A Lady's Guide to Improper Behavior by Suzanne Enoch (7)

Your cards this morning, Miss Tess.” Inclining his head, the butler held out the silver salver piled with calling cards.

Theresa wiped jam off her fingers and lifted the cards. “Thank you, Ramsey.”

“Those are all for you?” Michael asked as he strolled into the breakfast room. Planting a swift kiss on Grandmama Agnes’s cheek, he came around to rest his hands on Theresa’s shoulders and read the cards over her head.

“Let’s see,” she said, looking through them one by one. “Lord Lionel, Montrose, Bertle—oh, goodness, you may have him.”

“Thank you, no. He has a very particular odor about him.”

She looked up at her brother. “You should attempt a dance with him.”

“Let’s put that one aside,” he said with a grin. “Who else?”

“Harriet, Lord Hayverton, Lord Wilcox…” She stopped to slide that card across the table to their grandmother. “A caller, Grandmama?”

“Hmm. Apparently that hat was even more impressive than we thought.” Chuckling, Agnes read the note scrawled across the back of the calling card, then set it aside. “Wilcox has invited me to go for a stroll this afternoon. How very nice!”

“Don’t wear the hat,” Michael advised. “You’ll have the poor baron suffering an apoplexy of lust.”

While her brother and grandmother bantered about the state of Lord Wilcox’s health, Theresa looked through the remaining cards. As she finished and stacked them all together again, she frowned. Nothing from Tolly James. Not a card, not a note, not a flower or even a bare stem.

“What’s amiss, my dear?”

Swiftly wiping away her scowl, Theresa looked up. “Nothing’s amiss, Grandmama. I have three invitations to luncheon.”

“I foresee two gentlemen with broken hearts.” Releasing her shoulders, Michael went to the sideboard to select his breakfast.

One luncheon companion, two broken hearts, and one broken head, if she had her way. She’d done everything she could think of to make Colonel James aware of her interest. And judging from a trio of supremely exemplary kisses, he was interested, as well. And yet he refused to call on her.

Perhaps he kissed so many women when no one else was looking that he simply hadn’t yet made his way to her particular door. This was unacceptable. It was maddening. Didn’t he realize that firstly she was considered a catch, and secondly he was rotten and unpleasant and was not considered a catch?

She pursed her lips. Honesty made her admit to herself that he wasn’t entirely unpleasant—not the way he looked at her sometimes, anyway—and that considering what had happened to him, he was perhaps entitled to be a bit…prickly from time to time. On the other hand, the heated kisses and horrific personal secrets with which he’d favored her, together with him otherwise completely ignoring her, was too much to bear.

Turning her annoyed, irritated growl into a cough, she pushed to her feet. “I forgot, I already made luncheon plans with Amelia,” she stated.

“Ah. Three broken hearts, then,” Michael amended with a grin. “You’re a cruel, cruel girl, Troll.”

Theresa paused in the doorway just long enough to stick her tongue out at her terribly amusing brother. Then she hurried upstairs to scribble out her regrets to her three would-be luncheon hosts, collect her maid and her hat, and attempt to figure out how she could accidently run across the colonel at James House and make certain he knew just how displeased she was—all without causing a stir.

Of course all of that would make her appear desperate for his attention, which she was most definitely not. Hmm. Perhaps she could accidently stumble across him and then ignore him. That would show him how little his kisses and his pretty eyes and his obvious courage impressed her.

By the time the family coach stopped at James House, she was ready for battle. After all, she had a dozen beaux trailing after her, and she’d had her fill of showing interest and kindness and empathy where none was returned. She’d never encountered the like before. Someone needed to teach that man a lesson.

Generally Graham opened the front door for her before her feet even left the coach. Today, though, she had to rap the brass, lion-shaped knocker against the door twice and then wait before it finally opened.

“Miss Weller,” the butler said, inclining his head.

“Good afternoon, Graham. Is Lady…” She paused, belatedly noting the butler’s pale complexion and the thin, straight line of his generally amiable mouth. “Is something amiss?”

A strangled male yell of pure agony ripped through the interior of the house. The sound froze her to her very bones.

“Good heavens!”

She practically flew up the staircase, Graham and Sally on her heels. Clearly something was dreadfully wrong, and the image that immediately came to her mind was of Tolly. Had he fallen? Had those awful Thuggee somehow invaded Mayfair and come to finish him off?

At the end of the same hallway that led to Lord and Lady Gardner’s master bedchamber she found them—Amelia and Stephen and Violet and a half dozen servants, all clustered around the door from which Tolly had startled her the other evening.

Her heart clenched. “What’s happened?” she asked, her voice shrill.

Amelia jumped. “You should go,” she whispered, her face pale and one hand over her mouth.

Oh, no. “Is it Tolly? What’s wrong?”

