A Lady's Guide to Improper Behavior (7 page)

Bartholomew stepped down from the hired hack and stopped on the street for a moment to gaze at the modest Cheapside home. Every instinct he possessed yelled at him to climb back into that carriage and return to James House posthaste. Instead he dug the tip of his cane into the hard ground and limped forward.

With his free hand he swung the brass knocker against the door. At ten o’clock the hour was still fairly early for the peerage during the Season of balls and parties, but this wasn’t the home of a nobleman.

The door swung open. A stern-looking woman in a voluminous night rail and a robe, a lit candle in one hand, peered out at him.

“This house is closed for the evening, sir,” she said, her voice softer than he expected.

“Yes, I know,” he returned. “I wondered if I might have a minute of the good doctor’s time.”

“Well, come into the sitting room, and I shall inquire.”

More walking and sitting and standing again. “I’ll wait here,” he decided.

“Your name, sir?”

“Colonel James.”

With a nod she shut the door on him. Bartholomew
clenched his jaw against the growing urge to run—or rather, to hobble away at his best speed. There was a damned war raging in his mind. To one side his own resolve to accept what misfortune fate had dealt him, to…honor his men by continuing to suffer from the attack that had ended their lives. That ongoing pain of the last months pushed and shoved against a woman’s words; Theresa Weller wanted him to call on her, wanted him to dance with her. And he quite simply wanted her.

The door opened for the second time, and the more familiar figure of Dr. Prentiss stepped forward. “What can I do for you, Colonel?” he asked. “Did you manage to tear that wound open again?”

“No.” He swallowed. “I wondered whether you might call on me at James House tomorrow. I…want you to break and reset my leg.”

Prentiss eyed him for a long moment, then nodded. “Is noon acceptable?”

Fourteen damned hours to contemplate how large a fool he was to intentionally risk losing a limb altogether. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Colonel. I imagine you’ll be hating me tomorrow.”

He was more likely to be hating himself by then. With a nod Bartholomew turned and made his way back to the waiting hack.

He knew he was being foolish, because he’d been driven to this moment by hope. Hope that he might in a few weeks be able to limp without excruciating pain. And hope that if everything went far better than he deserved, he would be able to waltz with Tess Weller. The only problem with all of that was that
he and hope had had a very poor relationship for the past eight months.

“I can’t approve of this, Tolly.”

“I didn’t ask you to.” Wishing his brother would give up the argument, Tolly continued to pretend to be interested in the stack of calling cards on the hallway table. None of them were for him, but that didn’t signify.

“Who is this Dr. Prentiss, anyway?”

Bartholomew went through the stack for a third time. “I met him through a…friend.” Not that he considered the Duke of Sommerset to be a friend, precisely, but he wasn’t certain how else to describe him without revealing the entire Adventurers’ Club business. “And he’ll do as well as anyone, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t! You have both legs. You need simply to thank God for that and leave it be.”

Bartholomew gazed levelly at his older brother. “I do not have both my legs. I have one leg and one anchor dragging and clanking with me wherever I go. As I said, I didn’t ask your permission. I informed you because I’ll be off my feet for a time. If you prefer that I do this elsewhere, I w—”

“Don’t even begin throwing that garbage in my direction.” Stephen jabbed a finger at him. “You are not going anywhere. And whatever you think of my opinion, this is too risky.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, myself,” Bartholomew said slowly. “I need to risk this. I just wanted you to know.”

“Thank you for that, at least.”

“You’re welcome.”

When Stephen still showed no sign of going away, Bartholomew muttered a curse and limped to the base of the stairs. The narrow, closed-in servants’s stairs were easier to descend, but he needed to hang on to the railing of the main staircase to climb up.

Three steps up from the bottom, he heard Stephen start after him. As soon as his brother’s arm closed around his shoulders, he shoved backward. “No!” he growled, panicked at being grabbed from behind even though he knew damned well who it was. He’d known before, too, eight months ago.

“I don’t understand,” his older brother grumbled, returning to the foyer. “You never used to behave like this.”

“No, I don’t suppose I did.” Wrapping his hand around one of the balustrades, he hauled himself up another step. “He’ll be here at noon. I’m going to have a drink.”

Stephen stood back, watching his stubborn, fearless, athletic younger brother hitching himself up the stairs step by painful step. They’d received word from the damned butler that Tolly had returned to England. No word from Tolly himself, and still no explanation about what, precisely, had happened in India.

