No Other Love (20 page)

“With the—pain—I’m feeling, I might wish I were,” Perry panted out. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Nicola. “I say, are you Jack’s lady?”

Nicola’s brows rose, and Jack said hastily, “Hush, Perry. You’re acting dicked in the nob.” He glanced over at Nicola. “I think you’re right. He
is
delirious.”

“He sounded quite lucid to me,” Nicola retorted. She turned to the patient. “I am my own lady, sir, not Jack’s nor any other man’s.”

Perry grinned faintly. “Yes, ma’am.” In an aside to Jack, he added, “I like the cut of this one’s jib.”

“I am so honored,” Nicola added sarcastically. “Now, then, I intend for you to get well, sir, so I suggest that you lie back and go to sleep. It’s the best thing you can do for your health.”

Perry merely nodded, his eyes beginning to drift closed already. Jack looked at Nicola. “How is he doing?”

Nicola shrugged. “Too early to say. His wound is angry-looking, but there is no pus formed yet. Nor is his fever raging. I am hopeful that there will be no infection. Still, it has not been very long. We must simply wait and see.” She suited her actions to her words, sitting down in the straight-backed chair beside the bed.

Jack stood there for a moment, then pulled another chair from the far wall over to the bed and sat down across the sickbed from her. Nicola raised her brows slightly.

“There is no need for both of us to be here,” she told him. “I came here to take care of him. No doubt there are other matters that require your attention—loot to divide, carriages to stop, people to rob….”

“My, but you’ve developed a wicked tongue.”

“Developed? I think, Mr. Moore, that you would find that I have always had one.”

“Somewhat at odds with all the stories I hear about your kindness and generosity.”

Nicola moved her shoulder in a gesture of dismissal. “Odd…I hear similarly glowing stories about you.”

She surprised a flicker of a smile from him.

“Perhaps,” she continued a little less tartly, “the difference is less in us than in the person who perceives us.”

“Perhaps.”

Nicola looked at him, his upper face hidden by the enigmatic black mask. It was most irritating, the way he kept his face secret from her, and she had to wonder at the motive.
What did it matter if she could recognize him?
Surely he must realize after all this that she was not about to turn him in to the constable, no matter how much he annoyed her. She had too little liking for Richard and too much fondness of the people in the village for that. The village would suffer if the highwayman went down, and that was the last thing Nicola wanted.

She wondered if it was because of some scar or deformity that he kept his visage covered.
Did he conceal himself from everyone?
She remembered Lydia talking about how he concealed himself and kept away from others. That would seem to argue in favor of some hideousness that he was reluctant to reveal. However, the lower half of his face, the visible part, belied any notion of ugliness. His jaw was firm and straight; she could see that much even though it was a trifle hidden by the dark, neatly trimmed goatee and mustache that adorned his lip and chin. His lips were full and firm, well cut, even, she had to admit, somewhat arousing.

Nicola remembered the feel of that mouth upon hers last night, the brush of his beard and skin against her face. Heat blossomed in her at the memory, and hastily she turned her mind away, seeking another subject.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said into the stillness.

Jack looked at her oddly. “I am a highwayman.”

“Is that the sum of your parts?” Nicola responded. “Surely you come from somewhere, have done other things. You have a family, a past.”

“Aye,” he answered laconically. “I do. I did. No longer. I see little point in talking about them.”

“It will help to pass the time,” Nicola pointed out. “I shall be here for some time with your friend, and since you seem determined to stay, you might as well do something to alleviate the boredom.”

“My life was surpassingly dull,” he said lightly. “I do not think it would pass your time well.”

“Why don’t you try me?”

He shrugged. “My family was quite small, all dead now. I left home several years ago. I was in the Royal Navy.”

“The navy? Really? You do not seem like a sailor.”

“It was not by choice, I can assure you. I was taken by a press gang. When I awoke with a sore head, I found myself in the bowels of a ship. That is where I met Perry.”

“That’s awful!” Nicola exclaimed. “I have heard tales of such, but I have never met a man who actually—”

“Few of them are free and alive to be telling their tales. But Perry and I and some others escaped.”

“Others? You mean the rest of your men?”

He nodded.

“I see. So then the lot of you decided to go into the business of thievery on the highways?”

“After a time. We tried some other things first. It was something I wanted to do. The others went along.” He grimaced. “Obviously I did Perry a disservice.”

