“Don’t fucking touch me,” he snarled, lifting his head off the ground. “I’m waiting for the Countess of Kinmarloch.”
The largest pair of shoes in London hove into view. Edmund. And then the most perfectly polished pair of shoes. He looked up. George squatted down.
George’s stern voice, taking charge as always. “Jack. We have to get you out of the ballroom. You are distressing the ladies with your screaming and your colorful language. And we need to have a doctor examine you. Edmund can pick you up or these footmen can. Your choice.”
He allowed himself to be picked up by the footmen. Jack was all too sure Edmund was capable of slinging him over his shoulder and taking him out of the ballroom like he was a recalcitrant child with his arse pointing toward the ceiling.
“Don’t touch my foot. Fuck!”
Edmund walked by Jack’s side as he was being carried. Jack grabbed his arm. “Go find Phin. Take George. You have to help Phin find the Countess of Kinmarloch for me. Small woman. Blue dress. Brown hair.”
It suddenly struck Jack as insane that those six words—small woman blue dress brown hair—comprised his description of Helen. Butbrutally honestandeats me with her eyeswould sound like drivel.
Edmund nodded and turned away.
Find my thistle, Jack wanted to shout after him.
Jack was taken to a drawing room and put on a sofa. A doctor came in and removed Jack’s hose and shoe while Jack howled and cursed. The doctor felt the deformed ankle. Much more firmly than was surely necessary, and Jack cursed some more.
“A fracture with an associated dislocation of the joint, Your Grace. I’ll have to reduce the dislocation.” He went into his bag. “I’ll give you some morphia for the pain—”
“No morphia.” Jack shook his head. “No morphia. I need my wits.” He turned to one of the footmen standing nearby. “Do you know if anyone has found the Countess of Kinmarloch?”
“No, Your Grace.”
“Well, goddamn it, go find out!”
The footman went to leave but the doctor held his hand out and stayed him. “I’m going to need you.”
Another footman came in and spoke in the doctor’s ear. The doctor turned to the man, astonished. “Another patient? Let me take care of His Grace quickly, and I’ll come.”
The doctor turned to Jack. “Are you certain you don’t want morphia?” Jack shook his head, and the doctor turned to the footmen in the room. “Please keep His Grace from moving.”
Five footmen held Jack’s arms and his left leg and pressed his torso into the sofa as the doctor picked up Jack’s right foot by its big toe. While Jack tried very hard not to scream, the doctor pulled on his heel and turned his foot. Jack felt the clunk of the joint. Then slowly, the pain went from excruciating to searing.
“There.” The doctor put Jack’s foot down on the sofa and went and picked up his bag. “Don’t move, Your Grace, or we’ll have to do it again. I won’t mind, but you will. Your language reminds me of my time in the navy. I’ll be back shortly, I hope.”
The doctor left just as Edmund came in the door.
“Did you find her?” Then Jack noticed the gout of blood on Edmund’s cravat. A cold wave of fear washed over him. “Whose blood is that?”
“Down, Jack. It’s not from the countess. Phineas says the bleeding man’s name is Reeves.”
“Where’s Lady Kinmarloch?”
“I don’t know. Phineas and George are still looking for her. If they don’t find her here, Phineas says he’ll go to her rooms.”
“Good.” Then, “Why is Reeves bleeding?”
A small, grim smile from Edmund. The equivalent of a broad grin from anybody else. “He won’t say who did it to him but someone cut his face up very badly with a knife. Not deep cuts, but a lot of them. Very disfiguring. And he seems, uh, very frightened that the villain might come back and do it again. I had to shake him a bit, but he still wouldn’t tell me who did it. And he was cupping his hands in front of his bollocks. Seems he was threatened with the removal of those.”
His savage countess with her dirk.
I’m not here to protect Helen. I’ve gotten it all wrong from the beginning. That was never my job.
The doctor came back. “Messy. That’ll take hours to sew up. But we’ll get your ankle splinted and get you taken home, Your Grace. And I’ll call tomorrow.”
“I can’t go home, I have to find someone.”
