When She Said I Do (38 page)

No.

“Callie! No!”

“Oh, my God.”

Ren jerked his head up to see a miracle. In the open doorway stood a young man in elegant clothing, carting an armload of flat dress boxes.

The fellow tossed the boxes aside, spilling shimmering silks, stockings, and shoes in a fountain over the side of a chair. He knelt next to Ren.

“What happened?”

Ren shook his head. What did it matter? “I think … a shot—perhaps a poacher … or someone … someone…” He couldn’t speak.

If he’d only stopped and spoken to her this morning, she wouldn’t have followed him out. If he’d only stopped the first time he heard her call his name, before he crested the hill. If he’d only kept far, far away from the lilting voice in the dark hallways of his hell.

“I think … I think she’s gone…” His throat closed.

Cabot pushed Sir Lawrence’s bloody shaking hands away and felt for Lady Porter’s pulse. “She lives.” He stood and turned to go.

Sir Lawrence clutched at his wife’s hands. “Get help—there’s—somewhere in the village, there … is there a doctor close by?”

Cabot turned and gazed at the man everyone else wanted to save. Personally he couldn’t imagine why. “Help is closer than you think,” he said shortly and left.

This would not do. Cabot would not allow Lady Porter to die, for it might upset Button and Cabot couldn’t allow that.

Porter didn’t deserve her … but then again, being deserving didn’t always get one what one wanted, either.

*   *   *

She was swimming. Callie moved her arms and legs in perfectly even strokes. She could thank Dade for that, for thinking a girl needed to know how to swim as properly as a man, not simply splash about in the shallows afraid to wet her hair.

The water was warm, as soothing to her skin as bathwater.

Lovely.

Then something happened to her memory. She forgot the stroke, became tangled and fouled in her own limbs. With a frantic gasp she slipped beneath the surface of the water. It boiled about her, scalding her. Then she was under the frozen Serpentine—but this time when she tried to find the hole where she fell in, it was gone. She pounded the thick ice with childish hands. She couldn’t get out. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t wake up.

I want to wake up. Dade will be so worried. Mama and Papa and …

Ren.

Ren was frantic for her. She couldn’t remember why. She only knew that she had to fight this heavy weight of unconsciousness. It was pulling her down, far down beneath the surface. Above her was the icy light, but it only wavered and flowed out of her reach.

Wake up.

Wake up now.

“Calliope? Calliope, you must wake up now.”

“Lady Porter. Calliope. Can you hear me?”

Callie could hear him. He was very insistent, this stranger. Annoying fellow. He was disturbing her when she needed to pay attention. She needed to wake up.

Oh. Right. She followed the line of that voice, clinging to it as she was drawn up and up, and the world brightened about her and she was blinking up at a man she’d never seen before.

He smiled approvingly at her. “Excellent. Lady Porter, do you know where you are?”

She looked around the room.
Amberdell.

“Yes. Very good.”

Did I speak? Odd.

“Yes, I know you must feel quite strange. I gave you laudanum whilst I removed the musket ball. It was very important that you kept still during surgery.”

Musket ball? I drowned. I don’t like this stranger with his nonsense. Where is Ren?

“I’m here, Callie.”

Someone squeezed her hand. She rolled her head to see Ren at her bedside, her hand lost in his two big ones.
Oh, good. Ren. I love Ren.

He ducked his head for a moment.

She looked back at the doctor.
I don’t love the doctor.

The doctor nodded. “No more you should, with all the painful things I’ve done to you today. You’ve lost a great deal of blood, my lady. Still, sometimes that can be a blessing, washing potential infection from the wound. Either way, best to lie about for a week or more, build up your strength.”

No. I don’t like him. He’s being much too familiar, standing by my bed. That isn’t proper at all. What will Ren think?

“It’s all right, Callie.” She looked back at Ren. He held her hand pressed to his ruined cheek. “Listen to the doctor, darling.”

Well, if Ren said so. She needed to talk to him so she wanted the doctor gone. There was something she’d meant to tell him …

“Doctor, if I might speak to you for a moment?”