“Yourself as well. If you are caught, you will be hanged.”

“I know.” He looked at her. “Perhaps it is time to be thinking of getting out.”

“I would say past time.”

“No doubt you are right.” He sighed and rose, walking to the small window. He leaned against the wall, looking out. “I suppose that I have accomplished all I can hope to here.”

“What was it you wanted to accomplish?”

The glance he shot her was brief and fierce. “To destroy the Earl of Exmoor.”

Nicola’s brows rose. “I am afraid it would take more than the depredations of a highwayman to do that.”

“I know.” His mouth twisted bitterly. “I am more like a bee stinging him than the sword that lays him low, as I would like to be. I cannot make him feel the pain I felt, for there is no one and nothing that he loves—other than himself.”

“What did he do to you to make you hate him so?” Nicola asked.

“He destroyed my love.”

Nicola’s eyes widened. “He killed the woman you loved?” She frowned. “But I thought you said that—”

“No. He did not kill her. He killed our love.” He turned to look at her, his dark eyes bleak. “He turned her against me. Used her to get rid of me. And in doing so, he ripped my heart out.”

Nicola sucked in a breath, moved by the pure despair in his voice. “Oh, Jack…”

“He took away even the feelings, the memories, so that I had nothing left.”

“I am so sorry.” Nicola stood up, pulled toward him by her sympathy.

He turned away abruptly. “It doesn’t matter. You are right. It hardly requires both of us to watch over Perry. I will relieve you in a few hours.”

With those words, he walked away, leaving Nicola staring speechlessly after him.

N
ICOLA STOOD UP AND LOOKED DOWN
at her patient. He seemed a bit more flushed, she thought. She had been sitting with him for more than three hours. For a while he had been quiet and somewhat cooler, but now he was moving restlessly again, and his arm, when she laid her hand upon it, seemed warmer. She put her hand on his forehead. It was damp with sweat and definitely hotter than before, hotter, she thought, than when she had first come in.

She turned to the stand beside the bed, where a bowl of water sat. She dipped a rag in it and wrung it out, then wiped his face with it. Again she swished the rag through the water, wrung it out and folded it to lay across his forehead. This was a process that she had done several times during the last few hours. It helped somewhat, but it was only an extra measure. What he needed was another dose of feverfew, and she thought that she would add some meadowsweet this time.

The problem was, she would have to mix the powders and get him to drink, and it had been clear last time that getting him to drink required at least two people. She would have to call Jack, and that was something she had been putting off for the past half hour.

He had left in an obviously black mood, but it was not his temper that made Nicola nervous. She was not a person who feared much, and she had faced an angry man before. It was more that she no longer knew how to act around Jack. His revelation about Richard and the pain that had tinged his words had aroused her sympathy. Up until now, she had maintained an adversarial status with him; even through their passionate kisses, there had been some sort of battle raging between them. But the bleakness in him tonight had touched some answering chord in her; she had felt not only sadness for him, but a sort of kinship, as well. Jack, for all his mocking, irritating ways, had dwelled in the same depths of sorrow and despair as she had, his life ripped and trampled beneath the feet of another. It was even the same man who had ruined them both. She understood his pain on a wordless, visceral level.

And now she no longer knew how to treat him, how to act with him.
Had they reached a sort of understanding? Would he talk to her? Or would he revert to the sarcastic tone he had used with her before? Would he be embarrassed at how much of himself he had revealed and therefore become even more distant?

However, she could hardly stand by and watch her patient’s temperature climb just because of her uneasiness at the idea of finding Jack and asking for his help. So Nicola squared her shoulders and walked out into the hall. It was night now, and the hallway was dim, lit by a couple of sconces along the wall.

“Mr. Moore?” She walked along the hall and peered down the stairs to the floor below. It looked rather dark down there, so she continued along the hall toward an open doorway, through which a flickering shaft of light fell. “Jack?”

She reached the door and stopped, looking in. Jack was standing before the washbasin, stripped to the waist and washing his face. He was turned away from her, so that she could see only his back, but that was enough to hold her eye. His back, padded with muscle and browned by the sun, broadened from a slender waist and hips to wide shoulders. His dark hair was damp from the washing and a trifle shaggy across the back of his neck. Nicola was aware of a primitive impulse to run her hands over his back, and the heat that flooded her abdomen at the thought set her back a little.
Was she so weak that the mere sight of his naked torso filled her with lust?

