Noble Satyr: A Georgian Historical Romance (55 page)

“I didn’t. You may detest my viola playing,”
she called out, “but I am considered good in a crisis.”

“What are you doing back there? Please don’t
go to any trouble…”

“I assure you, I won’t do more than is
necessary to keep you alive until Dr. Medlow arrives.”

Deb stepped out from behind the tree, the
frockcoat hanging loose about her shoulders and arms and buttoned
to her chin, the narrow lapels pulled up about her slender throat
and tickling her small ears. She knelt beside Julian and went to
work ripping up her shirt to make bandages.

“I’m going to have to remove your waistcoat
and shirt,” she said, addressing the torn strips of fabric. “I’ll
be as gentle as I’m able.”

“I’m sure you shall,” came the murmured
reply.

He submitted with good grace to having his
silk cravat pulled this way and that; the diamond pin extracted
with care and put aside, but it took great presence of mind for him
to sit up, straighten his leg and remove the hand that was pressed
to the wound. At the latter he fainted with the pain but made a
swift recovery, gaze riveted to the girl’s face: On the expressive
brown eyes, the straight indifferent nose and the full bottom lip
that quivered ever so slightly. Several curls had escaped from
their pins and fell across her flushed cheek. Julian could not
decide on their color; were they a dark strawberry blonde or were
they more an autumnal red? He was certain he had never seen such
rich red hair before, or such shine. He would have remembered such
a particular color. The question consumed all his thoughts as he
was stripped out of a richly embroidered waistcoat to reveal a
shirt wet and heavy with his own blood.

Removing the shirt presented a problem for
Deb. She knew her patient did not have the strength to raise his
arms above his shoulders to slip the shirt over his head, so it
would have to be torn from his back. Yet that was no easy thing.
The cloth about the wound was wet with blood and had adhered to the
slit in the man’s muscular chest like glued paper to a wall. But
Deb did not dwell on the pain she was about to inflict. It only had
to be endured for the briefest of moments.

Decided, she took hold of the opened shirt
front and ripped it left and right off the broad shoulders. It took
three tugs to rent the fine fabric; the third tore the cloth from
neck to waist, exposing a wide expanse of chest mattered with hair
the same raven-black color as that which covered the gentleman’s
head. For an instant her eyes registered surprise. The silk cravat,
the richness of the exquisite fabric of waistcoat and frockcoat,
the patrician features, all had concealed the measure of the man’s
muscle. It gave her hope for a full recovery. Such a well-exercised
physique would stand him in good stead; but only if the wound could
be staunched, and at once.

Julian suffered these ministrations with
great fortitude; surprised the girl possessed such strong
constitutional powers. It seemed that the sight of blood did not
bother her in the slightest. She merely wrinkled her nose, not in
response to any feelings of squeamishness, but in an enquiring,
interested sort of way. He was about to make a quip about the dual
sensibilities of being female and a musician but the quip died on
his pale lips and was replaced with a guttural oath from deep
within his throat, for suddenly his whole being convulsed with an
unbearable pain.

Deb had carefully peeled away the sodden
shirt from the wound, exposing a deep gash under the rib cage in
the gentleman’s right side. Examining it, she said in a detached
voice,

“I don’t think he meant to kill you, or your
opponent has no notion of anatomy. The slice is deep but if he’d
wanted to kill you he’d have pinked you on the left…”

Then, without warning, she pressed a wad of
folded cloth over the wound, and so firmly that to Julian it was as
if her whole fist had been thrust through the slit to mingle with
his entrails and meet up with his spine. Disorientated with pain,
he fought to remain conscious. His limp hand was placed over the
dressing and he was told in a strident voice to keep it there with
a firm pressure until the makeshift bandage was securely about his
chest to hold the padding in place.

