Chapter 23
Chapter 23
Silence hung in the theater for what felt like an hour, though it was surely no more than half a moment. Transfixed by Graham’s gruesome wound, Julia let the candlestick slip from her suddenly nerveless fingers. The heavy brass ornament struck the boards with a resounding crash, and that seemed to be the general signal for chaos to break loose.
Graham stumbled backward to sit in the chair at Briggs’s writing table, clutching the injured hand in his lap, the better to support the weight of the knife, his features distorted in agony, though he made no sound. A woman in the audience screamed, and then another and another took up the cry. A stampede of footsteps followed as seats and boxes emptied, most to the exits. But a goodly number rushed to the stage. At her feet, Fanshawe groaned, roused by the clamor. Sidestepping him, she hurried to Graham’s side.
“Don’t touch it!” ordered a voice from below. She stopped herself, but not before her fingers were stained with his blood. “Name’s Essex. I’m a physician. And pulling out the knife might make matters worse.” Two other gentlemen helped to hoist the doctor onto the stage, and he dropped onto one knee beside Graham. “If I may, your lordship.”
His jaw set in a firm line and his face paler than usual, Graham allowed the doctor to examine the blade’s entry point as well as its exit.
“Well?” he demanded.
The doctor shook his head. “Difficult to say. The knife may be the only thing preventing a significant loss of blood, and removing it could . . .” The physician’s expression told clearly enough how that would end.
Graham swore beneath his breath. “So, then? I can’t verra well go about like this, can I?”
“No, my lord. But it is not a procedure I wish to undertake here, before an audience.”
Julia glanced around at the theater. Some still stood near their seats, unable or unwilling to leave, while others crowded around the exits. Various groups littered the stage: a pair of men who’d rolled Fanshawe onto his stomach and bound his arms with a length of rope; Mr. Sawyer ministering to Mrs. Cole by chafing the feeling back into her hands and feet; other actors and stagehands looking on in shock. Why should a medical man be reluctant to do his duty in front of any of them?
When she turned back to the doctor, though, she realized from the tilt of his head, silently directing Graham’s notice, that he’d been referring only to her.
“Go to your family,” Graham told her. “I’ll send word when all is well.”
“No, Graham. No.” She threw her arms around his neck. Clung to him. “I won’t leave you.”
His left hand curved around the back of her head, pressing her momentarily closer before pushing her away. “You must.”
“Julia.” Jeremy’s voice. He spoke low, the better to be heard beneath the noise around them. She glanced upward to find him standing over them, though she hadn’t any notion how he’d managed to get there so quickly. She wouldn’t have put it past him to have swung down to the stage from the box.
Though, since Mr. Remington, who was considerably older, was also with him, such a maneuver seemed less likely.
Less likely, but not impossible.
“If I may, sir,” Mr. Remington said, “I have some experience with such injuries, both the treatment of them and the recovery afterward.”
He had once been a soldier and then a manservant to a notorious rogue, and when he said such things, it made Julia wonder how many other lives he had lived.
Graham’s brow wrinkled, a mixture of pain and confusion. “And you are?”
“My stepfather,” Julia explained. “Arthur Remington.”
“Much obliged to you, sir,” Graham said then. “Right now, the only thing I have need of is someone to take Julia away from here. It wouldn’t do for her to see me . . . faint.”
It wouldn’t do for her to see me die.
Julia knew exactly what he had been thinking, perhaps what he had been on the point of saying. She sent a desperate, prayerful glance upward.
Her gaze came to rest on Aunt Mildred, still seated in the box. Mama and Laura were gone—on Jeremy’s orders, she supposed, given Laura’s delicate condition. He would want to guard her from any shocks. But the older woman could not walk away without assistance.
“What nonsense,” she called down in a carrying voice. “A hale and hearty fellow such as yourself has no cause to concern himself with such things. And besides, I should think you already understood that our Julia is brave.”
“And stubborn,” Jeremy added, shaking his head.
“Aye,” Graham agreed in a gravelly voice.
The physician’s gaze darted among all the involved parties. “How do you wish me to proceed, my lord?”
Graham jerked his chin once toward his hand. “Get on with it.”
Every man nearby surrendered a handkerchief at the doctor’s request. “I advise you to look elsewhere,” he told Graham.
She expected him to refuse out of some misguided sense of toughness, but he turned his head to the side and locked eyes with her. Then again, perhaps that was as much to keep Julia from watching the removal of the blade than anything else.
“Wait,” she whispered as the doctor grasped the hilt. “Just in case you . . . faint, Graham, I want you to know that I love you too.”
