Rebel Magisters (Rebel Mechanics #2)(56)

“I’ll need some help.” He held his right arm out to me, and I pulled with all my might to get him to his feet. As soon as he was upright, he fell against me. I got my arm around him, and he draped his arm around my shoulders. He seemed to be trying his best to carry his own weight and walk, but I felt like he was doing well to move his feet as we made our way to the door.

I propped him against the wall and checked up and down the hallway before hauling him across to his room. There, I threw one of the towels that was still draped around him onto the floor in front of the fireplace and lowered him to the ground. With a wave of my hand, I made the fire flare up because I was afraid he was going into shock, he was trembling so badly.

I was less worried about a light causing suspicion in his room—being an eccentric young bachelor covered so many behaviors—so I turned on the lamp and moved it closer to him. “It’s the shoulder,” he said.

I eased his overcoat away from his shoulder. The white shirt underneath was dark red with blood. I lifted him somewhat to check his back, but the shirt was all white. “The bullet must still be in there,” I said.

“You’ll need to get it out,” he said through clenched teeth. “Look in my trunk. I have a medical kit.”

“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.