Princess Charming (29 page)

People of all ages—screaming women, crying children, angry men—flowed against Nick like a flooding river as he fought his way in the direction of the dais. He pushed against them, aware that to lose his footing would mean certain death. The king’s troops showed little order or discipline as they plunged through the crowd. Nick ducked as a horse reared barely five feet from his head.

“Help me!” The plaintive cry came from his feet. He looked down to find a young woman thrusting a babe into his arms. She was bleeding copiously from her belly, and Nick could have sworn it was a bayonet wound. “Take him!” the woman pleaded. “Please, take my baby.” He hesitated. Lucy. He must find Lucy.

“Please, sir,” the woman begged, and Nick suddenly found the infant in his arms. He juggled the unfamiliar bundle as the crowd continued to surge past him.

“Come with me.” He reached down for the woman, but she did not take his hand.

“No! Take the baby! Run! Run!”

Her words were frantic, but Nick felt a numbness stealing over him. He had heard those words—or similar ones—before, from another mother. His own.

Without knowing quite how he managed it, Nick reached down and pulled the young woman up beside him. “Hold on to me.” With the baby tucked in the crook of his other arm, it was all he could do to keep the three of them from pitching to the ground and being trampled. Nick glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the speaker’s platform and prayed for a glimpse of Lucy. A shadow fell over him, and he looked up to find himself facing not a dragoon, but a local militiaman with a raised bayonet.

“Run, you filthy scum,” the militiaman shouted. Nick watched as the man lifted the bayonet, and in that moment, he knew that all was lost. The baby began to shriek. He could not even protect an innocent babe from
 . . .

“You run, you bleeding coward.” Tom Selkirk, appearing from nowhere, hoisted the soldier’s stirrup and threw the man off balance. The momentary distraction was enough. Nick thrust the baby into Tom’s care and then swung the woman into his arms.

It took them an eternity to cross the market square, fighting the panic-stricken crowd as Nick and Tom inched, inexorably, toward safety. “Have you seen Lady Lucy?” Nick shouted at Tom as they dodged bodies and soldiers. The baby wailed in the younger man’s arms.

“I left her to your care,” Tom yelled back angrily. “Damn your soul, St. Germain. Damn your soul.”

If Nick had had any breath left, he could have told Tom that it was far too late. His soul had been damned long ago. They reached the shelter of an alleyway off the main square, and Nick stopped. The sudden stillness was disconcerting after the pandemonium of the crowd. Gingerly, Nick laid the woman on a pallet of flour sacks on the pavement outside a bakeshop. Her pale skin and listless gaze reminded him of a death mask.

“Here,” he said to Tom. “Give me the babe. Now fetch a surgeon, and be quick.”

“Are you mad? There won’t be a surgeon to be had, not in this catastrophe. And what about Lady Lucy?”

Nick wanted to scream at the boy, wanted to howl in pain at the fear clenching his gut, but neither response would save the woman at his feet or the woman he loved. “I don’t care what you have to do, but fetch a surgeon! As soon as
she is safe, I’ll find Lucy.”

Tom’s nostrils flared, but Nick had no time for righteous indignation. “You know where to look. I do not. Now, Selkirk. Or we may lose them both.”

These words, at least, were enough to spring young Tom into action. He took off without further protest. Nick could only pray there was a surgeon to be found. The screams of terror had subsided, but though he could not see the square from his vantage point, he could hear the moans and wails of the injured. Tom had laid the babe in the crook of the mother’s arm, against her uninjured side, and the little one, reunited with the smell and warmth of his mother, gazed peacefully back at him. Nick ripped a large scrap from one of the flour sacks, brushed away the mold that clung to it, and bundled it into a compress to hold against the woman’s wound. He pressed it firmly in place, the strength of his hands her only hope of survival. Nick sat, prisoner to the woman’s need, and tortured himself with wondering whether any of the moans he heard were issued from the lips of the woman he loved, the woman he should have been protecting.

THE CLOCK IN the church bell tower chimed the hour before Tom returned with a surgeon in tow. Nick didn’t pause to ask how Tom had obtained the man’s services in the midst of such a melee. Instead, he yanked Tom down beside him, pressed the youth’s hand against the woman’s bandage, and leaped to his feet. Heart racing, he dashed around the corner and into the square.

