Then she heard the unmistakable sound of voices, raised in argument. Before her eyes, chamber doors opened and heads emerged, all glancing toward one chamber in particular, the apparent location of the ruckus.
Abruptly, one of the voices sounded achingly familiar.
“Damn it, I said no more tea and no more medicine.”
A crash of some sort followed. Then she caught a series of grunts and snarls, accompanied by scuffing feet and, she feared, flesh hitting flesh.
Appalled, Georgina bolted toward the chamber and passed through the open door just as she heard from behind her, “That’s her, doctor. I swear, I bid her wait.”
She slammed the door shut and sought to lock it, only no lock existed. Groaning in frustration, she settled for bracing her slippered feet and pressing her back against the solid wooden door, for all the good it would do her.
Only then did she take in the state of the chamber she’d entered—and the man inside it. Teddy, at long last. She drank in the sight of him—unshaven, cheeks ashen, hair too long, body too lean, and…a blackened eye? She choked on a sob, despite her stern admonition to herself not overwhelm him with her emotions when at last she saw him. In the end, it did not matter. Neither he nor the two brawny looking men attempting to control him paid her any attention.
Teddy issued a hard kick behind him. His hessians made contact with an armchair, tumbling it onto its side to join an overturned cart that had once, evidently, delivered a tea service that was now in scattered bits across thick, patterned carpet now stained brown.
The door lever rattled and turned and despite her efforts to stay it, swung open, pushing her ignominiously to the wall.
She remained there, hidden, and harboring hope her presence might be forgotten as the new arrivals—the porter and, most likely, the doctor he’d gone to fetch—took in the mayhem.
“Lord Arlington, this again?” Both the speaker’s displeasure and air of authority were plain.
“I don’t want any more bloody potions. I made myself quite clear on that, yesterday.” Teddy spoke through clenched teeth. “Now instruct these apes to take their hands off me and get the hell out of here.”
Georgina chanced a glance from behind the door.
Teddy faced off with a man who stood two heads beneath him, hands clasped behind his back.
The orderlies, or apes as Teddy described them, now stood on either side of him, each grasping an arm and looking thoroughly vexed.
“We’ve been over this, Lord Arlington. The medicine is for your own good, prescribed by your own family physician. It will calm you, something you need in order to heal—and will keep you from attempting to harm yourself again.”
Teddy’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I told you.” He articulated each word. “I have never tried to harm myself.”
“Never? Are you certain?”
His jaw hardened. “I am certain I have not since returning to London. You know very well I cannot remember events before that,doctor, but, if I were to place a wager, I would bet all I had that I had not ever attempted to cause myself bodily harm.”
“Then how do you explain charging headlong into the third-floor balcony railing and plummeting to the grounds below? A fall which, only by the grace of God, you survived.”
“I never ran at it. The railing broke.”
“The three-inch stone railing gave way? You see how unlikely that is, don’t you?”
Teddy hung his head in defeat. “Please. I don’t want it and I don’t need it.”
Georgina’s heart hurt, seeing him like this, and at the thought of him trying to kill himself. And what did he mean, he wasn’t able to remember previous events?
The porter whispered into the doctor’s ear.
His thick brows arched upward. “Ah, yes. Your lady visitor.”
“Come again?” Teddy demanded.
The porter grasped the door lever and yanked the door away from the wall, exposing Georgina. Her cheeks flooded with heat as all five men stared at her.
She had eyes only for one. She sent him a tremulous smile. “Hello, Teddy.”
As he gazed at her, his mouth curved in a grim smile that held absolutely no warmth. “Hello madam, whoever you are.”
