No pulse.
Ethan’s last breath escaped in a sigh.
He was gone.
“No, you don’t,” Garrett said fiercely, swabbing his arm and picking up a scalpel. “You’re bloody well not going to do this to me, you sow-buggering bastard!” Deftly pinching a fold of cool skin, she made a quick incision to expose a depleted vein. “Hand me the director,” she said through gritted teeth. As Trenear hesitated over the tray of instruments, she snapped, “The pointy one.” Immediately he picked it up and handed it over to her.
Within seconds, Garrett had lifted the vein with the director, made a transverse cut with a scalpel, and inserted a cannula. While Lord Trenear held the cannula in place, she connected it with the transfuser and used the pumps and aspirator to withdraw every dram of air in the line and flush it with sterile water. Although she’d never used this kind of transfuser before, her hands somehow knew what to do, guided by a part of her brain that was thinking ten times faster than usual. A twist of a silver stopcock, and blood began to flow into the vein.
The two men were now connected by a hermetically sealed channel.
Garrett exerted pressure on the balloon pump to release the blood into Ethan’s arm at a slow pace, to keep from overwhelming the heart. Her lips moved in a ceaseless incantation: come back come back come back . . .
After one minute had passed, a miraculous change came over the lifeless form. His pulse resumed. His color rose rapidly. His chest lifted once, twice, and he began to breathe in deep, fitful gasps. Another minute, and he was perspiring and twitching.
Garrett let out a sigh of relief that sounded embarrassingly like a whimper. Feeling her eyes brim, she covered them with one hand and fought for self-control. A few profane words escaped her lips as a tear slid down to her chin.
“You curse so beautifully,” she heard Ravenel say dryly. “Few women can do it with such natural ease.”
“I learned at the Sorbonne,” Garrett said with her hand still over her eyes. “You should hear me curse in French.”
“I’d rather not, or I might fall in love with you. By the way, does Ransom have enough blood now? Because I’m starting to feel a bit light-headed.”
After Garrett had cleaned her instruments and the transfuser equipment, she checked Ethan’s vital signs for the tenth time. Pulse, one hundred. Temperature, ninety-nine. Respirations, thirty. He was sweating profusely, and stirring uneasily as the effects of anesthesia slowly faded.
Leaving him in the care of Mrs. Abbot, Garrett unsteadily made her way to a corner of the library and sat on a small carved stepladder. Bending forward, she rested her head on her knees. She was distantly aware that she was shaking as if from a seizure. She couldn’t think what to do about it, only crouched there and quivered until her teeth rattled.
Someone was beside her, lowering to his haunches. A large, warm hand settled high on her back. A sideways glance revealed that it was West Ravenel. There were no glib comments, only a calm, friendly quietness that soothed her. His touch reminded her a little of the way Ethan would sometimes stroke or gently grip the nape of her neck. She began to relax, the tremors fading. He stayed like that, the pressure of his hand light and comforting, until she let out a shuddering sigh and sat up.
Ravenel’s hand slid away. Wordlessly he gave her a glass filled with a small portion of whiskey, or brandy—something alcoholic—and she took it gratefully. Her teeth clattered against the edge of the glass as she took a swallow. The smooth amber fire helped to drain a few last shudders of nervous tension.
“It’s been almost an hour,” Ravenel said. “The transfusion was successful, wasn’t it?”
Garrett drank again. “He won’t die from the damage done by the bullet,” she said dully, her fingers clutched around the glass. “He’ll die from what was allowed inside by the bullet track. Viruses, bacteria, lethal microbes, chemical contaminants. I’d rather have immersed him in poison than that river. The Thames would turn up Neptune himself within five minutes.”
“I wouldn’t say death is a foregone conclusion,” Ravenel said. “He comes from tough stock. A long line of vicious bastards. As he’s already proven, he can survive things other men wouldn’t.”
“You’re acquainted with his family?” she asked.
“He hasn’t told you, then. The Ravenels are his family. His father was the old earl. If Ransom hadn’t been born a bastard, he would be Lord Trenear right now, instead of my brother.”
