Page 48 of An Unusual Wager

Chapter Twenty-One

Verity, with Kitty and Miss Bligh close behind her, ran out of the dining room and into the enormous entrance hall. Through the open front doors of the loggia she could see a carriage drawn up on the gravel drive, its doors open. There appeared to be several people milling about near it, but none of them were Jonathan.

Without pausing, she ran down the wide steps and out onto the drive. Cousin Walter, who’d been standing looking into the carriage, turned towards her. What on earth was he doing here? And who was that with him?

“Verity!” exclaimed the thin young man standing beside Walter. “My God, you’ve hardly changed.”

But she wasn’t interested in renewing old acquaintances with the man she recognized as her childhood friend. She gave him a swift nod as he and Walter moved aside and let her look into the carriage.

A rough bed had been constructed from seat to seat out of something that looked uncannily like an old door covered in rugs. Lying on it, his face horribly disfigured by swelling and what was going to be massive bruising, lay Jonathan. Or at least she thought it must be Jonathan. Hard to tell with his face so battered. His eyes were closed and as far as she could tell on this panicked first viewing, he didn’t appear to be breathing.

Her heart gave a terrible lurch of fear before she saw the reassuring rise of his chest. Her heart, however, did not react by slowing down. “What’s happened?” she asked, turning accusing eyes on her cousins.

“He’s dying,” wailed Kitty. “Look at him.” Tears streamed down her face.

Walter shook his head. “He’s not dying, young Kitty. Be assured.” But he didn’t sound particularly confident.

Verity grabbed his arm. Someone needed to take charge here. “Tell me what’s happened to him. Now.”

Lucas and two of the footmen were standing back, expressions of deep shock on their normally imperturbable faces. Unsurprising, considering the state of their master.

Walter stared at Verity. “Jonnie and I were set upon on our way home from White’s last night. This morning, I mean. Seven footpads. Seven to two is pretty bad odds. Jonnie managed to kill one and incapacitate two, but that still left four. I took care of one. We’d have won, I’m sure, if one of them hadn’t broken his sword arm for him.”

She looked past Walter at the splint on Jonathan’s right arm where it lay across his body.

“A fellow in one of the nearby houses heard the noise we were all making. Must’ve woken the entire street but he was the only one who took it into his head to come to our rescue. Looked out of his window and fortunately for us fetched his pistols. Came out shouting the odds and our attackers fled.” He paused, a slightly shifty look creeping across his worried face. “They dragged their dead friend off with them.” His face cleared. “As luck would have it, the fellow was a doctor. Got him to patch Jonnie up and he said we could go home.” He colored. “Took it upon myself to bring him here. He needs a nurse…” His voice trailed off.

“Bring him in.” She’d think about the fact there was a dead body somewhere that Jonnie had caused and the implications of this later. She turned to Lucas and the footmen. “Help my cousins bring His Lordship up to his room and send someone to fetch his own physician. He must have one. Do you know who he is?”

Lucas, his face pale, nodded. “Yes, my lady. I’ll send one of the grooms on a fast horse immediately to fetch Dr. Collins.” And he hurried away to fulfil his commission.

A few footmen later and with Walter and Robert helping, it took no time at all to get the makeshift stretcher up the stairs and into what had to be Jonathan’s own room. All the while, Verity noted, he gave no hint of coming to his senses. Was he just deeply asleep or dangerously unconscious? She didn’t like the look of his face. Someone had given him a terrible beating.

Once he was lying on his bed, a huge, four poster edifice, larger than the one in her own bedroom, there remained the problem of his clothing. “Scissors,” Verity ordered. “Now.” Two of the footmen departed with the old door.

The redoubtable Miss Bligh turned to Kitty, who’d come into the bedroom and was standing by the head of the bed, her hands covering her mouth, tears still running freely. “You come along with me, Katherine. Your brother is most certainly not dying, but he needs care and attention you cannot give him, and you do not need to witness that. I’ll take you downstairs for a fortifying hot chocolate. Come with me now.”

With Kitty gone and the scissors having arrived, Verity, for want of anyone else doing anything, took charge. Walter and Robert stepped back, although she missed their exchange of conspiratorial glances. With swift efficiency she snipped Jonathan’s shirt away from his body and with the help of one of the footmen, managed to lift him enough to remove its tattered remains.

He possessed an impressively muscled torso, most of it covered in marks that were already darkening to bruising, and a chest endowed with a fair amount of curling dark hair. Not that Verity had never seen a man’s naked chest before. Her life had not been so sheltered. She’d also tended to a fair number of wounds in her time and was not at all squeamish. Luckily.

A bandage had been applied to his left shoulder, the blood on it dried. “Has he been shot?” Verity asked. “Since when do London footpads, or footpads in any city, go armed with pistols? Surely their choice of weapon is a knife or cudgel of some sort? Pistols cost money.”

“Er, some do,” Walter said, sounding abashed. “One of these did, at any rate. He was aiming for me, would you believe it, and Jonnie leapt at him and caught the bullet. Didn’t seem to affect him at all, though.” His voice held admiration. “Ran the fellow through with his sword stick. That was the one he killed.” His eyes darted from left to right as though he didn’t want to look her in the eye. There was something here he was keeping to himself.

Verity sighed. Men. In Verity’s experience most were quite fond of a bit of violence. Some of them a sight too fond.

Jonathan groaned but his eyes didn’t open. One of them couldn’t have anyway, as the left side of his face, including his eye, was swollen and reddened. He was going to have an amazing black eye before long.

“Boots and then breeches,” Verity said. “You can help, Walter.”

Walter hesitated. “Shouldn’t you go out of the room?”

She set her hands on her hips. “Why? He’s my husband.”

“But, er, but…”

Verity fixed him with a hard stare. Did he know she’d refused conjugal rights to Jonathan? And did he think she’d never seen a naked man before? Traveling through a Europe that had been dangerously war torn from time to time had provided her with a far more liberal education than any young English girl would ever get. And wounded men, whom on occasion she’d had to tend to, often had to be undressed to be treated. “I have no qualms about this, I can assure you.”