Rebel Magisters (22 page)

“You brought a medical kit on this trip?”

“I’m notoriously accident-prone. And isn’t it good that I did? Improvising this sort of thing with tools you might find lying around would be difficult.”

I didn’t think it would be easy
with
the right tools, but I forced myself not to think so I wouldn’t panic. I found the kit, which looked like a doctor’s bag, and brought it over to him. He motioned for me to help him sit up, and he rummaged through the bag, bringing out a bottle. “Open this,” he ordered. After I did, he took a long swig from it and handed it to me. “For the pain,” he explained. “I suspect I’m going to need it.” He took out another bottle, some instruments, and a great deal of gauze, then lay back down, breathing heavily, like the effort had cost him a great deal.

“You’ll need to take those forceps and probe the wound for the bullet,” he said. “Do you think you can do that?”

“Of course I can,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as him.

“Of course you can,” he echoed, a faint smile on his lips. “I should never doubt you, Verity.”

I used the scissors from the kit to cut his shirt away from the wound, forcing myself not to think about seeing that much of his bare skin, and moved the lamp closer to light my work. He clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut as I put the tips of the forceps into the wound. I immediately came upon something solid. “I think I have it,” I said and tugged as gently as I could. He gasped and went limp. Working quickly before he could regain consciousness, I pulled the bullet free. Remembering a novel I’d read about stagecoach robbers, I put the forceps back into the wound and probed for a scrap of cloth that might have come with the bullet. I was surprised to find it, and it seemed to match the hole in his shirt. “See, Father, pulp novels are good for something,” I muttered to myself. I poured a generous amount of disinfectant over and into the wound, then pressed a wad of gauze onto it, putting on pressure to slow the bleeding.

He moaned and stirred then. “Are you done?” he asked groggily.

“I need to get you bandaged, but I removed the bullet and the cloth it took with it, and I’ve cleaned the wound.”

“You have a future in medicine if you get tired of being a governess,” he mumbled.

“Especially if I keep working for you. I’m getting plenty of practice.” I wrapped a bandage around the wad of gauze, holding it tight against the wound. “Now, we need to get you warm and dry.”

His overcoat had actually kept his body fairly dry. It was just his hair that was soaked. He seemed to have lost his hat somewhere along the way. I wished his valet had come with us because Matthews was far more experienced in this sort of thing. I might not have quailed at removing the bullet, but I was very uncomfortable with the prospect of undressing him. I found a dry towel in his bathroom and gave his head a vigorous rubbing, pulled a nightshirt over his head to hide the bandage, then wrapped a blanket from the bed around his shoulders and made him lie down again.

“There should be a teapot and some tea and sugar in the trunk,” he said.

“Do you pack expecting to encounter a tea emergency?”

“Strong, sweet tea is very good for shock. Get water from the bathroom, and you know how to boil it.”

“Do you think it’s safe for me to use so much magic?”

“They’ll think it’s me if they notice anything.”

I filled the pot, then concentrated on the ether surrounding it. Soon, the water was bubbling, and I added tea leaves. After the tea had steeped thoroughly, I strained it into a cup I found in the trunk and added a generous dose of sugar. Kneeling beside him, I helped him sit halfway up and held the cup to his lips for him to drink. When he’d finished, I lowered him back to the ground. “You should probably have a cup, yourself,” he said, his words starting to slur, perhaps from the painkiller he’d taken. “You’ve had a bit of a shock in dealing with this.”

“I need to clean up first. We don’t want that blood to set.” I gathered the towels and his overcoat and took them into the bathroom. I set the towels to soak in the bathtub in cold water and attempted to dab the blood out of his coat. It looked like the worst of it was on the lining, so the real problem was the obvious hole. He only had the one overcoat with him on the trip.

After draining the water from the tub and giving the towels another rinse, I realized that my white nightgown looked as though it had been through a war. I managed to rinse the blood out of the hem, but by the time I’d done that and wrung out the towels to leave them to dry, my thin cotton gown was so damp as to be transparent. I couldn’t go out to face Henry like that, so I took his dressing gown off the hook on the back of the door and wrapped it around myself.

