Chapter 11

Jeb nearly fell from his horse more than once, but Mariah managed to keep his arms wrapped around her neck. She constantly yelled to him to keep him from losing consciousness, but several times she was afraid he was no longer alert.

Tears filled her eyes. He was badly injured. How badly she didn’t know, but the blood from his shoulder had soaked the back of her riding habit. If the bleeding didn’t stop now, it was possible that he wouldn’t survive. She dared not stop. She knew her father. He’d send more than a half dozen men after her, for certain. He’d send a small army to get the Queen’s jewels back.

She pushed Goliath to travel as fast as he could and almost cried out in relief when she realized they’d entered the outskirts of London.

“We’re here, Jeb. We made it.”

He moaned as if telling her that he was relieved that they’d arrived. On every side people scurried out of the way, letting the disheveled woman atop the giant horse with a bloodied man hanging on for dear life pass.

“I don’t know where we are, Jeb. You have to help me.”

He lifted his head, and Mariah knew he was trying to get his bearings.

“Go straight . . .”

Mariah followed his directions until he told her to stop. She looked around, but he hadn’t taken her to Upper Berkeley Street. “This isn’t Upper Berkley Street!”

“No . . .” he gasped. “Get . . . help . . .”

Mariah slid off Goliath’s back and turned to make sure Jeb wouldn’t fall. When he was steady, she ran to the house Jeb had pointed to and flung her fists at the door. It wasn’t long, and a man as tall and broad shouldered as Jeb opened the door. “I think you have the wrong—”

“Help me. Please.”

Mariah knew she looked a fright. Her hair had to be a wild mass of tangles. And with her clothes soaked with blood, it wasn’t surprising that the man didn’t want to let her into his house.

She turned and pointed. “He’s badly hurt!”

The man looked past her to where Jeb was failing to stay upright. “Bloody hell,” he said, then raced out the door and ran to Jeb.

“Cal,” Jeb said, then he fell into the man’s arms.

Jeb was dead weight, and Mariah felt she was no help at all lifting him. But somehow they got Jeb up the stairs and into a bedroom. “I’m going to get his clothes off. Are you able to go down to the kitchen and bring up some water?”

“Yes, I can manage.”

Mariah found the kitchen and filled a pitcher with water. When she returned, the stranger was removing Jeb’s shirt. Jeb moaned when the man turned him to his side.

Her stomach clenched painfully. Not because of the gaping bullet wound in his flesh. Or the blood streaming down his back. But from the sight of the puckered and gnarled scars that crisscrossed his back.

He’d been whipped. And from the way the scars had grown over each other, it appeared it had happened more than once.

Mariah placed the basin on the bedside table and rinsed a cloth in the water. She handed it to the stranger, then rinsed another cloth in water and went to the other side of the bed.

“You didn’t know,” the man said when she tenderly placed her trembling fingers over the knotted, distorted flesh.

She shook her head. She couldn’t imagine what Jeb had endured. Couldn’t imagine how he’d already suffered.

She swiped at the tears that fell like rivers down her cheeks, then placed her cloth on his face to wipe the sweat from his brow.

“He was tortured during the war. For secrets the enemy thought he had. He nearly died.”

She brushed away tears she couldn’t keep from spilling, then lifted her gaze. “Were you in the army with him?”

“Yes. Captain Caleb Parker, ma’am.”

Mariah nodded, hesitant to speak her own name just yet.

“Were you a spy, too?”

The man smiled, and that was enough of an answer for Mariah.

“Come hold this cloth. Press hard. We have to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, I’ll need to get a doctor. The bullet’s in there too far for me to dig it out.”

Mariah went around to the other side of the bed and pressed on the cloth, then jolted when Jeb’s fingers clamped around her wrist.

“Cal,” he gasped. “My saddle. Get my . . . saddle.”

“Your saddle is fine,” the man said. “And we’ve put your horses out of sight.”

