“In the name of Zeus! They’re found!”
They grabbed Vitor and pulled him over the ledge. His eyes were closed and she put her hands on his face and withheld her sobs as men—more men—seemed to fill the tiny opening of the ice cellar. They carried him back to the castle, others remaining to pull Lord Case from the hole. She ran ahead, calling for warm baths to be prepared, specifying the exact temperature of the water and the oils to be added, and demanding bandages and dressing. Everyone did as she bid until they carried him into the room with the filled copper tub.
Ann appeared and took her arm.
“Come, dear friend,” Ann whispered. “You may not remain, and you must see to your own comfort now.”
Ravenna went, frustrated to be ejected when she was the most suitable person in the castle to see to a man’s injuries, and weak with joy.
Chapter 18
A Lord in the Kitchen Yard
She was not permitted to see either man that night. The prince himself and a bevy of servants waited upon them. She was unneeded.
Unlike Arielle Dijon, she could not bear to sit in the drawing room with the others before dinner, remaining modest and demure while the gentlemen, Lady Margaret, and the duchess speculated on the purpose the betraying guards had in harming Lord Case and his brother. Unable to eat, she took out the pugs and then asked after Gon?alo. She was told that the hero of the day was sleeping soundly in his lordship’s room.
She retired to her bedchamber, unnoticed.
Late, after she finally ceased pacing and climbed into bed, a scratch at her door roused her. By the light of a candle, Lord Case’s valet was white with agitation.
“He has taken fever, miss.” He wrung his hands. “I haven’t any notion of how to care for him. His lordship has a physician to see to such things.”
“I can help.” She changed clothes and took up her medical bag to follow him to his master’s quarters through dark, silent corridors.
The earl’s brow was hot, his face and nightshirt damp with perspiration. “You must change the bed linens and his nightshirt as often as necessary to keep him dry,” she instructed the valet as she poured an inch of water into a tumbler and emptied into it a packet of the fever powder she carried for Sir Beverley and Petti in case of emergency. “If the fever should break and he remains for long in a damp state, his lungs could take an inflammation.”
The valet lifted his master and she propped pillows behind his back.
“My lord,” the valet whispered. “Miss Caulfield wishes to dose you with medicine.”
The earl’s eyelids fluttered but did not open. “Ah, an angel of mercy,” he mumbled. “She may do as she wishes if she smells this devilishly good while she’s about it.”
She set the glass to his lips. “Drink, my lord, and don’t dribble or I will scold you for wasting my powder.”
“Lucky devil, m’brother,” he said against the rim of the glass, and swallowed.
They lowered him to the mattress.
“While I examine the wound you must remain very still.”
He mumbled unintelligibly, but when she unwrapped the poorly tied bandage and began probing at the wound, he squeezed his eyes closed. “Bloody hell. Call off the witch, Franklin.”
“I cannot, my lord. Excepting the cook, who is asleep and refuses to be roused, she is the only individual in the castle with medical knowledge. If you should like, I will summon the village midwife—”
“I am not giving birth, you idiot.” He clamped his jaw.
“Quite right, my lord.”
“Mr. Franklin,” Ravenna said, “I require clean linen to bind this wound.”
“Yes, miss.” He hurried away. She bathed the wound with wine, then set her needle and thread to the torn flesh while the earl’s chest rose upon hard gasps. The bullet had passed cleanly through the fleshy part of his muscle, and the wound was easily mended. Still, he would have lost considerable blood, yet he did not swoon.
“Did you mix a drug into the wine that you invited me to drink the other night, my lord?” she said quietly as she worked. “Do tell me the truth, or I will poke this wound with my sharpest fingernail before I bandage it.”
“Hippocrates spins in his grave,” he said upon a rasping breath.
She tied off the thread and dabbed the wound with salve oil. “I should like to hear from you the truth. My finger is poised.”
“I did not.”
“Why did you follow me to the stable?”
His eyes opened, dull with fever but aware. “To offer you gold in exchange for your promise to leave my brother alone.”
She swallowed over the catch in her throat.
Mr. Franklin returned and she bound the earl’s wound, gave instructions that the poultice should be changed every three hours, and left. Candlelight skittered along the walls as she trod on quiet feet to the ladies’ wing of the castle, wishing that now that the danger was over she still possessed the courage of a wolf, enough to cast away fear and go to Vitor’s room and demand entrance. But Lord Case had reminded her that in their world she was merely a hare and would never be otherwise.
WHEN SHE AWOKE, she found a message delivered from Mr. Franklin informing her that while Lord Case’s fever had not yet broken, he continued to sleep comfortably.
She rose, dressed in one of her own woolen gowns, and left her bedchamber.
All eyes followed her about the house, to the dining room and then to the parlor where Lady Margaret and Ann sat with the duchess, Iona, and the Whitebarrow ladies. Each held a frame of embroidery, which they plied with needles much tinier than anything Ravenna had ever used to tie a wound shut. They all stared at her as though she wore horns atop her head.
Iona came to life first. “Miss Caulfield!” She hurried over to her. “Have ye broken yer fast?”
“I—”
Iona pulled her into the corridor and whispered, “Everybody’s heard whit ye did for Lord Case in the wee hours. His valet told Lord Prunesly’s man, an’ the news spread like fire. Well done, lass!”
“I see.” She could not return to the parlor now, and wanted to see only one person, to assure herself that he was well. She hadn’t a care for her own reputation, only how it might reflect upon Sir Beverley and Petti. But if the whole household knew she had been in a gentleman’s bedchamber in the middle of the night with only his valet as chaperone, how could it hurt for her to now demand an audience with Lord Vitor?
She squeezed Iona’s hand and went to his bedchamber. Her heartbeats pounded in her throat as the door opened.
“My lord is not in, miss,” his exceedingly proper valet said.
“Not in? Is—is he well enough to be not in?” She sounded like a fool.
“His lordship has a remarkably strong constitution,” the valet said stiffly.
“Do you know where he has gone?”
“I should think to breakfast, miss.” He tilted up his nose. “But as his lordship did not share with me his itinerary, I cannot say with certainty.”
Her fingers itched to pinch him for that. Instead, she went to the hall. Monsieur Brazil spoke with the guard in the foyer.
“His lordship is in the chapel, mademoiselle.”
“Father Denis’s hermitage?” she asked in disbelief. A quick healer he might be, but this seemed miraculous.
“Non, mademoiselle. The chapel here at the chateau.”
“At the chateau?”
“Bien s?r.” He motioned for the guard to open the front door, then pointed across the forecourt. Flanked by the cemetery, a substantial church structure rose between the keep and curtain wall between two towers. She had not noticed it before. In all her perambulations of the cemetery with Petti’s dogs, she had not once lifted her attention to the huge building beside it.