The peaceful market lay in ruins, strewn with bodies like a battlefield. The soldiers had retreated, leaving carnage in their wake. Nick heard the sound of laughter from over his head and looked up to the wide balcony that spanned the front of an ale house. Several gentlemen, one wearing what appeared to be a mayoral seal, hoisted pints in the air, and with a jolt, Nick realized they were celebrating. The urge to climb the balcony trestles and wring their necks with his bare hands almost overwhelmed him. He started toward the ale house and then stopped. Lucy. She was still out there, somewhere.

Other once-jubilant reformers were now picking their way cautiously back into the square to recover the injured and the dead. Nick watched as a woman collapsed over the form of a young boy. His throat knotted. No, not Lucy. She was alive somewhere in this carnage. He moved as quickly as he could, stepping gingerly to avoid the injured. Other than the boy, there seemed to be remarkably few dead, but unfortunately the more gravely wounded might find holding on to life difficult. Infection, disease—enemies far stronger than soldiers with bayonets—must now be faced.

Nick was within ten yards of the speaker’s platform when he saw her. Her bright curls stood in relief against the dullness of the stone beneath her head. She lay motionless, and for a long moment he couldn’t move, could only pray with a fervor he’d known only once before.
Dear God. Dear God, why do you never take me instead?

“Lucy!” In three long strides he was beside her, hardly able to breathe. He dropped to the ground and rolled her onto her back. Lowering his cheek to her mouth, he begged heaven for the feel of her warm breath against his skin. For once in his life, the Almighty was listening.

“She breathes,” he said, but there was no one else to hear. Her right temple was bruised and bleeding where it had hit the stone. “Lucy. Lucy, open your eyes.” His voice was not as commanding as he’d intended, hardly more than a whisper. He ran his hands over her limbs and her belly, checking for other injuries. He felt no weaknesses, no blood, no breaks. If he was a very, very lucky man, and God was feeling gracious, Lucy might only be concussed.

“Oh, princess,” he said, sighing. “This was not the way I intended to win this wager.”

Very carefully, Nick lifted her in his arms and moved back across the square. Guilt, that familiar burden, seemed to weigh more than the unconscious Lucy. It would be too much to hope that the surgeon was still in front of the bakeshop, but Nick asked God for it anyway. For Lucy. Surely the Almighty had a soft spot for reformers. After all, his own Son had been one of them.

Nick passed the grieving mother who still rocked over the body of her child, passed underneath the celebrating gentry on the alehouse balcony. One of them called down some imprecation, but Nick’s ears were deaf to the taunts.

The surgeon was still there, bent over the woman on her bed of flour sacks. The babe must have begun to cry again, for Tom had scooped him up and was awkwardly bouncing the infant. “Lady Lucy!” Tom’s cry of relief quickly died away when Nick placed her limp form on another bed of flour sacks.

“When you’re finished, sir,” Nick said to the surgeon, “if you’d examine this girl, I’d be in your debt.”

The surgeon, a grizzled old man, gave the bandage he’d wrapped around the young mother a final smoothing and stood. “I’m done with her.”

Nick cringed at the finality in the man’s tone. “Is she dead?” Had he sacrificed precious time, and possibly Lucy, all for naught?

“No, thank God. Perhaps I’ve managed to save one today. The pressure stemmed the flow of blood, otherwise she’d not be so lucky.” The surgeon paused to run his hands over the babe in Tom’s arms. “You will not have to give up your mother’s milk quite yet, little one.” He looked at Tom. “Do you know this woman?”

“No, but I’ll find her people. You may leave her to my care, sir.”

Nick watched as Tom seemed to mature in an instant, and his estimation of the youth rose several notches. If it weren’t for the younger Selkirk fetching the surgeon, Nick’s losses this day might have been more than he could bear. They still might be.

“Then let’s see about this girl.” The surgeon, accustomed to dire wounds, did not linger over his success. Nick stepped back as the man examined Lucy. For long, anxious minutes, the only sound Nick could hear was the echo of his own breathing. Finally, when he thought he couldn’t stand another moment of not knowing, the surgeon looked up at him.

“I can find nothing wrong aside from the bump on her head, but I’m concerned she’s not come round yet.” He reached into his kit and brought out a small vial. With a deft hand, he waved the smelling salts under Lucy’s nose. She winced and started to rouse, but then fell back against the flour sacks.

