The Rogue Not Taken (Scandal & Scoundrel 1)
“Indeed it does,” the doctor said. “But you are with us. Which makes me rather happy.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“He’s the surgeon.” King replied.
She looked to him. “He does not look like a surgeon.”
“I’m not certain of his skill.”
She returned her attention to the doctor. “Do try not to kill me, sir.”
The other man nodded. “I shall do my best.”
“And is it entirely necessary to pour that on my wounds?” she added, “I didn’t care for it.”
“There is some speculation that the alcohol helps with infection,” the doctor replied. “I do hope that’s the case, as I would like to think that I haven’t wasted a half a bottle of gin.”
Neither Sophie nor King found the jest amusing. The doctor did not seem to mind, choosing that moment to raise his strange device and say to King, “Please hold her down,” before saying to Sophie, “I’m afraid this is also going to sting.”
King’s hands were barely on her when the doctor began the bullet extraction, Sophie screaming, blood oozing, and King feeling a thousand times the ass for allowing this entire situation to happen. She protested his grip, writhing beneath him, and it took all King’s residual energy to hold her still rather than pull the doctor from her and end her pain.
“Finished,” the doctor said eventually, removing the forceps and showing the bullet to King before mopping up the river of blood that he’d summoned and moving to his bag once more.
King was riveted to Sophie, who had returned to the table, eyes closed, with a sigh that became a low whimper, and the sound nearly broke him. He resisted the urge to strangle the handsome man-child who called himself a surgeon. And he might have, had the doctor not returned with needle and thread. “Madam, would you like a drink before I stitch you up? It might well dull the pain.”
Sophie, already pale, blanched further and nodded. The doctor thrust his chin in the direction of the sideboard. “There is whiskey there.”
That, King could manage. He grasped the bottle and uncorked it. “As this is for business rather than pleasure, I’m not going to put it in a glass,” he said, putting the bottle to her lips. She tilted her head back and drank deep. “Good girl,” he said quietly before she coughed, the alcohol no doubt stinging down her throat.
She shook her head. “Bollocks!”
He smiled at that. “You say that word like it is second nature.”
She looked at the needle. “More coal miner’s daughter than Society lady.”
He laughed, but the sound was cut off by her gasp of pain as the doctor began stitching. King did his best to distract her. “Do you miss it?”
Her blue gaze found his. “Life before London?” He nodded, and she turned away, watching the needle do its work. “I do. I’ve never felt quite right there.” She smiled. “Now I can’t go back. They’ll never have me with a bullet wound.”
He smiled at that, imagining that if Sophie Talbot decided to return to London, she could make them take her back. “What happened at the Liverpool party?”
She met his eyes. “I shall tell you what happened to me if you tell me what happened to you.”
His brows rose. “You know what happened to me.”
“Before that.”
“I imagine you can guess,” he hedged.
“I suppose I can,” she said, and there was something soft in her tone. Censure. Disappointment.
It wasn’t as though King hadn’t been on the receiving end of such disdain before; he had. He’d just never cared. He made his reputation on it. But somehow, this woman made him feel like an insect, despite having done nothing at all wrong.
“Excellent,” said the doctor, seemingly unaware of the discussion around him, snipping the string on his perfect row of stitches and halting King’s thoughts as he produced a pot of honey.
“What is that for?” King asked.
“For her wound,” the man said, simply, spreading the golden stuff over the wound as though it was perfectly normal.
“She’s not toast.”
“The ancient Egyptians used it to stave off infection.”
“I suppose I’m to think that’s a good enough reason to do it now?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
King did not like this man. “Does it work?”
The doctor shrugged. “It can’t hurt.”
King blinked. “You’re mad.”
“The Royal College of Surgeons certainly thinks so.”
“What do they know about you?”
“My membership was rescinded last year. Why do you think I’m in Sprotbrough?”
“I see now that it’s because you’re as foolish as the name of this place.” King grabbed the man by the neck. “Let me be clear. She shan’t die.”
“Killing me won’t help with that,” the doctor said, utterly calm.
Goddammit. King released him. Spoke again. “She shan’t die.”
“Not from the gunshot,” the doctor said.
King heard the repetition. “Not from the gunshot. You keep saying that.”
“It’s the truth. She will not die from the gunshot.”
“But?”
There was a long silence while the doctor dressed the wound. Once finished, he turned away to wash his hands in a nearby basin and said, “I can’t guarantee she won’t die of what comes next.”
Sophie opened her eyes and focused on the doctor, a small smile on her face. “He won’t like that.”
The doctor looked down at her with a smile. “I gather not.”
She blinked. “You’re very handsome for a surgeon.”
The man laughed. “Thank you, madam. Of course, I would have preferred that compliment without the ‘for a surgeon.’”
She inspected him for a long moment before she nodded. “Fair enough. You’re very handsome. Full stop.”
King wanted to break something when the doctor laughed. “Much better.”
It was nonsense, obviously. King didn’t care if she flirted with the damn doctor. She could live here forever if she wanted. It would make everything easier for him. He could leave her and head north and live a life without her troublesome—
The doctor put his hand to Sophie’s forehead, and King could not help but want to hurt someone. Someone specific. “Is it necessary that you touch her so much?”
Unruffled, the doctor said, “If I’m to judge if she has a fever, I’m afraid so.”
“Does she?”
“No.” The doctor turned and exited the room without further comment.
It was not every day that King was dismissed so easily, and he had half a mind to follow the young man and tell him precisely whom he was disrespecting. But then he looked down at Sophi
e. And everything changed.
She was watching him, her blue eyes seeing everything. Her lips twitched in a little half smile. “You see? The universe does not bend to your every whim after all. I might, in fact, die.”
“Of course you’re smug about that.”
“Better smug than the other.”
He shouldn’t ask. Later, he would wonder just what it was that made him ask. “The other?”
The emotion in her eyes was clear and unsettling. “Afraid.”
The word struck at his core, and he was reminded of another time. Another girl. Equally afraid, standing before him, begging him to save her. But he’d been a boy then, not a man. And while she had died, Sophie wouldn’t. “You won’t—”
She shook her head, interrupting the insistent assurance. “You don’t know that.”
“I—”
Her gaze found his again, full of certainty. “No. You don’t. I’ve seen fevers, my lord.”
He remained silent, his gaze flickering to the bandage on her shoulder, to the blood dried on her clothes, on her skin—that smooth, unsettlingly soft skin. It shouldn’t be bloodstained. She was young and wealthy, the daughter of an earl. She should be clean and unscathed. She should be laughing with her sisters somewhere far from here.
Far from him.
He turned his attention from her, hating the guilt that flared, dipping a long length of linen in the basin of water, now pink with her blood. Wringing it out, he began to tend to her stained skin.
At the first touch of the cloth, she started, and he imagined she would have pulled away at the sensation if she’d had the strength. Or the room. Instead she lifted her good arm and captured his wrist, her fingers cool and stronger than he would have imagined, considering the events of the last several hours. “What are you doing?”
“You’re covered in blood,” he pointed out. “I’m washing you.”
“I can wash myself.”
“Not without moving, you can’t.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, and he wondered if she would let him help her. He bit back the words that he was somehow desperate to speak. Let me take care of you.
She wouldn’t like them. Hell. He didn’t like them.
But damned if he didn’t want to say them.