All he knew for certain was that Tolly had been injured, and badly. And he knew that his good-humored brother didn’t smile or laugh any longer, that he was curt and angry and on edge. If Tolly had decided to risk the loss of his leg by having it intentionally re-broken, there was clearly nothing anyone could do to change his mind.

That did not mean, however, that he could stop himself from worrying. And from wondering—if Tolly with an injured leg was unpredictable and barely civil, what might Tolly with only one leg attempt?

With a shudder Stephen returned to the morning room to explain to his wife and his sister that Tolly had not been joking and that they all might very well have just seen him on his feet—both his feet—for the last time.

Y
our cards this morning, Miss Tess.” Inclining his head, the butler held out the silver salver piled with calling cards.

Theresa wiped jam off her fingers and lifted the cards. “Thank you, Ramsey.”

“Those are all for you?” Michael asked as he strolled into the breakfast room. Planting a swift kiss on Grandmama Agnes’s cheek, he came around to rest his hands on Theresa’s shoulders and read the cards over her head.

“Let’s see,” she said, looking through them one by one. “Lord Lionel, Montrose, Bertle—oh, goodness, you may have him.”

“Thank you, no. He has a very particular odor about him.”

She looked up at her brother. “You should attempt a dance with him.”

“Let’s put that one aside,” he said with a grin. “Who else?”

“Harriet, Lord Hayverton, Lord Wilcox…” She stopped to slide that card across the table to their grandmother. “A caller, Grandmama?”

“Hmm. Apparently that hat was even more impressive than we thought.” Chuckling, Agnes read the note scrawled across the back of the calling card, then set it aside. “Wilcox has invited me to go for a stroll this afternoon. How very nice!”

“Don’t wear the hat,” Michael advised. “You’ll have the poor baron suffering an apoplexy of lust.”

While her brother and grandmother bantered about the state of Lord Wilcox’s health, Theresa looked through the remaining cards. As she finished and stacked them all together again, she frowned. Nothing from Tolly James. Not a card, not a note, not a flower or even a bare stem.

“What’s amiss, my dear?”

Swiftly wiping away her scowl, Theresa looked up. “Nothing’s amiss, Grandmama. I have three invitations to luncheon.”

“I foresee two gentlemen with broken hearts.” Releasing her shoulders, Michael went to the sideboard to select his breakfast.

One luncheon companion, two broken hearts, and one broken head, if she had her way. She’d done everything she could think of to make Colonel James aware of her interest. And judging from a trio of su
premely exemplary kisses, he was interested, as well. And yet he refused to call on her.

Perhaps he kissed so many women when no one else was looking that he simply hadn’t yet made his way to her particular door. This was unacceptable. It was maddening. Didn’t he realize that firstly she was considered a catch, and secondly he was rotten and unpleasant and was not considered a catch?

She pursed her lips. Honesty made her admit to herself that he wasn’t entirely unpleasant—not the way he looked at her sometimes, anyway—and that considering what had happened to him, he was perhaps entitled to be a bit…prickly from time to time. On the other hand, the heated kisses and horrific personal secrets with which he’d favored her, together with him otherwise completely ignoring her, was too much to bear.

Turning her annoyed, irritated growl into a cough, she pushed to her feet. “I forgot, I already made luncheon plans with Amelia,” she stated.

“Ah. Three broken hearts, then,” Michael amended with a grin. “You’re a cruel, cruel girl, Troll.”

Theresa paused in the doorway just long enough to stick her tongue out at her terribly amusing brother. Then she hurried upstairs to scribble out her regrets to her three would-be luncheon hosts, collect her maid and her hat, and attempt to figure out how she could accidently run across the colonel at James House and make certain he knew just how displeased she was—all without causing a stir.

Of course all of that would make her appear desperate for his attention, which she was most definitely not. Hmm. Perhaps she could accidently stumble
across him and then ignore him. That would show him how little his kisses and his pretty eyes and his obvious courage impressed her.

By the time the family coach stopped at James House, she was ready for battle. After all, she had a dozen beaux trailing after her, and she’d had her fill of showing interest and kindness and empathy where none was returned. She’d never encountered the like before. Someone needed to teach that man a lesson.

Generally Graham opened the front door for her before her feet even left the coach. Today, though, she had to rap the brass, lion-shaped knocker against the door twice and then wait before it finally opened.

“Miss Weller,” the butler said, inclining his head.