I returned to the bedroom to find him dozing. I checked his pulse and found that although it was weaker and more rapid than would be considered healthy, it was stronger and steadier than it had been earlier. “Yes, I’m still alive,” he said sleepily without opening his eyes. “Now, have some tea and let’s see if it was worth all my spilled blood.”

I didn’t need urging to pour myself a cup of tea and add plenty of sugar. Now that the immediate crisis was over, I could feel the shock setting in. My legs felt watery and my hands shook. I downed the whole cup before picking up the packet I’d found in Henry’s overcoat pocket. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what’s in it,” I said, trying to keep a light, teasing tone in my voice to hide the tremor.

“I was too occupied with fleeing for my life to stop to look. It would be just my luck if it’s nothing more than birthday greetings to a friend.”

With trembling fingers, I opened the package and pulled out several sheets of paper covered in bold handwriting. When I saw Henry trying to sit up so he could read, I moved closer to him and held the pages so that he could see by the light of the fire.

The contents were more astonishing than I anticipated. The governor admitted that there had been some kind of fraud or mismanagement that was about to bankrupt the colonial government and begged his friend for a loan to tide the colonies over until the matter could be investigated and resolved.

When he’d finished reading, Henry let out a low whistle. “And to think, it’s in his own handwriting. This is exactly what we needed, worth every drop of blood. Even all those fence-sitters should be up in arms about this. I need to take this letter around to all those who denied me before.”

“You won’t be doing that for a couple of days, not if you don’t want anyone to find it suspicious that you’ve got a bad shoulder right after the governor’s courier shot someone who stole these documents.”

With a sigh, he said, “I’m not sure I can safely do it ever. Being specifically linked to this letter would put me in great danger.”

“So, it takes large doses of pain medicine to make you think rationally,” I teased. More seriously, I added, “I can get it to the Mechanics, to go in their newspapers. We know there are magisters who read them.”

“You can’t be linked to it, either.”

“Liberty Jones is willing to cede this scoop to some other reporter.”

“We need to put this directly into the hands of people we know we can trust. As dangerous as it may be to hold on to this news, let’s wait until we get back to New York.”

“You can’t keep this sort of thing all that time, in the governor’s house!”

“I know. But you can.”

“Me?”

“No one is going to search your room. Why would a governess who’s never out of sight of her charges have incriminating evidence in her possession? And you’re less likely to have servants pawing through your belongings in the name of being helpful.”

He closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath through clenched teeth. “Though if you are to remain above suspicion, you should probably get back to your room and make sure it shows no signs of intrusion. I’ll need you to help me up and into bed first, though.”

As I got my hands under his good shoulder to help him sit up and then get to his feet, I said, “You know you’re not going to be anything like back to normal by tomorrow. How will you explain your condition?”

He leaned heavily on me as we walked around to the head of the bed, where I pulled back the covers and allowed him to fall onto the mattress. “I have come down with a terrible case of the flu.”

“You really do need a doctor,” I said as I pulled the covers up over him.

“Believe it or not, I’ve had worse. Armed robbery is a dangerous business.” He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Thank you for being my rock. We would all be doomed without you.”

“That medicine has gone to your head,” I chided. I reluctantly slipped my hand out of his, but I couldn’t resist brushing the hair off his forehead.

I thought he smiled ever so slightly, and was that a sigh, or a moan of pain? “Now go to bed, Verity,” he murmured, closing his eyes.

I checked the room one last time for signs of blood and made sure the medical supplies were all packed away in the trunk before I slipped out of Henry’s dressing gown and left it draped across the footboard. I picked up the stolen letter and tucked it up under one sleeve of my gown, then listened for a long moment at the door before opening it. When I detected no signs of life in the hallway, I darted across to my room.

