No Good Duke Goes Unpunished (20 page)

“It was a . . .” Mara trailed off, shaking her head. They did not understand. Few did.

It was a mistake.

She did not say it, because they neither cared to hear her story, nor deserved to. Temple was another tale. Temple deserved the truth.

If he lived, she’d give it to him. All of it.

She would lay herself at his feet and give him his chance at retribution. At vengeance. And she’d give him the truth.

If only he would live.

She moved toward his still form, and was stayed once more by the strong grip of his man-at-arms. She looked to the pile of linen near Temple’s head on the low table.

“You must remove it swiftly, and immediately apply pressure,” she said, deliberately avoiding the gazes of the men in the room, looking only to the surprised eyes of the countess. “You’ll need more linen than that.” Her gaze flickered to the knife. “The wound is deep.”

“You’re a doctoress, now?” The words oozed lazy condescension.

She steeled herself and met the marquess’s eyes. “I’ve extracted knives before.”

“From whom?”

She looked back to Temple. “From whomever.”

The countess was through waiting. “Asriel, you will have to release Miss Lowe. We shall require your strength to keep him down.”

“He is unconscious,” Bourne said.

“If we’re lucky, he shan’t be when we do this. It will hurt. A great deal, I imagine.” Mara closed her eyes at the words, willing them to be true. Willing him to wake. Willing him not to be dead. She watched the men move to hold Temple down—three of them to keep his massive body still—and she tried not to notice the way his skin had gone sallow, life seeping from him on a river of blood.

So much life.

Her throat closed at the thought.

What had she done to this man? What had he done to deserve her in his life? If he lived  . . . She bargained again. If he lived, she’d give him everything he wanted and leave him to his happiness.

To some beautiful woman and their beautiful children on his beautiful estate.

She’d give him back everything she took.

If only he would live.

It was the closest she’d come to a bargain with God in a decade. In longer.

The countess looked from one man to the next, then to Mara. “You’ve done this before?”

Mara nodded, thinking of another knife. Another time. More pale skin. “I have.”

“You should do it.”

Mara did not hesitate, moving toward him. Wanting to touch him. Bourne stopped her. “If you hurt him, I kill you.”

She nodded. “It seems reasonable.”

She would do everything she could to save him. She wanted him alive. She wanted to give him everything for which he asked. All the truth.

Perhaps he would forgive her.

Perhaps they could begin anew.

And if not, at least she could give him all she had. All he deserved.

Bourne released her and she moved to the stack of linens, folding them into a haphazard bandage and bringing the bucket of steaming water closer. When the earl and the marquess cut her vicious looks, she stared back, refusing to be cowed. Bollocks to them.

She handed the stack of linens to the countess before hiking up her skirts to kneel on the table next to Temple’s head, placing firm hands on the knife’s bloody hilt. “On my count.” The room stood still. She looked down at Temple, his face pale. “Don’t you dare die,” she whispered. “I’ve things to tell you.”

He did not move, and she ignored the ache in her chest at his stillness.

“One . . .” she counted. “Two . . .” she did not wait for three, instead yanking the knife from his chest, straight and true.

He screamed his pain, bowing from the table, and Mara nearly wept with relief at the sound as the countess leaned over him, flooding the wound with scalding water, to clear away the blood and hopefully, hopefully show a less deadly incision.

Hope was a fool’s emotion.

Temple’s scream renewed itself, the searing liquid burning his skin and bringing forth a new river of blood. Refusing to flinch at the sound, Mara grabbed a stack of linen, covering the wound and leaning all her weight into the cloth, willing the tide to stem even as it soaked through the fabric. Even as he bled.

Even as he died at her hands.

“You won’t die,” she whispered. Over and over. “You won’t die.”

She had to stop the bleeding.

The words were all she could think as she rose above him, pressing as hard as she could, trying to ignore the way he bucked beneath the force, attempting to throw them all off. Even now, she was shocked by the size of him. By his strength. By his will as he roared his anger and pain and his eyes shot open, black as midnight and filled with its demons.