“Good afternoon, Graham. Is Lady…” She paused, belatedly noting the butler’s pale complexion and the thin, straight line of his generally amiable mouth. “Is something amiss?”

A strangled male yell of pure agony ripped through the interior of the house. The sound froze her to her very bones.

“Good heavens!”

She practically flew up the staircase, Graham and Sally on her heels. Clearly something was dreadfully wrong, and the image that immediately came to her mind was of Tolly. Had he fallen? Had those awful Thuggee somehow invaded Mayfair and come to finish him off?

At the end of the same hallway that led to Lord and Lady Gardner’s master bedchamber she found them—Amelia and Stephen and Violet and a half dozen servants, all clustered around the door from which Tolly had startled her the other evening.

Her heart clenched. “What’s happened?” she asked, her voice shrill.

Amelia jumped. “You should go,” she whispered, her face pale and one hand over her mouth.

Oh, no
. “Is it Tolly? What’s wrong?”

Another muffled yell cut through her. Her breath catching, Theresa pushed forward. Whatever the devil it was, whatever the rules said about minding her own affairs and letting men be manly, she needed to know.

Stephen’s broad chest blocked her path. “No lady should see this,” he said, his own voice tight. “My brother is being tended by a physician.”

“Yes, one who’s breaking his leg,” Violet sobbed, sinking to the floor.

“Oh, Vi.” Amelia sat down beside her, taking the younger girl’s hands in hers. “It will all be well.”

None of them looked as though they believed that. Theresa didn’t much believe in trusting to hope, anyway. She hadn’t for a very long time. Taking her skirt in one hand, she slipped through the distracted group and into the room. And stopped dead in her tracks.

Tolly James lay on his back in a large bed, his face very nearly the same coloring as the white sheets. His nightshirt was askew and soaked with sweat, his fingers clenching into the folds of the bedsheets. He wore tan knee-length breeches, the left leg torn open up to the thigh. A stain of red spread around the awful mess that was his left knee.

“My God,” she whispered.

The stout, balding man leaning over Tolly’s leg and with what looked like a pair of pliers dug into the
wound, looked up at her. “Are you squeamish?” he barked.

She tore her gaze from the mangle of Tolly’s knee.
Good heavens
. He’d walked on that. He’d ridden on it. She’d teased him about dancing on it. “No. No, I’m not,” she managed.

“Then come here and hold his leg still so I can pull out the rest of the damned lead ball.” He shifted to look down at Tolly’s face. “Your horse doctor didn’t find it all.”

Bartholomew, though, was gazing at her. “Get out of here,” he rasped.

Oh, she wanted to. “Nonsense.” She stepped forward, pulling off her gloves and dropping them to the floor. “You’re a physician?”

He nodded. “Prentiss. Put your fingers there. Press hard, no matter what damned thing he says.”

“Theresa Weller,” she returned, hoping conversation would keep her from contemplating precisely what she was doing. She’d wanted to touch his bare skin, but this wasn’t remotely what she’d imagined. “Why don’t you have someone here to assist you?”

The doctor jabbed his chin toward the half-open door. As she looked in that direction, she spotted the figure crumpled against the baseboard behind it. “He fainted? I’m sorry, but he can’t be much of an assistant.”

“Ha. He didn’t faint, did you, Clarke?”

The man moaned.

“Colonel James here kicked him in the…in a sensitive area. I told Clarke to hold him still. Hopefully next time he’ll listen.”

“If it’s not too damned much trouble, would you get the bloody hell on with it?” Tolly growled.

“We are. Hold still and don’t injure Miss Weller.”

Amber eyes held hers for a brief moment. “I won’t.”

Dr. Prentiss twisted his hand and pulled. With a wrench the fragment of lead came free, prompting another strangled yelp from Tolly. Her fingers pressed just above his knee, and she felt the muscles there tighten and then relax again.

“Well, that makes things a bit easier,” Dr. Prentiss commented, brushing his forearm across his forehead. “Lad should have passed out ten minutes ago.”

She looked at Tolly’s face again. His eyes were closed, the color of his skin still alarmingly pale. “Violet said you needed to break his leg again,” she said, swallowing.

“I already did. That’s where I lost Clarke and found the lead fragment. Now I need to set it and bandage it again. Are you up for that, Miss Weller?”

“Yes,” she heard herself say. “Of course.”

