The Highwayman (3 page)

He was lying perfectly still with his eyes closed, the only sign of tension being his clenched jaw and his hands gripping the linens on either side of him. Relaxing his jaw, he said, “Sebast...”

As he spoke, the container accidentally tipped, and a small stream of whisky poured onto the wound. He bolted upright with a roar of anguish, and his hand shot out to grip her wrist like a vise. His black eyes glaring into hers once more, he shouted, “What the bloody hell are you doing to me, woman?”

“Really, Mr. Sebast,” Jane said disapprovingly, “I have tried very hard to take into account both your probable station in life and your condition. But I must tell you that I find your language to be offensive in the extreme.

“As to what I am doing, I am attempting to cleanse your wound with whisky as a preventive to infection.”

At that, his eyes shifted to the container, and releasing her wrist, he jerked the bottle from her hand, saying, “I have a better use for it.”

Too surprised to react for a moment, Jane watched as he drank, long and deep. But then, before he could finish it off entirely, she reached for it again, fully expecting a struggle for its possession.

However, he gave it up willingly enough, then lay back, closed his eyes, and after resuming his grip on the sheets, said, “I am ready now.”

Melrose grasped the man’s shoulders and Jackson his ankles, while Jane took up the thin-bladed knife she had cleansed earlier. Holding the blade poised over the wound, she hesitantly placed her other hand on the naked flesh below the wound. But if her patient was ready, she now discovered that she was not. She squeezed her eyes shut, almost overcome by the very alien and disturbing feel of his hair-roughened skin against her palm, as well as by thoughts of the grisly task before her.

There was no telling how long she might have remained like that—seemingly unable to either retreat or go forward—had the man not goaded her by saying, “Confound it, woman! Do you enjoy torturing me with this suspense? Get on with it!”

That effectively ended her procrastination as nothing else could have done. Opening her eyes and gritting her teeth, she lowered the knife and inserted the tip into the wound.

Though not a sound came from his throat, the man’s body stiffened and arched, straining against the hands which held him, and then, blessedly, he went limp. Fortunately for both himself and Jane, he had lost consciousness.

By the time she had probed for the bullet, removed it, cleansed the wound, stopped the bleeding, and applied a dressing, she was nearly as pale as her patient. She also found that she was trembling with fatigue brought on by the strain of the ordeal. Even worse, she had the most horrifying feeling that she might burst into tears at any moment—something which would have been entirely out of character for her.

And so she accepted with alacrity Agatha’s offer to sit with their patient, and made her way to her bedchamber to recover her poise in privacy.

It was not until after the dinner hour that she returned to the sickroom, where she found Mr. Sebast to be still insensible, as Agatha had reported when she came down to the dining-room. Jane supposed it was just as well. He needed someone with him since he was not yet out of danger, but once he was awake, it would not be proper for her to be alone with him.

However, she hoped he would not remain unconscious for too long. He would soon need sustenance in the form of broth and gruel in order to regain his strength. Then all she need worry about was the dreaded possibility that he might develop a fever, which would indicate that his wound had turned putrid. But a hand placed on his cool brow relieved her of that fear, for the time being at least.

Sitting down in a chair beside the bed, she made herself as comfortable as she could, then gazed at the man lying there. His head was turned toward her on the pillow, and the candle on the bedside table shone full on his face, making it possible for her to study him closely.

His hair was a dark, chestnut brown, and disheveled as it now was, gave evidence of a natural curl. His brow suggested intelligence; his nose was mainly straight with just a hint of the aquiline; his mouth was well formed; and his chin and jaw seemed to indicate strength. She had noted earlier that his eyes were not actually black, but so dark a brown as to appear to be that colour. Now she noticed that at the outer comers of his closed eyes there were tiny, barely perceptible lines, which made her think that he was no stranger to laughter.

