Chapter Eleven
Eli climbed backfrom darkness, terror, and dreams of Fanny being dragged to hell by monstrous half-human creatures, to see Rob’s cocky grin.
“Fanny!” Eli flew up—or tried to. Pain shot through his head, almost blinding him.
“Safe. Safe and well,” Rob soothed, gently urging him back down to the pillow. “Good to have you back among us.”
“What time is it—and where am I?” He lay in a soft bed, in a cheerful room up under eaves. Flower prints livened up walls painted eggshell blue. Sun filtered through lace curtains to the decidedly feminine room, one he had most assuredly never seen before.
“You’re in your lady’s bower,” Rob said, wagging an impertinent eyebrow.
“She isn’t my lady,” Eli mumbled, absorbing the fact that he lay in Fanny’s bed.
“And it’s midmorning. Thursday,” Rob went on.
Eli started back up again, but his brother stopped him with an arm across his chest. “How can it be Thursday? The Happy Cock. We went there Tuesday night. Have I been sleeping for two days?”
“A day and half, since it is not quite noon. Two nights perhaps. We carried you here shortly after midnight. Do you remember anything? You woke briefly.” Rob leaned on his elbows, brow furrowed.
“Nothing. I don’t remember anything after…Fanny’s look of sheer terror. Where is she?”
“The lady is packing.” A shadow passed over Rob’s face. “Miss Hancock gave us a detailed description of what happened. It will keep, but you need to know this much. Their ‘customer’ specified a woman with red hair. I have reason to know that not more than five or six people out of a hundred in this part of the world have hair the color of mine. Even fewer are female, young, and attractive. We need to remove her from Manchester.”
Eli digested that, wishing he could spit it out. “What happened to me?”
“The brute you downed didn’t stay there. He came at you with a cudgel. He reached for Miss Hancock, but Reilly took him out with a single shot.” Rob shook his head. “Brilliant shooting. The man performed every bit as well as he claimed. Some of the miscreants fled. We wrapped the rest up after Reilly’s shot, the fight gone out of them. Hickock and Holliday and their men hauled them away in the thieves’ own carriage.”
“And you brought me here.”
“Young Wil ran for the physician, and Miss Hancock insisted on putting you up here. ‘Rather than in my disgusting stepfather’s bed,’ she said. You did wake up briefly, fists flying and frantic. The physician dosed you with laudanum. He said we were to let you sleep.”
“That explains the monsters in my nightmares. Keep that stuff away from me please,” Eli murmured.
“I’ll try to restrain Miss Hancock. Women get carried away when they think something will help a wounded duck,” Rob said.
“I’m not a duck! And I don’t want laudanum,” Eli said more loudly than he intended.
“You’re awake.” Fanny bustled to the bed, searching his face as if looking for catastrophe.
“I am well, as you can see,” Eli said, shoving up onto one elbow. Slowly this time, and very gently. When that worked, he pushed himself all the way up. “My head hurts a bit, but I’ll do.” He studied Fanny with as much intensity as she examined him.
No sign of injury, thank God. He wished he could see into her heart and soul, for surely there had been injury there. He reached out and took her hand. “Are you truly well? You’ve recovered from your ordeal?”
“I’m perfectly fine,” she said primly, pulling her hand away. “You had a much harder time of it. Should you be sitting up?” She glanced over at the dresser.
Eli saw the laudanum bottle in her line of sight. “Keep that venom away from me.”
“The doctor said…,” she began.
“That was two days ago,” Eli growled.
Rob cleared his throat and rose. “I’ll leave you two to argue. But Eli, if you’re going to stay upright, you might want to put on a shirt.”
Eli glared at his brother’s departing back and grabbed for the coverlet.
Fanny turned a remarkable shade of red and gazed at the wall behind the bed. “Rob is right,” she said.
My damned brother usually is. Eli stood up on wobbly feet and wrapped himself in the coverlet. “I’ll go fetch my clothes. Or I would if I knew where they were.”
