The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(96)
Imogen was a lithe beauty with an open, expressive face and sleek strawberry-blond hair. She had an air of capability about her that set others at ease and, judging by the temperament of her war-hero husband, was likely necessary.
It wasn’t any wonder that Ash, Blackwell, and Trenwyth had to hover like morose statuary behind them as they gushed and tittered over each other like long-lost friends, all but oblivious to the attention, both male and female, such a stunning array of ladies attracted.
The appointment at St. Margaret’s with a Dr. Longhurst would have gone a great deal faster if Lorelai hadn’t had to talk Ash into letting another man take off her stocking and examine her ankle.
“Aren’t specialists supposed to be old and blind?” Ash had made what he thought was a very salient point.
Apparently used to protective husbands, the young, serious, and imperturbable doctor agreed to allow him into the examination room with her.
After a painful and rigorous inspection that left Ash more pale and sweaty than his wife, he asked anxiously, “Do you think it can be fixed?”
“Certainly.” Dr. Longhurst covered her bare ankle and gently let it rest back on the bed. “All we’d have to do is break it, again.”
“Absolutely not.”
Lorelai put a staying hand on his arm. “If we do this, I’ll be able walk normally again?”
Dr. Longhurst nodded. “It’s risky, but if I could find where the initial break happened, then I could break it with a small hammer, realign the bone, and coax it to heal the way it should have years ago.”
“Did he say hammer?” Ash boomed.
Both his wife and the doctor infuriatingly ignored him.
“With some time, and some strengthening excercises, you might not only walk again, but run.”
Ash swatted the desk with the flat of his hand, garnering him the startled attention of them both. That was more like it. “You said risk.” He narrowed his eyes at the doctor. “What kind of risk?”
Longhurst’s eyes reminded him of a deer’s, or a bunny’s. Soft and brown. They were eyes of prey. Shifty, if intelligent. “There’s always a risk associated with anesthesia,” he stuttered. “But it’s less and less frequent the more we learn about it. Then infection is always a worry, but with modern sanitation techniques, it’s also becoming—”
“Get your things, Lorelai, we’re leaving.” Ash gathered his coat and her hat.
She stubbornly stayed where she was. “I’m getting the operation, Ash.”
He scowled at her. “Did you conveniently miss the part with the hammer?”
Her gaze was steady and resolute. “I want to do this. I want to go all the places you can take me, and I can’t…”
“I already told you, I’ll carry you, if I have to.”
“I want to walk beside you.”
Ash had to swallow three times before he could speak. “It’s not worth losing you.”
She reached up to pull him down next to her, where she took his clenched jaw in both of her hands. “Let this be, my love. Sometimes, one must be broken, in order to be healed.”
Sniffing away vision clouded by emotion, he turned to Longhurst. “Whatever fate befalls her, I’ll visit upon your bones threefold, you mark me.” That taken care of, he slammed out of the office, but not before hearing Lorelai’s sweet apologies.
“Do pardon him, Doctor, he really is working on making fewer death threats on my behalf.”
“It’s all right,” Dr. Longhurst replied. “I’m physician to many of Blackwell’s associates and their wives and children. That isn’t even the worst threat I’ve received this week. And here I am. Still alive.”
*
A year later, Lorelai was able to cajole Ash to attend Veronica’s second wedding, despite her shocking selection of groom.
Lorelai didn’t merely walk or hobble down the sunny lane in the South of France to greet her beloved sister.
She ran.
Read on for a delicious sneak peek at all the books in the unforgettable
Victorian Rebels series!
THE HIGHWAYMAN
“In his arms she will never be the same again…”
The beats of her heart echoed as loud as cannon blasts in her ears as she entered the private lair of Dorian Blackwell.
Farah tried to imagine a man such as the Blackheart of Ben More in this room, doing something as pedestrian as writing a letter or surveying ledgers. Running the fingers of her free hand along a bronze paperweight of a fleet ship atop his enormous desk, she found the image impossible to produce.
“I see you’ve already attempted escape.”
Snatching her hand back, Farah held it to her heaving chest as she turned to face her captor now standing in the doorway.
He was even taller than she remembered. Darker. Larger.
Colder.
Even standing in the sunlight let in by the windows of the foyer, Farah knew he belonged to the shadows in this room. As if to illustrate her point, he stepped into the room and shut the door behind him, effectively cutting off all sources of natural light.
An eye patch covered his damaged eye, only allowing glimpses of the edge of his scar, but the message illuminated by the fire didn’t need both eyes to be conveyed.