Another muffled yell cut through her. Her breath catching, Theresa pushed forward. Whatever the devil it was, whatever the rules said about minding her own affairs and letting men be manly, she needed to know.

Stephen’s broad chest blocked her path. “No lady should see this,” he said, his own voice tight. “My brother is being tended by a physician.”

“Yes, one who’s breaking his leg,” Violet sobbed, sinking to the floor.

“Oh, Vi.” Amelia sat down beside her, taking the younger girl’s hands in hers. “It will all be well.”

None of them looked as though they believed that. Theresa didn’t much believe in trusting to hope, anyway. She hadn’t for a very long time. Taking her skirt in one hand, she slipped through the distracted group and into the room. And stopped dead in her tracks.

Tolly James lay on his back in a large bed, his face very nearly the same coloring as the white sheets. His nightshirt was askew and soaked with sweat, his fingers clenching into the folds of the bedsheets. He wore tan knee-length breeches, the left leg torn open up to the thigh. A stain of red spread around the awful mess that was his left knee.

“My God,” she whispered.

The stout, balding man leaning over Tolly’s leg and with what looked like a pair of pliers dug into the wound, looked up at her. “Are you squeamish?” he barked.

She tore her gaze from the mangle of Tolly’s knee. Good heavens. He’d walked on that. He’d ridden on it. She’d teased him about dancing on it. “No. No, I’m not,” she managed.

“Then come here and hold his leg still so I can pull out the rest of the damned lead ball.” He shifted to look down at Tolly’s face. “Your horse doctor didn’t find it all.”

Bartholomew, though, was gazing at her. “Get out of here,” he rasped.

Oh, she wanted to. “Nonsense.” She stepped forward, pulling off her gloves and dropping them to the floor. “You’re a physician?”

He nodded. “Prentiss. Put your fingers there. Press hard, no matter what damned thing he says.”

“Theresa Weller,” she returned, hoping conversation would keep her from contemplating precisely what she was doing. She’d wanted to touch his bare skin, but this wasn’t remotely what she’d imagined. “Why don’t you have someone here to assist you?”

The doctor jabbed his chin toward the half-open door. As she looked in that direction, she spotted the figure crumpled against the baseboard behind it. “He fainted? I’m sorry, but he can’t be much of an assistant.”

“Ha. He didn’t faint, did you, Clarke?”

The man moaned.

“Colonel James here kicked him in the…in a sensitive area. I told Clarke to hold him still. Hopefully next time he’ll listen.”

“If it’s not too damned much trouble, would you get the bloody hell on with it?” Tolly growled.

“We are. Hold still and don’t injure Miss Weller.”

Amber eyes held hers for a brief moment. “I won’t.”

Dr. Prentiss twisted his hand and pulled. With a wrench the fragment of lead came free, prompting another strangled yelp from Tolly. Her fingers pressed just above his knee, and she felt the muscles there tighten and then relax again.

“Well, that makes things a bit easier,” Dr. Prentiss commented, brushing his forearm across his forehead. “Lad should have passed out ten minutes ago.”

She looked at Tolly’s face again. His eyes were closed, the color of his skin still alarmingly pale. “Violet said you needed to break his leg again,” she said, swallowing.

“I already did. That’s where I lost Clarke and found the lead fragment. Now I need to set it and bandage it again. Are you up for that, Miss Weller?”

“Yes,” she heard herself say. “Of course.”

Theresa preferred not to remember the next twenty minutes, the twisting muscles and the blood and the popping of bones shifting reluctantly back into place. Finally the doctor pointed her at the wash basin. She cleaned Tolly’s blood from her hands, then sat on the upper corner of the bed leaning against the headboard while Dr. Prentiss finished stitching the jagged wound, dashed it with whiskey, then began wrapping it in a thick cloth bandage with the help of the mostly recovered Clarke.

Gently she stroked her fingers through Tolly’s damp, too-long dark hair. “Will he be able to walk now?”

“I don’t know. What I did today should have been done months ago. The bone kept trying to knit, but it wasn’t set straight. It’s damned unhealthy for a wound to be open and aggravated for this long. My guess is that he’ll still lose it.” He glanced over at Clarke. “And do not drink all of that blasted whiskey. I warned you to hold him still, so this is your own bloody fault.”

“He was supposed to be an invalid,” the doctor’s assistant grumbled. “Not kick like a mule.”

“Mmm-hmm. Go tell the family he’s resting quietly.”

Prentiss leaned closer to Theresa. “That man is an idiot,” he whispered. “If my sister hadn’t married his brother, he would be out selling oranges on the street corner.”

She chuckled, then looked down again as warm fingers closed over her free hand—the one that rested on Tolly’s chest. Whisky-colored eyes dulled by shock gazed at her.

