The epic tests one reads about in books, the stuff of dreams and fantasies—formidable heroines matched with men of glorious valor, expeditions and quests so far afield from silly ballrooms and insipid parlor prattle that the contrast was at once jarring and invigorating. She’d never had such an experience as the one this evening and expected she never would again.
Of course, she could judiciously examine the situation now that she knew the Earl of Merevale wasn’t going to die.
She replayed the evening from her seat in a modiste’s shop in an ominous part of town she’d never before visited, a cup of oolong tea cooling beside her.
After dispatching the ruffians on the street with startling efficiency, Merevale had unfortunately returned to the carriage in Brick’s arms, deposited atop the squabs withbrute strength and no gentleness, left to bleed and groan whilst she and the maid, Molly, attended him.
Molly had kept the earl’s long frame from pitching to the floor of the jolting carriage while Isabella did her best to staunch the crimson flow seeping from a ragged wound along his lower back. She’d torn a length of muslin from her godawful costume and bound him with it, whispering assurances he wouldn’t recall in an effort to keep him calm.
He’d woken only once during the short journey, his fathomless emerald gaze meeting hers, two words torn hoarsely from his throat:between us.
Then they’d arrived here, Merevale hustled down a narrow corridor into a distant chamber, she sent to this parlor of sorts with no further explanation. She had no notion what it meant to be bound by secrets to a man who was not what the world believed him to be.
When she was exactly what they thought her to be.
Still, as anyone who knew Isabella might have foreseen, she meant to find out.
So she remained in the waiting area of a Whitechapel shop, Brick having gone to deliver Molly home, leaving Isabella here because she’d refused to depart. She assured Merevale’s manservant that her family was in Bath for the week and that if she returned before dawn, dressed sensibly should she be spotted, they could likely avert disaster. She’d slipped through the servants’ entrance on more than one occasion and been discovered—and could talk her way out of trouble if it came to it. Her sister’s beleaguered staff were accustomed to Isabella’s mischief; at this point, they mostly wanted her to leave them alone.
Drawing a restless breath tainted with the aroma of raw silk and beeswax, Isabella decided to explore until the next spectacle occurred. The parlor was filled with the usual trappings of a seamstress’s trade: lengths of lace and ribbon woundon cards, button molds, trays of paste beads. A small brazier stood in one corner, pressing irons in another. Scraps lay gathered in a basket, needles bristled from a pink cushion. An order ledger sprawled atop a scuffed desk.
Isabella halted before a set of shelves running the length of one wall, trailing her finger over instruments not standard at all. A scalpel, a probe, a lancet. Nothing dramatic in their presentation, each tool polished and wiped clean. A ceramic bleeding bowl and a rather frightening set of forceps wrapped in linen. She was holding an amber vial to her nose, London’s chill seeping through the floorboards into her slippers, when the door behind her opened with a slight creak.
“My father was a surgeon, so I have skills learned from him, ones of use to those requiring furtive medical attention,” the woman lingering in the entryway replied, her subtle smile suggesting that having her evening disrupted in such a bizarre manner amused rather than disturbed her, an occurrence that had clearly happened before. Her lovely yellow gown bore not a trace of blood, her chignon as neat as the instant she’d arranged it—imagine that.
She was beautiful in a self-assured way, closer in age to the Earl of Merevale, which made Isabella question—with an unsettling pinch low in her belly—how close their association might be.
When he’d been in danger, he’d comehere.
“Ever’s awake and wants to see you.” The modiste-cum-doctor beckoned, and Isabella had no choice, nor any desire truthfully, but to follow. The rest of the evening’s thrilling story waited down the hall. “Brick will be back soon to escort you home. He said you refused to go along, which is intriguing, or maybe not. Only, Ever has never brought anyone here before.”
As Isabella puzzled over the curious remark, their footfalls echoing along the narrow passage, the aromasshifted from linen and starch to the sharper tang of rubbing alcohol and laudanum. She rehearsed what she—the earl’s youngest daughter, known firebrand, unmanageable baggage, sister by marriage to a duke—would say to Percival Everard Trentham, Earl of Merevale.
The man a covert female physician in Whitechapel calledEver.
Isabella came up with nothing.
She hesitated at the partially closed door she’d been led to, her palm pressed against the smooth oak panel. Excitement and anxiety bubbled in her chest, knotting the breath that left her lips.What was she doing?
The shop owner gave Isabella a nudge that sent her into the room with a whispered warning: “He likes saving people. Anyone, that is, but himself.”
Isabella halted in the doorway, her heart breaking into a wild rhythm.
Did she look like she needed saving?
And…did he have to look this alluring?
The earl rested against the iron headboard, a bandage bound tight around his middle, his expression stripped to something hard and watchful. Without his shirt, there was no mistaking the strength of him—the breadth of his shoulders, the power in his arms. In truth, no mistaking his beauty. His chest was covered in a fine dusting of hair that trailed and disappeared teasingly beneath the white sheet drawn to his waist. Dark locks tumbled across his brow, undoubtedly the work of restless hands, though this softened nothing about the clarity of his gaze.
Before she could brace herself, a startling awareness raced through her, warming her belly, scalding her fingertips. Was this the desire totouch? She had never stood this close to a man laid bare, glimpsing parts she’d only imagined beneath his clothing.
Whatever London believed Merevale to be did not survive this vision.
A dazzling specimen.Tipsy Trentham, indeed.
“Madam Menace,” he murmured, his bottle-green eyes assessing, his stern expression suggesting he was unimpressed with her participation in this debacle.
She began badly. “None of this—ofyou—makes sense.”
