Rules of Engagement (28 page)

"Lord Kerrich, the queen's physician is on his way," Albert said.

Lifting the pad, the doctor grimaced at the sight of the wound, then leaned his head close as if he were listening. Raising his head again, he said, "Could be worse. Could be better. I won't know until I go diggin' for the bullet."

"Why could it be better?" Lord Reynard asked.

Dr. McEachern's attention flickered toward the old man in the chair, then returned to Pamela. "The reason it could be better is because if the wound were closer to her arm, I would know the bullet hadn't nicked her lungs. Probably didn't," he added quickly. "Can't hear her wheezing at all. But I won't lie to you. If her lungs have been touched, she hasn't much of a chance."

Kerrich's own lungs froze in the clutch of agony. "Blast you, just fix her."

Dr. McEachern drew a long black cloth cylinder out of his bag, and nodded at Albert. "That gentleman's not fer believin' me credentials." He looked at Kerrich. "But this is your wife, I think. Will ye let me do the task? I promise ye'll have as fine a job as any can do in London an' beyond." Unrolling the cloth, he laid it out across the bed.

Kerrich found himself unable to stare anywhere but at the row of bright sharp instruments tucked into pockets in the black silk.

Dimly, he heard Beth say, "I won't go, Lord Reynard. I'm staying with her."

But Beth's words didn't mean anything, because Pamela could be dying.

"Will ye let me operate on her?" Dr. McEachern spoke to Kerrich as he drew forth a long, thin, shiny scalpel. "It's up to you, sir."

Kerrich didn't have a choice. The queen's physician wasn't here and Kerrich doubted he had experience with gunshot wounds, anyway. In a hoarse voice, Kerrich ordered, "Operate."

Dr. McEachern turned brisk. "She's conscious, so I'll need people to hold her. Sir, will you?"

Obviously, he didn't know Albert's identity, and Albert didn't enlighten him. He just came around to the side of the bed beside the doctor and grasped Pamela's arm. Kerrich climbed on the other side of the bed and held her.

"She's going to fight," Dr. McEachern warned as he prepared to make the first incision.

He should have said she was going to scream. Because she did, loud and long and shrill, and she didn't let up until Dr. McEachem held the bullet in his forceps.

Then, into the blessed silence, Dr. McEachem said, "Good news, m'lord. I can safely say her lungs weren't touched."

That had been over a fortnight ago, but Pamela still found smiling a trial and talking an effort. Everything wearied her, perhaps because, although there had been no infection and the wound had healed in a marvelously efficient manner, her heart ached all the time.

"I must thank you again for allowing me to remain here." Pamela sat up and tried to shift the tumble of pillows into some comfortable position. "I do have a bedchamber at the Distinguished Academy of Governesses, although not nearly as grand as this one." This bedchamber had gold brocade draperies and a counterpane, rich maroon wallpaper, and cheerful paintings on every wall. "Every day when Miss Setterington visits she asks me when I'll be well enough to return."

"There is no rush." Queen Victoria stood and plumped the pillows directly behind Pamela's head, then helped her recline again. "You're still dreadfully wan, and that bruise on your face is turning a most ghastly shade of yellow."

Pamela touched her own cheek. The stairs had left their mark on more than just her face. She resembled a calico cat with brown and yellow marks up and down her entire body. For one moment, she suffered as she wondered if that was why Kerrich so seldom visited, but she knew that wasn't true. Any man who kissed the formidable and disguised Miss Lockhart wouldn't be so shallow as to see bruises, or even a scar left by a gunshot, as barriers to desire.

And that was the problem, wasn't it? When he did take time out of his busy life to visit Pamela, the queen chaperoned them, or Hannah did, or one of Her Majesty's ladies-in-waiting, and while he stood beside her bed, he treated Pamela with the utmost respect and admiration.

Pamela hated his respect. She spat on his admiration. She could scarcely bear his polite, well-meaning conversation. If he wished to speak with her honestly, as he had done before, no one's presence could have hobbled his comments. Pamela understood what he was telling her without words.

The fire had burned out. He no longer desired her.

Queen Victoria's voice intruded on Pamela's own personal purgatory, and with a start Pamela realized Her Majesty had reseated herself and had been speaking for quite a while.

"So I told Lord Kerrich that Lady Colbrook tricked the story out of me months ago. I had no idea she was so clever, although later events certainly proved she was. I assume she spread the tale of Lord Kerrich's… um… bareness outside the window that very night to try to cause a diversion from her own activities." Queen Victoria was shaking her head in amazement. "He is still angry about that."