“It’s finished now except for the rest of the bandaging,” she said quietly, more moved than she expected. She’d had his blood literally on her hands, but it was more than that. Seeing the state of his leg—he might very well have died in India or on the ship sailing him back to England, and they never would have met. That thought left her inexplicably saddened.

“What are you doing here?” he asked thinly.

Why had she come by? Oh, yes, to make a point of ignoring him because he wouldn’t call on her. It seemed silly and petty now. “I came to ask Amelia to luncheon.” At least that was partly true. “Does your leg hurt?”

“You are far too bright a chit to be asking that question.”

“I’m making conversation,” she retorted.

“I’m leaving laudanum and instructions for administering it,” the doctor interrupted. “That should help some with the pain.”

“Don’t need it,” Tolly grunted.

Theresa glared at him. “Don’t be silly. Of course you do. You just allowed someone to break your leg, for heaven’s sake.” She squeezed his fingers.

He closed his eyes again. “You like to dance,” he murmured. His fingers relaxed as he drifted off once more, either to sleep or to unconsciousness.

His family shuffled into the room, but Theresa barely noted them. He’d done this for her? Because she’d teased him about dancing? That was…She didn’t have the words.

This sort of thing—a man she barely knew, and one who intentionally aggravated her, subjecting himself to such agony on her behalf—just didn’t happen. She’d read all the books. At the request of her many friends, she’d written a guide, herself. Women suffered silently, doing their duty without complaint, while men went on as they always did.

After a few moments of the family hovering and whispering, Amelia tugged on Theresa’s sleeve. “Do you have a moment?”

Nodding, Theresa settled Tolly’s hand beneath the blanket Dr. Prentiss had pulled over him. Amelia led her out into the hallway, then faced her. “What was that?” her cousin asked.

“What was what? You know I helped Lawkins deliver foals every spring. This was no worse than that.” It had been much worse, actually, but she wasn’t about to admit it.

“You were holding his hand. I’m his sister-in-law, and he’s never so much as shaken hands with me.”

Theresa frowned. “He was in pain. Of course I offered him comfort.”

Her cousin continued to eye her. She’d been a master at fabricating tales as a child, so she had no idea what Amelia thought she might detect by staring at her face. There wasn’t even anything to detect. At all.

“Well, it was grand of you to step in,” her cousin finally acknowledged. “I couldn’t have done it, and Stephen and Violet were too overwrought.”

Privately Theresa thought that being overwrought should wait until after a given emergency was finished with. Oh, that could go into the second edition of her Guide. “I’m glad I could help.” She took a breath. “In fact, I’d like to call on my patient tomorrow to see how he’s recovering.”

Amelia smiled and squeezed her arm. “You know you never need to wait for an invitation. You’re always welcome here.”

“Thank you. And since I imagine that you are not free for luncheon today, I will leave you in peace.”

She wanted to stay until he awoke again, and she wanted him to reach out to hold her hand as he had done before. And both of those were very good reasons for her to take her leave immediately. Because according to what he’d said to her, he’d put himself through this hell for her. That required some contemplation far away from his company. That wasn’t what someone did as part of a mild flirtation.

“Sally,” she said, spying her maid. “We will take our leave now.”

The maid curtsied. “Yes, miss.”

By the time she passed through the foyer, the butler had summoned her coach, and she swiftly climbed in. As soon as the maid was seated opposite her, they rolled into the street. For a moment Theresa closed her eyes.

Yes, she was deeply, deeply moved that a man as…compelling as Colonel Bartholomew James would take such a risk for her. But what if it went wrong? Dr. Prentiss had said quite clearly that Tolly would likely lose his left leg altogether.

She had suitors for every day of the week, and extra ones for Sunday. In the past three years she’d received nine proposals of marriage, three from the same gentleman. The death of her parents had made her a considerable heiress, which more than likely had at least something to do with the quantity of her beaux. Their deaths were also why she remained unmarried, but she didn’t care to contemplate that at the moment.

Nothing like this had ever happened before in her experience. By calling at James House today, by deciding that no man in his right mind should have been able to ignore the rules of civility, had she obligated herself to one man? “Oh, dear,” she muttered under her breath. She wasn’t prepared for any of that.

“What is it, Miss Tess?”

She shook herself. “I forgot my gloves,” she improvised.

“I’m certain Lady Gardner will send them back to you.”

“Yes. Yes, of course she will.”

As soon as they returned home, Theresa retreated to the solitude of her bedchamber. Two questions troubled her more than anything else—was she truly the reason Tolly had subjected himself to such pain, and did she truly want—could she even manage—such a complicated soul in her life? She couldn’t think of a single sentence in her Lady’s Guide to Proper Behavior that came even close to describing or explaining Colonel Bartholomew James. Or the way she behaved when she was around him.

