Free Lady Sherry and the Highwayman by Maggie MacKeever Page A

on her plate, and the rogue could do her little harm in his present condition. “This one won’t be dancing a jig for a while,” she said, shifting the bloody bowl from one hand to the other. “No, nor even walking a few steps. That’s a nasty wound he has. But he’ll do, milady.” And then she went on to speak knowledgeably of the danger of sepsis and mortification of the flesh as result of probing for a bullet, and the theory of laudable pus.
    Sherry could not care for this conversation or for the bloody rags and water that Aunt Tulliver seemed bent on waving under her nose. Resolutely, she quelled her squeamishness. “I’ll sit with him awhile. You need to rest.”
    Tully did not argue. Mettlesome and temperamental as she might pride herself on being, she was also old. Sherry followed her across the room, and once more locked the door. She picked up the pistol from the table where Tully had placed it and set the claret decanter on a table that bore mute evidence to the fact that Aunt Tulliver, at least, had enjoyed a hearty repast. A chair had been drawn up by the settee and Sherry dropped down into it.
    The book room was very quiet. Sherry leaned her head back against the chair. She looked again at the highwayman, watched the steady rise and fall of his chest. He was very handsome in a reckless sort of way, even with his current pallor and his bright eyes shut. Sherry’s eyes closed also. She slept.
     

Chapter Eight
     
    For some moments, all three of the occupants of the book room dozed. Prinny dreamed of chasing rabbits and Lady Sherry of being kissed in the manner enjoyed by the heroines of the books she wrote: activities that neither had experienced in real life. The third dreamer was not so far-ranging in his imagination, although there is little doubt that he would have vastly preferred not to know firsthand that of which he dreamed. Micah Greene—known also in certain quarters as Captain Toby—had also passed a very trying day. Now, in dreams, he again left behind the filth and promiscuity and general unpleasantness of Newgate Prison to mount the scaffold erected outside the debtors’ prison door. His dislike of the proceedings was not mitigated by the discovery that at least half of London had turned out to see him hanged. Micah stood on the scaffold, staring out at the sea of faces, seeing his life pass before him, a pageant of missed opportunities and foolish mistakes. Unwisely as he may have frittered away his days upon this mortal coil, Micah at five-and-thirty was not yet ready to write off the business as a bad job of work. The memory of standing on the gallows with the rope around his neck, staring out upon that sea of brutish, expectant faces, made him shudder in his sleep.
    That movement jerked him back to wakefulness. Micah welcomed the horrid pain because it meant he was not dead. Fate—or some agent thereof—had intervened, and he had not been hanged.
    Micah’s memories of his escape, alas, were sadly fragmented. He had accosted a female on horseback, had demanded her assistance at gunpoint. From that moment onward, matters seemed to have gone quickly downhill, beginning with the unlucky bullet that had lodged in his leg. He recalled hiding in a gardener’s shed, in a water closet, under a shapeless sack of a dress and a shawl and a hideously uncomfortable wig. He’d walked for what seemed like miles on his wounded leg, drifting in and out of consciousness, supported by two females. Then, as if the preceding had not been trial enough, matters had only gotten worse: he had regained his senses only to discover one female sprawled across his chest, holding him down, while another applied what felt like red-hot pincers to his leg. Another time, under different circumstances, Micah would have raised no objection if a bright-eyed lass wished to deposit herself upon his chest, might even have invited her to take whatever further liberties suited her fancy. But the liberties taken by this