“In and out, I expect.” The doctor plucked out a small bloody corner of fabric and shook it onto the floor. “A soldier, wasn’t he? They know what to expect.” He lifted some tissue out of the way and peered into the wound, and clucked his tongue. “Looks as if the ball struck bone, but didn’t break it completely.” His elbow cocked up as he elevated his angle, digging deeper in Valen’s chest.
Valen bellowed like an angry bull. Elizabeth expected at any minute that the two footmen and doctor would be sent flying across the room. But Valen only rolled his head back, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, growling.
“Right! Got it.” The surgeon pulled out a splinter of bone, dropped it in a metal dish, and smiled as if he’d discovered a gold nugget amongst the muscle and gore.
Bile rose in Elizabeth’s throat. She held her stomach and turned away.
“Hand me that one.” Without looking at her, the doctor waved his fingers at his array of instruments. “Quickly. The long extractor.”
She took a deep breath, ignored her stupid stomach, and gave him the long thin pincers, and braced herself for Valen’s next cry of pain. But his head bowed forward, sweat-drenched strands of gold and fire fell beside his agonized features. She clamped her trembling lips together and sent desperate prayers to heaven.
The doctor muttered to himself and fished deeper for the lead. At last he withdrew, holding a misshapen bullet in his forceps. He inspected it before plunking it down on the table. “Looks to be in one piece.”
Blood cascaded in a steady stream down Valen’s chest. “Thread that needle with the silk.” He pointed at a card wrapped with white thread. “And call for more rags.”
He pulled a small cylindrical flask from his apothecary, poured some of the yellow sulfur powder onto a slip of paper, curved the parchment, and funneled the contents into Valen’s wound. “Piece of good luck it didn’t hit the lung. A near thing.”
Elizabeth’s hand shook as she aimed a length of silk suture at the eye of a wickedly curved needle. She couldn’t help but envision the point stabbing into Valen’s flesh. Piercing the very shoulder she had rested her head against and felt so comforted and safe.
If only she hadn’t screamed.
She would be dead, but he might have been spared. It had all happened so quickly, before she had time to think. She had awakened and Merót stood beside her bed leering at her. The scream had torn out of her throat unbidden.
Who could have known Valen would be the one to hear? The one to race to her bedchamber? Merót must have guessed—vile fox. She bit down hard on the corner of her lip to suppress her tears. If only she hadn’t screamed.
She handed the doctor the threaded needle.
Five loose stitches, the doctor did not close the wound completely. “Seepage,” he explained, and unscrewed a jar of leeches. He placed three of the ghastly things atop the oozing wound.
Elizabeth cringed as the dark sluglike creatures settled themselves on Valen’s swollen flesh.
“Stops the bleeding,” the doctor claimed.
She grimaced, skeptical that anything so repulsive might serve a beneficial purpose.
“I have it on good authority that Napoleon’s surgeons used them on the battlefield all the time.”
A recommendation she could do without. Devil take Napoleon. If he hadn’t made war none of this would have happened.
After the servants mopped up the blood, and they padded the bed with extra linen and laid Valen back against a mound of pillows, Elizabeth whispered to the surgeon. “Will he live?” A foolish question. Who but God could answer?
“It’s possible. The extraction went well.” He rubbed at his scraggly side-whiskers and stared at their patient. “I must report to Lord Ransley.”
She nodded and sat down to have a good cry.
22
A Torn Tapestry of Foolish Dreams
Silent tears choked her, assailed her complexion, running in salty streams, crumpling her already haggard face. Wrinkles and lines no longer mattered to her.
I should not have screamed.
If she hadn’t screamed, Valen would be alive and well. She would be in the next world with her father, and that venerable gentleman would have the pleasure of scolding her for eternity and telling her exactly how she ought to have behaved. Instead, Valen lay dying, while the vicious marmot lived on—a mean waddling hedgehog with claws and a poisonous tongue.
It should have been me. Why had he stepped in the way of a bullet meant for her?
She stood up and brushed away the tears as she went to him. Her fingers gently trailed over the muscles of his arm. Why would he risk his life to protect a wretched useless marmot?
Elizabeth heard a commotion downstairs and didn’t care. The world might come crashing down around her ears. It didn’t matter. If Valen didn’t survive, none of it mattered. She wondered how she ever could have been so foolish to think she might trade her heart to repair the family fortune. She would have been no different from her father—chasing after money and neglecting those who really mattered.
Clattering outside the door, men talking, the sound of boots reporting on the stone stairs—none of it interested her.
She lightly brushed back Valen’s wavy hair.
“Izzie!”
“Robert?” She turned.
In three strides, her brother was at her side. “I failed you. The blighter got away from me.”
None of that mattered. “It’s over.” All that mattered was the future.
Robert still blustered his excuses. “Lost Merót’s trail on the outskirts of London. Had a feeling he’d come here. But we had to check all of the possibilities. It took too long. Then I heard that wretched screaming in my head and I knew.” He patted her. “Izzie! Izzie! Stop crying.”
She hadn’t realized she was. Robert clasped her shoulders and gave her a shake. She suddenly became aware there were two soldiers in the room with them and fought to compose herself.
Robert let go of her and turned to Valen. “How