Chapter 17
West smiled slightly as Garrett Gibson stared at him with dazed green eyes. “That explains the resemblance,” she said after a long moment.
How very small she seemed, tucked in the corner of the library with her knees drawn up. For the past hour and a half, she had been a commanding figure, strung tight with energy, her gaze stern and steely. She had worked in millimeters, doing tiny, crucial things to veins and cellular tissue with astonishing precision. Although West knew nothing about surgery, he’d understood that he was witnessing someone perform with rare skill.
Now, in her exhaustion, the brilliant surgeon resembled an anxious schoolgirl who had taken a wrong turn on the way home.
West liked her a great deal. In fact, he was rather sorry now that he’d kept shrugging off Helen’s efforts to introduce them. He’d envisioned the female doctor as a severe matron, probably hostile toward men, and Helen’s assurances that Dr. Gibson was quite pretty hadn’t been at all convincing. Helen, with her completely unjustified affection for humanity, loved to overestimate people.
But Garrett Gibson was more than pretty. She was riveting. An intelligent, accomplished woman with an elusive quality . . . a suggestion of hidden tenderness . . . that intrigued him.
The evening had been one surprise after another, starting with Ethan Ransom being carried in half dead by a pair of terrified river police who clearly wanted nothing to do with the affair. Having stopped their patrol boat beneath Blackfriars Bridge for a forbidden drink of whiskey from a flask, the officers could hear the murder in progress above them. After the assassin had left the bridge, they’d managed to haul the wounded man aboard and searched his pockets, and had found nothing to identify him other than West’s calling card. But they’d heard enough to realize that reporting the matter would result in more trouble than they cared to deal with.
“Who did this?” West had asked Ransom as he lay in a filthy, crumpled heap on the settee.
“One of Jenkyn’s men,” Ransom had gasped, fighting to stay conscious, his eyes unfocused.
“Jenkyn ordered it?”
“Yes. Don’t trust police. Felbrigg. When they find me . . .”
“They won’t find you.”
“They’ll come.”
Let them try, West had thought, livid as he saw what had been done to his kinsman.
Kathleen had bent over the dying man, using a soft white cloth to wipe some of the grime from his face. Ransom lost consciousness for several seconds, and reawakened with a groan. “May I send for someone?” she had asked gently, and he’d responded with a string of nearly unintelligible words that she’d somehow managed to make sense of. She had turned to West with a perplexed and sorrowing look. “He wants Dr. Gibson.”
“Gibson’s in King’s Cross, isn’t she? We can fetch our family physician far more quickly.”
“He doesn’t want her as a doctor,” Kathleen had said softly. “He wants the woman he loves.”
It had struck West as a highly improbable pairing, the doctor and the government agent. But after seeing them together, he realized their connection didn’t have to be understood by anyone except the two of them.
Rising to his feet and looking down at Garrett’s strained face, West saw that she’d nearly reached the breaking point. She stared back at him vacantly, too drained and overwhelmed to ask a single question.
“Doctor,” he said gently, “I’ve just spoken to my brother, who’s arranged for us to take Ransom to Hampshire. We’re leaving in a few hours.”
“H
e can’t be moved.”
“He’s not safe here. No one else is, either. There’s no choice.”
Garrett snapped back to attention, her gaze sharpening. “All the jolting could kill him. It’s out of the question.”
“I swear to you he’ll be conveyed quickly and carefully.”
“On rough country roads?” she asked scornfully.
“We’re transporting him by private train carriage. We’ll reach the family estate by dawn. It’s quiet and secluded there. He’ll be able to heal in privacy.”
West could hardly wait to return to Eversby Priory. He was beginning to hate London and its hard-hearted chaos of streets, buildings, vehicles, and trains, filth, smoke, glitter, and grandeur. Oh, he missed the city from time to time, but after a few days he was always eager to get back to Hampshire.