“My dearest lass. This isn’t quite as I’d planned it”—he tipped his chin toward his chest—“but reach into my pocket.”
Despite a rumble of disapproval from her brother, Julia slid one hand across Graham’s chest and inside his coat. Her fingers closed around a little box.
“Open it.”
Beneath the brilliant lights of the chandeliers, the amethyst gleamed like a sunrise. A betrothal ring. Without hesitation, she slipped it onto her finger. “Oh, Graham. Yes. The answer has always been yes.”
He blinked as if in disbelief, his gray-green eyes hazy with pain. Her name escaped his lips on a breath.
And then, taking advantage of his patient’s distraction, the doctor pulled the knife free.
The string of oaths that followed—not spoken under his breath this time—flooded her cheeks with heat, even as the remaining color leached from his.
But the doctor made a satisfied sound. “Not as bad as I’d feared.” He applied half of the stack of handkerchiefs to either side of the wound and bound them in place with his own cravat. “Still, an infection might yet cost you the hand. And even if you keep it, it may be of very little use to you—once injured thus, the sinews of the hand do not always recover their strength and flexibility,” he warned. “If you gentlemen could help me take Lord Dunstane back to my practice,” he said to Jeremy and Mr. Remington, “I’ll do what I can to improve matters.”
Julia ceded her place to her brother, who helped Graham to his feet. “Go to Aunt Mildred,” Jeremy said. “We’ll talk about the rest of this business”—he glanced around the stage, pausing at Fanshawe’s still-prone form, then looked Julia up and down—“when I get home.”
After maneuvering through throngs of curious theatergoers, Julia was at last reunited with Aunt Mildred in the long saloon behind the boxes. “Well, my dear,” the older woman said, her lorgnette half raised to her eyes, “that was quite the theatrical debut.”
Tears sprang to Julia’s eyes—shock, fatigue, and a hundred more emotions that she could not name. “Oh, Aunt. This will teach me to be careful what I wish for.”
“Come, now,” Aunt Mildred said, looping her arm through Julia’s. “It’s not like you to give up so easily. And who knows what may happen, now that you’re to be married to the most notorious playwright of the age?”
She’d almost forgotten that Graham had revealed his secret identity to the world—to forestall Fanshawe, who had come perilously close to revealing hers.
“Jeremy is fit to be tied by it all. He may yet refuse his consent.”
They reached the lower level, walked through the vestibule, and emerged into the chilly evening, where the line of carriages had begun to thin. Aunt Mildred pointed with her walking stick toward the barouche, directing Julia’s footsteps. “Your brother has enough to concern himself with, just now. Scolding the future Countess of Dunstane can wait. Half Moon Street,” she called up to the driver when they were within earshot.
“Aunt Mildred?” Julia asked uncertainly. It was not a direction she recognized, and it would hardly be proper to hope.
“Dunstane will have need of a nursemaid,” the other woman explained with a wink, the movement almost lost in shadow if not for the twinkle of her eye. “It’s only right for me to send him the best.”
* * *
Graham arrived in Half Moon Street at nearly midnight, exhausted as much by the tumult of his emotions as the pain in his hand, the expenditure of nervous energy draining him more than the loss of blood.
Climbing wearily from the hackney, he struggled up the steps and into the house. No doubt the cabbie thought him a sot. Once inside, a footman reached to help him off with his greatcoat. Graham merely shrugged, and his coat and greatcoat came away together; the physician, Essex, had only draped them over his shoulders after bandaging Graham’s hand and strapping his arm into a sling to discourage its use.
“My lord?” the footman began. Graham’s shirt was streaked with blood.
Graham waved him off with his good hand. “See that I’m not disturbed.” Then he trudged up another two flights of stairs to his bedchamber and swung open the door, expecting to have to fend off his valet. Just a dozen steps more to his bed.
To his surprise, Harcourt was not within. Nevertheless, he or someone had prepared the room for an invalid. The bedcoverings had been turned back and the pillows fluffed. A roaring fire crackled in the hearth.
The firelight painted a glow across the sleeping figure of Julia, curled in an oversized leather chair, hair down about her shoulders, still clad in the costume of Perpetua Philpot. His ring glittered on her finger. He blinked twice, trying to clear the vision.
“Lass.”
He’d meant it for a scold, but the word eased from him with what sounded suspiciously like relief. She jerked awake and to her feet. “Graham.” Her bright eyes swept over him, as if checking to make sure he was still whole. “You’re here.”
“Aye. And you shouldn’t be.”