“No,” he said with more force. He coughed, which caused him to moan in pain.

“Very well, Jeb,” Captain Parker said as he left the room. When he returned, he had Jeb’s saddle. He flung it in the corner and strode to the door. “I’ll be back shortly with a doctor.”

Mariah pressed the cloth against Jeb’s wound. She fervently wished not to cry, but she couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “Don’t you think about dying on me, Jeb. I won’t allow it. Do you hear?”

Mariah knew she was imagining it, but she thought the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.

“I . . . wouldn’t . . . think of . . . it,” he gasped through the pain.

“You’d better not.”

“I didn’t th-think we . . . were going to m-make it.”

“Of course we made it. Both of us are too stubborn not to.”

“You’re . . . a very special lady, M-Mariah.”

“And you’re a very special fellow, Jeb.”

“Promise you . . . won’t . . . leave me,” he said.

“If you promise you won’t leave me.”

“I . . . promise,” he answered, then closed his eyes.

. . .

The doctor finally finished digging the bullet from Jeb’s flesh. He cleaned the wound, then poured a liquid over it that caused Jeb to growl and writhe on the bed. A thick sheen of perspiration covered his forehead, and his breathing turned heavy and labored.

When he was satisfied, the doctor gathered his things and said he’d return in the morning. Mariah and Captain Parker followed him from the room. “Will he survive?” Parker asked when they were far enough from the door that Jeb couldn’t hear.

“I’ve done everything I know to do. The rest is in God’s hands. Keep him quiet. If he becomes restless, give him some laudanum. Put it in a little wine. But he’s a big fellow. Don’t be skimpy. It will help with the pain.”

Mariah nodded, then she and Caleb Parker returned to the room. She thought Jeb was asleep, but he wasn’t. He tried to move, then stopped on a gasp.

“Would you like something for the pain?” she asked when he grimaced. “The doctor left laudanum.”

He nodded, and Mariah put a strong dose in a glass with wine. Caleb lifted Jeb’s head, and Mariah held the glass to his lips. He drank the wine, then fell asleep.

He lay on his side with his back exposed. Mariah studied the deep welts that crisscrossed his back. “What happened to him?” she asked the captain. He sat in a chair on the opposite side of the bed.

“He was on a mission for the government during the war. He was carrying papers that if fallen into the wrong hands would cost thousands of our soldiers’ lives.”

“He was captured,” Mariah whispered.

“Yes. They tortured him for the information, but Jeb wouldn’t hand it over. They would have killed him if we hadn’t gotten to him when we did.”

“We?”

Caleb smiled. “When the war broke out, there were four of us who joined at the same time. Our commanding officers asked for volunteers to go behind enemy lines and do . . . special projects.”

“You were spies. Jeb told me.”

“More than that. We were traitors. Of the highest order, I assure you. Or at least that was the part we played. We called ourselves the Traitor’s Club. There was Ford Remington, Hugh Wythers, Jeb, and myself. We were close before the war, but by the end of the war we were inseparable. We’d give our lives for each other, so when we discovered Jeb had been captured, we went to find him.”

Caleb rose from his chair and went to a small table on the other side of the room. He poured some liquor into a glass and offered some to Mariah. But she declined.

“By the time we found him and got him out of the hellhole they’d put him in, he was more dead than alive.” Jeb’s friend threw a hefty swallow of the liquor to the back of his throat. “None of us thought he would survive, but somehow he did. We decided he was just too stubborn to die.”

Mariah smiled at Caleb’s description. Maybe Jeb was a bit stubborn. Or perhaps just determined. But she thanked God for whatever it was that kept Jeb alive. For her.

“It wasn’t long after we rescued him that the war ended. We brought him back to England where he could get proper care so he would heal.”

“He owes you his life.” Mariah was unable to keep tears from forming in her eyes.

“And now he owes you,” Caleb said. He looked toward the bed, then shifted his attention back to her. “How did you meet Jeb?”