I’d hidden things before, but never anything quite this important or damning. Being caught with this letter in my possession would likely be considered treason, even if they could find no evidence of my participation in the robbery, and I was in an unfamiliar house being run by the governor. I couldn’t think of any reason for anyone to deliberately search my room for contraband, so in devising a hiding place I tried to think of places no servant would have any reason to look while packing, unpacking, or arranging my wardrobe. I thought for a moment about one of my books, but there was the risk that one of the children might look there. I encouraged them to borrow books from me.

My first step was to disguise it, so it wouldn’t be obvious at first glance. I found an envelope in the drawer of my desk and slid the letter into it. On the outside of the envelope, I wrote my name in my best impression of masculine handwriting. As an afterthought, I added, “To my dearest” above my name. I sealed the envelope, waited about a minute, then eased it open.

Now that it looked like a love note that had been read, I hoped that no one who wasn’t prying into my life would take a closer look. I stuck it between the pages of my Bible, as that was one book no one was likely to need to borrow from me, and with any luck, that would add a dash of guilt to anyone tempted to read my letter.

It wasn’t until I’d settled that matter that I realized the window was still open. It was warm enough outside that the room hadn’t become badly chilled, but it still felt very damp, which made me shiver now that I wasn’t active. I made a quick check to ensure that no blood was evident in the room or on the windowsill and that no one was likely to suspect I’d had a midnight visitor, then crawled into bed and tried unsuccessfully to quiet my mind enough to get some rest.

In Which

I Must Maintain

Appearances

After a night of tossing and turning and startling at every sound within the house, I got out of bed at the crack of dawn. In the daylight, I couldn’t find any traces of Henry’s visit, which relieved me a great deal. I made my own bed and tidied after dressing so that the housemaid would have no reason to linger in my room.

I was alarmed to find the governor already at breakfast when I went down. I felt as though every word I said to him amounted to a lie when I was hiding such a huge secret from him. Of course, I’d been hiding things as long as I’d known him. I’d been spying on him the first time I visited his home. But this felt greater, somehow.

The governor greeted me with a gruff, “G’morning,” as I entered the room, but he didn’t look up from his newspaper. He was always gruff, and even more so at breakfast, so I couldn’t tell from his manner if he yet knew that his dispatch had been stolen. I was immensely relieved when Olive joined us soon after I sat at the table. Her chatter kept an uncomfortable silence from forming. Rollo joined us not long afterward, and he had his own way of steering a conversation.

“Have you heard that there’s a ship that travels under water, and they think it’s in this harbor?” he said, his eyes shining with excitement.

“Where did you hear that?” I asked. He’d had no opportunity I was aware of to talk to anyone local.

“One of the footmen is as interested in engineering as I am, and we were talking about it. I told him all about the airship, and he told me about this underwater boat.”

“I doubt such a thing exists,” the governor said from behind his newspaper.

Rollo’s eyes went wide. “If you don’t know about it, Grandfather, then that means it must be something invented by the Rebel Mechanics.”

The governor lowered the newspaper and looked at Rollo over the top of it. “The Rebel Mechanics are nothing more than red ribbons and bold talk. Have they ever actually made anything? Has anyone seen one of their miraculous devices?”

I focused on my toast and hoped that my invisibility as governess would count in my favor because it was hard not to react when I was well aware of exactly what the Mechanics had created.

“They made a steam engine,” Rollo protested. “It was in the newspaper.”

“It was in an unauthorized scandal sheet,” the governor corrected. “That is not a reliable source.” I knew he was not only incorrect but was actually lying to his grandson because I knew he’d sent soldiers to seize the machines, and British soldiers, including the governor’s friend General Montgomery, had seen the slum children fleeing an altercation in omnibuses pulled by a steam engine.

Rollo set his jaw defiantly in a way that for a moment made him look remarkably like his uncle, but he wisely said nothing more, even as his eyes said, “I know it’s true!”

Clearly changing the subject, the governor asked, “Where’s Lyndon? He should be down by now. Rollo, go check on your uncle. He’s usually more punctual than this.”