A most attractive man indeed,
thought Jane. Yet his was not the classic handsomeness one might associate with a gentleman. Even in repose she could easily imagine it belonging to an ancient warrior, or a pirate or a... highwayman?

Oh, she was being too nonsensical by half. And even if he should be the highwayman, as she had told Agatha, they had little to fear from him in his present condition. She very much doubted that he would end by robbing them, anyway. Surely he would not repay them so shabbily for saving his life. Of course, his life would not have needed saving were it not for them....

Misliking the direction of her thoughts, she sought to turn them into other paths. She mentally listed the many duties awaiting her on the morrow. There were the linens to be sorted, and of course many of them would be in need of mending. They always were. Thank heaven Cook was able to function with only a modicum of supervision. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Elsie, the young and rather inept maid.

In addition she must meet with Phillips, her estate agent. Their meetings never failed to throw her into a state of gloom. Then, too, she must find time to visit her herb garden and replenish her medicinal supplies, but she considered that a pleasure rather than a chore.

Jane suddenly yawned, shifted to a more comfortable position in her chair, and returned to her ruminations. There was also the necessity of preparing a chamber for young Alice Brant, who would be coming to stay at Meadowbrook in a few days. Jane was looking forward to that event with slightly less pleasure than before. She was beginning to wonder if Agatha might not be correct in thinking that Jane was biting off more than she could chew.

In small doses, Alice could be extremely likeable, and even amusing at times. But, Jane now admitted to herself, to say that Alice was a spoiled minx was a kindness; the girl was indeed wild to a fault, the product of a doting father who could seldom bring himself to say nay to her. Now the widowed squire had suddenly awakened to the fact that Alice was of marriageable age, and even he was not so blind that he could not see a few glaring deficiencies in her conduct.

“I’ll not deny that my young puss is a handful,” he had said jovially. “But you will know just how to handle her.”

Well, somehow she would manage to bring the girl up to snuff, if only because she must. She deplored the necessity of accepting payment for the task, but, unfortunately, she was in no position to refuse it. Her own papa had left her with a modest competence which was quite sufficient for everyday needs. But there never seemed to be enough money for the repairs required to keep Meadowbrook up as it should be kept.

Jane’s heavy-lidded eyes returned to the bed, and a vague thought drifted through her mind. She hoped that her patient would be able to travel soon. There was a certain incongruity in her trying to teach a young girl proper behaviour while a highwayman occupied one of her bedchambers.

The bedside candle had guttered out, and the chamber was moon drenched when Jane startled to wakefulness. For a moment, she could not think how she had come to fall asleep in a chair, nor did she know what had caused her to awaken so abruptly. But then memory returned in a rush as she heard a muttering and rustling sound coming from the bed. She rose swiftly, certain that her greatest fear had come to pass. Her patient was becoming delirious with fever.

Jane reached out a hand to feel his brow, but before she could do so, he gave a great shout and began thrashing about quite violently. Without consideration, she did the only thing she could think of in order to prevent his reopening the wound. She threw herself across his chest in an effort to hold him still.

* * * *

Jane’s patient came awake rather slowly, but with awareness came the consciousness of three things in rapid succession. He’d been reliving Waterloo in a nightmare, someone had thrust a hot poker through his thigh, and there was an unaccountable heaviness on his chest. For the ending of the nightmare, he could only be thankful, but the latter two circumstances were not to be tolerated.

His left hand and arm seemed to be trapped somehow at his side, but the right one was free and he moved it toward his chest, only to encounter a handful of hair. Further exploration told him that this was attached to a head, and he raised his own head from the pillow to squint down at the apparition lying on his chest. He muttered, “What the devil?”

The moon was full, providing sufficient light for him to identify his assailant. It was the Long Meg, and she had turned her head and was staring back at him, rather as though she were shocked at finding herself in such a position and did not know how she came to be there. Incongruously, and despite the discomfort in his leg, he was amused. He also decided that he had been wrong, after all. With her lying across his chest in that way, he discovered that the lady did, indeed, possess at least two feminine attributes.

