Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
The report of a pistol echoed across the wharves just as the little girl pointed Hugh toward the dilapidated Jackdaw. Through the thickening mist, the figure of a woman stumbled back, over the stern, and splashed into the water. No.
“Audrey!” Hugh broke away from the young urchin and bolted down the connecting wharves, dodging debris and slipping on the wet, corky wood. He kept one eye on Audrey’s billowing skirts in the water and the other on the man who’d shot at her.
“Fellows! Stop!” Hugh shouted. The man jerked toward him, then flashed into the covered portion of the shanty.
His instinct was to give chase and apprehend him. The man was a criminal, a murderer. He needed to be stopped before he could harm anyone else. But Hugh’s attention shifted to Audrey in the water, and he knew there was only one choice.
“Sir! Get the carriage!” he shouted over his shoulder. Hugh reached the end of the dock and without hesitation, plunged into the water.
Audrey wasn’t far from his reach, but as he broke the surface of the briny, refuse-filled Thames, she seemed leagues away.
The cobwebbed spray of her golden hair showed the pins and combs at the back of her head.
She was face down, and she wasn’t attempting to thrash or swim.
Her heavy skirts would drag her under any second.
Hugh pinned his lips together against the foul water and finally reached her, flipping her over so that her nose and mouth were in sight.
Blood streaked her chin and tinged some strands of her hair pink.
The bullet had struck her. Hugh hooked her with one arm and pulled at the water with his other, toward the dock as the shrill blare of a pea whistle split the air.
A commotion on the wharves stole his attention, though only for a moment. He kicked his water-logged feet and cut his arm through the water, toward the dock.
“Audrey,” he gasped. “Audrey, can you hear me?”
A glorious sound punched through the racing pulse in his ears and the splash of water: the choking gargle of a cough.
He grabbed onto a piling, where several small hands latched onto his wrist and clutched at his coat sleeve.
“It’s the lady!” the young girl exclaimed.
She, and the two boys she’d been playing with, heaved, and though their combined strength did little to assist him out of the water, he was grateful they hadn’t scampered away.
The two boys grabbed at the duchess’s arms, keeping her afloat as Hugh hauled himself onto the dock.
He then dragged her up next to him. She moaned as he laid her down onto the wood.
“Blood,” the girl whispered.
A dark stain bloomed against the drenched, deep green fabric of her upper right shoulder.
Hugh tore off his sopping wet jacket and then yanked at his sleeve, ripping the threads. He balled up the wet linen and pressed it to her shoulder. She screamed at the sudden pressure, and her lashes fluttered open. Terrified, deep blue eyes met his.
“It’s him,” she gasped, her lips purple, bits of debris and dirt clinging to her brows and cheeks. The Thames was polluted and writhing with pestilence. He pushed the thought of anything contaminating her wound from his mind and focused on what to do next.
“Mister Hugh!” The wharf rattled uproariously.
Hugh tore his eyes from her; Sir pointed toward the black roof of their waiting carriage, closer now than it had been before.
At the head of the wharf, two uniformed patrolmen had tackled whom Hugh hoped was Fellows, and several more men were rushing toward the melee.
Basil had reached Bow Street, and Sir Gabriel had taken Hugh’s request seriously. Thank God.
He scooped the duchess into his arms. Her drenched gown and limp form were a burden, but his legs held as he rushed, as swift-footed as he could, toward the carriage. There was only one place he could think to bring her; one person he trusted.
“Number eighteen St. James’s Square,” he told the jarvey as the man assisted Hugh into the carriage, Sir leaping in on the opposite side. “As fast as you can, goddamn it!”
The jarvey slammed the door and the chassis rocked madly.
“Where are we going, Mister Hugh?” Sir asked.
“My friend. He’s a doctor.”
“The tall nob, with the chops?”
“That’s the one,” he said, knowing full well that Sir had taken to following him around London, waiting to make himself useful in any capacity. Today, it might have saved the duchess’s life.
Might.
The wound bled profusely, and worry knocked against his thoughts.
There was no room in his mind to consider it further.
He cradled her as the driver took his orders to heart and careened from the wharves.
She shivered and groaned, wincing with every movement.
He hated that the rattling motion of the carriage caused her pain, but the faster they arrived at Thornton’s, the faster he could treat her shoulder.
“Stay awake, Audrey,” he told her, dispensing with her title and proper form of address. He needed her to hear him; perhaps even shock her a little.
“It was him,” she murmured, her eyes opened to slits. “He killed her.”
