“Where is Leo?” Jasper asked, his concern mounting. He’d expected her to join him shortly after he’d gone in pursuit of Frederick.
“She’s with Mr. Quinn,” Miss Brooks answered. “He brought her into the morgue to look at the wound on her neck. He wanted to be sure a vein hadn’t been nicked.”
“Avein?” Jasper had seen the blood dribbling from the slice to Leo’s neck, but she’d assured him she was fine. He started away from Frederick’s sprawled form, only wanting to be at Leo’s side.
Miss Brooks held up her hands to stop him. “Leo says she will meet you at the hospital. If—” Her lashes fluttered rapidly as she tried to look toward Frederick Cowper but couldn’t quite succeed. “If he is still alive?”
“He is, though barely.”And probably not for much longer.Jasper cursed under his breath. As the viscount’s heir had confessed to two murders, Jasper had a duty to stay with him, even if he lay half dead in the street.
“Fine,” Jasper finally relented. “Just make sure Quinn takes care of her. If he doesn’t, he’ll have me to answer to.”
With a nod, Miss Brooks turned to scurry away from the gruesome scene.
A paraffin lamp guttered in the corridor outside a surgery theatre at St. Thomas’s Hospital. Jasper paced the tiled floor, his impatience—and trepidation—climbing. Frederick Cowper had been rushed inside more than a half hour ago. Since then, a few nurses had come out of the surgery, blood smeared over their pinafores, but none had answered his inquiries as to whether the patient would live or die.
Jasper took his watch from his waistcoat pocket, and when he read the time, his nerves crackled. Where the devil was Leo? She was supposed to have met him here. Unless something had happened. Had Quinn met with some complication while assessing her neck wound? Jasper whisked off his hat and raked his hand roughly through his hair.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor. He whirled away from the closed surgery doors, only wanting to see one person.
“Inspector Reid.” Jasper masked his disappointment at finding Sergeant Warnock before him. “A reply telegram has come from Harrow. Viscount Cowper is on his way.”
Jasper had directed a constable to Scotland Yard earlier, to send word to Cowper Fields about Frederick’s accident. He did not look forward to explaining to Lord Cowper what had happened to his heir, or what Frederick had done to his own nephew and niece. But then, it was possible the viscount may have already suspected. Francine Stroud may have as well, considering she had not welcomed either her father or her brother to the reading of the will.
“Thank you, Warnock,” Jasper replied. “Have you heard anything regarding Miss Spencer?”
The young sergeant crinkled his forehead. “I just saw Mr. Quinn in the lobby. He informed me that Miss Spencer is with a surgeon.”
“A surgeon?” Ice, followed by heat, flushed through Jasper’s limbs.
“Yes, sir, that is what he said?—”
“Stay here,” Jasper ordered and then started at full speed toward the doors at the end of the surgery corridor. He burst through them into another corridor, where he stopped the first doctor he saw.
“Leonora Spencer,” he barked. “She is here seeing a surgeon. Where can I find her?”
The startled doctor adjusted his spectacles. “I do not know, sir. You’ll have to inquire with the admitting nurse.”
The doctor continued on his way, and with escalating irritation, Jasper stopped three more nurses before he finally got an answer: Leonora Spencer was in Room 12 on the next floor up. He dashed there, heart racing, and when he finally came upon the closed, white-painted door, he didn’t bother to knock.
He burst into the pocket-sized room, and Leo, reclining in the narrow hospital bed, vaulted upright.
“Jasper!” She clutched at her chest. “You startled me. Whatever is the matter?”
He took in the sight of her—her neck wrapped in linen gauze, the collar of her white blouse stained with blood—as he strode to the bedside.
“Warnock told me you were in with a surgeon,” he said, his thudding pulse still sounding in his ears.
“I was,” she replied. “Connor wanted a second opinion on the sutures he’d placed in the wound to be sure all was well. I told him it wasn’t necessary, but when Dita relayed your warning, he was quite intimidated.”
“My warning?”
Leo smirked. “The one in which you threatened that should anything happen to me he would have to answer to you.”
“Ah. That warning.” He felt a bit sheepish now, but seeing her smile melted some of the tension from his body. Jasper sat in the wooden chair next to the bed. “So, you’re going to be all right?”
She leaned forward and reached for his hand. “I am. The cut from the paper knife was deep enough to require several sutures, but Connor said it missed the external jugular vein by a good two millimeters.”
Hell.“That’s a fraction of an inch, Leo.”
