Silent.
She was not even sure if she was breathing, because she so hoped he might say another word. Even if it was only her name again.
If it had not been so silent, they likely would not have heard the door jostle before it opened. And if they hadn’t heard that, they would not have known to step away from one another before the Becks walked inside, looking frantic with worry.
“Reed!” Thaddeus Beck boomed, his wife hurrying in after him, pale as a ghost. “You were shot?!”
“Not shot,” he said, his voice suddenly back to its normal, carefree sigh. “Don’t step on that. It’s hot.”
“Mae!” Hannah cried, rushing forward with her arms extended. “We came as soon as we heard. A boy came crashing into the Vixen, saying Roland had been struck with gunfire. We scrambled out immediately. Oh, I am so relieved you are both all right!”
Mae caught her friend’s embrace with a little grunt at its force, wrapping her arms around the other woman with a reassuring squeeze, and glanced at Roland around the curve of Hannah’s copper head.
He was still watching her, even as his mouth moved in explanation to Mr. Beck, who was looming over his bedside, attempting to peek under the cool cloths sitting atop his cauterized wound.
He gave her a quirking tilt of the mouth. Not even half a smile. Perhaps only a quarter of one. Just an acknowledgement that they had, yet again, been interrupted, and he knew it too.
She sighed, exhaling heavily into Hannah’s hair, and released her, stepping back.
“I was just about to pour us both a drink,” she announced. “Will you two have one as well? And then I shall explain what happened.”
PART III
CAUTERIZATION
CHAPTER 10
The first thing Roland became aware of the following morning was the sound of Dinah Lazarus’s voice, arguing with little Winston as their footsteps echoed into the empty clinic at the absolute first ray of dawn.
“The moon is bigger than the sun,” Winston was saying to her. “Anyone can see that.”
“No it isn’t, you little footstool,” she replied impatiently. “Wait until Miss Rosalind arrives later. She will tell you. Her mother’s an astronomer.”
Roland grimaced, opening one eye and then the other, the pain gradually blossoming along his ribs as he became aware of the fact that he’d slept in the clinic last night. He blinked himself into wakefulness, settling his gaze on Winston just as Winston’s gaze fell on him in return.
“A stronger? Stronger than what?” the boy muttered as Dinah walked around him to head up the stairs, leaving the clinic’s front door open behind her. “Mr. Reed? Do you live here?”
Reed gritted his teeth and forced himself up to sitting, taking care not to pull at the bandages wrapped around his ribs.
Winston’s outburst had stopped Dinah three stairs up, and she had turned back, her blue eyes gone wide at his shirtless, rumpled state on the clinic’s main floor. “Mr. Reed!” she exclaimed, in a completely different tone.
He shook his head and rubbed at his eyes. “Winston, toss me my shirt,” he said, pointing to the blood-crusted, torn linen sitting on top of the hamper.
“That?” Winston said skeptically, even while he was moving to obey. “Are you sure?”
Mae had made it clear last night that wherever he chose to sleep was going to be where he would be stuck for at least the next full day, if not two. Tod had offered up the couch in his apartments above the Vixen, but Roland couldn’t abide the idea of leaving the clinic to the ambiguous mercies of London at large, even if he was in no state to defend it at present.
So he had stayed and let the Becks escort Mae back to Soho while he tried to make himself comfortable on the narrow cot in the lobby.
However, he was realizing in short order that he had chosen to remain injured and half clothed in full public view, and that new doctor was going to arrive at any moment.
Not ideal.
“I’m going to train you up on the maps of London today,” he decided. “Since you’ll be stuck in the nursery all day anyhow and I need to stay in one place.”
Dinah Lazarus blinked twice, very slowly. “You’re going to spend the day in the nursery?” she repeated. “With us?”
He nodded. “I can’t do much in the way of moving about,” he told her, gesturing to the bandage, “but I’ll help where I can. I need to send one of my kits out to get the maps once they arrive.”