It was then that she saw the network of fine white lines that crisscrossed his back. Nicola realized, with a little indrawn breath of horror, that the lines were scars, and she could think of nothing that would make such scars but a whip. Given his involuntary time in the navy, she felt sure that she was right about the whippings.

He must have heard her involuntary gasp, for he glanced back toward the door, still rubbing his face with the towel. When he saw her, he let out an oath and swung back around, hastily dropping the towel and picking up the mask that lay on the stand beside the washbowl. He put it on even before he reached for his shirt, lying over the back of a chair.

He slipped on the shirt and turned back to her, saying crossly, “Bloody hell, woman, don’t you know better than to sneak up on a man like that?”

“I was scarcely sneaking,” Nicola retorted. “I called your name. Twice.”

“Has something happened to Perry?” The irritation in his voice was replaced by worry, and he crossed the room in three quick strides, not pausing to button his shirt. “Is he worse?”

“A little. Nothing to alarm us yet, but I should give him another dose to bring down his temperature. I need your help.” Nicola was intensely aware of the bare skin of his chest, ridged with muscle, that was exposed between the open sides of his shirt, and she looked away.

“Yes, of course.”

He strode off down the hall, and Nicola had to hurry to keep up with him. Inside the room, he went straight to Perry’s bed. Nicola entered behind him and began to mix the feverfew powder and water.

“He is not improving, is he?” he asked.

“He is not failing, either,” Nicola reminded him. “It has been only a day, and I imagine that he lost a lot of blood.”

“Yes. It was a long ride back,” Jack agreed. “And we could not keep the bleeding stemmed.”

“Lift him up,” Nicola told him, coming to the bed with the glass of medicine.

Jack complied, and she began to pour the liquid into Perry’s mouth. He drank thirstily at first and downed more than half the dose before the bitter taste registered on his tongue. He turned his head, cursing, and once again Jack and Nicola had to hold his head still to get the rest of it down him. When Jack laid his friend back down on the bed, he looked over at Nicola.

“You look done in,” he said. “Why don’t you lie down and sleep for a while? I will watch over him.”

“But that is what I came here to do,” Nicola protested. “I am sure you will have ample opportunity to do so over the next few days. But you will be better able to help him if you are not dead on your feet. I will wake you if his condition worsens.”

Nicola cast a glance at the patient. She knew that it was likely that he would come to a crisis before much longer. It made sense to snatch whatever sleep she could now. After all, she had had a tiring day and little sleep the night before. “All right.”

“Take the bedroom next door.” Jack nodded toward the far wall. “No one will disturb you.”

Nicola nodded and left the room. The next room was small, but clean, as was the bed in it. She pulled the pins from her hair and shook it down, easing the beginning pains of a headache. She took off her shoes and lay down on top of the bed fully dressed, spreading out a blanket over her. She was asleep almost instantly.

S
HE WAS LYING IN HER BED
,
NOT
here or at Tidings, but she knew it was her bed. A man lay in the bed beside her, his hand stroking her body. She turned to look at him, and she saw that it was Gil. She smiled and relaxed, stretching her arms above her head and giving herself up to the pleasure that Gil was creating in her. His hand was gentle and warm, callused. She had never felt anything as pleasurable. His hand roamed all over her, arousing her until she moaned and stirred. Her breasts were tight and full, aching for his touch, and between her legs passion throbbed, hot and demanding. He began to kiss her, murmuring her name….

“Nicola…Nicola…wake up. Nicola.”

She was pulled reluctantly from sleep, her body alive and tingling from her dream, her mind still befogged. A man stood beside her bed, looking down at her.
Gil!
For a confused instant, her heart leapt within her, and her arms lifted toward him.

Then it registered on her sleepy mind that a mask covered half the man’s face, and she remembered suddenly who he was and where
she
was. Her arms dropped to her sides, and her face flamed with embarrassment. She sat up, pushing the blanket from her, but it had twisted around her as she slept, and now it seemed to tangle worse and worse the more she struggled.

Jack reached down and hooked a hand in the blanket, peeling it aside and freeing her. Nicola felt even more the fool, and she hid her face by swinging off the bed and bending down to pick up her shoes and put them on.

“What’s happened?” she asked curtly, hoping that if she were matter-of-fact, he would respond in kind. But inside her mind was racing.
What had he seen?
She could remember the details of her dream all too vividly.
Had she moaned aloud as she had in her dream? Had he heard her? How long had he been standing there watching her sleep? Could he tell what sort of thing she was dreaming about?

