Dangerous Exile by K.J. Jackson

{ Chapter 2 }

“She’s awake.”

With a nod to the gentlemen playing Faro in the private Peacock room, Talen moved past Declan to the door his partner had just entered with the news. There was a sizable amount on the table at the turn. A breeding stable of racing horses, land in Dorset, a mine in Cornwall. All going to the house if the cards flipped well.

None of that was more interesting than the woman that lay in a bed two floors above him.

Declan followed him out of the room and Talen looked over his shoulder to his friend once the door was closed. “Did she say anything?”

“Verity indicated that she wouldn’t say anything. Only your name.”

Talen heaved a sigh. Not that he expected anything less.

His long legs carrying him fast up the stairs, Talen entered the Blue Waters room without knocking.

Going directly to the side of the bed, he stared down at the mangled mess of the woman’s face framed by disheveled dark brown hair—a face so bruised and battered and swollen it roiled his stomach to look at her.

Nevertheless, he had to at least look into her one eye he could see as he talked to her. Respect. Madame Juliet would demand it of him, and he owed her. Madame Juliet was the bawd at the Den of Diablo, the central gaming house owned by Hoppler, his main rival and begrudging compatriot in rookery empire building. The last Talen had heard, Madame Juliet was headed north with a Scot, posing as his betrothed.

This lump on the bed was apparently a result of that ill-advised scheme.

Focusing on the oddly colored amber eye looking up at him, he pointed down at her arm closest to him. “Declan said you were seen getting off the Edinburgh mail coach. You rode in a mail coach all the way to London from Edinburgh with your arm like this?”

Her left arm lay atop the blue coverlet beside her body, the bottom half of her forearm grotesquely jutting the wrong way out from her elbow.

Her right hand clutched the top of the coverlet, pulling it up under her chin. Her voice still a squeak, her one eye didn’t look away from him. “You are Talen Blackstone?”

He nodded.

Her good eye closed, her head tilting back into the pillow. “Why am I naked?”

“We took off your cloak after your body collapsed, dead to the world, and we saw your arm. We had to make certain there were not other bones askew.”

She gave the slightest nod.

At least she didn’t fight him on it or take offense. Not that she was in a position for either reaction.

Talen cleared his throat pointedly. “I repeat, you rode in a mail coach all the way to London from Edinburgh with your arm like this?”

“I—” Her breath left her and it took concentrated effort for her to suck in air and force words out. Her right eye opened to him. “I did. I had to.”

She was lying. He’d seen her battered body. Bruises everywhere. The broken arm. The pain—every jolt of the coach would have been torture. Days of it. No woman could have suffered that and not gone mad.

He stared at her.

She stared back with her one open eye. In the middle of her unfocused look, her amber iris challenged him.

She blinked and her head shook slightly before her unfocused right eye veered off to the side, then snapped toward the ceiling searching again for him. “You are Blackstone?”

Talen stilled. She wasn’t following the conversation. That wasn’t good. “I am.”

“Juliet.” She gasped a breath. “Hide me. Selkie South Brothel. Hide me, please.”

The door opened behind him and he looked over his shoulder. Declan had popped his head into the room. “She’s here.”

Talen nodded to him and returned his attention to the woman. “You are safe here. The bonesetter is ready. We have to reset your arm properly.”

“I know.” A whisper, so thin he almost didn’t hear it.

“It will be painful.”

“I know.”

At least she knew what was coming. Better that than the shock of what was about to happen to her.

Talen reached into an inner pocket and pulled free a small vial, tugging the stopper from it. He set it to her bottom lip, but she didn’t open her mouth, sudden fear in her one good eye.

“It’s laudanum. I don’t know that your heart would survive this without it.”

Staring up at him, it took silent seconds before her lips slightly parted. He tilted the vial, the liquid dropping into her mouth.

“What’s your name?”

Her mouth closed and her throat visibly flexed and constricted as she swallowed. Even that looked to hurt. “Ness.”

He nodded to her as Declan came into the room with the bone setter, Mrs. Jenkins, in tow. A thick woman, her sturdy hands of steel had the strength of ten men for the limbs he’d seen her twist and set. There was none better in the area, in the whole of London, for that matter.

Mrs. Jenkins went directly to the side of the bed, wedging herself between Talen and the woman and she bent, her fingers skimming over Ness’s arm. Ness didn’t flinch away from Mrs. Jenkins’s touch.

Mrs. Jenkins grunted as she bent further over, looking from all angles at Ness’s wrecked arm. “Ye did this to her?” She didn’t look back to Talen.

“No.”

“Did you give her anything?”

“Laudanum.”

She grunted again, then stood straight, her focus on Ness’s face. “The laudanum will help, child, but the best we can hope for is that ye pass into darkness for a spell during the worst of it.”

Ness’s good eye closed and she gave a slight nod.

Mrs. Jenkins spun and pointed at Declan. “Ye hold her legs.” She looked to Talen. “Ye get in the bed with her and hold her body back, Mr. Blackstone.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You want me in bed with her?”