“He came to Scotland on a mission for Her Majesty.”

“For the Queen, eh.”

“Yes.”

“Why? What could have enticed him to accept another mission?”

“I assumed it must have been the Queen herself who asked.”

Caleb didn’t respond for several moments. “What was the mission? What was he supposed to bring back?”

Mariah swiped at another tear that threatened to fall. “Me,” she finally answered. “And what I stole.”

Caleb looked at her and held her gaze. “You love him, don’t you?”

A sad smiled lifted the corners of her lips. “It’s difficult not to.”

“Yes, it is,” Jeb’s friend agreed. After a brief silence, he rose. “I’ll return shortly. I have a cook and housekeeper. I’ll make sure they know to prepare some broth for Jeb and food for us. But first I have an errand to attend to.”

“Are you going to inform the other members of your club that Jeb’s been hurt?”

Caleb nodded. “I wouldn’t live long if I didn’t.”

Mariah watched Captain Caleb Parker leave the room. She was not at all surprised to discover that Jeb had such close friends.

. . .

Mariah prayed Jeb wouldn’t come down with a fever, but he did. For two nights he tossed and turned as the fever raged. Over and over she demanded that he fight to stay alive. She told him she refused to allow him to die. But there were times when she thought that was exactly what he was going to do. Times when his breathing was either so shallow she wasn’t sure he was still breathing or so forced and labored she wasn’t sure his heart was strong enough to continue to beat.

“You have to get better, Jeb. The Queen needs her jewels.” But even the threat of leaving a mission unfinished didn’t seem to cut through his stupor.

In the few moments when she dared to leave his bedside, she searched through Jeb’s traveling pack. She searched every possible space and found nothing. No jewels. She even checked the linings, feeling for telltale bumps that might indicate something hidden inside. But to no avail.

Mariah went cold, devastated at the realization that the jewels had been lost somewhere on the road. She’d put Jeb in mortal danger and might yet lose him, and for what?

Meanwhile, she and Caleb did everything they could think of to bring his fever down. And so did Jeb’s other two friends. They took turns caring for him, but they couldn’t change the cloths on his forehead and chest rapidly enough to cool him. They tried to force him to drink cool water, praying that would help. They even filled the hip bath with ice and set him in it, though he thrashed in crazed delusion the whole while. Nothing seemed to affect him.

On the third day, his fever broke, and he fell into a deep, restful sleep.

Mariah wanted to be strong, especially in front of his friends. She didn’t want to be an emotional watering pot, but when she realized Jeb’s fever had broken and his chances of survival had improved, she was so relieved she couldn’t stop the tears from falling.

She’d been terrified that he would die and leave her. Not only because she’d come to rely on him but because she’d fallen in love with him.

Mariah watched as his breathing returned to normal, then turned her gaze when the door opened and Caleb entered the room.

“Is there any change?” he asked.

Mariah nodded as fresh tears spilled from her eyes. “His fever broke.”

“Ford and Hugh will be sorry they aren’t here. They’re more than worried.”

“He’s trying to wake. He’s been moving slightly the last few moments.”

Caleb went to the other side of the bed and watched him. It wasn’t much longer before Jeb opened his eyes and moaned.

“Lie still, Jeb,” she said. She sat on the bed beside him and placed a hand on his chest. Her touch seemed to calm him. “You’re safe now. We’re in London. Caleb is here.”

“Cal?”

“Yes, Jeb.” Caleb knelt at the side of the bed so Jeb didn’t have to strain to look up.

“Saddle?”

Cal laughed. “You and that saddle. You’d think it was your best friend.”

Jeb tried to speak, but no words came out.

“Don’t try to talk, Jeb,” Mariah said. “You’re not strong enough yet.”

She reached for a glass of water, and Caleb lifted Jeb’s head. He took a meager sip, then turned away.

Caleb lowered Jeb’s head back to the pillow, and a few minutes later he closed his eyes. And he fell asleep.