Authors: Moriah Denslea
It took four men to haul Wilhelm up the stairs and place him on his bed. He had the presence of mind to demand she be carried up the stairs, embarrassing that the task landed on Sir Gideon. He pretended she was no strain, but she had to be heavy, a tall woman with the extra weight of her condition. No one seemed to worry about Wilhelm’s peaked complexion and blood-soaked clothes. She could not take her eyes from the dagger and the blood seeping from the wound.
“Ben, wire Barney and Cox, abort the Versailles operation. Martin, see if Torquay will relay — ”
“
Wilhelm
! Stop.” His men froze, staring at her again. She waved a hand at the soldiers. “Out, all of you. Whatever the matter is, manage it yourself.” This time they complied without her shrieking. Perhaps it was the evisceration-by-glaring look she had been practicing, inspired by Aunt Louisa.
Wilhelm dropped his head back and sighed, closing his eyes. “I am fine, Sophie.”
“Liar. You know you are in danger. I have never seen you so desperate for distraction before.”
“So distract me.” He rested a hand on her knee and slid the skirts up her thigh. Impossible man. Bleeding to death and making advances? “Or we could discuss what in
hell
you were doing outside, alone.”
“I had Fritz and Dagmar.”
He snorted in derision. “You should be punished.” He winked, and his lips pulled into the dimpled-half smile that always stopped her heart. “Naughty girl.”
She grabbed a corner of the sheet and dabbed at the blood on his face. No use; it had dried in a macabre crust. She unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off from under his back. That he barely lifted his head to help was proof of his serious condition. At least the cuts on his arms and torso had stopped bleeding. “You look a fright, Wil.”
He disarmed her with a dimpled half-smile. “Nothing new.”
Oh no. He blinked too slowly, lingering with his eyes closed. His skin drained, growing paler by the minute.
Sophia leaned to examine the dagger, wedged to the hilt in his leg. An alarming pool of blood soaked the sheets below. “Why do you not pull it out?”
“I would like to; I can feel it jabbing into the bone. But if I do, it will bleed without the surgeon here to stop it. Just keep me company a while, will you?”
Martin returned with a tray, lingering in the doorway, eyeing Sophia as though he feared another outburst.
Wilhelm waved him in. “I hope it is something
good
, Martin.”
“Your Thursday mix, my lord.”
Sophia knew he heard cases from the Devon county court on Thursdays, and he often returned home frustrated and ill-tempered, in a mood to drink. Today she agreed he needed it. She handed him the glass and he emptied it in a few swallows. She gave it back to Martin and he refilled it.
“No sign of Lieutenant Cavendish and Greyes yet, but I will look out.”
“Thank you Martin.” Sophia studied the dagger again. “Wilhelm. I don’t think the knife is holding back the bleeding. I am worried.” She looked under his leg at the soaked patch on the mattress.
“Philip should return in less than an hour.”
“You don’t have an hour.” She stroked his jaw, moved her fingers through his hair, gingerly avoiding the clumps matted with blood. He closed his eyes, his breathing labored. After a few more minutes, she begged, “Wil, please. Take out the knife. Look, you are shaking and turning pale. You said yourself those are symptoms of dangerous blood loss.”
He didn’t answer.
“Wilhelm! Pull out the knife, or I shall!” She rose to her knees and folded the free half of the bedsheet into a tight bundle. “Do it, or so help me I will ha — ”
Wilhelm grasped the handle and yanked. The knife came free as he grunted and dropped the blade. Sophia reached inside the torn fabric and pulled the sides of the cut together, then quickly covered the wound with the folded sheet and leaned her entire weight onto his leg. He laid his head back with a faint hiss and closed his eyes, controlling his breath in slow gusts.
She silently counted five long minutes then asked, “Wil, how is it?”
“Better, actually.”
Sophia leaned forward as she pushed to relieve the strain on her arms. His breath caught.
“Ah, don’t move.”
“Sorry.” She failed to keep the anxiety from her voice. She watched him with his eyes closed, his breathing slow, and worried he would fall asleep and never wake up. A jolt of panic kicked her heart, and she swallowed a whimper.
Frantically she combed her thoughts for something innocuous to engage him with. “I suppose you are feeling smug. I can only imagine the measures you went to, orchestrating a private war. You were right about everything.”