A toss of her head sent unexpected sparks of red and gold scattering from her dark locks. “It’s no use sounding all gruff and telling me I have to go. I’m here to nurse you back to health, on Aunt Mildred’s orders.” With gentle pressure, she guided him to sit in the chair she’d just vacated.
He sank down to find the leather warmed by the fire and her body. He was too tired to argue, though he knew he ought. “How did you get in?” he asked instead, attempting to toe off his shoes.
“Let me,” she insisted, kneeling before him and slipping the shoes off his feet, then setting them neatly aside. “When the footman opened the door, I simply wouldn’t let him say no.”
Suddenly Graham understood that what he’d taken for the manservant’s expression of concern had more likely been an attempt at a warning.
“Though he did fetch someone else. Your secretary, I believe, who—”
“Never say Keynes let you wait in my bedchamber?” He could picture the man’s goggling eyes and determined, though obviously ineffectual, protests.
“I didn’t exactly ask permission,” she admitted, glancing up at him with a mischievous smile and waggling her hand to make the ring sparkle. “And he seemed to run out of arguments when I told him I was your betrothed.”
He started to shake his head in patent disbelief. Had her work at the magazine encouraged such shocking “miss conduct,” or had she always been prone to it?
But when he looked into her glowing, upturned face, he forgot to be disapproving. “When I think of what might have happened tonight, the harm that might have come to you . . . I should never—”
“I stepped onto that stage most willingly,” she reminded him. “Though I do believe I’m now well and truly cured of my longing to act.”
“You were brilliant,” he insisted. “From the first scene to the last.”
“You may tell me that as many times as you wish.” Her kiss was swift, more a buss in passing as she got to her feet. “But first you need your rest.”
She wasn’t wrong, though he would not have balked at a more thorough kiss.
He stood, slipped off the sling, and half stumbled toward the bed.
“Ought I to help you with that, first?” She gestured with the waggle of a finger toward his lower half.
It took a long moment for him to realize she was referring to removing his kilt. “Nay.” He climbed onto the mattress and slid beneath the cool linens as another wave of fatigue washed over him. “I’ll just . . .”
Sleep—and whatever the physician had given him for the pain—weighed on his eyelids, dragging them lower. She smiled as she drew the covers over him and then turned away, as if intending to return to the chair. With his good hand, he patted the empty expanse of bed beside him.
“Graham,” she chided. “I couldn’t possibly. You need your rest.”
“And I’ll have it,” he vowed. “But I’ll rest better if you’re here, rather than all the way over there.”
She shook her head, her mobile mouth caught between disapproval and amusement. Then, with a sharp sigh, as if she couldn’t quite believe her own actions, she pulled a few pins from her gown—“wouldn’t want to be poked”—and clambered onto the bed to curl up at his side. “Now, go to sleep.”
He didn’t need to be told twice.
He woke again as the first gray hint of dawn was streaking the sky, both surprised and relieved to find that Julia was still tucked against him, in the shelter of his good arm. Her dark locks hid her face and tickled his chin; her left arm was flung across his torso and her fingers spread possessively over his heart. Just as he’d hoped—nay, dreamed—the delicate ring perfectly suited her hand.
He dragged in a deep breath, unable to recall the last time he’d awoken feeling so content. As if all was right with the world. His hand still throbbed, it was true. And a good night’s sleep hadn’t cleared his thoughts of the doctor’s grim warnings about the threat of infection and permanent disability.
It had increased his determination to triumph over his injury, however. He tried to waggle his fingers and sucked in a breath at the pain even that slight movement produced.
But pain, he reasoned, was better than no feeling at all.
“Graham?” Julia stirred against his shoulder, swiped her hair away from her face, and looked up at him with heavy-lidded eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Aye. I will be. And so will you—and all of Mrs. Goode’s Misses, thanks to that timely knock on Fanshawe’s head, and whatever additional punishment your brother and stepfather managed to exact after they consigned me to the physician.”
Confusion flickered across her eyes. “That’s good news, isn’t it? Yet you look a trifle . . . disappointed.”
“Aye, well. A Scotsman likes to be the one to save his lass.”
Her head tilted in a charming scold. “Graham. That madman had a knife at my throat. You are the one who saved me. And not just through your brave actions, but through even braver words. For my sake, you revealed one of your most deeply held secrets to all of London society.”
“One?” He arched a brow. “Are there others?”
She nodded. “Who would have suspected the caring man you really are, beneath that scowling mask.” Then, sliding higher along his body, she pressed a string of kisses along his jaw. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
He turned and captured her mouth with his, seeking the kiss she’d denied him last night. Lips softly parted, she surrendered to his demand.
