Passion and Propriety (Hearts of Honour Book 1) (4 page)

“You heard me.” Grace readied her instruments. “We can’t both stand on this side of the bed. You’ll get in my way.”

Bemused, Hannah did as she was told.

“Now what?” she muttered, aware this was the first and no doubt
only
time she would ever share a bed with a man.

“Lean over his body, and press one hand on his shoulder and the other on his elbow. I need you to keep his upper arm still. You can always lie on him if he becomes too restless.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Hannah rolled her eyes, but Grace just gave a slight shrug of one shoulder.

“It’s either that or tie him down.”

Swallowing hard, Hannah leaned across the viscount’s chest and carefully placed her hands on his burning flesh. He was dreadfully ill, not to mention unconscious
,
but she couldn’t help being mindful of the fact she’d never been so close to a half-naked man before . . . well, not such a prime physical specimen. Holding her breath so as not to brush against his skin, she focused on her duty.

Despite her friend’s careful actions, the viscount grew restless, moaning as the stitches were painstakingly removed. When Grace probed the festering wound, he began to struggle in earnest.

“Keep still, my lord,” Hannah pleaded, lying across his torso as Grace had suggested to hold him in place.
 

His eyes flickered open, his vision glazed with fever and the effects of the sleeping draught.

“Stop torturing me, woman.”

“We’re trying to help you,” she said, and he studied her for a moment before turning to watch Grace remove a shard of metal from his wound.

Neither woman flinched at the curse that erupted from his lips, the poor man well within his rights to be outraged at the incompetence of the surgeons who’d sentenced him to an agonising death.

“How much longer?” he asked, grinding the words between his teeth.

“Not long,” Grace answered, allowing the wound to bleed freely for a moment to dislodge any remaining impurities. “I just need to redo the stitching and apply an herbal salve, then we’ll leave you to rest.”

After a pause, he nodded, and Hannah went to lift herself from where she lay across his chest.

“Don’t.” His other hand fumbled to grasp hers where it pressed upon his uninjured shoulder.

“Very well,” she said, concluding her touch must comfort him in some way.

To his credit, the viscount kept his arm perfectly still as Grace restitched the wound, tugging the torn pieces of flesh together and threading them through with the curved needle and catgut she kept for the purpose. But his chest heaved with ragged breaths, and Hannah prayed God would be merciful to the suffering man. With tears stinging her eyes, she sagged with relief when his head lolled and he succumbed to unconsciousness once more.

Chapter 4

Torment

William was on fire, pinned down and unable to escape the burning pain.

The screams of men and horses rose above the heavy thud of the big guns spewing their deadly missiles. The battle for Arapiles, south of Salamanca, had begun well. The English-fired shrapnel, a new development, shifted the balance in the favour of the Anglo-Portuguese troops, but still their losses were great. Cut down by a spray of fragmented shell casings fired by the superior French guns, William’s cavalry unit was decimated. His personal demons—images of his men, his
friends
—swirled through his mind, their faces hovering before him. Then a real spectre appeared.

“We’ll have to remove your arm, Captain.”

The army surgeon loomed over him while the lantern above his head swung to and fro, in time with the familiar sway of the ocean.

“He won’t thank you,” someone argued, William’s vision too blurred to make out his advocate’s more distant features. “He’s a
viscount.
He’ll have your head if you don’t gain his permission before amputating.”

“I don’t care if he’s the Duke of bloody Wellington. It’s the only way to save his life.”

“Not my arm,” William shouted at the feel of steel cutting through his flesh.

“Shh,” a woman’s voice soothed, her cool hand caressing his brow. “It’s going to be all right.”

“Don’t take my arm.”

“We’re trying to save it.” Her voice was soft, in stark contrast to the vicious pain radiating from his limb.

“Just let me die,” he begged.

“I can’t do that. You must fight to live”—the sweet voice scolded before changing to that of his father’s—“but it would be better if you’d never been born.”

William flinched from his sire’s angry face. At least he’d done one thing right, leaving no heir behind to bear the burden of the Blackthorn Curse or hear such hateful words.

God, have mercy,
he prayed before realisation dawned that it was too late for supplication. The heat and pain were no less than he’d been warned to expect, but the woman’s presence confused him.

What was an angel doing here in hell?

“Bloody well leave me be, woman!” he shouted when her prodding and poking became too much.

“I’m trying to help you, my lord.” Warm hazel eyes met his gaze on the rare occasion he could force his lids to open, but her gentle voice and soft smile didn’t fool him. She was no angel, but a devilish imp allocated to his personal torment.

“You’re a demon.” He glowered at her when she insisted on bathing him and changing his sweat-soaked bedding, the jostling increasing his agony.

“And you’re an impossible man, but we all have our crosses to bear.”

Her tone was acerbic, which added to his confusion. Where the hell was his valet? Markham couldn’t have been struck down in battle, as William had left him safely back at camp. Why, in God’s name, was he being cared for by a woman? And not just
any
woman—her voice was cultured, her demeanour marking her as a lady.

“You shouldn’t be doing this,” he said, but his concern for propriety gave way to panic when she turned to leave. “Wait!” He grabbed hold of her hand.

“It’s all right. I’m not going anywhere.”

Holding to her words like a talisman, he gripped her fingers with equal fervour. His uncharacteristic neediness would have appalled him . . . if any of this had been real.

