Free The Bachelor's Bargain by Catherine Palmer Page A

assure you.”
    “You are good.” Her eyes drifted shut. “Ruel, the marquess asked to be my protector.”
    “Yes, he did.” His voice was ragged.
    “I prefer you.”
    “Thank you, Anne. Thank you very much.”
    The doctor predicted Anne Webster would die during the night. She had lost a great quantity of blood. If not that night, she would surely perish within the week. The lead ball had driven bits of dress fabric into her leg, he theorized to Mrs. Davies, the housekeeper. Gangrene was certain to set in. He gave the housekeeper a small bottle of laudanum to dose Anne for the pain, instructed that the vicar be called in the hour of the young lady’s death, and hurried up to the rooms of the Marquess of Blackthorne.
    There, the doctor blotted, cleaned, and stitched the wound in the shoulder of his very wealthy and very important patient. He then bled the marquess, gave his valet a variety of powders along with a quantity of laudanum, and prescribed bed rest until the injury healed—a month at the least. The marquess was not to use his shoulder in any way during that time, but was to be fed, bathed, dressed, and pampered.
    Beatrice Chouteau, the Duchess of Marston, swooned the moment she was told of the dreadful event, and the doctor rushed from the marquess to her bedside. She recovered quickly enough but was confined to her rooms with a headache. She concurred with the intelligence that the gamekeeper was the prime suspect in the shooting incident. Slocombe House rules prohibited female servants from having suitors, she reminded her lady’s maids, and such appalling violence was exactly the reason. Romantic liaisons between members of the lower classes always led to trouble.
    While the doctor was tending his elder son and wife, the duke stormed up and down the corridors of Slocombe House, rapping his cane on the floor and issuing commands. Footmen flew at his beck and call. He ordered the roadway from Tiverton to Slocombe searched. He demanded that all possible witnesses to the dire event be summoned. He sent for the family’s physician from London. He authorized the immediate arrest of William Green. The gamekeeper, to no one’s surprise, was not to be found. The duke dispatched a party of footmen to find and detain the villain.
    On hearing the report of the shooting, Sir Alexander immediately departed the home of his friends in Tiverton and rode to Slocombe House. He stayed at Ruel’s side through the doctor’s visit and afterward during the long hours of the night.
    Weak from loss of blood and dizzied by the large amount of laudanum he had been given, Ruel found it difficult to recall exactly what had happened on the road leaving the church. He knew his shoulder ached and throbbed, though past experience assured him the injury was not serious. He recalled the uproar when his chaise arrived at the House with him . . . and whom? Two women. He could not place their names. Who were they? There was something about one of them, but he could not . . .
    “The ball must have been fired from the south,” Alexander was saying when Ruel finally recognized his brother’s voice. “A hill rises just beyond the hedgerow where you were shot. It is well-wooded property, and the shooter must have been standing at the top of the knoll in order to have taken such accurate aim. He almost had you through the heart, you know.”
    Ruel knew. He clenched his jaw against the pain as he straightened his shoulders on the mound of pillows beneath them. Sunlight filtered through tiny slits between the heavy velvet draperies, giving scant light to the dim room. The scent of burning wax mingled with the acrid smell of the powders at his bedside. His mouth tasted of cotton.
    “Draw apart those blasted curtains, Alex,” he muttered, grabbing the nearest bottle from the bedside table. It was rum. He grimaced and set it down again. “Upon my honor, I shall have the windows opened. Let some air into this room. Where is my valet? Where is