"Yes, but he would be, wouldn't he?" Pamela's gaze rested on the vase of roses beside her bed. Every day the old roses were replenished with fresh ones, and every day she inhaled their scent and remembered Kerrich's passion, then inhaled again and wondered if the scent of roses would ever again bring her delight. But she never asked that they be removed.

"He was willing to do anything to keep that tale quiet, even adopt that adorable girl." Victoria grinned wickedly as she stitched. "I've never forgotten that night at Kensington Palace. We were most amused. He was the funniest thing I'd ever seen, hanging there in all his glory, and I told him if you hadn't insisted that discretion was the better part of kindness, I would have tattled on him immediately."

"Was he properly appreciative?"

Queen Victoria glanced at her, her eyes full of mirth. "He didn't appear to be, although it might have gone better if I hadn't laughed."

"All men take it ill when a woman finds them an object of mirth."

"Yes, but I've made it up to him." The queen dismissed his disgruntlement with a wave of her needle. "I told Albert Kerrich was a good man. After seeing him with you and Elizabeth, Albert believes me now."

"Kerrich has been everything that is kind." And respectful and admiring. Not at all like the Kerrich she had come to love.

Love. That was the awful part. She loved him, and he didn't even desire her.

The wretch!

If only she hadn't been shot. Then she could stand up to him and tell him what she thought of a man who abandoned a child—oh, for a good cause, to be sure—but he had left Beth to go to meet the queen with only Pamela and Lord Reynard as support. She'd tell him what she thought of men who substituted respect and admiration for flaming desire. And most of all, she'd tell him… well, she'd tell him she was sorry she'd screeched at him. That she wished everything hadn't ended so badly. That his reputation for seduction was in no way inflated. That their affair could never have worked because… because she had trusted him no more than he had trusted her. They'd made so many mistakes. They'd told so many half-truths. And she just wanted to ask him if he had cared at all.

Queen Victoria stood, rubbed her back with her hands, and in an irritable tone said, "I just can't sit. It's not comfortable."

In the last weeks, the royal pregnancy had developed to the point that it could not be hidden. Pamela couldn't keep her gaze off the queen as Her Majesty wandered to the window and stared out across the London skyline. "I understand," Pamela said, but what she felt when she gazed on Queen Victoria was not understanding. It was uncertainty. Her own monthly courses hadn't arrived, but
surely
that was because of the trauma her body had suffered.

The queen turned and faced her. "I know what you're thinking."

Heaven forfend.

"You're thinking I should do more to punish Lady Colbrook."

"I wasn't thinking that at all, Your Majesty. I haven't been told what happened to Lady Colbrook."

"Oh." The queen fidgeted with the fringe of her silk shawl. "Lady Colbrook is under house arrest, and we have advised her husband, who should be the head of their household, that a long trip abroad would be appropriate."

Aghast, Pamela stared. "After all that she did… devising the plan to counterfeit banknotes, organizing her crew, recruiting Mr. Athersmith… and that's all?"

"Yes, and do you know why?" Victoria didn't wait for an answer. "Apparently she bragged that the men in the government policing forces would never admit a woman had so tricked them, and she was right."

"You jest."

"She deliberately created a diversion in the Bank of England by losing control of her horse and requiring that she be carried into the lobby and carrying on so that people crowded around and Mr. Athersmith almost succeeding in stealing those supplies." The queen shook her head. "They didn't even realize she had done it on purpose! They still prefer to blame everything on Mr. Athersmith because he's a man, and because he's dead."

Pamela plucked at the sheet. In great indignation, Beth had told her that Mr. Athersmith had wrestled his way free from the guards and somersaulted onto the marble floor below the staircase. He hadn't survived the fall, and that disappointed Beth, for she wanted him alive and suffering as Pamela suffered. Pamela could only think of that pleasant-looking, earnest man who loved a young lady, yet whose appearance, personality and value always paled into insignificance beside the radiance that was his cousin. "A man's pride is a very odd creature," Pamela said, "and it drives him to peculiar behavior."

"I think that is good of you to be so understanding of any man after… after the difficulties you've had since your father…"

Pamela covered her eyes with one hand. The good hand.

The other arm was still in a sling, because any time she moved it, it ached and pulled so dreadfully she was in tears. This was a good gunshot wound, the best, Dr. McEachern said, and the queen's own physician gravely agreed. She had been lucky.

