She Saved Him #2
“It’s no matter. But, as you can see, Lord Hawkins has had a little accident,” Beatrice said briskly. “Please bring clean linen, a roll of bandage, and some of Mrs. Crabshaw’s salve, if you can find it. And do be discreet, if you don’t mind.”
The maid thankfully gathered her wits quite quickly, bobbing a curtsy with a simple “Yes, my lady,” before she quickly struck a flint to the hearth and rushed out of the room.
When the door closed, the room turned still.
For the first time in weeks, she was alone with Gideon.
In her bedchamber.
With Gideon seated beside the fire, his black coat discarded, his shirtsleeve torn and bloodied, and the bed standing far too prominently behind him.
Beatrice turned briskly toward the basin.
Water. Cloth. Wound.
This was a time to be practical.
But when she stood before him, staring at the ragged tear and crimson stain on his sleeve, she realized the obvious difficulty.
His shirt was going to have to come off.
Gideon seemed to realize it at the same instant.
“Oh,” Beatrice said.
His mouth twitched. “Yes.”
“The sleeve is ruined,” she said, because apparently she had decided to discuss laundry.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“I cannot clean the wound through linen.”
“No.”
Another silence.
Then Gideon lifted his uninjured hand toward the buttons at his throat, but the motion pulled at his arm and his jaw tightened.
Beatrice stepped forward at once. “Stop that. Let me—”
“I have undressed myself before.”
“Not while bleeding.”
“On occasion, yes, while bleeding.”
Beatrice rolled her eyes. “Don’t be difficult.”
He lowered his hand with a grimace and gave her a begrudging nod.
Very slowly, Beatrice reached for the first button. When her fingers brushed the warm skin at the base of his throat, they both went still.
She had touched his throat before. She had kissed him there.
But she had never seen him unclothed.
Well, not since she’d spied on him and Dash swimming on the beach a very long time ago…
She drew a slow breath and reminded herself to be careful.
One button. Then the next. His breathing altered just enough for her to notice, and because she noticed everything about him, her own breath fluttered in answer.
The shirt parted beneath her fingers, revealing a narrow line of chest, then more. Warm skin. A smattering of dark hair. The strong column of his throat. The hollow just beneath it, where his pulse beat steadily, stubbornly, beautifully alive.
Her hands were not as steady as she would have liked.
When she finished the buttons, Gideon shifted forward. Together, awkwardly, they worked the shirt free from the waistband of his trousers. Her knuckles brushed the taut plane of his stomach.
“Lift your arm,” she said.
But there was roughness in her voice now.
She helped draw the linen upward. For one absurd moment, the shirt caught at his shoulder, and Gideon gave a soft curse while Beatrice found herself almost laughing from nerves.
Nerves and something else.
Then it came free.
Gideon sat before her, bare to the waist, lamplight moving over the broad shape of his shoulders, the defined strength of his chest, the dark hair narrowing over his stomach. He was not ornamental. Not some marble statue designed for polite admiration. This was Gideon. Warm. Real.
Alive.
The word lodged somewhere beneath her ribs.
Tonight, she had come far too close to learning what the world would feel like without him in it.
Beatrice pressed the cloth to his wound.
His breath hissed between his teeth.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” His voice was low. “Do what you must.”
She dipped the cloth into the water again and wrung it out.
For a moment, she could not quite bring herself to touch him.
Because all she could see was Hatherleigh in that hideous boar mask, the pistol aimed at Gideon’s chest.
She saw Gideon moving forward instead of away. Saw Hatherleigh’s finger tighten. Heard the crack of the shot all over again.
This wound could have been so much worse.
A few inches. One slight shift of Hatherleigh’s hand, and Gideon might not have been sitting before her.
Alive.
Beatrice forced herself to focus on the cloth. Only when her hands had steadied did she press it to his skin again.
“Why,” she asked, “was Lord Hatherleigh attempting to kill you?”
She felt Gideon’s gaze on her before he answered. “Do you remember what I told you about Groby?”
“That he was attempting to claim the Lovington title?”
“Yes.” He watched her hands move over his arm. “I have been… somewhat involved in efforts to thwart that claim.”
“Ah.” It didn’t surprise her. Not really.
“Hatherleigh appears to have been hired to discourage me from continuing.”
“Well, murder tends to be rather discouraging.”
“When done properly, I suppose. But that’s what you get when you pay the first lout with a grudge rather than handling your own affairs like a proper gentleman.”
“I take it you’re not particularly discouraged, then.”
“Not in the slightest.”
Beatrice continued cleaning the torn skin, but her thoughts had shifted.
