“Then your wife has steadier hands than several surgeons I have trained with.” Kreutzer laid out his instruments on a cloth beside the chair: needle, silk thread, a small bottle of tincture. “The wound itself is shallow but long. There is no damage to the deeper tissue. You were fortunate.”
“I am aware.”
“How did it happen?”
“A fall.”
Kreutzer threaded the needle without looking up. “A fall. Of course. I see many knife wounds from falls. Very common in Mayfair. The cobblestones are especially sharp this time of year.”
Evander said nothing. Kreutzer smiled and pinched the edges of the wound together.
“This will sting.”
It did more than sting. The needle pierced the skin at the edge of the cut, and Evander gripped the arm of the chair with his right hand and kept his breathing even while Kreutzer drew the thread through. The physician worked with a speed and precision that came from decades of practice, each stitch placed with the same measured interval, the thread pulled taut but not tight.
“Your wife’s binding saved you considerable blood loss,” Kreutzer said between stitches. “The pad was placed directly over the deepest section of the wound, and the wrapping maintained even pressure throughout. Most people panic and wrap too loosely, or they tourniquet the limb and cause worse problems.” Another stitch. “She knew what she was doing.”
“She is a capable woman.”
“Evidently.” Kreutzer tied off the final stitch and cut the thread. “Twelve stitches. Keep it clean and dry. I will leave a salve for the inflammation. Change the dressing each morning, and send for me if you see any redness spreading beyond the edges of the wound.” He began repacking his bag. “And Your Grace?”
“Yes.”
“Next time you fall, try to land on something other than a blade.”
Evander pulled his shirt over his head and buttoned his cuffs while Kreutzer left the salve and a roll of fresh linen on the desk.
The physician bowed and departed. The study door clicked shut, and Evander was alone with twelve stitches, a stack of unanswered letters, and the knowledge that Mary had dressed his wound better than a trained surgeon would have expected.
A knock. Harding, with a folded note on a silver tray.
“From Her Grace, Your Grace.”
Evander took the note. Mary’s handwriting was neat and unhurried, the letters formed with the same steadiness she brought to everything.
The coal merchant’s invoice for the quarter was delivered this morning. The amount exceeds last quarter’s by nearly forty percent. I reviewed the household accounts with Mrs. Cahill and found that the previous arrangement was negotiated three years ago at a rate that is well above the current market. I have written to Fenton & Marsh on Cheapside, who supply several houses on this street at a better rate, and requested a quote. I will inform you when it arrives. I have also arranged for a second rocking chair to be delivered to the nursery. Mrs. Bridwell and I cannot both sit during the evening feedings, and she is too polite to say so.
M.
No mention of the kitchen. No mention of the kiss. No request for permission. She had found a problem, identified a solution, and informed him as a matter of courtesy. The coal merchant,the competing supplier, the rocking chair. Three decisions, all sensible, all made without requiring his input.
“Shall I convey a reply, Your Grace?”
Evander folded the note and set it beside the salve on his desk. “Tell Her Grace that her arrangements are entirely satisfactory.”
Harding bowed and withdrew. Evander looked at the note, folded on his desk, the singleM.hidden inside. He opened his next letter and buried the note under the correspondence, where it could stop distracting him.
It did not stop distracting him.
A capable woman.That was what he had called her, and it was true, and it was also the most inadequate description of Mary that anyone had ever spoken aloud.
She was not merely capable. She was the kind of person who arrived in a stranger’s parlor in a wedding dress and demanded to see a baby. She was the woman who calmed a screaming infant with nothing but the curve of her arm and a smile. She managed his household without complaint, cared for his nephew without recognition, and cleaned a knife wound at three in the morning without flinching.
And Evander had kissed her, felt the whole careful architecture of his self-control buckle beneath the weight of it, and then apologized as though the kiss were an error in bookkeeping.
The guilt sat heavy in his stomach. Not because the kiss had been wrong. Because it had been right. Because Mary’s mouth had fit against his with a certainty that terrified him, and the sound she made when his lips moved to her jaw had opened a door inside his chest that he had spent fourteen years nailing shut.
If he kissed her again, he would not stop. If he did not stop, there would be consequences. A child. A family. The kind of life that unmade men when it was lost.