It was no easy task to bind up the wound.
Deb managed to slip the bandage once around her patient’s taut
stomach, but having achieved this much the gentleman’s eyelids
fluttered and he promptly fainted. Quickly, she scrambled up,
roughly pulled aside the layers of her petticoats to free her long
stockinged legs and straddled the man’s inert thighs in time to
catch the full weight of his upper body against her shoulder as he
pitched forward. She was almost knocked off her knees but managed
to put her shoulder into his upper chest and at such an angle that
it permitted her arms to remain free. This enabled her to pass the
bandage freely across the width of his wide bare back. She did this
several times, each time pulling the binding tighter so that the
wound was sealed and the padding secure under the wrappings.

Certain that her shoulder was bruised and
her back about to buckle under the man’s weight, she quickly groped
about the tangled tree roots for the diamond-headed stickpin she
had set aside. With the pin secured through the top layers of her
makeshift bandage, she used her remaining strength to set her
patient upright and gently leaned him back against the birch tree.
But he did not look at all comfortable and so without a thought to
modesty she stripped off his frockcoat, folded the embroidered silk
garment up into a bundle and successfully placed this soft pillow
behind his strong neck, thus avoiding his raven head banging back
against the tree trunk with a great thud.

Exhausted and feeling the need to catch her
breath, Deb just sat there in her thin cotton chemise: straddled
atop her patient’s muscular thighs, petticoats bunched up over her
knees and exposing her long stockinged legs to the world. She felt
bruised, battered and on the verge of tears.

“How dare you do this to me!” she demanded
of the unconscious gentleman and picked up the flask, uncertain
whether to force the rest of its contents down his throat or dash
the liquid in his face. “You’re probably a notorious criminal and
well served to be left to bleed to death! My misfortune to stumble
across you.” She leaned forward and poured a drop of brandy between
the parted lips. “I’m a fool,” she murmured, scanning his angular
face. “I don’t think you can be a criminal. Your eyes are too
honest… and you are far too swooningly handsome to be—Oh! You
ungrateful brute! Unhand me!” she yelped, for Julian had her hard
by the wrist and the flask fell into the grass. “That hurts!”

Julian looked into the flushed face close up
to his and blinked. “Promise me you won’t run off.”

Deb gave a twisted smile. “Afraid I mean to
leave you to the footpads?” she goaded, plying at the strong
fingers about her wrist.

“No. I want… I want to talk to you.”

“Save your strength for the physician. Oh,
do let me go! You’ll bruise my flesh.”

He released her and she sat up.

“I haven’t the strength to make you stay.
But I’m apt to decline into a blue melancholy without you.” He
swallowed and closed his eyes and spent a few moments regaining his
breath. “That would wound my pride far greater than any wound to my
body.”

Deb was suddenly curious. “Who did this to
you?”

“Men of little consequence.” He sighed his
annoyance. “They weren’t particularly good swordsmen. Uncle Lucian
will be disgusted with me.”

“Uncle Lucian?”

“Premier swordsman in France and England in
his day. He thinks I lack grace in my movements. He’s right.”

“You should have shot ’em!” Deb said
savagely.

Julian smiled. “Uncle Lucian? I know he
thinks me a sad trial on my parents and never has a good word to
say on my behalf but—”

“Silly! Not Uncle Lucian, the cowardly curs
who did this to you. Why didn’t you use pistols? Much quicker
result and you need not break a sweat.”

“Precisely. Uncle Lucian deplores the
methods of chivalry employed by the modern youth.”

“But you’re not exactly—Sorry!”

“I’m hardly in my dotage, dear girl,” Julian
drawled. “And to a man in his sixties, five and twenty is barely of
an age to be out of leading strings.”

“Oh! Well, that’s not old at all,” Deb
agreed. “Actually, I thought you older—Oh dear! I have the most
wretched tongue and am forever saying the first thing that comes to
mind.”

“Don’t let it bother you,” he said dryly,
gaze flickering across her bare shoulders and slim arms. “I expect
you thought me older because I’m graying at the temples?”

Deb met his gaze. “How—how many swordsmen
were there?”

“Three.”

“Three? That’s unfair and dishonorable.”

“Yes. Tell me your name.”

“Name?” she repeated with downcast eyes,
suddenly feeling self-conscious. “My name is unimportant.”