“I usually am.” He raised his empty glass in a toast.
Sophia cleared her throat then dared ask, “Why did you walk away?”
He opened one eye then closed it again. She waited, watching him breathe in and out.
“I didn’t understand,” he said simply. “Not until it was placed before me in a clear choice.”
“Stop speaking in riddles. What do you mean?”
He blew a slow breath between pursed lips. It made her want to kiss him. “Vengeance or redemption. As much as I wanted to crush his throat, I wanted … .”
Her arms screamed, burning with strain of holding his wound shut. She wished she could stroke his hair again, to coax out the rest of his confession.
“I wanted you more, Anne-Sophia. To not be the man who murdered your father.” He grimaced, breathing in sharp gusts, perhaps waiting for a surge of pain to pass. She thought he had fallen into a trance until he added, “I may be a lying, cheating bastard with blood on my hands. But I am not a cold-blooded killer. If I crossed that line, I would never be worthy of you.”
Her eyes misted, heat infused her cheeks. She wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his embrace. She didn’t move an inch.
He rambled about light, something about a siren song and ghosts, and she knew he had gone delirious. She glanced at the clock, dismayed to see only three-quarters of an hour had passed. When she checked under his leg, no fresh blood, at least.
“You would have made a lousy nun.”
“What?”
He hummed fragments of a tune she didn’t recognize. He was far away, hopefully beyond the pain. The clock ticked slow seconds and she tried not to count, but her anxiety took over, making her dread each passing minute without the doctor arriving.
Sophia studied the stark masculine planes of Wilhelm’s face. She saw strength and tenderness, rough beauty, and an inherent sadness that had become a part of his soul. A wave of possessive adoration swept over her, and there came those dratted tears again. With just a look he made her heart sing. One touch, and her pulse raced. She never grew accustomed to it. He had changed her, saved her from a bitter fate and carved a better one with the sheer force of his will. His presence was in turn soothing, vexing, thrilling. He had proven he would do anything for her, without limit.
“You are everything to me, Wil. I love you.”
“Love you back.” He smiled, making her notice his blue-tinged lips. “Worth it.”
His pulse raced in his throat, his skin cooled, and she finally understood what he meant.
Worth dying for.
Horror froze her from head to toe and she choked on a scream. She stuttered before she managed to curse, “Oh no you don’t, Wilhelm Montegue! Stay with me.” She looked at the clock. “Martin! Help!”
“Fine,” Wilhelm mumbled, his eyes still shut.
“My lady?” Martin rushed through the door, his shirt half unbuttoned. He took one look at Wilhelm and the pool of blood soaked into the bed and breathed an oath. He glanced at the clock and scowled, shaking his head.
“What should we do?”
Without explanation Martin ran back through the doorway, and she wanted to shriek. “Wilhelm? Wil, answer me.”
“Hmm?”
“Stay awake.”
“Tired.”
She hated seeing his strong body cold and shaking, his skin crusted with dried blood. He appeared deathly; it looked all wrong. “No! No, don’t! Do you hear me?”
Martin dropped an armload of supplies on the bed. She heard a rush of footsteps and murmuring voices in the room. Only a corner of her mind noted bowls of steaming water, the fire being stoked in the grate, pungent medicinal smells and the clink of metallic tools. The rest of her mind was occupied with begging Wilhelm to hold on.
O’Grady leaned beside her. “Fine work, Lady Devon. When I say the word, move aside and remove the bandage.”
“What will you do?”
He sliced a blade down the seam of Wilhelm’s trousers, splitting the fabric. “Best if you don’t look, my lady.”
Martin came to her other side, holding a bowl, linen rags draped over his arm.
“Go.”
Her arms almost didn’t obey; she was too numb. Her joints slowly unlocked and she leaned back to move out of the way. In a flurry that looked like practiced routine, O’Grady whisked away the fabric, Martin dumped hot vinegar water over the wound, and O’Grady pinched both sides of the cut to hold it together. They both cursed as fresh blood gushed from the seam.
“Will it work?” Martin muttered.
O’Grady stared as though stunned. “No.”
“What? What won’t work?” Sophia crawled over the bed and lifted Wilhelm’s head to rest in her lap. He had barely reacted to the water flushing out the wound. Small pink shards dotted the soaked sheet, fragments of splintered bone. Her stomach heaved, she swallowed and focused on O’Grady. “What are you doing?”
