Chapter 9
Mae’s hands were shaking.
Her hands never shook. It was one of her defining characteristics. It was the reason her grandfather had always told her as a child that she would be his successor.
Tonight, they were shaking.
She left Roland Reed to strip away the clothing over his wound as she went into the kitchenette to heat water, tossing him a clean rag to stopper the bleeding before she left the room.
Usually she would stay and demonstrate the appropriate amount of pressure, but she could not face that particular man at this particular moment.
Especially not whilst he was disrobing.
She took a bottle of clean, pre-boiled water after the kettle was set and snatched a few more clean rags from the cupboard before marching back into the central room.
She reminded herself that she was furious with him. That she wanted to slap him very hard. That he was impossible.
And then she rounded the corner and saw him leaned on his side on one of their waiting cots, that freckled torso in full view, dusted lightly with downy hair the color of brass.
The muscles of his abdomen were flexing as he winced and dabbed at the bleeding gorge between his ribs. She could see his navel.
He glanced up at her, his shoulder-length curls brushing against the bare planes of his shoulders and falling loosely over his collarbones. His eyes seemed to glow in the low light, an aggressive jewel-like turquoise.
“I need to see it,” she said, pleased that she sounded firm, even if her voice was more brittle than she would have liked.
“It hasn’t stopped bleeding,” he warned her as she came nearer, nodding down toward where he was pressing the rag into himself. “If I pull this off, it’ll start again.”
“Just for a moment,” she said, holding out a clean new rag. “When I say, lift it. I will pour water over to get a look, and then you can replace the pressure with a new cloth.”
He grimaced and nodded. “Fine.”
“Now,” she said, lifting the bottle and tilting it the instant he pulled the rag away.
She exhaled from a corner of her lungs that she hadn’t realized was reserving breath, relief spreading through her shoulders and creeping down toward her elbows as she observed the wound through the rippling lens of the stream of water, moving it side to side to ensure she was not being fooled by refraction or magnification.
“Done,” she said, and pulled away again. “It’s wide but shallow. And clean.”
“Good,” he said, clenching his teeth as he pushed the new rag down. “Stitches again?”
“Again?” she asked, blinking at the wound before her eyes slid up the length of his forearm, falling on the pale white oval where the amputee had bitten him all those years ago.
She felt a faint smile float over her lips.
“Ah. No, not this time. The gash is too wide. I’m afraid I need the cautery iron. ”
He stared at her for a moment, made a face, and then collapsed backward onto the cot, his hair flying out around him with a little huff. “Get on with it, then.”
As though agreeing, the kettle began to scream from the kitchenette.
She retrieved the medium-sized iron from its place in her tool cabinet before moving into the kitchen, swapping it with the kettle, and pouring the boiling water into one of her basins. The water rippled a little from the trembling of her hands as she poured.
She made herself breathe slowly. Deeply in through her nose, slowly out through pursed lips. She watched the iron start to turn red.
She wondered where the bullet had ended up.
Shaking her head, she turned and moved the basin into the room, next to Roland, and moved around, pulling down the various salves and poultices, the expensive linen gauze and a precious tincture of silver nitrate suspended in beeswax.
She put them one by one on the table at the foot of his cot while he watched her through narrow slits between his lashes.
“Aren’t you going to tell me a story?” he said, when she turned to check the iron. “Isn’t that what you do?”
She stopped, her spine going up, and turned only her face to the side, looking at him through the corner of her eye. “Are you making fun of me, Mr. Reed?”
“You told me one last time,” he returned, rather than answering. “The three debutantes from Dover. I want another.”
She turned very slowly to face him, scanning his expression for any sign of mockery. He was difficult to read, she thought. It wasn’t just the beauty, though that, of course, always muddled things up.
This man obviously fancied himself something of a trickster, and if he thought so, why shouldn’t she suspect the same?
“Fine,” she said. “The bumblebee of Almack’s.”
“The what?” he repeated, sounding skeptical, but she’d already gone into the kitchen to retrieve the iron, carrying it carefully back out by its beveled handle to rest in its stand.
She placed it in his eyeline, perhaps to punish him a bit, letting him watch the way the glowing red shed sparks while she started opening her jars and bottles.
“There was a beehive at Almack’s in its early days, when it was still aspiring to become London’s greatest dance hall,” she said briskly.
“The bees there were fat and happy, with plenty to choose from every night, with luxurious balls always outfitted with lines of people arriving to try their sweet and nectar-like offerings of lemonades and punches, champagnes and sweetened teas, and so on.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, his fingers going slack as she reached for the rag, taking over the pressure application as she brought forward her witch hazel bottle and the silver tincture. “Bees.”
“One bee had aspirations beyond just the gilded halls of Almack’s,” she said, lifting the rag in sections to disinfect with the witch hazel and dab the perimeter of the wound with the tincture.
