follow him. “You learned in Afghanistan?” she queried.
“I did.”
“I always wondered why you went to war. I was told Dr. Alcott sponsored you to attend university.”
It surprised him that she’d asked after him enough to have gleaned the information. The Goodes had not engaged Doctor Alcott for some time. “He did for a while, but he died of a sudden aneurysm. His family was not so keen on keeping up my education, and so I pledged my fledgling skills to Her Majesty’s Army to further my experience in hopes of continuing my instruction.”
“Did you suffer?” The whispered question was laced with such lamentable emotion, the fine hairs of his body vibrated with it.
“Everyone who goes to war suffers.” Irked to find that the lift wasn’t on the ground floor, he pulled the lever to call it down to them.
“Tell me?”
He looked at her askance. “Of my suffering?”
“If you wish. Just… tell me about you. About this.” She gestured to the wide halls of his hospital. “About everything or anything.”
Something hardened inside of him. Chafed and ached like an old scar in an approaching storm. “Why?”
“I’ve spent a decade wondering.”
I’ve always been right here, he wanted to say. She could have found him any time.
He could only read her expression in silhouette; the glow of the gaslights situated between each doorway illuminated a woman as resolute as she was curious.
She hadn’t always been like that. And, it seemed, she’d the courage to fight battles of her own these days.
Don’t make a fool of yourself by doing something so pathetic as begging, Titus. Her last words fell like shards of ice on the heart she’d begun to melt. I can no longer stand the sight of you.
“It was a short and savage war.” His intonation had taken on some of that savagery, even as he endeavored to keep his register low for the sake of the patients. “There’d been a hailstorm of bullets on either side. The battles ground men into meat, and I spent my days like a butcher, white apron and all, covered in blood. I either dug bullets or shards of shrapnel from anywhere you can imagine, or hacked mangled limbs from screaming men.”
“I can’t imagine,” she remarked, her brow pinched with what he dared interpret as regret. “I wonder that it didn’t put you off of the entire business.”
“On the contrary, I returned with a burning need to not only learn but improve our understanding of the surgical arts. I did whatever I had to, to make it through university, even going so far as to use my skills for rather nefarious people.”
“The Black Heart of Ben More, I gather?”
His eyebrows lifted. “You know him?”
She lifted her good shoulder in a shrug. “Oddly enough, he’s a former enemy of Morley’s, and I take it that they’re forming something of a friendship. It is no small wonder to Prudence. She speaks of it, often.”
The lift arrived with a slight squeak. The intricate and decorative metal door folded in upon itself like an accordion as he pushed it aside for her.
Nora stepped past him, the scent of roses and warm female flesh beckoning him to follow.
He kept talking, doing his utmost to avoid any fraught silences between them. “The army didn’t pay enough for me to finish Cambridge, but Dorian Blackwell did. He needed a doctor in his debt to attend to his men without asking questions. I saved his eye back in the day…as well as I could. Now that he’s gone mostly legitimate, I’m inclined to prevail upon his newfound generosity.”
“Oh?” The question seemed to escape on a tremulous breath as he reached past her to depress the lever that would propel the lift up to the fifth floor.
As the blasted thing lurched to a start, she stumbled into him.
Reflexively, his arm went around her, pulling her to his side so she might use his sturdy form as a bulwark.
It had been a mistake, to press her soft curves against his hard angles. To fill his hands with her in the shadows.
If she wasn’t a wounded woman, he might have taken the upturn of her face, the parting of her lips, as an invitation.
“I’m sorry. I’m not used to these contraptions. I’m rather uneasy to not find my feet on solid ground.” She put her hand against his chest as if to push away, but it stayed there.
Right over his heart.
Could she feel it leaping behind the cage of his ribs? Hurling itself against her palm.