Shameless (23 page)

She started to say as much, only to break off as Dolly and Nan, wide-eyed and giggling still, turned and fled toward them.

“He saw us! Oh, my!”

“’Twas because you
would
laugh so!”

“Mayhap you ought to go round there and offer to help him.” Nan plopped down on the ledge beside Jane and Alyce, who shared a blanket and sat next to Peg. Dolly stopped before them, glancing around in indecision.

“Do you think I should?”

“He’d be positively grateful for an extra hand, I should think.”

“An extra hand to do what?” Beth asked.

“He must have an injury, don’t you know, because he’s pouring that bottle of spirits he took from the trunk over his back. Why else would he do that, but to clean out a cut or some such?” Dolly giggled again. “Unless he likes to bathe in spirits.”

“That be about as likely as ’im wantin’ your ’elp,” Mary muttered.

“Oh, you should have seen.” Ignoring that, rolling her eyes around at the rest of them, Dolly fanned her face with her hand. “La, I’m still all atwitter.”

“From what?” Alyce inquired, a little wide-eyed.

“He’s unclothed to the waist. All those muscles . . . ” She pretended to swoon. “I just adore a well set-up man.”

“Probably he’ll be wanting to bandage that injury up, next.” Nan gave her a sly smile. “That’s where he could use the extra hand, you see.”

“If either of ye ’ad the sense the good Lord gave a goose, ye’d leave ’is worship alone,” Mary warned. “Bein’ that ’e seems not best pleased with yer company anyway. Or any of ours, for that matter.”

“If he upped and left us,” Peg added, “we’d be properly in the suds.”

“But what if he’s hurt sore?” Jane, who’d been silent until now, looked frightened. “What if he’s
dying
? What would we do then?”

That was the question that had been teasing Beth. Alone amongst them, she knew that he had been shot. Given that, and the weakness he had exhibited when he’d sat so abruptly on the rock, and what
Dolly and Nan had just seen, the possibility that he might be seriously injured was more likely than the rest of them knew.

“I’ll check on him,” she said, standing up.

“Why should
you
?” Dolly frowned at her, her face a study in affront. “Why should I not be the one to go?”

“’Cause ’e’ll send
you
away with a flea in your ear,” Mary told her flatly. “Miss should go.”

Except for Nan, the others nodded agreement.

“I am going.” Beth’s tone brooked no disagreement, and though Dolly pulled a sour face, there was none. Barefoot, her steps silent on the smooth stone, she approached the strung-up garments that separated the chamber into two distinct areas. He’d built a fire on his side, too, and the cave was almost warm as a result. The light from the blaze limned the makeshift barrier in orange. As she reached it, her courage wavered, knocked a little askew by the thought that she had no way of knowing what he might be doing, or just how indecent he really was.

Conscious of the weight of the others’ eyes on her back, she stopped just this side of the barrier.

“Neil,” she called, though his name felt strange on her tongue. Still, she had nothing else to call him, “housebreaker” being clearly ineligible. “’Tis Beth. I need to talk to you, if you please.”

She waited. Nothing. No reply.

“Neil?”

Still nothing.

Dear Lord, has he fainted? Has he
died?

With a quick glance back at the others—Mary made encouraging motions, while Dolly still frowned—she peered around the barrier.

And saw a small fire burning near one of the tiered shelves, and deep shadows doing a sinister dance across the walls and ceiling. His white shirt and cravat were in plain view, hung from a stalagmite near the fire, and his black frock coat and waistcoat adorned more stalagmites nearby. Then she saw his stockings, and his pantaloons, hung out to dry like the rest. Amongst other items, he’d taken some breeches from one of the trunks, she recalled, and the memory helped quiet
the dismaying thought that he might be completely nude even as it occurred.

But he was nowhere to be seen.

Her heart beat a little faster.

“Neil?” she tried once more. When there was still no answer, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and stepped around the barricade.

B
ETH WAS ONLY A FEW PACES
into her search when she saw him. For a moment she stopped, halted in her tracks by the sight of so much bare male skin. His lack of clothing, combined with his dazzling good looks, was unsettling in the extreme. Her first impulse was to turn back at once and leave him to his fate.

Don’t be a fool,
she scolded herself, and pressed on.

“Neil?”

He didn’t so much as twitch. Fortunately, she realized as she drew closer, he did not appear to be dead. Wearing only his boots and the breeches he had scavenged from the trunks, he was obviously breathing. He sat on one of the terrace-like shelves in an alcove area that was not visible from the barricade. Probably, she thought, he had moved when he realized he was being spied on by Dolly and Nan. He leaned against the wall, his long legs stretched out before him, his head tipped back against hard stone, his black hair, loosed now from the ribbon in which it had been confined, hanging in waves to his shoulders, his eyes
closed. Despite his natural swarthiness and the stubble that darkened his cheeks and jaw, his face seemed pale. His arms lay limply at his sides. There was no expression, absolutely none at all, on his face that she could discern.

He
has
fainted,
she thought with a thrill of alarm, and hurried to his side.

“Neil?” Even as she said his name and tentatively laid her hand on a warm, smooth-skinned, hard-muscled upper arm that felt so disconcertingly male that she drew back immediately, she took in more details. As Dolly and Nan had said, he was in possession of a bottle of spirits, and he smelled of them. The squat glass bottle was open, half empty, and sat on the stone beside him. A battered brass dish with water and a crumpled bit of rag in it was nearby. His left hand gripped a candle that, as evidenced by the wisp of smoke wafting from the wick, had been recently snuffed. The smell of burning was strong, stronger even than the scent of alcohol. It was difficult to look at his nakedness, at his wide bare shoulders and broad chest with its wedge of curling black hair, at his muscular arms, without flinching or turning away out of modesty. But look she did, and with a gathering frown, too, because in that first comprehensive glance she saw something that should not have been there: a black sear mark on his flesh in the general vicinity of where she would expect the wound to be. A closer inspection revealed that in its center was a round hole sealed with darkened congealed blood.