He looked right at her and swore, dark and unhesitating, the muscles in his neck straining.

“You hurt him.” The Marquess of Bourne gave voice to Temple’s look. “You take pleasure in it.”

“I don’t,” she whispered, only to him, to her great duke. “I never wanted you hurt.” She pressed harder on the shoulder, feeling vaguely grateful that the tall, redheaded gentleman across from her was strong enough to hold Temple’s arm down, as she had no doubt that he would like nothing more than to strike her. “I want you well.”

Temple resisted her touch, and she changed tack. “Stop straining,” she said, loudly. As firm as the pressure she exerted. “The more you fight, the more you’ll bleed, and you can’t spare it.”

He did not look away from her, and his teeth remained clenched, but he stopped fighting.

Hopefully by choice.

The linens were soaked through, as she’d expected. He was bleeding profusely, and she would need more padding to soak it all up.

She turned to the countess. “My lady . . . would you . . .”

The bespectacled woman responded without hesitation, knowing what Mara wanted without articulation. She took hold of the bandage as Mara reached for the bloody knife on the table.

“No—” The redheaded gentleman saw her movement first.

Bourne instantly released Temple. “Put it down.”

She did not hide her irritation. “You think I’ll slit his throat with all of you here? You think I’m so hateful I’ve gone mad?”

“I think I’d rather not risk it,” Bourne said, but Mara was already turning away, lifting her skirts quickly—even as the marquess came at her—and cutting away a layer of beautiful mauve underskirt. Bourne pulled up short, and Mara would have enjoyed the look of shock on his face if she weren’t so busy thrusting the hilt of the knife in his direction. “Make yourself useful. We’ll likely need your shirts, as well.”

Later, she would marvel at the speed with which the men responded to her demand, shrugging out of their coats and pulling their shirts over their heads, but in the moment, she added, “His is somewhere in this room, as well. Find it.”

And then she was nudging the countess out of the way and pressing her petticoats to Temple’s bare chest, hating the way his roars had turned to quiet, inarticulate protest at the feel of her firm touch. Hating that she couldn’t keep the life from seeping out of him.

“You made me ruin my new dress,” she said, meeting his gaze, trying to keep him awake. Alert. “You shall owe me another.”

He did not respond, his eyelids growing heavy. She registered the waning fight there.
No.
She said the only words she could think to say.

“Don’t you dare die.”

His black eyes rolled back beneath their lids, long dark lashes coming to rest on pale cheeks.

And Mara was alone once more, her only companion the ache in her chest. She closed her eyes and willed back the sting of tears.

“If he dies, you shall follow him into Hell.”

It was a moment before she realized that it was not the marquess—the man who had quickly become her nemesis—speaking. It was the other man, the ginger-haired, circumspect aristocrat with the lean face and the square jaw. She met his gaze, noting the way his grey eyes shone with barely contained emotion. And she knew without doubt that the threat in the words was true.

They would kill her if Temple died. They would not think twice of it.

And perhaps she would deserve it.

But he did not.

And so she would keep him alive if it took every ounce of her being.

She took a deep breath and exchanged her skirts for the man’s shirt. “Then he shall not die.”

H
e did not die that night.

Instead, he fell into an unsettling sleep, which continued when the surgeon arrived, instantly fussing over the wound.

“You should have waited for me to return before extracting the knife,” he said, inspecting the wound, deliberately not looking to the women in the room.

“You did not come,” Bourne said, anger in his tone, and Mara was happy to see it directed to one who so rightly deserved it. “We were to do nothing?”

“I have other business,” the doctor replied without remorse, lifting the linen from Temple’s shoulder and inspecting the now dry wound. “Nothing would have been better. You could have caused more damage. Certainly putting him in a woman’s hands was a questionable decision.”

The Countess of Harlow raised a brow at the words, looking to the redheaded aristocrat whom Mara had discovered was her husband, but said nothing, obviously not wishing to scare the elusive doctor away now that he had arrived.

Mara did not feel the same way. She’d seen too many doctors arrive, magic potions and tools in hand, and leave having done nothing but make the situation worse. Temple had never been luckier than when the doctor had been delayed eight hours. “I prefer a female doctor to none at all.”

