Chapter 18
Owen woke with a hammer banging inside his skull and cotton stuffed in his mouth. A cup was pressed to his lips before he could so much as stir. He drank down the cool liquid and peeled open one eye. “Ivy?” he croaked.
She sat beside him, the sun streaming through the window and lightening her brown hair into a golden hue. She smiled, her crescent dimple making an appearance, and he wondered if he was dreaming. There was no other explanation for Ivy Bennett being in what he now recognized was his bedchamber.
“Lord Brackley.” She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “You are still feverish, but not as hot as before.”
“Am I ill?” He tried to sit, but a blinding pain in his shoulder set his teeth on edge.
He hissed as he scooted backward. Slowly he opened the partially buttoned nightshirt and stared down at his shoulder.
A white bandage was wrapped over his shoulder and under his arm, but beyond its clean edges he saw purple and green bruising.
All at once his memory of the robbery flooded back.
He had been shot by a man who had seemed so familiar that Owen swore he knew him from somewhere.
Owen had sunk to the ground as Ivy had walked toward the scoundrel, who had been demanding a kiss.
He had been entirely unable to protect her.
He gripped her wrist with his good hand. “Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
“How…” Another memory surfaced, this one hazier, as if viewed in a dream. Ivy, striking the man in the face, kicking him in the groin, and disarming him as easily as if she were a seasoned London brawler. “You disarmed him.”
“You were bleeding out, my lord. Your memories are faulty. Once you collapsed, the highwayman rode away. Perhaps he was frightened by what he had done.”
“Owen,” he corrected, still keeping her wrist trapped.
His thumb was pressed against her heartbeat, and her steady pulse calmed him, reassured him that she had come away from the incident unscathed.
It had been his job to protect her, and he had failed miserably.
He thought of the thousand things that could have happened to her, and his stomach churned.
“You are turning pale.” She pulled her wrist away and reached for a tin pail, but he stopped her by snatching her hand again and drawing in deep, slow breaths through his nose.
He needed to feel her skin right now, just until his brain caught up with what his eyes were showing him: that she was healthy and unharmed by his side.
Had he been so close to death that he had hallucinated what he had seen? He must have. It was unlikely his former governess had disarmed a man twice her size. “Tell me everything.”
Was it his imagination, or did her pulse kick beneath his thumb?
“After you were shot, the thief took off. He was too rattled to even snatch our purses.”
“I am not sure the coins were ever his intent.” He squinted against the blinding pain in his head. Everything about the interaction had seemed personal, as if to punish him.
“You were able to climb on Saxony, and I took you to the nearest place I could, which was my friend’s modiste shop,” Ivy continued. “We left it quite a mess, I am sorry to say.”
“I will send her funds to cover it. What happened there?”
“I left you at the shop and rode back to Brackley Estate to fetch the carriage. The doctor arrived not long after.”
He ran his gaze over her pink cheeks and the honey-brown eyes that could not quite meet his own. “How did I manage not to bleed out before the doctor arrived?”
“Pressure?”
“Say it without the question at the end the next time you lie, Ivy.”
“Pressure.”
“Hmm.” When she tugged again, he released her wrist and studied her in the slanting light. She had shadows beneath her eyes, and her usual cheer was strained. “How long have I been unconscious?”
“Three days. You were quite feverish. We did not know…” Her voice broke.
Owen gave her a wan smile. “It will take more than a bullet to keep me down, although I am confident the reason I am alive right now is because of you and not my hardy constitution.”
She refilled his water and passed it to him before ringing the bell for the maid. Once she had instructed the maid to bring broth and tea, she turned back to him, and he glimpsed the slightest tremble in her lower lip.
“I am sorry you had to witness what you did,” he said gently.
“Try not to die on me, Owen, even if it would save me from having to end our courtship.”
A few minutes later the maid arrived with tea, broth, and an unwelcome visitor.
“I see you are still alive,” Barnes said, pulling out a chair. He did not appear to be happy about it.
“I do not have the spirit for you, Barnes.”
Ivy tried to lift the broth to his lips, but he took it from her and did it with his own good hand. He was not an invalid yet.
Barnes frowned at Ivy’s attempt to nurse him. “You need to regain your spirit in that case, so that I may call you out for almost getting my sister killed.”
“Barnes!” Ivy twisted in her chair, her voice heavy with censure.
“The viscount woke up not half an hour ago, and you are already threatening him with a duel? Are you addled? He could not have stopped that highwayman from pulling the trigger any more than I could have. If you have no kind words to say, please leave.”
A flicker of something crossed Barnes’s face—regret, perhaps?—but then it was gone, his mask of disdain firmly in place once again. “Mayhap I’ll stay a bit and hear about the attempted robbery from the viscount himself.”
Ivy glared at him. “You would not be trying to avoid Diane, would you?”
“She is with the girls, so no, dear sister, I am not avoiding anyone.”
Owen sipped the broth and sighed as the salty warmth slid down his throat. “How are the girls?”