Beth was just registering what that meant when he opened his eyes and looked at her.

“What do you want?” His tone was disagreeable. His eyes were narrowed. His mouth and jaw were tight.

Too conscious of having just touched his bare skin, she folded her arms protectively across her chest. The knowledge that the blanket, which she wore draped over her shoulders, concealed the extent of her considerable deshabille from his view was strengthening.

“I thought you might need help.”

“I don’t.”

Her gaze dropped to the blackened wound, which was high in his upper right chest. “That is no mere flesh wound.”

“And what would you know of bullet wounds, my girl?”

“I know enough to know that a hole like that means a bullet went into your chest.”

“And came out my back again, missing all vital organs on the way. I’ll live, never fear.”

“You relieve my mind,” Beth said politely. “You cleaned it with alcohol and cauterized it with the flame from the candle, didn’t you?”

“The one prevents infection, the other stops bleeding.”

“You sound like you’ve done this before.”

“Upon occasion.”

“Are you in pain?”

“Nothing to speak of.”

But the shadow in his eyes, and the continued tightness of his mouth and jaw, belied his words. There were smears of blood on his chest and down his side, she saw, and since he had bathed in the stream before turning that section of the cave over to the women, she knew they had to be of extremely recent origin. Then she realized that some of the blood she was seeing on his side was scarlet and fresh, and that it was trickling down from the exit wound in his back.

“Your back is still bleeding.”

“I’m aware of it.”

From the position of the wound, she didn’t see how he was going to be able to cauterize the hole in his back himself, although from Dolly’s description he had already poured spirits over it. And if he was to continue without sickening or weakening from blood loss, cauterization was clearly what was needed.

“It will be difficult for you to reach. You’d best let me do it.”

His eyebrows lifted as he looked at her skeptically. “You? Hold a flaming candle to the hole in my back? No, I thank you.”

“You cannot reach it yourself.”

“I told you, I need no ministering angel.”

Her brows snapped together. “Now who is being foolish beyond permission? And it is nothing but folly when stupid male pride and mule-headed stubbornness combine to prevent you from allowing me to do something that obviously needs to be done.”

“I should perhaps take this opportunity to tell you that I find managing females particularly unattractive.”

“Amazingly enough, I feel precisely the same way about stupid, stubborn males. Which makes it most fortunate that I am not concerned with finding you attractive, only with preventing you from dying before you can get us out of this devilish maze of caves.”

“I repeat, I’m in no danger of dying.”

“Weakening from blood loss, then. You’re putting me out of all patience with you, you know. Give me the candle and have done.”

“You’ll faint, or worse.”

“I never faint.” Beth took the candle from his unresisting hand. “I’m quite strong-stomached, believe me.”

“Now that I believe.”

“Well, then.” Moving over to the fire, she held the candle to the flame. The wick caught. Protecting it from drafts with a cupped hand, she returned to stand in front of him. When he continued to look at her without moving, she added in an encouraging tone, “It would probably be best if you were to lie down on your stomach. That way, if
you
should feel faint, there will be no chance of you falling and injuring yourself more.”

The derisive sound he made told her his opinion of that. He eyed her a trifle grimly, then appeared to see the sense in letting her do what he could not, because he moved sideways, lifting his right shoulder away from the stone and turning so that she could see his back. Here the bullet had exited just above his shoulder blade. Untreated, it was a jagged-edged hole the approximate diameter of the end of her thumb, and dark around the edges with dried blood; more blood oozed from the center to run in scarlet rivulets down the sleek planes of his back.

“Do it, then,” he said.

“Certainly. Pray hold still.”

Hitching the blanket more firmly into place, laying a hand on his wide shoulder (which was as disconcertingly warm, smooth-skinned, and heavily muscled as his arm) to steady herself, she gritted her teeth and put the flame to his flesh with no more roundaboutness. There was a horrible sizzling sound and a smell like some sweetish meat being cooked as the hole was sealed and the blood bubbled and stopped flowing. He stiffened and, she thought, caught his breath. But he made no sound and, except for the steel-like hardening of the muscles of his shoulder beneath her hand, gave no other sign of the pain she knew he had to feel.

“There, it is done.” Blowing out the candle, she bestowed a comforting pat on his shoulder. Her voice was perfectly steady, just like her hand had been throughout the whole nerve-shredding ordeal. But her heart beat faster, and a surge of nausea made her grimace and swallow; fortunately, with his back to her, he could not see.

“Thank you.” His voice was a shade grittier than usual, and there was a new hardness around his eyes, she saw as he shifted around so that he was once again facing her. He was careful to keep the injured portion of his back away from the wall even as he leaned against it for what she guessed was badly needed support. Once situated to his liking, he looked at her from beneath half-lowered lids. “I make you my compliments: you ministered most admirably.”

“And you were very brave,” she replied. He made a sound that might have been an aborted laugh, grimaced, and reached for the bottle of spirits. Laying the candle on the stone beside him as he put the bottle to his lips and took a long drink, she forbore to give him so much as a disapproving look. Instead, she took in the beads of sweat that had popped out on his brow, the whiteness around the corners of his mouth, and the overall pale tinge to his skin, and felt sorry that she’d had to hurt him.

He might not show pain, she thought, but he felt it.

“Don’t concern yourself, there isn’t enough left in this bottle to make me even the slightest bit bosky.” Lowering the bottle, he encountered her frowning gaze and put his own interpretation on it.