Or perhaps surrendered wasn’t quite the right word. Pressing her hand more firmly against his chest, she rose above him, her tongue stroking eagerly into his mouth, her hair tumbling around them like a curtain of brown silk.
“My love?” She drew back, nibbling her lower lip uncertainly as she rubbed her breasts against him with a becoming urgency. “Are you in a great deal of pain?”
“Oh, aye,” he teased, his breath already ragged.
She pushed herself fully upright, until she was kneeling beside him on the bed. Her blue gaze flickered to his bandages, to the bloodstained shirt he still wore.
“I didn’t mean my hand,” he tried to explain, feeling a fool. “I’m sorry. That joke was unworthy even of Blackadder.”
Though her lips curved slightly, an acknowledgment of his feeble attempt at humor, her eyes darted to his bandaged hand, and a notch formed between her brows. “Will you still be able to write?”
Essex had said a loss of dexterity was likely. Graham dragged in a breath and reached up with his uninjured hand to brush her hair behind her shoulder. “I don’t know.”
Sensing the moment for playfulness had passed, he planted one foot against the mattress to join her in sitting up. Her eyes followed the movement as the linens slipped to bare his leg, the hem of his kilt hiked to mid-thigh.
With one tentative fingertip, she brushed the dusting of coarse hair just above his knee. “I could hold your pen.”
Bawdy wordplay? Or the promise of a new writing venture beyond anything he had imagined? Either way, he hardly dared hope.
Her fingertip slid higher up his leg.
“And would you write exactly what I told you?” he growled.
She shot him a look of mock disbelief. “Certainly not. I was not offering to take dictation. A woman with my knowledge of the theater, not to mention my experience on the stage”—her fingertip abandoned his leg in favor of tracing the edge of her bodice; the oversized gown had slipped lower while she slept, leaving Perpetua Philpot with a delightfully daring decolletage—“ought to be considered an equal partner in this venture.”
“I agree,” he said, reaching up to wrap his hand around her neck and draw her down for a kiss. “But until I’m healed, you’ll have to do a bit more of the work.”
Thankfully, this time, she understood exactly what he meant. In a matter of moments, she had peeled off her clothing, tossed aside the coverings, and climbed back into the bed, straddling one of his knees.
“Does this mean I finally get to see what’s under your kilt?”
He groaned as her hands swept beneath the plaid, one on either thigh, to his groin. The brush of her fingers against his cock was the sweetest agony as she bared him to her gaze in the early morning light. “You already know.”
Still, the eager flare of her eyes was flattering. And he admired the sight of her slender hand, adorned with his ring and curled around his ruddy shaft, more than a gentleman ought.
Still less should he have enjoyed it when she leaned forward and brushed a gentle kiss across his crown. Another groan rumbled through him as her hands pushed up his shirt and her mouth moved higher, her tongue teasing the ridged muscles of his abdomen, his flat nipples, the hollow at the base of his throat.
Meanwhile, he caressed her breast with his left hand—less nimble, perhaps, than his right, but hardly useless—then reached down to cup her already slick mound. “Take me inside you, Julia.”
With eager, uncertain motions, she shuffled her hips higher, her knees spreading wide around his body, and led him to her entrance. Slowly, inch by inch, she sank down on his cock.
“That’s right,” he urged as she shifted her position until a shuddering gasp of pleasure burst from her lips. She lifted her hips once, experimentally, then slid down again. “Ride me.”
Prone, he gave himself over to her pleasure, guiding her with his hand on one hip, then sliding his fingers across her belly to circle her bud with his thumb. The sweet, hot clasp of her sex was exquisite, her passion like nothing he had ever known.
“Graham!” Her voice was almost a sob, her rhythm already beginning to fray. “I’m going to—”
“Yes!” Someday, he would teach her patience. But not today. Because he was already on the edge of climax, too. And in his position, withdrawal was out of the question. After this, she would be truly his.
He thrust upward as she ground her pelvis against him, the pulsing of her channel calling forth his seed.
Both spent, they collapsed together, damp with sweat though the room was cool.
Around them, morning crept ever closer, and with it the arrival of servants to sweep the hearth and newspapers containing columns about the shocking events at the Theatre Royal and almost certainly one brother in high dudgeon about where his sister had spent the night. Carefully, he wrapped both arms around her, a shield against the day to come.
Pray God Keynes knew the ins and outs of acquiring a special license.
Because Graham meant never to wake up alone again.