“If I sear the skin, the artery will still leak underneath. He’ll die of that too.”
“Where is that damned surgeon?” came a third voice. She turned to see Sir Gideon holding a blade in the flames, heated to a red glow with the edges turning white. He rose, walked to the bedside, then lifted Wilhelm’s hand and noted his fingernails tinged blue. “Cauterize the artery. We have no time left.”
Gideon passed the blade to O’Grady and flashed his severe ice-blue gaze at her. “Try to calm him,” he ordered. “This will be unpleasant.” He took his place at the foot of the bed, grasping Wilhelm by the ankles as Martin restrained the arms.
She had no time to protest the hare-brained idea; it happened too soon.
O’Grady let go, opening the sides of the wound. The blade landed with a sound like bacon in a skillet. Wilhelm seized and arched his back, his agonized shout contained behind clenched teeth. The putrid smell nearly made her retch, and an oily cloud of steam lingered. She folded her arms around his shoulders and rested her forehead on his, whispering to him. Her throat lurched and swelled with the threat of tears.
He started chanting under his breath, “Wilhelm Montegue, Corporal First Class, third battalion cavalry.” Over and over again, pausing to gasp without parting his teeth as O’Grady worked with the knife. She looked from Martin, to O’Grady, to Sir Gideon, silently begging one of them to notice her desperation.
Martin glanced over, his face an inscrutable mask. He explained quietly, “He was trained to do that, as a defense against being broken. He thinks he is captured or is reliving it.” Martin swallowed and stepped back, releasing Wilhelm’s arms with a look of disgust. She felt it too, a horrible sickness, comprehending this had been done to Wilhelm before by his enemies.
Just when she thought it was over, she looked up for confirmation and saw Sir Gideon reheating the knife in the fire and O’Grady holding the gash shut.
“ … Surgeon repair it later … odds of saving the leg … ” she heard Gideon murmuring to Martin. She groaned in disbelief and had no control over the tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Very pretty scar you’ll sport here, Old Wil.”
He was too far gone to respond to O’Grady’s attempt at humor.
Wilhelm’s chant turned into unintelligible mumbling. He only flinched when the knife seared his skin; she realized he deliberately held himself still and trembled with the effort. Gideon had released him too, standing watch with a wizened expression decades too old for his young face. She prayed Wilhelm would fall unconscious, but he stayed far from it. He seemed to feel every awful moment, accepted the pain without a fight, without a single scream.
Even if the procedure saved his life, what would be the damage to his mind? She could not deny that despite his moments of normality and other moments of utter brilliance, at times she saw within him the makings of a madman. What would this suffering do to him?
“Wilhelm,” she sobbed into his neck. “Stay with me. Please.” Sophia held him and cried into his shirt. So much for calming him. She lost control, grasping his shoulders, dying a vicarious death every time he tensed with pain. It seared over every moment of torment she had known before, branding something new into her brain.
He gasped for breath, and his chant altered. She leaned close, watched his lips move, and thought she heard him say, “Worth it. Worth it, worth it.”
All the words ever spoken became nothing compared to his honest, pure gesture of love: the act of sacrificing oneself for another. It transformed her. Shifted the universe and realigned the stars to bring one simple fact into focus, too pure and powerful to speak aloud. She whispered it into his ear, over and over as she stroked his face and smoothed his hair. The futility of the gesture nagged a small corner of her brain, but her heart was too full to pay it heed.
“Worth it,” he whispered. “Worth it, worth it.”
Epilogue
“Uncle Wil, you will wear a hole through the floor,” Elise complained.
Sophia screamed again, the sound loud and clear even through the closed door. Wilhelm knew how to read screams; Sophia’s throat-shredding howl sounded of misery and resignation. It raked every nerve down his spine, drilled his head with the threat of total insanity. Vibrated every scar on his body with sympathetic pain.
“Honestly, I sat out when my mother gave birth to Madeline, and twice for my Aunt Cecile. Trust me, this is normal.” He ignored her and she added, “Sometimes women deliver some weeks early; I know my mother always did.”
He shot her a look of warning and she finally seemed to comprehend she had made a poor comparison, as her mother had died giving birth to Madeline.