Anthony proposed last night, and I said yes!
We are keeping it a secret from everyone until he returns from Scotland with his grandmother’s engagement ring…
—from the diary of Miss Venus Merriwell, aged 21
Gal couldn’t stop shaking.
Whether from the cold or the fear or the ordeal—or an amalgamation of all three—he couldn’t say. In all honesty, he was so goddamn cold he was barely capable of speech anyway, so he didn’t suppose it mattered.
All that mattered was he was still here, and she was right beside him.
He had a vague recollection of Venus bundling him in a hackney. Of her holding him tight as she rubbed heat into his muscles. Then being draped around her as she hoisted him up the four flights of stairs to his sparse apartment.
“We need to get you out of these wet clothes.” She peeled the shirt from his skin and swaddled his top half in the blanket she had stripped from his bed before she set to work on his breeches. “We need to get you warm.”
“Where’s the boy?” Gal had lost track of him somewhere on the ice. “Did he make it?”
“He’s next door. With the reverend and the physician.”
“Will he make it?”
“The doctor is coming to see you next, so we can ask him.” She grunted as she wrestled the tight kerseymere down his legs, then steadied his quaking hands as he stepped out of it. He heard the sodden fabric slap against his bare floorboards as she tossed the last of his clothing to one side and supposed he should be embarrassed that he now stood as naked as a jaybird before her. But he didn’t have the energy. Every last ounce he possessed was being used to keep his body upright. Because for some reason it kept curling as if his muscles had all shrunk or shriveled. Muscles that now burned—except bizarrely with cold rather than heat.
She set to work drying him with a towel while he shivered on the mattress, and then she tucked him into bed while she lit a fire.
“Hot tea!” Mrs. Witherspoon dashed through his bedchamber door with a steaming mug and for the first time in his life he was grateful for it. As he cradled it in his hands, she apologized. “Doctor’s orders, I’m afraid, Gal, so it has to be tea not coffee, but it’s loaded with honey.”
“How’s the boy?”
“Doc says he’s better than he expected but not out of the woods completely. The cold has sent his body into a bad shock, most definitely, but so long as the plucky Johnny keeps rallying, he thinks the boy might beat it. All thanks to you.”
“Johnny? Is that his name?”
“Short for Jonathan, he said.” Mrs. Witherspoon smiled. “Jonathan Hicks.”
“If he can say his name, that’s gotta be a good sign, hasn’t it?” He searched Venus’s face for confirmation. “Means he’s conscious and compos mentis.”
“It does indeed.” She stroked his cheek, and he leaned into it.“Mrs. Witherspoon will keep us posted of any change, won’t you? And she’ll bring more blankets.”
She held him tight as soon as the matron left and Gal must have drifted off, because he woke with a start and Mrs. Witherspoon was back. There was a bed warmer near his feet and he was now swaddled in so many blankets and eiderdowns he could barely move. But at least he wasn’t shivering anymore.
On the other side of the room, the older woman and Venus were talking in hushed tones. “Doctor won’t be long, Vee, but says it’s imperative neither patient is left alone. At least overnight, as anything nasty will show itself in the first few hours.”
“You watch the boy and I’ll stay with Galahad.”
“The reverend says that for propriety’s sake he’ll…”
“I said thatI’llstay with Galahad.” Venus’s lovely blue eyes and tone brooked no argument. “He’s family. And hardly in any fit state to… you know…”
Unfortunately, Galahad couldn’t argue with that because he likely wasn’t in any fit state. He suspected his privates had shriveled and shrunk like all his damn muscles had.
Good grief! Had she seen that?
Concerned that she might judge him on it, he was sorely tempted to take a peek beneath the blanket to see how bad that shrinkage was, and if it was bad, to see if he could surreptitiously tease his frozen friend out of hiding. Although to what purpose he had no clue, as he could hardly whip it out to prove he wasn’t usually such a disappointment.
“Frostbite in the extremities might be a problem, too.” As if she had read his mind, Mrs. Witherspoon gave him something else to worry about. Noticing he was awake, she smiled.
“Do you have any numbness of the nose, fingers, or toes, Galahad?” He touched his nose and wiggled all ten toes to check if he could feel them and shook his head when he did. But his recently oh-so-rampant manhood was another matter entirely. He couldn’t immediately feel any sensation in his nether regions, and he could hardly wiggle thatto check with ladies present. “Any pins and needles or blisters?” He shook his head again, quietly dying inside at the thought of blistersthere. “Because if you develop blisters, those blisters could turn gangrenous and we would need to have all of that dead flesh chopped off.”