The surgeon looked to her then. “
You
are no doctor.”

She’d faced stronger and worthier adversaries than this little surgeon. Including the unconscious man on the table. “I might say the same of you, for all the evidence I have seen of your medical acumen this evening.”

The Countess of Harlow blinked large eyes behind her thick spectacles, her lips tilting upward at one corner. When Mara met her gaze, the other woman looked away, but not before Mara caught the admiration there.

An ally, perhaps, in a roomful of enemies.

The surgeon had turned away, and was already speaking to the Earl of Harlow. “He should be bloodlet.”

Mara winced, a vision coming, fast and unsettling, leeches dotting flesh, each one fat with her mother’s blood. “No.”

No one looked to her. No one seemed to hear her.

“Is it necessary?” The earl did not seem convinced.

The doctor looked to the wound. “Yes.”

“No!” she repeated, louder this time. Bloodletting killed. And it would take Temple’s life as sure as it had taken her mother’s.

The doctor continued. “And who knows what else the woman did to him. What might need to be reversed. Bloodletting is the answer.”

“Bloodletting is not the answer,” Mara said, placing herself at Temple’s side, between him and the surgeon, who was now extracting a large square box from his bag. No one listened.

No one but the Countess of Harlow.

“I am not certain that this is the right course of treatment, either,” she said, all seriousness, coming to stand next to Mara.

“You are not a doctor, either, my lady.”

“We may not be doctors, sirrah, but we were the best he had, were we not?”

The surgeon pursed his lips. “I will not stand for being spoken to in such a way. And by—” He waved a hand at them.

Cross stepped forward, ready to do battle for his wife. “By whom, precisely?”

The doctor noticed his misstep. “Of course I don’t mean Lady Harlow, my lord. I mean”—he waved at Mara—“this
woman
.”

He said
woman
like it was a filthy word.

Mara might have cared if Temple’s life were not hanging in the balance. She ignored the insult. “Have you blooded him before?”

There was a pause, and she thought the surgeon might not answer her until the countess stood her ground and added, “It’s an excellent question.”

The doctor hesitated, until Cross prompted, “Doctor?”

“No. He’s never required it.”

Mara looked to Temple, still as death on the table. Of course he hadn’t. The man was unbeatable. He’d doubtfully required any treatment at all. Until now.

Until he’d nearly died.

She looked to the countess. “My lady?” she asked, letting her feelings on the matter sound in the words. Show on her face.
Don’t allow this.

Please, let him live.

The countess nodded once and turned to her husband. “We should wait. He is healthy and strong. I would rather he be given the opportunity to mend on his own than lose additional blood.”

Mara released the breath she had not known she was holding, hot emotion burning at her eyes.

“Women cannot possibly understand the basics of this kind of medicine. Their minds—” He waved a hand in the air. “They are not equipped for such knowledge.”

“I beg your pardon.” Countess Harlow was obviously displeased.

Mara could not waste energy on taking offense. Not when Temple’s life was in the balance. She stood her ground. “Even women can understand that blood does not typically leave the body. I see no reason to believe we do not require all we have.”

It was an uncommon theory. And unpopular. But most people hadn’t seen their mothers die, paler and sicker by the minute, covered in leeches and cut with blades. She’d seen proof that bloodletting was never the answer.

The surgeon sighed, no doubt realizing he was going to have to deal with the women in the room. He spoke as though to a child, and Mara noted the earl’s jaw set in irritation. “We must offset the balance. What he has lost in the shoulder, we must take from the leg.”

“That is utter idiocy.” Mara turned to the countess—her only ally. “If a roof leaks, one does not bore a second hole in the ceiling.”

The doctor had had enough. He puffed up and turned to Bourne. “I won’t be schooled on my field of expertise by women. They leave, or I do.”

“Then you should leave, and we shall find another surgeon,” the countess said.

“Pippa,” Cross said, the words soft but firm, and Mara could hear the edge in them. He did not wish his friend to die.