Heartless (The House of Rohan 5)

Chapter 1

The pleasure of your company is requested at the baptism of Alexandra Emma Brandon Rohan, on the afternoon of March the eighteenth, in the one thousand eight hundred and forty-fifth year of Our Lord, to be held at the village church of St. Anne the Doleful in Upper Rippington, Suffolk, and to be followed by a reception at Starlings Manor immediately thereafter.

Brandon lowered himself carefully into the chair. He’d learned not to throw himself into furniture as he once had—the price he paid was far too dear. He was wet and cold—he’d spent the last three hours hiking among the unforgiving crags of Ben Tarquin in the Scottish Highlands, his home for the last three years of self-imposed exile, and steam was rising from his woolens as he edged closer to the fire.

“By the smell of those wet clothes, you’ve been giving yon Tammas a run for his money,” Noonan observed sagely, and Tammas, the springer spaniel who had traced Brandon’s every step, lifted his head at the sound of his name, then dropped it down again. The dog was even more exhausted after their long hike than Brandon was. He used a gnarled walking stick to help him keep his balance with his impossibly game leg, but Tammas had to run ahead and double back, leaping with excitement, while Brandon had learned to keep a steady pace, inured to their lengthy, daily excursions.

“Give me a chance to dry out, old man,” Brandon replied sourly. “I still haven’t taken a swim, and the water in the burn is colder than a witch’s tit. Let me just warm my bones before I subject myself to more punishment. And I might add that you’re smelling none too sweet yourself.”

Noonan cackled, pouring himself a deep dram of whiskey against the Scots cold. Brandon eyed the drink dispassionately. He had trained himself not to long for it, and he could even pour for someone else without his hands shaking, spend the afternoon with an open bottle and not break into a sweat. It was opium and its bitch of a sister, laudanum, that had twisted him in knots. The huge amounts of alcohol he’d consumed had only been to manage the effects of the stronger drugs, but he had no intention of ever going near any of them again.

He’d learned to work through those cravings by hiking no matter what wretched form of precipitation was coming out of the sky, and in the Highlands it was always something, followed by endless swims in the burns and lochs—sometimes breaking a thin film of ice in order to torment his body.

The results, slow but steady, were satisfying. His mother would have said positively remarkable, but his mother doted on her four children, no matter how badly they behaved, and he’d been the prize transgressor.

All this was well and good where he was. Returning to the bosom of his family, to civilization and all its temptations, would be another matter entirely.

Noonan was watching him from beneath his bushy brows, his expression wary. “So, are you going to go to the little one’s christening?” he demanded suddenly. “You missed the first one, and this wee one is named after you.”

Brandon’s head shot up. “How did you know about that? Have you been reading my mail?”

“Of course not, me boy,” Noonan said indignantly. “Your brother sent me a letter at the same time, asking me to make sure you do what he wants. It’s time for you to go back home.”

“This is my home,” he said stubbornly. “It’s not like this is Melisande and Benedick’s first child. Why all the bother now?”

“It’s the first girl, she’s named after you, and you’re her godfather.”

“I never agreed to that. And it’s only her middle name.”

“Can’t call a wee lass ‘Brandon’ now, can they?” Noonan snapped. His voice softened. “It’s time, laddie. You can’t hide away up here forever.”

Brandon said nothing, staring into the fire. They were in the kitchen of the gamekeeper’s cottage at Ballykeep, the estate his father had given him when he turned twenty-one—he’d refused to reside in the big house—and the peaty smell mixed with wet dog, wet wool, and whiskey was a familiar comfort.

Noonan was right, the sly old bastard, he thought wearily. There was no way he could live here forever until he’d faced his demons back home. There were ghosts back there, ghosts he had to lay. It was past time to face them and banish them once and for all. He had to make peace with Benedick at the very least, and see if he could find the answer to the half-memories that teased at him, disrupting a good night’s sleep and offering no clarity in return.

He gave Noonan a grim smile. “We’ll leave in three days’ time.”

“We will?” Noonan echoed in a startled gasp. “You know I don’t go south of the border, me boy. It’s no’ good for me health.” He managed a hangdog expression.

“I go, you go. They’ve forgotten all about you and anything you might have been involved in.”

“The blasted police never forget anything,” Noonan said glumly. “The only reason they haven’t found me is they’d never believe a good Irishman would hide out in an uncouth, backward, benighted place like Scotland.”

“It was over twenty years ago, and my family is not without influence in these matters. Either you come with me or I stay put. And what do you think the marchioness would have to say about that?”

Brandon knew perfectly well that Noonan was more afraid of Brandon’s mother than a horde of policemen, and Noonan’s glare left him unmoved. The old man reached out and took a drink straight from the whiskey bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The rich smell of the whiskey almost overcame the homely smell of food cooking, but Brandon didn’t flinch.