The Ravenels’ ancient manor house was positioned on a hill from which anyone who approached could be seen for miles. The estate’s tens of thousands of acres had belonged to the family since the days of William the Conqueror. It seemed appropriate that Ethan Ransom, who—although illegitimate—was in the family’s direct line of descent, should be guarded from his enemies in the home of his ancestors. He and Garrett Gibson would be safe there. West would make sure of it.
Garrett was shaking her head. “I can’t leave my father . . . he’s old and ill . . .”
“We’ll take him with us. Now, tell me what Ransom will need for the journey.”
West was fairly certain that in ordinary circumstances, Garrett would have argued over the plan. But she looked at him dumbly, seeming paralyzed.
“If you don’t wish to come with us,” he said after a moment, “I’ll hire a nurse for Ransom. That might be for the best, actually. You can remain in London and maintain appearances, while—”
“We’ll need an ambulance cart from the clinic to convey him from here to the station,” Garrett interrupted with a scowl, “as well as from the Hampshire station to your home. We’ll have to take it with us.”
“An entire cart?” West asked, wondering how they could fit that onto the train carriage. “Can’t we make do with a stretcher and a good mattress?”
“The cart’s framework is fitted with special elastic springs to absorb jolts. Otherwise, the artery ligations won’t hold, and he’ll hemorrhage. We’ll also need portable water tanks, an ice box, hand lanterns, pails, basins, linens, toweling—”
“Write it all down,” West said hastily.
“We’ll also have to take my cookmaid with us, to look after my father.”
“Whatever you need.”
Her green eyes narrowed. “Why are you doing this? Mr. Ransom doesn’t like the Ravenels. The very name makes him hostile.”
“That’s because Edmund, the old earl, treated both Ransom and his mother quite badly.” West rolled up his loose shirtsleeve and began to pick at the strip of adhesive plaster Garrett had affixed over the puncture left by the hollow needle. It had stopped bleeding by now, and the bandage was beginning to itch. “I’m willing to help Ransom because in the past, he was kind to Helen and Pandora. Also because, whether he likes it or not, he’s a Ravenel, and there are damned few of us left. My brother and I were orphaned when we were young, and deep down I’ve always harbored idiotic fantasies of large family dinners and children and dogs running through the house.”
“I doubt Mr. Ransom would want any part of that.”
“Perhaps not. But we men aren’t quite as simplistic as we appear. A bullet in the chest could inspire a man to reconsider his opinions.”
Garrett was only vaguely aware of the whirlwind of preparations taking place around her. She stayed with Ethan in the Ravenels’ formerly elegant library, now a wreckage of sodden, soiled upholstery and stained carpeting. The situation now appeared to be beyond her control. Lord Trenear and West Ravenel were making decisions without her, and she was too weary to try and insert herself into the process.
Ethan gradually awakened from the surgery in great pain, disoriented, and wretchedly ill from the effects of anesthesia and the toxic aftereffects of the Thames. He barely seemed to recognize Garrett, and answered questions only in monosyllables. She did what she could to ease his misery, giving him another injection of morphine, bathing his face with cool water, and sliding a small pillow beneath his head. Sitting at the table, she lowered her head to her folded arms. For a moment, she shut her eyes and felt herself sinking into sleep.
“Doctor,” came Kathleen’s gentle voice.
Garrett jerked her head up, trying to collect herself. “How are you feeling, my lady?”
“Much better, thank you. We’ve sent two of the servants to help your cookmaid pack for herself and your father. Lord Trenear and I have a proposition we would like you to consider.”
“Yes?”
“We had already planned to leave town for the summer. But before retreating to Eversby Priory, we had accepted an invitation to spend a fortnight in Sussex with Pandora’s in-laws, the Duke and Duchess of Kingston. They have a lovely seaside manor with a private sandy cove, and ample room for guests. I think it would do your father some good to come with us, and perhaps take some seawater baths and do a bit of sunning. That way, you’ll only have to concern yourself with nursing Mr. Ransom back to health, instead of having your attention divided.”
“My lady, I could never impose on you that way, not to mention the Duke and Duchess—”
“After the way you saved Pandora’s life, they would be delighted to welcome your father. He would be treated like royalty.”
