23. I Don’t Hate You
I DON’T HATE YOU
Ned came out of the shadows as Guin tore into Grosvenor Square. He was already beside her as she urged the horse to a stop. He lifted her off the horse, and before her feet touched the ground, she said, “It’s Bran. He’s injured. Get him to the conservatory.”
“Holy hell.” Ned took one moment to drag a hand down his face before lifting Bran with a grunt and tossing him over his shoulder.
“Quick!”
In less than a minute, they were inside, and Bran was sprawled atop her worktable.
“What the bloody hell happened?” Ned asked.
“Four men with guns. They attacked the coach. Hesperus helped fight them off. I suspect the bullet that tore through Bran’s shoulder was poisoned with the same stuff we put on our blades.”
“Fuck. Do you have the antidote?”
“I do now.” She threw open a cabinet beneath the worktable. “Pick and peel a lemon. Quick.”
“Right.” Ned ran off into the leaves.
“Ah!” She grabbed the bottle in the back of the cabinet.
Beneath Bran, red seeped onto her table.
She cupped his cheek, stroked his eyebrow. “Be strong. It’s just a scratch, remember?” Words to comfort herself. For all she knew, he couldn’t hear them.
His skin was pale, his shirt dark and wet. She ripped it off him as Ned returned with an armful of lemons. They rolled across the table when he released them, and he snatched one up, poked his thumbnail into the peel.
Uncorking the bottle, Guin poured all of it into the bullet wound. He didn’t even flinch, though more than one ingredient would sting. “At least we don’t have to rummage around for a bullet.” At least it wasn’t close to any vital organs. But he’d lost so much blood…
She wouldn’t break now.
“Help me lift him. I need to get the other side.”
Ned rolled Bran onto his side, and Guin poured a second bottle into the wound.
She began working on another lemon. “I need large pieces of the peel and pith attached. The white part on the inside.”
Ned nodded, and they worked until there were two pieces large enough to cover the holes.
“Bandages! I need bandages. Get Bentley. Sheets or linens or anything will do. Clean.”
Ned ran off, and Guin pressed the pith of one peel to the wound on Bran’s chest. When Ned and Bentley returned, they helped her roll him, she applied the other peel, then they wrapped the peels tight against his body with the linens.
The blood had already started to slow by the time they were done. But… Had he lost too much?
Her hands trembled on the worktable. She shook them out. No time to give in to panic. “Take him upstairs, please. Be gentle.”
Ned and Bentley carried him together, and she followed behind.
“Send for the doctor,” she said once they’d placed Bran on the bed. A fire was roaring in the grate, ready for its master to retire for the evening.
Oh, the duke had retired, all right. He was so still.
She went to the bathing chamber and turned the water on, using her heat to warm the copper tub. She filled a washbasin with warm water and took it and a pile of linen towels to Bran’s bedside.
His chest was red, blood already dried and flaking. One swipe of the water against his chest brought it back to sticky life, coating the linen. Soon she had to refresh the water, and in the gentle orb light of the bathing chamber, she noticed her hands.
Stained red.
She collapsed against the tub, nothing more than a sobbing, fragile body, her stomach heaving for the space of ten wailing seconds. At most.
She picked herself back up and brought fresh water to her husband, wet a clean cloth, and continued to clean him.
“Ned,” she called, her voice low and raspy. She cleared her throat to try again, but there he was, striding through the doorway.
“Whaddya need, Lady G?” he asked.
“Turn him on his side, please.”
He did as she refreshed her water and cleaned him, and by the time the blood was mostly gone from his body, it was time to check his bandages. Something could have come loose as they’d jostled him.
But the bleeding seemed to have slowed, stopped, even, and the linens did not need to be changed.
A rush of footsteps up the stairs then down the corridor. Bentley appeared in the doorway, another man with gray hair, holding a leather bag behind him.
“Dr. Mink, Your Grace,” Bentley said.
Dr. Mink stepped into the room, setting his bag on the bed and pulling several fairy orbs from it. He set them floating above Bran’s body. “What happened?”
“A gunshot wound,” Guin answered. “I suspect the bullet was coated with a potion to keep the blood from coagulating.”
“Hmmm.” Dr. Mink took a device—short, tubular, and metal—from his bag, set one end to his ear and the other to Bran’s chest. “Heartbeat is sluggish.”
“He… he lost a lot of blood.” What an inane thing to say. She pushed a hand through her hair. “I stopped the bleeding with the antidote and pressed lemon peels against the wound.”
The doctor sat upright, replacing his tube in his bag. He gathered and extinguished his orbs, putting them away too. “Witchery.” The word as much of a snap as the sound of his bag closing. “But sometimes witchery works.” He made for the door.