“I want her upright and a force holding her back against me pulling. This break isn’t kind how it’s started to fuse back together. It should have been reset days ago.” She shook her head, obvious disgust on her face at his lack of calling for a bone setter sooner. “Either that laudanum was too much or she’s in a fever. The child can’t even hold her eyes open.”

Talen didn’t bother to correct Mrs. Jenkins on any of the assumptions she’d made. The woman would think what she did—she’d never be any different.

He moved to the opposite side of the bed to approach Ness from her right side and crawled onto the mattress. He lifted Ness’s torso up as he slid into place behind her, positioning her between his legs. He wrapped one arm around her waist and the other across her upper chest, attempting to make sure the coverlet didn’t shift too low for modesty’s sake. He’d already seen Ness’s entire body, but he didn’t need Mrs. Jenkins thinking any worse of him, or she’d never come back to the Alabaster to set another bone.

Ness was slight, as though she’d been slim before this had happened to her, and then she hadn’t eaten for days. Even more gaunt than he had noted when he had checked her body for injuries earlier.

And hot. Her skin boiling under his touch. He hadn’t realized fever had taken her over.

Pushing the bottom of the coverlet aside, Declan found her legs at the base of the bed and locked his hands onto her ankles. Ness’s eye had remained shut, her mouth silent, her body limp as the laudanum had already taken a hold of her.

Or not.

The second Mrs. Jenkins pulled Ness’s upper left arm away from her torso, Ness went rabid—screaming, legs kicking, her body thrashing.

The pain brutal or a hallucination taking a hold of her, Talen wasn’t sure.

Her right leg kicked, jutting up and out of Declan’s hold and her knee cracked Declan in the right eye as he tried to retrieve it. It was enough to send him flailing back a step. “Bloody hell—”   

“Ness—calm,” Talen ordered into her ear. “We’re fixing your arm so be still.”

She froze, her body tense against him. But she stopped whipping about. Her head turned, her right ear pressing against his chest as she looked away from what was happening to her left arm.

Mrs. Jenkins was quick, wrenching and manipulating Ness’s arm into position as she realigned the bone.

But with every twist, every yank Mrs. Jenkins made upon her arm, Ness’s body flinched. He felt it in her muscles. But she didn’t scream. Didn’t kick. Didn’t fight the pain.

Her chin merely curled down, taking every stitch of torture the grinding of marrow against marrow caused.

Talen had seen plenty of bones set in his day, some in the strongest of men. Men he’d had to punch out so they wouldn’t hurt the bonesetter. None of them had ever taken this sort of pain with the stoic silence that this woman did.

Whereas he didn’t truly believe her before—that she had ridden the entire way from Edinburgh to London in the mail coach with her arm like this—he believed her now.

She and pain were well acquainted.

That didn’t stop her body from shaking, the agony overwhelming.

Of all of it, that struck him. How her body shook uncontrollably against him. A life in overt turbulence.

One last wedge of Ness’s arm and Mrs. Jenkins looked up to him, satisfied. “I’ll wrap it with a splint.” She leaned over to dig through the satchel she’d dropped on the floor and pulled free a plank of wood and long strips of linen. “Ye need to have her leave it in place for weeks, a month, more if it still pains her. It cannot slip out of place.”

Talen nodded. “We will keep it wrapped.”

Mrs. Jenkins was quick to set the wooden splint along Ness’s forearm and then wrap it with the linen to lock it into place.

She stood straight, her gaze resting on Ness’s face that was turned away, quivering against his chest. Mrs. Jenkins pointed to Ness’s head. “And have the apothecary get an ointment for her face to relieve the swelling, the poor pup.”

“Thank you for the prompt work.” Talen motioned his head toward Declan. “Declan will take care of you.”

Mrs. Jenkins picked up her bag and followed Declan out of the room.

This was the moment when he needed to extract himself from Ness’s body, but her shaking had yet to cease.

There was something inherently wrong about it, the thought of abandoning the tiny waif while she was still quivering.

One would think he was going soft, for how long he sat there, his arms wrapped around her body, trying to soothe the residual shocks of pain rolling through her.

But sit he did.

Until the trembling eased and her body relaxed against him, a deep laudanum-induced sleep taking her over.

Thank the saints.

He’d never stood for a woman sleeping against him, but in this case, he’d take it. Anything to ease the torture in her body.

He finally allowed himself to take a deep breath and he realized how uncharacteristic of him it was, caring at all if her pain eased. When had he started to care about the wretched souls?

Never.

Which told him he needed to get out of that room posthaste, as Ness had already wasted too much of his night.

Talen shifted her body gently away from his chest and pulled his left leg from the side of her, then laid her body back onto the bed.

Taking care to not disturb her left arm too much, he tucked the coverlet up and over her chest and atop her toes.

Poor pup indeed.

Madame Juliet better have a good reason for all of this nonsense.