“I’m sorry you had to ruin your shirt,” he
apologized after a short silence. When she looked away, out to the
forest, unable to meet the steady gaze of his clear green eyes he
said gently, “Won’t you tell me why you and—Jack? Yes, Jack, are
fiddling in the forest at this hour? Wouldn’t the schoolroom be a
more appropriate place?”

“I-I—must go…”

“My name is Julian,” he continued. “I can’t
thank you if I don’t know your name.”

“I told you. It’s not important. I’d have
done the same for-for—Oh!
Anyone
.”

“I see. Is it necessary for you to carry a
pistol?”

Deb threw him a sullen look. “You’re very
busy.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

“If you are, I’d like to offer my
assistance.”

“Is that so?” she said with a twisted smile.
“When do you think you will be in a position to offer your
services? A month; two months from now?”

“I’m not about to beg,” he replied
mildly.

“I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful,” she
apologized; face a mask of hard indifference. “It’s just that you
can’t help. So, please, forget you ever saw us or that I have a
pistol. If Gerry ever found out… I’ll go and meet up with Dr.
Medlow; show him the way through the forest.”

“Must you carry a pistol?” he persisted in
the same gentle tone.

Deb regarded him steadily then made up her
mind that there could be little harm in confiding just a little bit
about herself, especially to such a willing ear. Besides, it might
just take his mind off the pain in his side. “My brother
Gerry—
Gerald
—doesn’t know about the pistol. It belonged to
Otto who gave it to me just before he died and said that I must
keep it on me always when I am out alone. Otto was my other brother
and my best friend and Jack’s father. He was a splendid musician
and Jack has his talent. If Jack is to go to Paris to be tutored
under Evelyn Ffolkes, then he must practice. But as Gerry has
forbidden us to play our violas, Jack and I come out here to be
alone, and so the servants won’t report back to him. So you see,
that’s why I carry a pistol.”

“Gerry has no ear for music?”

Deb’s brown eyes lit up. “Gerry is tone
deaf.”

“Hence he has no appreciation of Jack’s
talent.”

“Precisely!”

Julian’s breathing became labored again and
he half-closed his eyes. Deb thought he was about to faint again
until he smiled and said in a contrived tone of disinterest, “I
dare say Gerry has the same lack of appreciation for beauty. If you
were my sister I’d take better care of you. I certainly wouldn’t
allow you out of the schoolroom, dressed in a man’s shirt and
without a corset.”

“You obviously have no idea what it’s like
to be spied upon!” she said indignantly. “I can’t be expected to
sneak out of the house with Jack if I must first wake my maid to
lace me into a corset. Brigitte would have the whole house up
within five minutes of my departure.”

“Well then, that certainly excuses you.”

“And you are a bad judge of age. I will be
one and twenty
very
soon.”

“Accept my apologies. You look much younger.
Perhaps because you aren’t wearing your corset…?”

Deb gaped at him. “Because I’m not wearing
my corset?” she repeated incredulously. “Your manners are
appalling. If you weren’t wounded I’d—I’d—”

“Yes?” he asked expectantly, shoulders
shaking with silent laughter. “You would…?”

A crimson flush washed over her breasts and
up her throat but Deb bravely looked him in the eyes to tell him
what she thought of his insolence when she noticed a spot of fresh
blood on the bandage and that he was trembling.

“You’re shivering!” she announced, all
embarrassment forgotten.

“Yes. I’m cold and can’t move my legs. No
matter, the physician will be here shortly.”

Only then did she realize that as well as
being practically naked from the waist up she was still straddled
atop the injured duelist’s thighs and had been comfortably seated
on his lap for quite some time. Hiding her embarrassment behind
anger, she admonished him as she scrambled off his long legs and
brushed down the layers of her crushed petticoats.

“You should’ve said something instead of
letting me sit there rattling on at you!”

“And cut short our
tête-à-tête
? Now
that
would’ve been bad mannered.”

“You must be a lunatic!”

“Yes, I must be,” Julian answered with a
private smile and closed his eyes.

If you enjoyed this preview

buy the
complete book