“Is there something we should do?” Guin asked, taking three rushing steps toward him.
“You’ve already done it. Watch for infection and fever. I’ll return tomorrow.”
“Will he… Will he…” Die?
“Live? Perhaps. Perhaps not. You’ll know better tomorrow.”
She listened to the doctor’s footsteps disappear down the stairs before she picked up a book from the bedside table and threw it out the door with a scream.
Bentley calmly picked up the book and returned it to her. In the firelight, she saw the title on the spine, embossed in gold: Curses of Southern England and How to Break Them.
She laughed, holding her belly and doubling over.
“Should we call the doc back?” Ned asked. “For the duchess?”
“Perhaps,” Bentley ventured, voice as hesitant as she’d ever heard it.
“No.” She straightened, wiping tears from her eyes. “No, I’m well. Help me move him to my bed.”
Ned picked Bran up like a babe and helped her dress him in a clean shirt and remove his boots then left. A fire had been prepared for her return, too, and Bentley stooped to rouse it, adding more fuel before he left too.
She bathed quickly, simply, with soap that used to smell like mint but now smelled like Bran, donned a shift and wrapper and crawled into her bed beside him.
On his back, arms limp at his sides, head turned toward her, he was nothing more than a shadow. She scooted closer, wrapping her hands around his arm, resting her forehead against his bicep.
“I don’t hate you,” she whispered. The despair that had crashed her to her knees earlier returned in a great, killing wave.
And through her sobbing, curled against his body, afraid to touch him, needing to touch him, she managed to repeat four words over and over again, a mantra, a prayer.
“I don’t hate you. I don’t hate you. I don’t hate you. ”
At some point during the night, she stopped crying and watched the up and down of his chest that proved he still lived.
Dawn brought a knock on the door.
She checked Bran’s pulse at his wrist and his neck, held her cheek against his lips to feel his breath across her skin, then left the bed, cinching her wrapper tight.
Bentley was behind the door.
“Yes?” she said.
“Mr. Grant is requesting to speak to you.”
“Grant?” She blinked several times, pressing the heel of her hand into one eye. “Grant… Hesperus?”
Bentley nodded. “I’ll tell him you are in no—”
“No. I’ll see him. Just… let me dress.” She did so quickly and in her simplest day dress, a pale blue affair that looked brighter than she felt.
“He’s in the conservatory,” Bentley said.
She nodded. “Would you… Could you… Would you find it outside your realm of duties to… watch my husband until I return?”
Her ribs were cinching her heart too tightly.
“Of course, Your Grace.” Said with polite coolness. But there was warmth in his eyes, in the curve of his lips.
“Thank you.”
She found Hesperus cleaning the worktable, the bucket beside him on the floor a ruby red that made Guin’s stomach turn.
“You do not have to do that,” she said.
He shrugged, continuing to clean. “It feels right. How is he?”
“Alive. Asleep. I’ll need to check the wound soon for infection. What of the attackers?”
“Taken care of.” His grin was like a jagged line carved with a knifepoint.
“Did they tell you who hired them?”
He shook his head. “But I found these in their pockets.” He stopped cleaning to pull two small, red bottles from his pockets.
“Madame Poppy’s potions.” Guin pinched the bridge of her nose. “That woman is unlikely to simply hand over a client list. But would you mind terribly trying to extricate one from her?”
He cracked his knuckles. “I wouldn’t mind at all, Your Grace.”
“I don’t think brute force will work. Are you capable of charm?”
He stood taller, swept his dark hair back, and turned his knife-slash grin into something softer, fuller lipped. He gave her a precise, courteous bow.
“I see. Well, work your charms on her, not me.”
He nodded, all military precision. “After this.” And he returned to cleaning the table.
“You do not have to. There are maids, and—”
“It’s a matter of respect. For him. For you.” He pointed at the end of the table. “I found your walking stick in the alley.”
The next breath was so much harder to pull into her ribs. She took the stick—ignoring the flecks of red spattered across the outer case—and managed a “Thank you,” then bustled about the conservatory to the shhrr shhrr of bristles brushing against the table.
Honey, garlic, ginger, a few flowering echinacea. Thyme. She put everything she might need in a basket, including several bowls of different makes—silver, copper, gold, wood—and pestles. She dragged it all up to her bedchamber and organized everything on the small writing desk near the window.
On the dark bed at the center of the room, Bran still slept. She sat on the edge at his side and put the back of her hand against his forehead—hot.
Her heart leapt into her throat. She forced it down.
A fever would come.
She would fight it.