitution for all you have suffered, but I have arranged to oversee your care until you are sufficiently recovered to be transported to your family’s estate, which Lord Darnley assured me you would wish as soon as possible. At the moment, you are lodged in my house on Mount Street. Not a very…respectable arrangement, I realize, but there seemed no other recourse, you being far too ill to be left—”

“Nay, madam, don’t apologize! I should be…in bad case indeed had you returned me to Albany. Only hope I’ve not been…too much of a charge.” He attempted a smile. “Many a gentleman would consider…a sword wound a trifling cost…to lie where I do now.”

“Not if theirs were the chest pierced by the blade,” she retorted, ignoring his attempt at gallantry. “In any event, I shall arrange for your journey as soon as the physician allows. Though I fear,” she added with a sigh, “that shall not be soon enough to prevent the troubling news of your present…situation from reaching your family.”

“My family will thank you,” Jack replied, surprised that Lady Belle seemed aware of the distress his mother might well experience upon hearing her only son was being nursed by the ton’s most celebrated Fashionable Impure. Odd, he thought, that a woman who had embraced a calling like Belle’s would spare a thought over how an association with her would be viewed by respectable people.

“Do you feel up to drinking some broth?”

At her question, he realized he was indeed hungry, though broth didn’t appeal. “Feel like having the steak…I didn’t finish for breakfast.”

“Beefsteak might be a tad ambitious,” she replied with a smile.

Despite the pain, Jack’s breath caught at how the sudden warmth of that expression, seen for the first time up close, magnified the natural beauty of her face. Though she was garbed in a high-necked, plain gray gown, her hair once again pulled severely back, the Quaker austerity of dress and coiffure seemed to emphasize rather than detract from the perfection of her features.

A smiling Botticelli angel, bending over his sickbed.

Extraordinary that a woman of her profession could exude such an aura of innocence. He felt that he might be content to spend the rest of his days simply gazing at her.

No wonder Bellingham had been so besotted.

And you, Carrington, had best keep a tight hold over your senses during the time you spend under her roof.

“Besides, that would have been breakfast yesterday,” she continued while he remained speechless, staring like a lackwit. “’Tis evening now, so you were unconscious nearly a day and a half. Indeed, I was beginning to feel I must call Dr. Thompson back to check you again.”

“That long?” Jack asked, shocked. As he studied her, recovering now from his bedazzlement, he noticed shadows beneath her eyes…and pulled up by the bed, a chair with a shawl draped over its back. “You tended me…all that time?”

“My companion Mae, though she possesses the kindest heart imaginable, turned queasy at the sight of you, the footman was little better, and I feared that my butler, a former prize-fighter, might not be gentle enough. But now that you are awake, I shall send Watson in and rest.”

“Please do! I apologize for being…such a burden.”

“Having been the instrument of your injury, ’twas only right that I do everything possible to assist you. In any case, I should not have been able to sleep until you regained your senses, giving me more confidence in your eventual recovery. Now, the doctor tells me rest and quiet are essential for healing, and I know you—and your family—will wish to have you on your way as quickly as possible.”

With that, she offered him another sip of water, bracing his shoulder as he leaned forward to drink. This time, Jack found his meager strength fading even more quickly—and now that he’d had time to sort out the gradations of pain and pressure in his chest, he discovered that breathing was becoming more difficult, as well.

He couldn’t stifle a groan as she eased him back against his pillows. There was so much more he wanted to ask her, but the words seemed to elude his grasp. “Sleep…might be…wise,” he admitted.

“You’re sure about the laudanum? Sleep, then.”

For the few moments before the vortex of pain and fatigue sucked him down to oblivion, he savored the feel of her fingers, gently stroking his face.

FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS, Jack dozed and woke and dozed again, except when roused for the doctor’s periodic visits, experiences uncomfortable enough that afterward he several times accepted Belle’s offer for a bit of laudanum. Mercifully, a small dose dulled the agony enough for him to sleep without filling his dreams with nightmarish visions.

Or perhaps being wounded in the safety of London, rather than in the middle of a grim winter retreat through the wilderness, allowed him to rest undisturbed. Whatever the reason, he awoke on the fifth day to find his mind and senses had at last escaped the haze of pain and laudanum.

Except for an itchy tickle of beard, he was reasonably comfortable, his soiled garments having been removed at some point in favor of a plain nightshirt, and his body washed. He gazed about him, able now that a tepid daylight illuminated the room and he was finally lucid to take stock of his surroundings.

He lay in a handsomely carved canopy bed, its hangings and the curtains at the windows a rich blue damask, a hue mirrored in the Turkish carpet upon the floor. The room itself, its walls painted a pale blue, boasted a fine plastered cornice, classical broken pediments over the windows and a doorway flanked by inset pilasters.