Rubbing her sore eyes, Garrett said distractedly, “He’s my responsibility. I don’t think—”
“There’s also the matter of his safety,” Kathleen pointed out gently. “If any trouble should arise over Mr. Ransom’s presence at Eversby Priory, I’m sure you would prefer your father to be kept out of harm’s way.”
“Perhaps you’re right. I’ll have to ask my father what he would prefer. However, I doubt he’ll like the idea of staying with strangers.”
“Your cookmaid would accompany him, of course.” Kathleen regarded her with a warm, concerned gaze. “I’ll bring him to you as soon as he arrives, and you can discuss it.”
“He’ll want to go with me,” Garrett said. “I’m all he has.”
But, when Stanley Gibson arrived at Ravenel House and the choice before him was laid out, his reaction wasn’t exactly what Garrett had expected.
“A holiday at the seashore with a duke?” her father exclaimed, looking befuddled. “Me, a man who’s never sea-bathed in his life? A constable, hobnobbing with upper-class toffs, eating dinner off gold dishes and drinking fancy French wine?”
“I understand, Papa,” Garrett said. “You don’t have to—”
“By Jove, I’ll accept!” he exclaimed heartily. “If the duke wants my company, he shall have it. I suppose it will do him good to spend time with a man like me, learn a thing or two about my years on the beat.”
“Papa,” Garrett began in muted alarm, “I don’t think the duke specifically requested—”
“All settled, then,” Eliza broke in hastily. “Wouldn’t do to disappoint a duke, would it? You and I will have to brace up and go to Sussex, Mr. Gibson, to humor His Grace—‘Do what ye can for other people,’ Mum always says. Come now, the housekeeper has a room for you to rest in ’til we leave for our train in the morning.”
Before Garrett could utter a word of protest, the pair had bustled out of the library.
With a speed and efficiency that was nothing short of miraculous, the Ravenels had acquired every item on Garrett’s list before dawn. Ethan was carefully strapped into a stretcher, which was carried out by a pair of footmen and the earl himself, to the waiting ambulance cart behind the mews. The sky was unrelieved black, the only light coming from streetlamps that cast crooked shadows across the pavement.
Sitting beside Ethan in the covered cart, Garrett could see very little of their route or direction. West had told her that they were going to
a private railway station just south of London, where they would board a special train without being observed, and bypass the usual permissions and restrictions. Extra precautions had been taken for guarding crossings and securing facing points, which would be timed to allow the train to run without stoppages.
A single horse pulled the ambulance cart at a measured pace. Despite the vehicle’s shock-absorbing springs, Ethan was jostled and jarred until stifled groans escaped him. Unable to imagine what hell he was enduring, Garrett held his hand, not letting go even when his grip turned bone-crushingly tight.
The cart slowed as they came to a place so dark and quiet that it seemed as if they had entered some remote forest. Peeking beneath the hem of the cart’s canvas covering, Garrett saw towering gates covered with ivy, and ghostly sculptures of angels, and solemn figures of men, women, and children with their arms crossed in resignation upon their breasts. Graveyard sculptures. A stab of horror went through her, and she crawled to the front of the cart to where West Ravenel was sitting with the driver.
“Where the devil are you taking us, Mr. Ravenel?”
He glanced at her over his shoulder, his brows raised. “I told you before—a private railway station.”
“It looks like a cemetery.”
“It’s a cemetery station,” he admitted. “With a dedicated line that runs funeral trains out to the burial grounds. It also happens to connect to the main lines and branches of the London Ironstone Railroad, owned by our mutual friend Tom Severin.”
“You told Mr. Severin about all this? Dear God. Can we trust him?”
West grimaced slightly. “One never wants to be in the position of having to trust Severin,” he admitted. “But he’s the only one who could obtain clearances for a special train so quickly.”
They approached a massive brick and stone building housing a railway platform. A ponderous stone sign adorned the top of the carriage entrance: Silent Gardens. Just below it, the shape of an open book emblazoned with words had been carved in the stone. Ad Meliora. “Toward better things,” Garrett translated beneath her breath.