AllFreeNovel
Share Us
PROLOGUE
Belgravia, London,
3 July 1912
“THAT’S GOING to leave a nasty scar,” said the doctor, without looking up.
Paul managed a wry smile. “Well, better than the amputation Mrs. Worry-guts here was predicting, anyway.”
“Very funny!” Lucy snapped. “I am not a worry-guts, and as for you … Mr. Thoughtless Idiot, don’t go joking about it! You know how quickly wounds can get infected, and then you’d be lucky to survive at all at this date. No antibiotics, and all the doctors are ignorant and useless.”
“Thank you very much,” said the doctor, spreading a brownish paste on the wound he had just stitched up. It burned like hell, and Paul had difficulty in suppressing a grimace. He only hoped he hadn’t left bloodstains on Lady Tilney’s elegant chaise longue.
“Not that they can help it, of course.” Lucy was making an effort to sound friendlier. She even tried a smile. Rather a grim smile, but it’s the thought that counts. “I’m sure you’re doing your best,” she told the doctor.
“Dr. Harrison is the best,” Lady Tilney assured her.
“And the only one available,” murmured Paul. Suddenly he felt incredibly tired. There must have been a sedative in the sweetish stuff that the doctor had given him to drink.
“The most discreet, anyway,” said Dr. Harrison. He put a snow-white bandage on Paul’s arm. “And to be honest, I can’t imagine that the treatment of cuts and stab wounds will be so very different in eighty years’ time.”
Lucy took a deep breath, and Paul guessed what was coming. A lock of hair had strayed from the ringlets pinned up on top of her head, and she put it back behind her ear with a look of spirited defiance. “Well, maybe not as a general rule, but if bacteria … er, those are single-celled organisms that—”
“Drop it, Luce!” Paul interrupted her. “Dr. Harrison knows perfectly well what bacteria are!” The wound was still burning horribly, and at the same time he felt so exhausted that he wanted to close his eyes and drift away into sleep. But that would only upset Lucy even more. Although her blue eyes were sparkling furiously, he knew her anger only hid her concern for him, and—even worse—her fears. For her sake, he mustn’t show either his poor physical state or his own desperation. So he went on talking. “After all, we’re not in the Middle Ages; we’re in the twentieth century. It’s a time of trailblazing medical advances. The first ECG device is already yesterday’s news, and for the last few years, they’ve known the cause of syphilis and how to cure it.”
“Someone was paying attention like a good boy in his study of the mysteries!” Lucy looked as if she might explode any minute now. “How nice for you!”
Dr. Harrison made his own contribution. “And last year that Frenchwoman Marie Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.”
“So what did she invent? The nuclear bomb?”
“Sometimes you’re shockingly uneducated, Lucy. Marie Curie invented radio—”
“Oh, do shut up!” Lucy had crossed her arms and was staring angrily at Paul, ignoring Lady Tilney’s reproachful glance. “You can keep your lectures to yourself right now! You! Could! Have! Been! Dead! So will you kindly tell me how I was supposed to avert the disaster ahead of us without you?” At this point, her voice shook. “Or how I could go on living without you at all?”
“I’m sorry, Princess.” She had no idea just how sorry he was.
“Huh!” said Lucy. “You can leave out that remorseful doggy expression.”
“There’s no point in thinking about what might have happened, my dear child,” said Lady Tilney, shaking her head as she helped Dr. Harrison to pack his instruments back in his medical bag. “It all turned out for the best. Paul was unlucky, but lucky as well.”
“Well, yes, it could have ended much worse, but that doesn’t mean it was all for the best!” cried Lucy. “Nothing turned out for the best, nothing at all!” Her eyes filled with tears, and the sight almost broke Paul’s heart. “We’ve been here for nearly three months, and we haven’t done any of the things we planned to do, just the opposite—we’ve only made matters worse! We finally had those wretched papers in our hands, and then Paul simply gave them away!”
“Maybe I was a little too hasty.” He let his head drop back on the pillow. “But at that moment, I felt it was the right thing to do.” Because at that moment, I felt horribly close to death. Lord Alastair’s sword could easily have finished him off. However, he mustn’t let Lucy know that. “If we have Gideon on our side, there’s still a chance. As soon as he’s read those papers, he’ll understand what we’re doing and why.” Or let’s hope so, he thought.
“But we don’t know exactly what’s in the papers ourselves. They could all be in code, or … oh, you don’t even know just what you handed to Gideon,” said Lucy. “Lord Alastair could have palmed anything off on you—old bills, love letters, blank sheets of paper.…”
This idea had occurred to Paul himself some time ago, but what was done was done. “Sometimes you just have to trust things will be all right,” he murmured, wishing that applied to himself. The thought that he might have handed Gideon a bundle of worthless documents was bad enough; even worse was the chance that the boy might take them straight off to Count Saint-Germain. That would mean they’d thrown away their only trump card. But Gideon had said he loved Gwyneth, and the way he said it had been … well, convincing.
“He promised me,” Paul tried to say, but it came out as an inaudible whisper. It would have been a lie, anyway. He hadn’t had time to hear Gideon’s answer.
“Trying to work with the Florentine Alliance was a stupid idea,” he heard Lucy say. His eyes had closed. Whatever Dr. Harrison had given him, it worked fast.
“And yes, I know, I know,” Lucy went on. “We ought to have dealt with the situation ourselves.”
“But you’re not murderers, my child,” said Lady Tilney.
“What’s the difference between committing a murder and getting someone else to do it?” Lucy heaved a deep sigh, and although Lady Tilney contradicted her vigorously (“My dear, don’t say such things! You didn’t ask anyone to commit murder, you only handed over a little information!”), she suddenly sounded inconsolable. “We’ve got everything wrong that we could get wrong, Paul. All we’ve done in three months is to waste any amount of time and Margaret’s money, and we’ve involved far too many other people.”