Theresa preferred not to remember the next twenty minutes, the twisting muscles and the blood and the popping of bones shifting reluctantly back into place. Finally the doctor pointed her at the wash basin. She cleaned Tolly’s blood from her hands, then sat on the upper corner of the bed leaning against the headboard while Dr. Prentiss finished stitching the jagged wound, dashed it with whiskey, then began wrapping it in a thick cloth bandage with the help of the mostly recovered Clarke.

Gently she stroked her fingers through Tolly’s damp, too-long dark hair. “Will he be able to walk now?”

“I don’t know. What I did today should have been done months ago. The bone kept trying to knit, but it wasn’t set straight. It’s damned unhealthy for a wound to be open and aggravated for this long. My guess is that he’ll still lose it.” He glanced over at Clarke. “And do not drink all of that blasted whiskey. I warned you to hold him still, so this is your own bloody fault.”

“He was supposed to be an invalid,” the doctor’s assistant grumbled. “Not kick like a mule.”

“Mmm-hmm. Go tell the family he’s resting quietly.”

Prentiss leaned closer to Theresa. “That man is an idiot,” he whispered. “If my sister hadn’t married his brother, he would be out selling oranges on the street corner.”

She chuckled, then looked down again as warm fingers closed over her free hand—the one that rested on Tolly’s chest. Whisky-colored eyes dulled by shock gazed at her.

“It’s finished now except for the rest of the bandaging,” she said quietly, more moved than she expected. She’d had his blood literally on her hands, but it was more than that. Seeing the state of his leg—he might very well have died in India or on the ship sailing him back to England, and they never would have met. That thought left her inexplicably saddened.

“What are you doing here?” he asked thinly.

Why had she come by?
Oh, yes, to make a point of ignoring him because he wouldn’t call on her. It seemed silly and petty now. “I came to ask Amelia to luncheon.” At least that was partly true. “Does your leg hurt?”

“You are far too bright a chit to be asking that question.”

“I’m making conversation,” she retorted.

“I’m leaving laudanum and instructions for administering it,” the doctor interrupted. “That should help some with the pain.”

“Don’t need it,” Tolly grunted.

Theresa glared at him. “Don’t be silly. Of course you do. You just allowed someone to break your leg, for heaven’s sake.” She squeezed his fingers.

He closed his eyes again. “You like to dance,” he murmured. His fingers relaxed as he drifted off once more, either to sleep or to unconsciousness.

His family shuffled into the room, but Theresa barely noted them. He’d done this for her? Because she’d teased him about dancing? That was…She didn’t have the words.

This sort of thing—a man she barely knew, and one who intentionally aggravated her, subjecting himself to such agony on her behalf—just didn’t happen. She’d read all the books. At the request of her many friends, she’d written a guide, herself. Women suffered silently, doing their duty without complaint, while men went on as they always did.

After a few moments of the family hovering and whispering, Amelia tugged on Theresa’s sleeve. “Do you have a moment?”

Nodding, Theresa settled Tolly’s hand beneath the blanket Dr. Prentiss had pulled over him. Amelia led her out into the hallway, then faced her. “What was that?” her cousin asked.

“What was what? You know I helped Lawkins
deliver foals every spring. This was no worse than that.” It had been much worse, actually, but she wasn’t about to admit it.

“You were holding his hand. I’m his sister-in-law, and he’s never so much as shaken hands with me.”

Theresa frowned. “He was in pain. Of course I offered him comfort.”

Her cousin continued to eye her. She’d been a master at fabricating tales as a child, so she had no idea what Amelia thought she might detect by staring at her face. There wasn’t even anything to detect. At all.

“Well, it was grand of you to step in,” her cousin finally acknowledged. “I couldn’t have done it, and Stephen and Violet were too overwrought.”

Privately Theresa thought that being overwrought should wait until after a given emergency was finished with. Oh, that could go into the second edition of her
Guide
. “I’m glad I could help.” She took a breath. “In fact, I’d like to call on my patient tomorrow to see how he’s recovering.”

Amelia smiled and squeezed her arm. “You know you never need to wait for an invitation. You’re always welcome here.”

“Thank you. And since I imagine that you are not free for luncheon today, I will leave you in peace.”

She wanted to stay until he awoke again, and she wanted him to reach out to hold her hand as he had done before. And both of those were very good reasons for her to take her leave immediately. Because according to what he’d said to her, he’d put himself through this hell for her. That required some contemplation far away from his company. That wasn’t what someone did as part of a mild flirtation.

“Sally,” she said, spying her maid. “We will take our leave now.”