“Diane fully took over my governess duties while I nursed you, but I am still helping when I can.” Ivy glanced at the clock over the mantel and startled. “Oh! I promised her I would help with outdoor prayer.” She stood and ran her eyes over him. “Will you be all right for an hour or two?”
“Of course.”
She nodded, and when she passed by Barnes she said sternly, “Behave.”
The door snicked shut behind her, and still Barnes did not move from his sprawled place in the chair at the foot of the bed. Owen drank the broth, his eyes meeting Barnes’s over the rim. Neither of them looked away.
“Tell me what happened,” Barnes ordered.
Owen was tempted to tell Barnes to bugger off, but if it had been his sister held at gunpoint, he would demand to know every last detail, so he told him all he could recollect.
When he finished, Barnes steepled his fingers beneath his chin.
“Perhaps you took up with this man’s sister, and he wants revenge. ”
“If I did not have a bullet in my shoulder, I would knock you out for the mere suggestion.”
“You do not have a bullet in your shoulder.”
Owen lifted a brow. “The doctor was able to extract it?”
“Not quite. When the footmen and I arrived at the modiste shop, the bullet was in a tray and your wound was stitched.”
Owen leaned against the pillow, reeling from dual shocks.
First, that Barnes had come to fetch him.
And second, that the wound had already been cleaned and stitched before he had arrived home.
That explained how he had not bled out, but it did not answer who had done it.
“The modiste?” he asked, although he did not fully believe it.
“That is what Ivy says.” Barnes continued to stare at him.
“The highwayman could have injured her, Owen. I know you do not give a damn about her well-being, but Ivy is the baby of the family. She is tough and she is clever, but she still needs protection. When you started this charade with her, it was with the expectation that you would see to her safety. He could have assaulted her. Kidnapped her. Killed her.”
Owen’s stomach was in knots at the recitation of every last one of his nightmares.
“She should not have been out late at night. She should not have been with you. But she was with you, and you failed to protect her.” Barnes arched a brow at Owen’s silence. “No excuses to make?”
“No.”
Barnes leaned forward, his eyes glittering dangerously. “Make a mistake like this again, and I will kill you myself.”
With his promise still ringing in the air, he left the room.
Owen fell asleep, and when he woke again it was to find far more welcome visitors.
“Brother!” Ophelia, the eldest of his sisters, cried.
She and her sisters leaped from the floor, where they had been quietly playing with dolls, and crowded around him.
Over their silky heads he glimpsed Ivy and Diane, and flashed them a grateful smile.
Even though his entire body ached and his shoulder felt as if someone were spearing it with a heated blade, some of the itchiness in his soul eased at the sight of the girls.
“Did you get shot?” six-year-old Ollie asked plainly, and Owen was proud of himself for knowing both her name and her age.
“I did. But as you can see, I am perfectly fine now because Miss Bennett saved my life.”
A few of the older girls still seemed close to tears, but the younger ones shivered with excitement, and the look they gave Ivy bordered on hero-worship.
Owen reached for a glass of water, going clammy when it felt like the stitches were being torn out of his skin. He was grateful when Opal jumped to help him. “Is he going to come back?” she asked.
“Who?”
“The highwayman.”
The girls stilled, awaiting his answer. Before he could respond, Oriana, who was five, squinted her eyes and said, “Let him try to hurt our brother again! Thanks to Miss Bennett, we will be re—” Odette gave her a swift kick, and Oriana immediately shut her mouth.
“Thanks to Miss Bennett you will be what?” Owen prodded, his eyes narrowing on Oriana. When her lips remained stubbornly pressed together, he glanced at the other seven girls, each one looking guiltier than the last. “Oriana?”
“Nothing,” she blurted. “I only meant that because Miss Bennett saved your life, then you will be safe so long as she is here.”
They were keeping secrets. Although Diane’s expression appeared thoughtful and Ivy’s entirely blank, he knew without a doubt that he was missing something.
His brow furrowed, and he opened his mouth to demand answers, when Ivy said, “Girls, I think your brother needs to rest. We will return tomorrow.”
They all scrambled to pet his arm and say their goodbyes.
The littlest one climbed onto the bed, jostling his tender body, and gave him a sticky kiss on his cheek.
He snatched her with his good arm before she could get away, and squeezed her in an awkward hug, unfamiliar with casual affection.
But he must have done it right, because she gave him a toothy grin before slipping off the bed.
“You are safe, girls. You do not need to worry for me or yourselves. No one will separate us,” he vowed, and watched as some of the tension eased from their shoulders.
They trusted him, he realized with awe. He had done nothing to earn their love and devotion, and yet they freely gave it to him.
In that moment, he knew he would do anything to be worthy of them.
When his valet arrived later, Owen instructed him to dispatch an urgent missive to a private detective he had heard of.
The man was richer than Satan, but took on work in order to stay sane.
As if that were not enough to endear him to Owen, the detective constable had also unveiled the identity of the Evangelist some months ago, and had since started his own private detective agency with his wife.
“Send this letter to Mr. Zachariah Denholm,” Owen instructed, handing over the sheet of stationery. He would uphold his promise to his sisters, which meant he needed to know who that bloody highwayman was, and what he knew about his mother.