So what had it been like for her father, shot and left to die? What kind of agonies had he experienced as he writhed alone?

Pamela hated that Kerrich was right. She had never mourned her father, and now it was catching up with her. Now that she was weak and wretched, her father walked her dreams.

"I'm sorry," Victoria said. "I should never have mentioned that dreadful time. I just wanted to offer my condolences on the deaths of both your parents."

"Thank you, Your Majesty." Pamela picked up the silver pocket watch she kept on her pillow and looked at it.

Queen Victoria took that as a hint, and gathered up her belongings. "You're tired."

Hastily, Pamela flicked a tear away. "Perhaps. Just a little."

"My physician says you'll feel better soon. Why don't you take a nap?"

"Yes. Thank you. I will." Except that when she did, her father was there. Day and night she saw him, charming, handsome, feckless. When she was a child, she had loved him for the charm. When she was an adolescent, she hated him for the fecklessness. Almost everything he'd ever done was unforgivable, yet right now, as the pain of the bullet lingered, she remembered the early times when he had swung her on the swing, sung her to sleep, and carried her on his back. He had been her father, all she had of him was a watch, and her love for that loving, winning man had never been completely vanquished.

So as Her Majesty slipped away, Pamela covered her face again and cried for him, all the heartache he had caused and the bitterness of all those wasted years.

She cried for herself, for all the lonely years ahead. Kerrich was like her father in his charm and his comeliness. But he wasn't feckless or irresponsible. He'd been on a secret mission. He cared so much for his grandfather and his family name he had gone to great lengths to change his image from rake to upright member of the nobility. Only now that he no longer cared did she realize it.

She… she had been so afraid of being like her mother, dedicated to a man who disdained her love, that she'd refused to encourage the best man she'd ever met. Beneath the shield of her hand, she smiled a watery smile. Perhaps not the
best
man; he had his faults and she was well aware of them. His conceit. His hauteur. His tendency to take advantage where a gentleman should not. But he was the man she loved, faults and all.

She had alienated him, and now she had to live with the consequences.

At some point, she must have slipped into slumber, for she came awake with a start when Beth whispered in her piercing voice, "Miss Lockhart, are you asleep?"

Pamela chuckled. Beth always made her happy. "No," she whispered back without opening her eyes.

Beth tiptoed away, then at the door whispered again, "Come
on
."

Pamela's eyes popped open.

Kerrich stood framed in the entrance holding a bouquet of red, white and pink roses.

The mere presence of the man brought a tingling to her shoulder—among other places. That dark, ruffled hair, that sensuous mouth and the twice-broken nose. As if his countenance weren't enough, his shoulders filled his dark blue coat to perfection, that light blue waistcoat was brimming with his broad chest, and she didn't dare look at his trousers because she remembered…

And when he stared at her like this, she was no longer aware of her wan complexion or the pain from the gunshot or the aches from staying in bed too long. When he stared at her with those sin-colored eyes, she wanted to remain in bed longer—with him in it.

"Miss Lockhart, I know you are tired of being asked how you are, but tell me, then I will let the matter drop." He strolled to the side of the bed, each movement a symphony.

The voluptuous scent of the roses reminded her of just how virile he could be. "I'm fine," she said.

"No. I didn't defy the queen and sneak past the guards so you can tell me a polite lie. You must tell me the truth." He took her hand, and the warmth of their two palms together made her want to sigh worshipfully. "Just this once."

The truth is, I love you.
"The pain grows less," she said. "Three times a day, Dr. McEachern makes me move my shoulder as far as I can, and I think that helps."

Beth piped up. "She cries because it hurts so much."

"Don't…"
Tell him about her weakness
.

His hand tightened on hers. "The doctor's hurting you?"

"The forced movement is helping. Even the queen's physician admits that."

He glared at her as if she had made him angry. And anger, she had to admit, was a passion of sorts, and better than respect and admiration. Abruptly, he said, "I must tell you the truth."

Pamela had heard a man start a speech like this before. Her father had told her the truth not long before he walked away.

Kerrich continued, "I know you don't want to hear this, but I must express my gratitude to you for helping apprehend my cousin."

She supposed he might think she had helped kill his cousin.

"None of those other people even thought to go get the guards. Only you." He smiled down at the child at his side and stroked her hair. "And Beth."

"Lord Kerrich, aren't you going to give her the flowers?" Beth prompted.

He started as if he'd forgotten the roses he held. Then he laid them on the pillow beside Pamela. "They're beautiful," he told her, as if she needed instruction on appreciating them.