The room was coming into clearer focus. Ren shouldn’t worry so. He knew how she felt about doctors. Idiots, all of them.

But the fear in Ren’s voice was real. And the doctor was talking again, speaking quietly to Ren, saying words like “infection” and “blood loss.”

And worst of all, “invalid.”

And Callie was suddenly very afraid that her dream foretold that she might never come up for air again.

*   *   *

Ren walked the doctor out politely enough, but he was filled with agonizing worry for Callie, not to mention self-loathing for his own past wallowing about his broken body. He might be scarred, but he was still much more fit than Callie was at the moment.

On their way, they passed Betrice carrying in a bowl of broth to tempt Callie to eat.

The doctor nodded to her. “Mrs. Nelson.”

“Doctor.” Betrice smiled distantly and hurried on to Callie. Ren was happy that she wouldn’t be left alone.

The doctor inclined his head in the direction Betrice had taken. “A wonderful woman, Mrs. Nelson. I don’t know what the village will do without her.”

Ren was preoccupied with Callie’s condition. “Why would they have to?”

The doctor regarded him for a long moment “Sir Lawrence, you have lived here for a number of years, but you know nothing about these people.”

Ren almost missed the warning in the man’s voice but then old habits kicked in. His attention snapped to. “Meaning?”

The doctor pursed his lips. “The heir to Amberdell was found at last, but people had come to think of Henry Nelson as master of Amberdell. And his wife as lady of the manor.” He sighed wearily. “Country people don’t care for change. They care even less for change for the worse. This poacher … did you see him? Are you sure he was not someone local?”

Ren stared at the doctor for a long moment. This was something he’d not taken into account. To him, the village was a source of staples and the occasional labor. He’d never thought of it as a source of danger … but a village was made of people and people were bloody dangerous.

“The ball was my wife’s attempt to remedy just that.”

The doctor nodded. “From what I hear it nearly worked.” The man drew his greatcoat about him and put on his hat. “Sir Lawrence, you are master of Amberdell. I cannot tell you what to do. But I suggest you investigate the local populace.”

Ren frowned. “There have been other attempts … but this is the first overt attack.” He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something different about this one. There was true fury powering that musket ball.

The man left, but the thoughts he planted in Ren’s mind did not. He ventured thoughtfully back upstairs to Callie’s room, not truly noticing Betrice as he passed her on the stair.

*   *   *

Betrice stood in the shadows near the landing. Dr. Snow was an intelligent man. A man who knew every soul in the village. From the man’s tone, he knew precisely who was doing these terrible things to Callie. Or thought he did.

Betrice grabbed her wrap from the chair by the door and scurried out into the damp evening.

*   *   *

Ren sat on the edge of Callie’s bed. She slept on her side, limp and pale. He reached a tender finger to stroke a twisting coil of hair away from her forehead. She despaired the insistent wave of her hair. Ren loved it, loved the way it clung to his fingers, loved the spring of it, like the spring of Callie herself.

His chest ached as he recalled her bounding about the countryside and playing the fool with her silly dance in the lane. Would she ever dance again?

Invalid.
Forever tied to her bed, forever weak and ill …

Whatever the doctor thought, Ren knew that the bullet had been meant for him. Callie had simply been in the way.

She was always in the way. She stood between him and the solitude he’d longed for. She’d stubbornly planted herself, chin raised and arms akimbo, in the way of his dark and bitter decline.

“It’s bloody annoying,” he whispered to her. “That’s what it is.”

He bent to kiss her forehead. Closing his eyes, he willed all of his own stubborn desire to cling to life into her.

I love Ren.

Her laudanum-inspired words had gone through him like her silly sword. She couldn’t. It was impossible.

“I love you, Callie.” He said it because she would never recall it.

From outside the window, Ren heard the clatter of hooves on the drive and the rattling squeaks of a carriage pushed past its limits. He left Callie’s side and strode to the window to see.

Below him on the drive, an elderly carriage pulled by elderly horses had pulled to a stop before the manor. Even as he watched, the doors opened to spill the bloody Worthingtons to the ground like a pumpkin spilling seeds.

