waist down.
Hastily, she looked away and found Rupert watching her.
“How long have you been married?” he asked her.
“Three days,” she replied calmly.
He blinked and began to laugh. “One thing about my family. We can always entertain a lady. Chris, you scurvy dog, what do you mean by not taking your delightful wife on a wedding trip?”
“And thereby allowing you free rein to bleed all over my house?” Christopher said and walked out the door.
“At least you noticed,” Rupert said, eyeing his brother with disfavor. “Josh, you go back to the ship and wait for me. I’ll find you when it’s safe. Let the excisemen search it if they want, they’ll find nothing now, and you can play innocent fishermen.”
“Take care, Josh,” Deborah said guiltily to the large man in the rakish bandage, who looked surprised and then grinned at her on his way out the door.
“You take care of him,” he advised, nodding at Rupert, and vanished.
“Where should we put him?” Christopher asked Deborah as the wheels of the wagon and the horses’ clearly covered hooves moved softly away into the distance. “Which chamber is habitable?
Deborah considered. “The one next to yours is clean, though the bed is not yet made up. No one but you would really have cause to be in that part of the house.”
Christopher nodded. “Very well. You go ahead, cough if anyone happens to be about, which they shouldn’t at this time of night. Dudley, you watch out behind, and I’ll hold Rupert up.”
“I can walk by myself,” Rupert said impatiently.
“Perhaps. Deborah?”
Deborah snatched up the medicine box and the bowl and rags and led the way up to the kitchen where they waited while she replaced the box, then threw away the bloody water and rags, and rinsed out the bowl. Then she led the way up the side stairs closest to Christopher’s bedchamber. Despite his protests, Rupert was leaning heavily on his cousin’s arm.
“Sit him in a chair while I fetch the bed linen,” she murmured and hurried on to the linen room.
When she returned to the room next to Christopher’s, she found them plying Rupert with brandy.
While she hastily spread on the clean sheets and pillowcases, Christopher said to Dudley, “That was you creeping past my bedchamber, wasn’t it?”
“You were supposed to be asleep. I didn’t know you were lodged away over here in any case.”
“I had a lot on my mind. But I confess, I didn’t know you could move so quietly.” Christopher came toward her, helped her tuck the sheets under the mattress, and heaved the blankets on top.
“How domestic is Christopher?” Rupert marveled from his chair. “Amazing what three days of marriage can do for a man.”
“You just think I won’t hit you because you’re wounded.”
“You won’t,” Rupert said smugly.
“I can still torture you with gruel and noxious medicines. And the quack if you give me any trouble.”
Ten minutes later, with the patient drifting off to sleep, they left his chamber.
“Good night,” Dudley said in relief.
“Good night.” Christopher took Deborah’s arm, urging her toward his bedchamber in the other direction.
She glanced at him in sudden alarm, and a gleam of mockery shone clearly in the candle flames. “We are married, you know. It’s perfectly proper. I need to talk to you.”
He opened his door and ushered her inside. A lamp burned in the room, and he lit another candle from his own. The chamber looked slightly tidier than the last time she had seen it. Only a coat had been slung over the back of a chair. A few papers were scattered over the desk, some half-hidden beneath a large book.
He removed the coat, flinging it on the bed instead, and waved her to the chair. He sat opposite her on the edge of the bed, which somehow seemed ridiculously intimate.
“I won’t keep you,” he murmured. “You must be exhausted. I just wanted to thank you for looking after Rupert. And me. I’m sorry to drag you into it.”
“Your family seems to have an adventurous life. And you didn’t drag me. I followed someone—probably you, now I think about it—down to the kitchen and voluntarily chose to involve myself. And despite his present…er… profession, your cousin does not appear to be a vicious man.”
“He isn’t. I said at the time he could only have killed Harlow—his dueling opponent—by accident. I’d be surprised if he meant to hit him. But there, dueling is a stupid, chancy business.”
She blinked. “I thought you would be all in favor of it?”
“Why?” he shot back.