She called herself ten times a fool for not locking the door.
Imagine—at Tidings, she barricaded herself in her room each night, but here, in the midst of a gang of thieves, she had not even thought of locking the door!
It had doubtless been because she was so tired, but still…it seemed to her that anyone with the least common sense would have been afraid to fall asleep here unprotected.

“He has taken a turn for the worse,” Jack explained, his voice and face giving nothing away. “His fever is high, and he’s thrashing about and talking nonsense. I had to hold him down for fear he would reopen his wound.”

Nicola hurried out of the room, not taking the time to pin up her hair, and it floated in a pale cloud about her shoulders, soft and golden. When she entered Perry’s room, she found him struggling to sit up, cursing softly.

“Damn him! I’ll not be dictated to!” he exclaimed, his eyes wild, his voice even more accented in the tones of wealth and privilege.

“Of course you won’t,” Nicola said agreeably, coming around to one side of the bed and taking his arm in both her hands, gently pushing him back down. “But you really must lie down, you know.”

“I don’t want to lie down,” he answered pettishly. “I have to—to talk…” His voice trailed off, and he lay back with a weary sigh, his eyes closing. “Tell him.”

“I will. And later you may tell him yourself.”

“Arrogant bastard.”

Nicola made a soothing noise, brushing his hair back from his forehead and feeling for herself how hot his skin had become. She reached for the washcloth and dipped it into the bowl of water.

“Thank God for you, Netta,” Perry continued.

“Mmm.” Nicola smoothed the damp cloth over his face. “There. That feels better, doesn’t it? You should rest now.”

Perry nodded, mumbling something unintelligible, and soon the evenness of his breathing showed that he was asleep again. Nicola looked across the bed at Jack.

“What was that about?”

He shrugged. “I know little more than you. I think Netta is the name of his sister. He does not talk about his family much. They are estranged. I believe his father threw him out because of his wild ways. His mind is ten years in the past. How bad is he?”

“I don’t know. Obviously he’s delirious. He is quite hot. All we can do is try to bring down the fever and keep him still so he doesn’t reopen his wound.” She wiped down his sweating face and chest, carefully staying away from the bandage over his wound, then rinsed the cloth and wrung it out and started over again.

“I’ll bring up a pitcher of water from the barrel outside,” Jack said. “It will be cooler.” He left the room, taking the bowl of water with him, and returned a few minutes later with an empty bowl and a pitcher of water, chilled from sitting in the evening air.

Nicola repeated the process with the cooler water, then laid a damp cloth beneath his neck and another over his forehead. She left Jack with their patient to make sure he did not hurt himself by thrashing around again, and she went downstairs to the kitchen to heat water for a cup of meadowsweet tea. When the herb had steeped, she carried the pot and a cup upstairs. She found Jack leaning over the bed when she entered, holding his friend down.

“He keeps insisting on getting up,” Jack said grimly. “If we are to get that cup of tea down him, I had better call for reinforcements.”

He went to the door and yelled for Saunders, returning to help Nicola press Perry back flat on the bed. Within a few minutes, Saunders, the man who had helped them the day before, joined them.

It took the three of them to get the cup of fluid down Perry’s throat. Perry was delirious and shouting imprecations at them, using the sort of language that would have made Nicola blush had she not heard it all before from the women she worked with in the East End. After a few minutes, the meadowsweet began to work on his fever and he subsided into a restless sleep, still hot enough to soak the sheets with his sweat, but at least no longer raving and seeing things that were not there.

They stayed with him throughout the night. Jack’s man made a pallet on the floor and went to sleep there, rising when they needed him to hold Perry down. Otherwise Jack and Nicola watched over Perry, keeping his fever down with cool cloths and holding him still whenever he began to try to get out of bed or to flail around.

It was a long, desperate night. Nicola forgot about eating, and there was no question of sleep. All her attention was focused on her patient. Jack worked quietly and well with her, doing whatever she asked of him. All sarcasm and teasing had disappeared in the face of his worry about his friend. They changed Perry’s bandages and applied new salves of woundwort and comfrey. They fought his fever with cooling cloths and forced feedings of meadowsweet, feverfew and water. Perry, in pain and delirious, was not an easy patient, and it required strength, forbearance and patience to nurse him.