They were all shouting something. Ren could see Dade and Mr. Worthington helping Callie’s mother down from the carriage, even as the woman threw back her head and yodeled a name.

“Attie!”

*   *   *

Ren had no time for Worthington antics. When he rounded the lot of them into the front parlor, he baldly told them that Callie had been shot and would they please take their exhausting selves back to London as soon as possible?

They gazed at him in horror, then turned to one another.

The hubbub was astonishing. Ren was tempted to lock them into the parlor and shove food under the door once a day. Bloody zoo.

Finally he could bear no more. They were going to wake Callie with their commotion!

“Shut it!”

His roar shocked them all into silence. Dade snarled, but when his mother began to speak again, he put his hand over hers. Then he turned to Ren. “Tell us what happened to Callie.”

Ren did so, but he could tell there was something they knew that he didn’t. “The doctor left an hour ago. The musket ball was removed, but—” He could scarcely bear to say the words out loud. “There was a great loss of blood, and a terrible risk of infection—”

The sister, Elektra, gasped, her hands to her face. The dark brother, Lysander, said nothing, but his eyes said he knew what it meant, what a musket ball could do to a body. The twins seemed to finally be shaken from their playful attitudes.

The scholarly one, Orion, stepped forward. “I would like to speak to this doctor.”

“Rion,” Dade warned.

“I want to know, Dade.” Orion held Ren’s gaze. “I know a great deal about human anatomy. If this fellow is any good, he won’t mind running me through his technique.”

Ren wouldn’t mind a second opinion himself. He nodded. “He lives in the village, in the house just past the church, with black shutters.”

Orion turned and left without another word. Unfortunately, he was the only Worthington who practiced such economy. Dade turned to quiet his family again.

Ren was losing patience. “There is something you aren’t telling me.”

Dade opened his mouth, but the sister interrupted him. “Sir Lawrence, please, let me take Mama up to see Callie.”

Ren could scarcely keep Callie’s mother from her side, knowing how Callie loved the silly woman. He nodded shortly and the two women left.

At this rate, he’d be rid of all the Worthingtons soon.

He gazed at Dade. The fellow met his eyes reluctantly.

“It is Attie, our youngest sister. She is missing.”

Ren frowned. “That is indeed terrible news.”

Dade looked away and ran a hand through his hair. From the way it stood, he’d been doing it for hours … but he’d not known of Callie’s condition until just a moment ago.

Attie … Callie had told him that Attie was an eccentric, fierce child, able beyond her years, a tremendous handful. Of course, the words Callie used were “brilliant” and “creative,” but Ren was learning to decipher the Worthington native tongue.

Ren had only seen the girl once, at the ball the night before. She’d glared at him from across the room, intent upon him like a predator on its prey. He’d laughed off the hunted feeling she’d given him, but now—

He swore. “I knew that musket ball was meant for me.”

Chapter 34

Attie crept into a small stone hut she found in the middle of a great pasture. It was nothing but four walls and a roof, with rough holes in the walls for ventilation. It smelled of sheep.

There were a few piles of moldy straw on the floor. Attie gathered them into one and snuggled down into it. She wanted a fire, and she knew how to make one with nothing but a willow bow and a shoelace—Lysander had taught her how the soldiers did it when they had no flint and steel—but even if she could hide the light, the smoke would be visible. That was the last thing Attie wanted to be … visible.

The spring evening was damp and the shed stank. It was only what she deserved.

Callie is dead.

Maybe she could live here, in this hut. She could kill a sheep when she got hungry. She could even make it look like wolves, so no one would know there was a person living here.

She imagined herself butchering a sheep and shuddered. Red blood on green grass. Tears cut clean paths through the dirt on her cheeks, but she refused to sob. She didn’t deserve to cry out her guilt and fear, then to fall into the deep childish sleep of relief.

Callie is dead.

She would sit here, in the cold and stink, and know that her family would never forgive her, just as she could never forgive herself.

She only wished she hadn’t thought about wolves.

*   *   *

Ren leaned forward in his saddle and contemplated the small patch of hillside he could see by the light of his lantern.