“He left to explore the rest of the city, certain that London had more to offer than just one marble ballroom, though his friends from the hive told him he’d never find such delicious nectars anywhere else. ”
She dipped a clean rag in the hot water and wrung it out, gritting her teeth against the way it singed her hands.
She pressed this one against the center of his gash, holding it steady as she applied a second layer of balm to the healthy skin outside of the wound.
“This bee explored the pubs of the docks and tried their ale. He tried the rich, milky teas in the drawing rooms of Bloomsbury. He tried the sherry in the opera houses and the whiskey in the park. It was true that none of it was as sweet as the nectars of Almack’s, but he felt himself more worldly for his expanded experiences, and wanted to go home and tell the others. ”
“Naturally,” said Roland through his teeth.
She flashed him a quick, perfunctory little smile and stood, putting his hand back on the rag as she turned to take the iron into her hand.
“Unfortunately, he got lost trying to find his way back home. For two whole days he wandered the city, taking wrong turns and going in accidental circles, until finally, half parched to death, he made it back to Almack’s.
By the time he got through the door, he didn’t even care about gloating to the others; he just wanted something to drink.
Unfortunately, it seemed every bee in London had discovered the place in his absence! ”
She walked back, returning her hand to the rag and finding the right angle for the iron, measuring it with her head tilted to one side and then the other.
“First he went for the champagne, for it had always been his favorite, but the line was so long it was hanging out the door,” she said, pushing hard downward to staunch what she could of the blood flow in this last moment.
“And then he turned to the lemonade, but that one had a line almost just as long, twisting and turning for hours. In the end, he decided he must instead settle for punch. Do you know why, Mr. Reed?”
She looked up at his face, blinking, until he looked back, clearly surprised that she had stopped her process to ask him this.
“I don’t,” he said, his voice strained.
“Because,” she said, whipping the rag away. “There never was a punch line.”
And then she stuck the iron to his wound and sealed it shut with all the fury of molten hot iron.
She gritted her teeth and flung the iron away, letting it clatter onto the ground, and immediately slapped a cold rag to the site as he cried out in pain and shock. This time, she did not push. She draped one cool cloth, and then another, and then one more.
And finally, she let herself exhale.
She put her hand on his bare shoulder and squeezed it, releasing a hysterical little laugh. “It’s done,” she muttered. “It’s over. Do you want a drink? I’ll wrap it up in a moment, once it cools.”
He was staring at her, gone completely still in the wake of his initial outburst of pain, his expression completely impermeable. “A drink?” he repeated.
“What do you take?” she asked, turning. “Something awful, I bet. Whiskey?”
“Port,” he said, and grabbed her wrist before she could walk away. “Don’t.”
She looked back, surprised, not just that he’d stopped her but by the iron grip and the speed with which he’d reached out.
Evidently, injury did not slow or soften Roland Reed.
“Why not?” she asked, frowning.
He was watching her, an unsettling steadiness in his gaze. His chest was rising and falling in steady breaths, as though she hadn’t just seared a gunshot out of his flesh.
“Mae,” he said, soft and low. His grip on her wrist loosened, his fingers trailing down to her hand, caressing the hidden nook of her pulse, over the heel of her hand, and tracing through her palm.
His eyes did not leave hers.
She was not sure if her hand was still shaking, because in this moment, he was holding it still. Everything was still, just now.
Everything was suspended.
Silent.
She was not even sure if she was breathing, because she so hoped he might say another word. Even if it was only her name again.
If it had not been so silent, they likely would not have heard the door jostle before it opened. And if they hadn’t heard that, they would not have known to step away from one another before the Becks walked inside, looking frantic with worry.
“Reed!” Thaddeus Beck boomed, his wife hurrying in after him, pale as a ghost. “You were shot?!”
“Not shot,” he said, his voice suddenly back to its normal, carefree sigh. “Don’t step on that. It’s hot.”
“Mae!” Hannah cried, rushing forward with her arms extended. “We came as soon as we heard. A boy came crashing into the Vixen, saying Roland had been struck with gunfire. We scrambled out immediately. Oh, I am so relieved you are both all right!”
Mae caught her friend’s embrace with a little grunt at its force, wrapping her arms around the other woman with a reassuring squeeze, and glanced at Roland around the curve of Hannah’s copper head.
He was still watching her, even as his mouth moved in explanation to Mr. Beck, who was looming over his bedside, attempting to peek under the cool cloths sitting atop his cauterized wound.
He gave her a quirking tilt of the mouth. Not even half a smile. Perhaps only a quarter of one. Just an acknowledgement that they had, yet again, been interrupted, and he knew it too.
She sighed, exhaling heavily into Hannah’s hair, and released her, stepping back.
“I was just about to pour us both a drink,” she announced. “Will you two have one as well? And then I shall explain what happened.”