Noonan eyed him gloomily. “Your mother isn’t even going to be there—she’s still travelling in some godforsaken place with your father.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’ll hear you failed in your duty. She won’t be angry, of course. She’ll just be very, very disappointed in you.”

Noonan shuddered. “God save me.”

“My brothers are intent on reforming me,” Brandon said. “Charles is convinced I should marry to redeem my reputation. He’ll probably be waiting with a special license and a bride at the ready. I need you to protect me, Noonan.”

Noonan snorted. “And you’re so docile you’ll go along with it without a whimper?” He blew out a disgusted breath. “You’re really going to make me go, aren’t you?”

“Same back at you, old man.”

Emma Cadbury was covered in blood. It splashed her face, her hands, up to her elbows, and she scrubbed away at it, at her nails, ignoring the discomfort.

The girl had died. Emma had done everything she could, and she’d been convinced that this time she’d won the battle, but the poo

r girl had died anyway. She was the third one in a week, and no matter what Emma had done she’d slipped away, nameless in death as she had been in life.

The smug, ill-trained coterie of men who served at Temple Hospital had refused to look at the girl, and when things had turned bad there’d be no one to save her. Emma scrubbed her hands more fiercely. This had happened too many times, and she should be used to it by now. She had yet to figure out why the women hadn’t survived when they appeared to be on their way to recovery, and she would not forgive herself for that.

She was alone now in the small room they’d set up for her and she stripped off her bloody clothes, down to her chemise, kicking off the stained slippers and throwing everything into the bins, including the cap that covered her hair. Patients died. She couldn’t weep for each one.

She stepped inside the cold shower bath the hospital had grudgingly provided. They could hardly let her leave the place covered in blood, and the handheld pump was easy enough to operate. The head of surgery, the stately Mr. Fenrush, had accepted her under duress, but Temple Hospital was the best in London, in the entire country, and she’d wanted to work there rather than a glorified butcher shop. Benedick Rohan, her best friend’s husband, had generously seen that she did, and Mr. Fenrush’s outrage had caused her a little discomfort and a fair amount of quiet amusement.

She was anathema to him on every level. There were a few female physicians, with their very proper honorific of “doctor,” in other countries, but not in England. Female surgeons, ones who actually cut into flesh, beggared the imagination of all but the most broad-minded of men. Emma was content to work behind the scenes so as not to horrify English society. The fact that this particular surgeon had also been one of London’s most notorious madams in her early twenties would have made it even more appalling. The revolt that had followed her appearance had been long and ugly, led by Fenrush himself, who seemed to view her as a colorful combination of the Antichrist and the Whore of Babylon with a trace of Jezebel and Satan thrown in for good measure. He was a Godly Man, or so he had informed her, but instead of praying over her he seemed more likely to cast her to the wild dogs, as Jezebel was, or into St. Matthew’s fiery furnace.

Instead he had no choice but to accept her presence, to treat her with the barest minimum of decency, since Benedick Rohan, Viscount Rohan, heir to the Marquis of Taverstock, was a major benefactor of Temple Hospital. If Benedick withdrew his support, there would simply be no hospital, and at least she labored in obscurity, and the men were more than happy to take credit for her successes.

Mr. Fenrush’s absolute hatred of her always struck her as extreme, but she’d run into it before, usually in similarly Godly Men. When Fenrush realized he couldn’t get rid of her, he had done what he could to make her presence invisible. She entered the operating room after the chloroform had been administered and was shunted from the place before the patient woke up and discovered the horror of a female’s hands upon him.

But in between, she was learning everything, and some of the supervising surgeons had eventually let her participate and then conduct the surgeries.

She generally counted herself content, which was a triumph in itself. Between the hospital and her work at the Dovecote, her best friend Melisande’s charity for fallen women, she found her life filled.

A rough cough wracked her body again, and she let out a sigh of weary frustration. It had been a terrible week, and not just at Temple Hospital. She still had smoke in her lungs from the recent fire, and the foul London air wasn’t making it easy to get rid of the irritation.

The Dovecote had gone up in flames. Her dearest friend’s townhouse, the building that had served as a home for what were described as “the poor unfortunates,”

and what Melisande’s husband had named the Gaggle, was gone. This place for the women to live and learn a new profession, a way station to a new life, was now a pile of rubble and ash.

It had been a close call. Melisande lived with her husband in Suffolk, and she’d already repurposed the dower house on the estate for her soiled doves. The last few women had left the day before the fire, thank God, or Emma would have been burying her old friends like Mollie Biscuits and Long Polly.

Instead Emma had been alone in the place when the fire broke out, trapping her, and if she weren’t so familiar with the house she would never have survived. As it was, she’d managed to escape with nothing worse than a lungful of smoke and a few scratches, minor inconveniences that were slowly abating.

Now she cleared her throat as she wound her braids around her head, securing them with a few rough stabs of the metal hairpins. She didn’t bother to check in the mirror someone had placed for her convenience. She knew her hair was neat, she knew what she looked like, and if she forgot, those around her reminded her.