the steady stream of derision aimed at Miss Domville.
‘She’ll ruin her dress,’ Lady Preston sneered.
‘She’s acting like a common camp follower,’ Miss Cartwright hissed.
Warren made the final suture, tied it off with a neat knot and used the scissors in the sewing kit to snip the needle free of the thread. ‘You’d make quite a surgeon’s assistant, Miss Domville. You have the steady nerves for it.’
She frowned and glanced past him to the door. ‘Not everyone agrees with you.’
‘Ignore them.’ He handed her a clean towel, eager to see her lovely white fingers free of the red taint.
‘I spend my days ignoring them.’ She roughly scrubbed her skin.
He wondered what had happened to turn the others against her. Perhaps it was jealousy. She was sensuous like a Greek sculpture with shapely arms ending in elegant hands. When her fingers were clean and white again, she handed him the stained towel, avoiding his touch. Then she adjusted the lace chemisette covering her very generous décolletage. The brush of her fingertips across her breasts proved as teasing as it was modest. It made him forget the dirty linen in his palm as he watched her straighten a pin in her golden hair with its faint hints of amber circling her face. It was arranged in small twists which were drawn together at the back of her head, emphasising her curving neck and the small curls gracing it. While he watched her, he was no longer irritated at being drawn back to the sickroom he despised. If he’d known this beautiful woman was waiting in the sitting room for the men to finish their port, he’d have insisted they leave the dining room at once.
‘Warren, perhaps you should see to the bandage,’ his mother encouraged, interrupting his admiration of Miss Domville.
‘Of course.’ Warren took up the roll of linen and wound it over the wound, attempting to ignore the blood covering his fingers and to focus on Miss Domville’s steady presence beside him. As he tied the bandage, a small spot of red darkened the centre, but it spread out only to the size of a thruppence before stopping. ‘There now, Lady Ellington, all is well again.’
Lady Ellington looked at her arm and the dried streaks running down it. ‘To imagine, all this trouble because I tripped.’
‘It was no trouble at all. I’m glad you summoned me.’ He patted her good shoulder, hoping his smile hid the lie. It didn’t and his mother caught it, offering him a silent apology, but he ignored it. The old fear humbled him enough without anyone noticing it. ‘Let’s help her up to the sofa so she can rest.’
The moment Lady Ellington was settled against the cushions, the invisible dam holding the ladies back burst. They flooded into room, surrounding the Dowager Countess in a flurry of chirping and silk. Warren moved back, surprised to find Miss Domville next to him.
‘She really will be all right, won’t she?’ she asked, her fear palpable. She wasn’t the first person to seek his reassurance about a patient.
‘There was no cloth pushed into the wound to fester and, given her robust health, I think she’ll recover well.’ It was the best he could offer.
Pink replaced the pale worry on the apples of her cheeks. He’d experienced the same reprieve the day he’d returned to Portsmouth and resigned his commission. He’d vowed that day never to climb aboard another Navy frigate again, and heaven help him, he wouldn’t.
‘I’ll write out instructions for properly seeing to the wound while it heals and a recipe for a laudanum tonic to help ease any pain.’ He walked to the escritoire, the activity relieving some of the tension of having attended to a patient for the first time since his sister’s death over a year ago. He pulled out the chair, making it scrape against the wood floor, irked that a simple cut could affect him or dredge up so many awful memories. His reaction was as shocking as when he’d turned to find Miss Domville in the dining room asking him to help the same way his mother had asked him to intervene during Leticia’s travails.
Seating himself, he selected a piece of paper from the stack on the blotter. He paused as he laid the clean sheet over the leather. Blood darkened the tips of his finger and the side of his hand. He rubbed at the stains with the linen towel, but the red clung to his skin as it used to during a battle. He tightened his hand into a fist, desperate for water and soap to rid himself of the filth.
He looked up, ready to bolt from the room in search of cleansing when his eyes caught Miss Domville’s. She glanced at his clenched hands, then back to his face. It wasn’t his mother’s pity in the stunning blue depths of her eyes, but the same bracing strength she’d offered Lady Ellington before he’d begun his work.
He snatched up the pen, his fingertips pressing hard on the wood as he scratched out in shaky letters the directions for mixing the laudanum and alcohol. He pushed back the haunting memories of his cramped cabin below the waterline and focused on the proportions, determined not to get the dosage wrong and leave poor Miss Domville at fault for easing her friend’s pain for good.
‘My, it’s cold in here,’ Lady Astley’s voice rang out above the noise.
A poker clanged in the grate and Warren flinched, running a streak of ink across the paper. The scrape of rods shoved down cannon barrels echoed in the sound, the balls buried deep inside and ready to wreak a destruction his surgical skills could never hope to undo.
‘Ladies, I think Lady Ellington should be left alone to rest until the carriage is called.’ Miss Domville’s firm suggestion sounded above the clatter, silencing it.
Warren, pulled from the past by the steady voice, was surprised by the young lady’s ability to remain composed in the face of so many hostile stares. She reminded him of a seasoned seaman calmly watching the coming battle while the new recruits wet themselves.
Lady Cartwright huffed up to Miss Domville, not content with a silent rebuke. ‘I don’t think you should instruct us on how to behave. You didn’t even have the decency to tell us what was wrong, bursting in on the men and leaving us to think who knows what.’
‘It was an emergency. There wasn’t time for pleasantries.’ The twitch of small muscles around the young woman’s lips undermined her stoicism.
Lady Cartwright opened her mouth to unleash another blow.
‘She was right to summon me as she did.’ Warren rose to defend Miss Domville, tired of the imperious woman. Miss Domville had endured enough tonight worrying over her friend. She didn’t need some puffed-up matron rattling the sabre of propriety over her blonde head. ‘And she’s correct. Lady Ellington needs space and rest. Lady Cartwright, would you call for her carriage? Mother, would you escort her and Miss Domville home? I’ll send my carriage for you.’
‘Of course.’ His mother arched one interested eyebrow at Lady Ellington, who offered a similar look in return before her face scrunched up with a fresh wave of pain.
Lady Cartwright’s nostrils flared with indignation, not nearly as amused as the two ladies on the sofa. ‘I’ll summon Lady Ellington’s carriage. After all, we wouldn’t want to detain Lady Ellington or Miss Domville any longer.’
She struck Miss Domville with a nasty look before striding off in a huff.
The long breath Miss Domville exhaled after Lady Cartwright left whispered of tired resignation. It was as if she’d waged too many similar battles, but had to keep fighting. He understood her weariness. Aboard