She gazed at herself in her dressing table mirror. From the moment she’d first set eyes on Tolly James she’d felt electric, lightning coursing down her spine and out to the tips of her fingers. And those kisses, and the way he looked at her sometimes, heated her from the inside out. But she’d teased and flirted, and then by his actions today he’d all but declared himself. And now she was the one who needed to find her footing.

A knock sounded at her door. “Come in,” she said, hurriedly moving to the chair by the window and picking up a book so she wouldn’t be caught admiring herself in the mirror.

The door opened, and an orange cat slipped through the opening and darted onto her lap. “Hello, Caesar,” she said, scratching the big tom between the ears. “Hello, Grandmama.”

Agnes followed the cat into the room and closed the door behind her. “Caesar insisted on joining me,” she said, taking the seat Theresa had just vacated. “Though he’s a very poor escort.”

“I thought you were going for a stroll with Lord Wilcox,” Theresa commented, setting the unread book aside to scratch Caesar with both hands.

“He’s downstairs waiting for me. I’m being coy.”

“Grandmama!”

“Oh, it’ll do him good to have a sit-down before we go. You were to join Amelia for luncheon.”

“Yes. We had a change of plans. It’s no matter; I have some work to do on the second edition of my Guide.”

“‘It’s no matter,’ is it? You are aware by now that servants gossip, I hope. Particularly when a female member of the household goes visiting and ends up assisting in a surgery.”

Dash it all. She hadn’t asked Sally to exercise any discretion, though, so she supposed the subsequent gossip was her own fault. “I did what I could,” she said aloud.

“I hear you were quite distressed when you learned who the doctor had come to see.”

Theresa looked sideways at her grandmother. “Do you have a question for me, or are we going to make observations all afternoon while poor Lord Wilcox wastes away downstairs?”

Agnes’s fingers wandered through hair clips and hat pins and combs spread across the dressing table. “Yes, I have a question. While I have never known you to be missish or retiring, pushing your way into a man’s bedchamber and then voluntarily getting his blood on your hands isn’t precisely your…usual cup of tea, as they say.”

Keeping her gaze on the purring cat, Theresa hid a scowl. “That still isn’t a question.”

“That was the preface, being that my question is only one word: Why?”

Why indeed? “I think he might have risked losing his leg because I teased about wanting to dance with him.”

“You—”

“And if he did do this because of my jests,” Theresa pressed, unwilling and unable to stop now that she’d begun, “then everything that follows is my fault. I behaved improperly.”

“Nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense. Actions have consequences.” An unbidden image of her parents touched her, and she mentally brushed it away. “I can’t turn my back on him now.”

“Do you want to turn your back on him?”

“No. I think I might find him intriguing. But if he loses his leg because I was inappropriate and flirted with him, I’ll be doubly obligated to remain with him, regardless. No dancing, no long walks in the evenings, and probably no riding horses because how could he do that with one leg cut off above the knee? I don’t even know if he can have children, and you know I’ve always wanted children, and—”

“I thought it was his knee that had been injured,” her grandmother interrupted.

“That’s what I’ve been talking about.”

Grandmama Agnes’s expression softened into a brief smile. “Then he can very likely father children.”

Theresa’s heart jolted. “You think I should marry him, then.”

“Has he asked you?”

“No, but—”

“Is Colonel Bartholomew James a weak-minded man?”

She frowned. “No. Not at all. I think he’s very likely at least as stubborn as I am.”

“Then why do you think you caused him to risk his leg?”

“Because he looked at me and said he wanted to dance with me, and then he fainted.” That hadn’t been precisely what he’d said, but it was close enough.

“I see.” Agnes gazed out the window for a moment. “Colonel James wants to dance with you.”

“It’s more than that, Grandmama, and you know that perfectly well.”

“You met him what, a week ago?”

Had it only been seven days? “I believe so.”

“Then, my dear, I would suggest that you become acquainted with Colonel Bartholomew James. Decide whether you like him before you plan a marriage with him.”

“I—”

“Because if you like him, truly like him, while he has two legs, then I believe you’ll like him when or if he has only one. But you need to discover that now, or you’ll never know for certain.”

“But what he said was—”

“Tess, do not take all the world’s burdens and tragedies onto your shoulders. As I’ve said before, simply because someone brings up your name in regard to an event, doesn’t make what follows your fault.”

“I find it difficult to believe that he was attempting to mislead me. I’m not very trickable.”

Her grandmother stood. “No, you’re not. Perhaps he merely wasn’t thinking clearly.” She strolled over, kissed Theresa on the forehead, and collected Caesar.

Theresa sighed as Grandmama Agnes left the room and closed the door quietly behind her. As usual, her grandmother was correct; she couldn’t plan her future without deciphering her present.

And that meant that tomorrow she would have to break another of her own rules and pay a visit to Bartholomew James.