Hello Stranger

Leaving him in the care of Mrs. Abbot, Garrett unsteadily made her way to a corner of the library and sat on a small carved stepladder. Bending forward, she rested her head on her knees. She was distantly aware that she was shaking as if from a seizure. She couldn’t think what to do about it, only crouched there and quivered until her teeth rattled.

Someone was beside her, lowering to his haunches. A large, warm hand settled high on her back. A sideways glance revealed that it was West Ravenel. There were no glib comments, only a calm, friendly quietness that soothed her. His touch reminded her a little of the way Ethan would sometimes stroke or gently grip the nape of her neck. She began to relax, the tremors fading. He stayed like that, the pressure of his hand light and comforting, until she let out a shuddering sigh and sat up.

Ravenel’s hand slid away. Wordlessly he gave her a glass filled with a small portion of whiskey, or brandy—something alcoholic—and she took it gratefully. Her teeth clattered against the edge of the glass as she took a swallow. The smooth amber fire helped to drain a few last shudders of nervous tension.

“It’s been almost an hour,” Ravenel said. “The transfusion was successful, wasn’t it?”

Garrett drank again. “He won’t die from the damage done by the bullet,” she said dully, her fingers clutched around the glass. “He’ll die from what was allowed inside by the bullet track. Viruses, bacteria, lethal microbes, chemical contaminants. I’d rather have immersed him in poison than that river. The Thames would turn up Neptune himself within five minutes.”

“I wouldn’t say death is a foregone conclusion,” Ravenel said. “He comes from tough stock. A long line of vicious bastards. As he’s already proven, he can survive things other men wouldn’t.”

“You’re acquainted with his family?” she asked.

“He hasn’t told you, then. The Ravenels are his family. His father was the old earl. If Ransom hadn’t been born a bastard, he would be Lord Trenear right now, instead of my brother.”

Chapter 17

West smiled slightly as Garrett Gibson stared at him with dazed green eyes. “That explains the resemblance,” she said after a long moment.

How very small she seemed, tucked in the corner of the library with her knees drawn up. For the past hour and a half, she had been a commanding figure, strung tight with energy, her gaze stern and steely. She had worked in millimeters, doing tiny, crucial things to veins and cellular tissue with astonishing precision. Although West knew nothing about surgery, he’d understood that he was witnessing someone perform with rare skill.

Now, in her exhaustion, the brilliant surgeon resembled an anxious schoolgirl who had taken a wrong turn on the way home.

West liked her a great deal. In fact, he was rather sorry now that he’d kept shrugging off Helen’s efforts to introduce them. He’d envisioned the female doctor as a severe matron, probably hostile toward men, and Helen’s assurances that Dr. Gibson was quite pretty hadn’t been at all convincing. Helen, with her completely unjustified affection for humanity, loved to overestimate people.

But Garrett Gibson was more than pretty. She was riveting. An intelligent, accomplished woman with an elusive quality . . . a suggestion of hidden tenderness . . . that intrigued him.

The evening had been one surprise after another, starting with Ethan Ransom being carried in half dead by a pair of terrified river police who clearly wanted nothing to do with the affair. Having stopped their patrol boat beneath Blackfriars Bridge for a forbidden drink of whiskey from a flask, the officers could hear the murder in progress above them. After the assassin had left the bridge, they’d managed to haul the wounded man aboard and searched his pockets, and had found nothing to identify him other than West’s calling card. But they’d heard enough to realize that reporting the matter would result in more trouble than they cared to deal with.

“Who did this?” West had asked Ransom as he lay in a filthy, crumpled heap on the settee.

“One of Jenkyn’s men,” Ransom had gasped, fighting to stay conscious, his eyes unfocused.

“Jenkyn ordered it?”

“Yes. Don’t trust police. Felbrigg. When they find me . . .”

“They won’t find you.”

“They’ll come.”

Let them try, West had thought, livid as he saw what had been done to his kinsman.

Kathleen had bent over the dying man, using a soft white cloth to wipe some of the grime from his face. Ransom lost consciousness for several seconds, and reawakened with a groan. “May I send for someone?” she had asked gently, and he’d responded with a string of nearly unintelligible words that she’d somehow managed to make sense of. She had turned to West with a perplexed and sorrowing look. “He wants Dr. Gibson.”

“Gibson’s in King’s Cross, isn’t she? We can fetch our family physician far more quickly.”

“He doesn’t want her as a doctor,” Kathleen had said softly. “He wants the woman he loves.”

It had struck West as a highly improbable pairing, the doctor and the government agent. But after seeing them together, he realized their connection didn’t have to be understood by anyone except the two of them.

Rising to his feet and looking down at Garrett’s strained face, West saw that she’d nearly reached the breaking point. She stared back at him vacantly, too drained and overwhelmed to ask a single question.

“Doctor,” he said gently, “I’ve just spoken to my brother, who’s arranged for us to take Ransom to Hampshire. We’re leaving in a few hours.”

“He can’t be moved.”

“He’s not safe here. No one else is, either. There’s no choice.”

Garrett snapped back to attention, her gaze sharpening. “All the jolting could kill him. It’s out of the question.”

“I swear to you he’ll be conveyed quickly and carefully.”

“On rough country roads?” she asked scornfully.

“We’re transporting him by private train carriage. We’ll reach the family estate by dawn. It’s quiet and secluded there. He’ll be able to heal in privacy.”

West could hardly wait to return to Eversby Priory. He was beginning to hate London and its hard-hearted chaos of streets, buildings, vehicles, and trains, filth, smoke, glitter, and grandeur. Oh, he missed the city from time to time, but after a few days he was always eager to get back to Hampshire.

The Ravenels’ ancient manor house was positioned on a hill from which anyone who approached could be seen for miles. The estate’s tens of thousands of acres had belonged to the family since the days of William the Conqueror. It seemed appropriate that Ethan Ransom, who—although illegitimate—was in the family’s direct line of descent, should be guarded from his enemies in the home of his ancestors. He and Garrett Gibson would be safe there. West would make sure of it.

Garrett was shaking her head. “I can’t leave my father . . . he’s old and ill . . .”

“We’ll take him with us. Now, tell me what Ransom will need for the journey.”

West was fairly certain that in ordinary circumstances, Garrett would have argued over the plan. But she looked at him dumbly, seeming paralyzed.