“I know.” Hugh gathered her closer, their soaked figures both shivering now. “St. John was with the duke that night, and his mother had given him orders to end their relationship.”
Audrey’s eyes flared open. “The marchioness. Letter. My pocket.”
If the Thames hadn’t fished the letter out of her pocket, the water would have destroyed it by now. Hugh cringed at the lost evidence.
“She wrote it,” he guessed. Lady Wimbly had led the singer to Jewell House and had hired Fellows to kill her there. How had the marchioness known her son would be gone by the time Miss Lovejoy, and then Fellows, arrived?
“P-pretended to be Wimbly,” Audrey confirmed, jerking her head as she tried to nod. She grimaced. “My shoulder…the bullet.”
“I’m taking you to my friend Thornton. He’s going to help you. Audrey, you have to stay awake.”
“I should have…” she started, but then her next word tremored.
“Waited for me? Not gone to the wharves alone?” he interjected. He clenched his teeth against more of a reprimand. He couldn’t scold her, not when she was like this.
“Brought a pistol,” she finished. Hugh barked a laugh.
“Yes, I think you should have too,” he agreed.
The carriage tottered around a sharp corner, and outside, he spotted the familiar wrought iron fence and elms outside Thornton’s home. At last.
The driver whistled to the horses. The next collection of minutes was a blur of shuffling Audrey out of the carriage without causing her too much agony, sending Sir ahead to alert the butler and Thornton himself, and then Hugh pushing his way into the foyer.
“Goodwin, tell me he’s in.”
The butler snapped his fingers to a footman and maid, who’d rushed into the front hall to view the commotion. “Yes, of course, sir. Take her straight to the back wing,” he said, but Hugh was already on his way.
Thornton kept an office in his home at the back of the house, where patients could enter and leave without being seen from the square out front. Hugh kicked open the door and was two steps inside the office when Thornton entered through a side door, Sir on his heels.
“A bullet to the upper right shoulder?” Thornton asked, already serious and focused. Ready. Hugh’s thighs trembled, knowing Audrey would be cared for now. He laid her onto the examination table.
“Yes. And a dunk into the Pool of London.”
Thornton scowled at the poor luck as a young maid rushed through the door Sir was still holding open, her hands swiftly tying on a pinafore. His assistant, Hugh presumed.
“And yourself?” Thornton inquired as his assistant produced a pair of steel shears and handed them to him. He made an incision in the sopping green fabric of Audrey’s bodice and began cutting upward, toward her collar.
“I am fine. Uninjured,” Hugh answered, impatient. The duchess’s cheeks were ashen, her lips dusky purple, but her eyes were partially open.
“So c-c-cold,” she stammered.
“You’ll be warm soon, Your Grace,” Thornton assured her.
The gown’s fabric fell away, and Thornton gently rolled Audrey to her side.
“W-what are you—” Her stammering objection fell silent as she continued to shiver.
The assistant sliced the ribbons from her boned corset.
“Your Grace, forgive the impropriety but I need access to your wound,” Thornton informed her.
At the first glimpse of her bare back, Hugh stepped away, averting his eyes.
Lying her down flat again, Audrey made small mewling noises. Each one daggered Hugh in his gut. Thornton pulled off her sopping corset just as his assistant draped her with a swath of white cotton.
“The bullet entered the outer deltoid and has lodged there,” Thornton announced. “Miss Matthews, hot water, alcohol, and forceps.”
Audrey moaned as the assistant flushed debris and blood from the wound, and then held her still as Thornton inserted the narrow forceps.
Hugh’s stomach turned and he fought the irrational desire to clock his friend in the jaw.
He was helping Audrey, saving her life, and yet anger roiled inside him.
Not for Thornton, no. For that Fellows blackguard.
The man who’d murdered Miss Lovejoy, had most likely killed Bernadetto too, and who’d held no qualms about shooting the duchess.
“Mister Hugh,” Sir whispered, appearing at his elbow, as usual. The normalness of it relieved him. “Want me to keep my blinkers on this Wimbly lady?”
He’d been listening in the carriage. The marchioness hired Fellows to frame the duke. What he couldn’t be sure of was if St. John had been in on it or not.
“Got it,” Thornton announced, followed by a clink of metal as the extracted bullet fell from the tips of his forceps and onto a tray.
Audrey had lost consciousness, her waxy complexion giving Hugh another curl of fury mixed with nausea.
“A clean entry,” Thornton said, stepping away as his assistant staunched the bleeding.
“She’ll live?” Hugh asked.