Since she neither moved nor spoke, he drawled, “I have known females to throw themselves at gentlemen, but do you know, this is the first time I have experienced that phenomenon quite so literally.”

“Your fever!” she gasped. “You were becoming delirious. I was afraid you would do more injury to yourself.”

“Kind of you to be so concerned, sweeting, but if I seemed delirious, it was because of a nightmare, not fever.”

“Oh!” she breathed.

“Yes,” he continued. “And much as I might enjoy this delightful intimacy at another time, I fear that just now my thigh hurts too damned much to do it justice.”

Jane came to her senses at the man’s words, and with the realization that she still lay sprawled across him in a most unseemly manner, horror and mortification swept through her. Jerking herself up and away from him, she knew that nothing could cause her to remain in his presence a moment longer. No, not even if he were bleeding to death!

With one hand pressed to her mouth and the other to her fluttering stomach, she fled from the room.

It was not until she was already in bed that she recalled his last words and realized that she had failed to offer him laudanum for his pain. She considered returning to him to correct the oversight, but dreaded doing so. Then she thought of waking Agatha and asking her to do it, and had started to rise from the bed before it struck her that that solution would not answer. She could not think how to explain the circumstances to her companion, who would surely wonder how such an oversight had occurred in the first place.

For a brief moment, she even considered sending Elsie, but quickly rejected that notion. The maid’s understanding was not of the highest. The poor girl frequently had trouble grasping the gist of even the simplest of instructions, and Jane could easily imagine her dosing their patient with enough laudanum to kill his horse.

In the end, she consoled herself with the thought that if Mr. Sebast’s most recent remarks and conduct were any indication, his pain could not be too severe. In any event, she was quite certain that if it became necessary, her patient was perfectly capable of shouting the house down.

CHAPTER THREE

Fortunately for the injured man there was not much left of the night. Unfortunately, he lay awake for the remainder of it, unable to sleep because of the unrelenting pain in his thigh. At one point, he did, indeed, consider shouting at the top of his lungs until someone came to his aid, but he discarded that notion in favour of stoic martyrdom.

Instead, he spent much of that time devising ways in which he might take his revenge upon the insensitive female who had appointed herself both his physician and his nurse, only to abandon him to his agony. He knew quite well that he had done his part in driving her away, but anyone with a modicum of sense would know that a man in his condition could not be held accountable for his behaviour.

When at last sunshine bathed the room and he could hear sounds of activity from another part of the house, he fixed his eyes on the door, waiting with fiendish anticipation for her to enter.

After a moment, however, it occurred to him that he would be at a serious disadvantage lying there as he was, with her looking down at him. Laboriously, he placed the pillows against the head of the bed, then carefully maneuvered himself to a sitting position against them, though the effort left him panting and trembling like a newborn colt. But with the move finally accomplished, he returned his attention to the door, thinking.
Now let her come.
He was ready for her.

But it was some time before anyone appeared, which did nothing to improve his temper. When someone finally did come, it was not his nemesis, but another female of even greater vintage. He could not recall having seen this one before, but as she was smiling cheerfully and carrying a promising-looking tray, he decided to hold his spleen until such time as he should be faced with its proper target.

She introduced herself, and he returned her good-morning civilly, adding that he hoped hers would prove to be better than his augured to be.

Agatha cocked her head and studied him solicitously before saying, “You poor man. You look as though you had not slept a wink.”

“How observant you are, ma’am,” he said. “I don’t mean to complain, but I fear a bullet wound is not conducive to restful sleep.”

He softened this with a smile of such singular charm that even a female of Miss Wedmore’s advanced years was not immune to it.

For just a moment, she felt a breathless fluttering within her chaste spinster’s breast before recovering herself enough to say, “Oh, dear. I’m sure Miss Lockwood will be very sorry to learn that she did not dose you with sufficient laudanum to relieve your pain.”