Over and over, he returned to the war—different battles, different fields, but the sounds of gunfire and the smell of blood and death always the same. When it all became too much, his angel’s voice drew him back to the bed where he lay in his father’s room. Pungent herbal aromas assailed his senses, but occasionally he would catch a whiff of her scent
.

Floral but subtle, her fragrance was infinitely more appealing than the cloying perfumes used by the camp whores. Wives of common soldiers who’d accompanied their men to war, now widows, they sold their bodies to survive. Unable to ignore the desperation on their faces, William had given them money, not for services rendered but to ease their suffering. While his peers had taken their pleasure without a thought, William’s concern had been for the gaggle of ragtag urchins hanging off the women’s skirts. Filling even one child’s belly made it worth enduring the ribald comments about his tenderheartedness.

The occasions he’d been sent to bed hungry as a boy were not ones he would forget in a hurry, even though they’d not happened too often. His lot in life might have been bleak, but on the whole, he’d been well fed and rarely beaten. What his childhood had lacked was kindness, a virtue his angel seemed to possess in abundance . . . when she wasn’t torturing him. William feared her presence was part of his punishment, a taste of heaven to show him what he’d missed, what he could
have had, if not for the curse.

Agitated by the futility of his thoughts, he groaned with pain and regret. His angel wiped his brow, murmuring reassurances, and he vowed to moan more often. Her arm came around his shoulder, an added comfort, a guilty pleasure. Wanting to catch another glimpse of her, he tried to force his eyes open, but it was as if his lids were glued shut.

A woman’s face floated before him, familiar and arresting. His angel? With hair the colour of honey, her strong but feminine features were those of a lady. Puzzled, he couldn’t recall from where he knew her. It was unlike William to focus his attention too keenly on a female of his class. He tended to keep his distance, appreciating their fear his family’s misfortune would rub off on them if they allowed him too close.

“We kill the ones we love, all except the spawn that live to perpetuate the travesty.”

The memory of his father’s bitter diatribes plagued William, the words the same whether spoken coldly sober or in one of his many drunken rages.

“Shh.
It’s all right, my lord. This will help ease your pain.”

The woman’s voice brought him back to the present, and he reached out to grasp her hand. Relief swamped him as her cool fingers entwined with his.

“I need you to raise your head a little for me,” she said, and he allowed her to ply his lips with another foul-tasting draught. With his head resting against the cushion of her breasts and her arms virtually embracing him, William took comfort in her presence. Although one thing bothered him. He knew he shouldn’t complain, but surely an angel could have found something more tolerable for him to drink.

Hannah was exhausted, never having nursed such a difficult and demanding patient before. Considering he was barely cognisant most of the time, she tried not to blame him for his ill manner.

“It’s not right that you should be caring for a gentleman by yourself,” her father said, fretting when he came to check on her the day after the viscount’s arrival. “But I’ve had no luck finding anyone to assist you. Unless I can guarantee payment, none are willing to come up to the manor for a prolonged stay.”

Hannah tsked. “Utter foolishness.” In the decade since a goodly number of the village folk had lost their employment at the estate, despondency had set in. Now superstition overrode common sense.

“Will Mr Grantham not be persuaded to release the necessary funds? Surely he must realise how badly it will reflect upon him if his lack of action hinders the viscount’s recovery?”

“I’m beginning to wonder if it might be in Mr Grantham’s favour if the viscount did
not
recover.” Her father pressed his lips together in a grim line. “But that’s neither here nor there, as the man is nowhere to be found. He informed his housekeeper he was going away on a business trip after the Sunday service, ostensibly on the viscount’s behalf.”

Hannah raised a brow. It would be interesting to discover just how many of Mr Grantham’s callous directives had actually originated from his employer. She was beginning to think they might be few, if any.

“Don’t worry about me, Papa. I’m more than capable of caring for His Lordship. As for propriety, I have Mr and Mrs Potts to assist me with the more intimate aspects of his nursing.”

Hannah was pleased to have mollified her father’s concerns, though she’d no idea the dramatic change in circumstance that would confront her on the third day of her nursing duties.

“Mr Potts’ knee ’as blown up like a bullfrog,” Tommy, the Jenkins boy, informed her in a breathless voice after running up the stairs the following day. “Said to tell ye all the trips up and down the stairs ’as brung on an attack of ’is rheumatism. Mrs Potts ain’t in any better shape, neither. She’s ’obbling around the kitchen, and ’er knuckles are all swollen.”

“Oh, dear.” Hannah sighed then assured the boy she would be down to check on the elderly couple shortly.

“You’ll manage,” Grace said when she stopped by to check on her patient.

“But I’ll have to bathe, dress, and help toilet him alone.”

Grace shrugged. “You’ve seen a naked man before, haven’t you?”

“Well, yes, but old Mr Pettigrew is in his dotage, and I only got a glimpse of his, er . . . intimate region. It wasn’t very pleasant to look at.”

“Something tells me you’ll find His Lordship’s intimate region a sight more appealing to the eye, or is that what’s worrying you?”

“Of course not.” Hannah crossed her arms, refusing to take the bait of her friend’s provocation despite her misgivings.

“He’s strongly built and has obviously maintained an active disposition.” Grace observed the semi-naked viscount. “Probably has a lot to do with why he’s still alive. It’s hard to say what he looks like underneath all that hair, though. Pity about the scars.”