Gideon had placed himself in danger.
For Sebastian’s mother. For Sebastian’s legacy. For a dukedom that had never been his to protect.
He had no claim to any of it except loyalty.
And guilt.
And Beatrice was all too aware that her first instinct was to tell him to stop.
To caution him. Scold him. Perhaps even demand he remove himself from the matter before Groby could make another attempt.
The words rose automatically.
Then faltered.
Because Gideon was not reckless.
Not truly.
And he was not careless.
“You will be cautious,” she said instead.
His gaze lifted to hers.
It had not been a question.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then one corner of his mouth moved faintly. “That is what I tell myself about you.”
Beatrice looked down at the cloth in her hand, stained pink with his blood.
“It is rather alarming,” she said slowly, “when someone you… care about might be in danger.”
Gideon did not move.
“Alarming is too small a word,” he said.
Her throat tightened.
“And you want them to stop,” she continued. “Even when you know they’re doing what they believe is right.”
“Yes,” he said softly.
“You want to protect them.”
“Yes.”
A hard little ache rose in her throat.
“Perhaps.” Gideon spoke softly as she drew the cloth gently around the edge of the wound. “Perhaps protection doesn’t have to mean restriction.”
Her breath hitched.
“Perhaps,” he said. “It can mean standing near enough to help, and far enough away to allow your person to live the life they choose.”
Her fingers paused against his skin.
For a moment, the room felt very still.
Then, of course, someone knocked.
Beatrice startled, though Gideon did not. He merely looked at the door with a faint expression of regret, as though the interruption had been both expected and unwelcome.
The same maid from earlier entered with a tray. “Clean linens, my lady. Bandages. Mrs. Crabshaw’s salve. Vinegar, and some spirits as well.” Her gaze flicked once to Gideon’s bare chest before snapping dutifully back to the tray. “For his lordship’s pain.”
“Thank you,” Beatrice said. “That will do very well.”
She did not mention that Gideon wouldn’t be drinking those spirits.
Besides, she might need a dram or two herself.
The maid set the tray on the washstand, then hesitated only long enough to determine that she was interrupting something considerably more delicate than the tending of a bullet wound.
“I’ll be just outside if you need anything else, my lady.”
“Thank you.”
The door closed again.
Beatrice looked at the spirits. A decanter of brandy, no doubt taken from Dash’s study.
She paused. “Are you certain you don’t want a little? To remove the sting?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Beatrice glanced up.
His gaze was fixed on the amber liquid as though it were poison.
“No,” he said again, quieter this time. “Thank you.”
She set it aside. “Very well.”
For a moment, she thought that would be the end of it.
Then he exhaled.
“After you and I… argued. After I learned you’d left London without—” He stopped. Swallowed. “Without speaking to me first. Without saying goodbye. Dash and I made a night of it.”
“At White’s?”
“Among other disreputable establishments, yes.”
Beatrice dipped the cloth into the vinegar. The wound was ugly, but shallow.
Thank God.
She knew, of course, the sort of trouble Gideon and Dash had once found together. Before Lady Hannah. Before Ambrosia. Before age and consequence forced respectability upon them.
Still, something sharp and unpleasant moved through her.
Not surprise, exactly. Or outrage. Something sharper.
“Brothels?” she asked, very carefully.
Gideon’s gaze cut to hers. “Yes.”
Beatrice kept staring at his arm.
“We didn’t… Neither of us…”
Gideon sighed and continued.
“There was something in my tea,” he said grimly. “I could taste it… And yet, I drank it anyway.”
Concentrating on his words, she did not look up. Instead, she carefully drizzled some of the pungent liquid onto a clean square of linen.
His forearm was warm beneath her fingers, the tendons shifting slightly whenever he moved. Dark hair brushed her fingertips as she steadied him.
Beatrice kept her attention there.
On the wound.
And simply listened.
“Later that night, I had… visions.” The word emerged reluctantly.
Beatrice stilled. “Of what?”
He gave a short, humorless breath. “I thought I saw Sebastian.”
Oh.
“It felt real,” he said. “Far too real.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
“It is a terrible thing,” she said carefully, “not being able to trust one’s own mind.” She kept her attention on the linen in her hands.
She had spent years trying to reconcile what she remembered with what she did not. Sharp fragments. Blank spaces. Certainty in one moment, doubt in the next.
But she did not say that.
She merely pressed the cloth gently to his arm.
Then his gaze returned to the spirits. “Pain, I understand. It is honest. I far prefer it to another temporary loss of my wits.”
Beatrice dabbed some vinegar directly on the wound.
He hissed, but did not pull away.