The surgeon tucked the salts back into his kit. “Head injuries can be tricky. She needs to be somewhere warm and dry. Normally in these cases, the patient will rouse within twenty-four hours.”

Nick couldn’t miss the apprehension in the surgeon’s voice. “And if they don’t?”

“Then there is no knowing. I once had a patient lie insensible for a month, but when he awoke he was as fit as a fiddle.”

“Then she will awaken?” Nick refused to allow fear to creep into his voice. Lucy would be well. She must be. He could not bear to lose her, not when she’d become as
vital to him as the beating of his own heart.

“Warm and dry. Don’t take it too hard, man. I have hope she’ll recover.” The surgeon paused. “She is your wife?”

“No,” Nick answered. “But the moment she awakens, she will be.”

The surgeon hoisted his kit. “That’s the spirit, young man. No sense in waiting, not when life is so uncertain.” He turned toward the square and looked back at Nick. “Is it bad, then?”

“Like a battlefield,” Nick said.

The man’s shoulders sagged. “I was at Waterloo, you know. I came to Nottingham for a bit of peace and quiet.”

“And instead found reformers?”

“No. Instead, I found that the men who saved England are now treated like enemies. God save the poor mad king and damn the Regent. This would never have happened in Farmer George’s day.” The surgeon walked away, and Nick, feeling strangely shamed, turned to Tom Selkirk.

“Would your resourcefulness stretch to finding a cart, Tom? It’s the only way I know to get these ladies home.”

Tom nodded, handed Nick the babe, and took off down the narrow alleyway. Nick cradled the baby and waited, his eyes never leaving Lucy’s face.

A DAY THAT had seemed so full of promise to the people of Nottingham ended in more tragedy than they’d be able to bear, Nick thought as he sank back on the stone bench that had literally been carved from the wall of Mrs. Selkirk’s bedroom. He ached with exhaustion, but no amount of persuasion could move him from his perch beside the bed. Lucy lay very still. The injured mother and her child had been given a pallet in the main room, and Nick had insisted that the Selkirks tend to the woman and babe while he kept vigil over Lucy. Night had fallen at last on the long summer day, and Tom appeared at the doorway with a candle in hand.

“You’ll want this when she wakes. She might be afraid if she finds herself in the dark.”

“Thank you.” He accepted the candle from Tom and set it on the bench beside him. Strange how tragedy could forge friendships between antagonists.

“She’ll be all right,” Tom reassured him. “Lady Lucy is strong, far stronger than you’d expect from an—”

“From an aristocrat?” Nick finished the youth’s sentence with a tired smile.

Tom dipped his head and then grinned sheepishly in response. “Yes, I suppose so.”

Nick rubbed his aching eyes with his fingertips. “We’re not so different, you and I, Tom. I’ve learned that much this day.”

Tom sagged against the doorway for support. “You’re gentry, too, aren’t you?” The question was casual, curious, with no hint of hostility.

“Royalty, actually,” Nick responded before he thought the better of it.

“I’m not surprised,” Tom said with a laugh. “You have that princely arrogance about you.”

Nick nodded. “I suppose I do, Tom. I suppose I do.”

For a moment, both were silent.

“She’ll wake soon.” Tom meant to reassure him, but the young man’s doubtful gaze did not match his words.

“Within the hour, no doubt,” Nick responded, but with little success at injecting optimism into his voice. With each hour that passed, his concern grew. The surgeon had specified twenty-four hours, but Nick couldn’t bear to wait that long.

“Call me if you need anything,” Tom said and then, with a lift of his hand, left the doorway.

“The only thing I need you cannot give me, young Tom.” Nick shot a glance toward the door and then eyed the wide space beside Lucy. The cold stone bench was not an inviting bed, and more than anything he wanted to be close to her. He’d rather not shock the Selkirks, but they’d be shocked enough when Nick’s identity was revealed.

With the ease of much practice, Nick divested himself of his boots, circled to the other side of the bed, and slid beneath the counterpane. How he wished he could undo the events of the last few days, and that he could start again from the last time he’d shared a bed with Lucy, when they’d been trapped in the fairy bower at Madame St. Cloud’s.