Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Miss Jones, Miss Jones!”
Artemis opened her eyes and blinked with confusion into the gray, early morning gloom of her bedroom.What on earth?
Apprehension knotting her stomach, she pushed herself up against the pillows as the woman’s voice—Hetty’s by the sound of it—came again along with a barrage of urgent tapping on the door. “Miss Jones!”
“Come in,” Artemis croaked in a voice rusty with sleep as she slid from the cocoon of warm covers and reached for her robe. Was something wrong with Phoebe?
Her sister’s maid stuck her head around the door. “Miss Jones, you must come quickly. There’s a gentleman asking for you. He’s downstairs in the entry hall. He says it’s urgent.”
Artemis cinched her robe tightly over her nightgown. “Is it my fiancé, the Duke of Dartmoor?”
Because who else could it be?
But Hetty was shaking her head. “No, Miss Jones. He says he’s the Earl of Northam.”
Artemis frowned as she thrust her feet into slippers.Lord Northam? Horatia’s husband? Here about an urgent matter?
Oh dear God.
As Artemis sped through the house—even before she reached the entry hall and saw Lord Northam’s face—she just knew in her heart that something had happened to Dominic.
“My lord, what’s wrong? What’s Dominic gone and done?” she asked in a voice breathless with panic and rushing as soon as she reached the earl’s side.
Lord Northam, a tall, slender gentleman, sketched a slight bow before he spoke. “Miss Jones, I apologize for calling at such an unseemly hour, but Horatia insisted that I come at once to tell you that Dominic has been hurt. Quite badly, I’m afraid.”
“Hurt. Quite badly,” Artemis repeated dumbly through stiff lips. It suddenly felt as though her chest was in a vise and all of the air had been squeezed out of her lungs. “In what way?”
The earl winced and glanced down at his top hat in his gloved hands before he met her gaze again. “Shot. And…he also has a serious concussion after sustaining a blow to the head. Probably from a fall.”
“Oh…”
Artemis must have looked as though she were about to faint because the earl reached out and gripped her elbow. “Miss Jones, do you need to sit down?”
She shook her head, then pushed a tangled strand of hair behind her ear with trembling fingers. “No. No, I’m all right. I mean, I’m not all right because Dominic is…” She swallowed, hard. “How did it happen? Was he dueling? With Lord Gascoyne?”
But Lord Northam was shaking his head. “No. It wasn’t a duel. He was found in St. James’s. Wounded in a side street, not far from his clubs. Scotland Yard is investigating—I’ve spoken with them already, but I suspect they’ll want to question you also considering you have pertinent information.” His brow wrinkled. “Why would you think he was dueling?”
“Last night, he found out that Lord Gascoyne deliberately ruined my sister. He was so very angry.”
“Ahh.” Lord Northam nodded as though he understood perfectly. “I see.” To his credit, his gaze didn’t stray once to Artemis’s disheveled hair and crumpled night attire as he said, “I will wait here for you while you get ready. I have a carriage waiting outside to ferry you to Dartmoor House.”
“Thank you, my lord,” she said. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, and she had to know the worst, she added in a whisper, “Will he live?”
Lord Northam’s frown descended into frightfully solemn territory. “The physician who’s been in attendance is not certain, I’m afraid. He removed a bullet from Dominic’s left shoulder, and apparently he was lucky that it didn’t nick anything vital. However, there’s always the risk of purulence setting in. And then it’s worrying that Dominic hasn’t regained consciousness yet. The doctor thinks that the thick fog last night—a miasma—may have contained noxious humors that have worsened his condition. And then, no one is entirely certain when he was wounded and how long he lay there before he was discovered.”
Artemis’s hand fluttered to her throat. “Oh God.” To think of Dominic, bleeding and abandoned, lying insensible in a cold, dark alleyway for hours and hours made her stomach twist with horror. She had to see him. At once. “My lord, give me five minutes.”
Lord Northam bowed his head. “I’ll be here. We’ll leave whenever you’re ready.”
***
Artemis felt like she was drifting in some strange sort of nightmare and at any moment she would wake up as she hurriedly followed Lord Northam up the stairs to the floor where Dominic’s bedchamber lay. A tense hush pervaded Dartmoor House, lingering in each corridor and every shadowed corner, reminding her of the dismal chill fog that continued to shroud London’s streets and squares outside.
When they reached Dominic’s suite, the earl knocked gently on the door, then admitted her to the softly lit room. The blue velvet curtains were still drawn against the gray morning but a fire crackling merrily in the grate and several lamps provided sufficient light. A warm golden glow illuminated the four-poster bed that dominated the center of the chamber.
The scene would have been quite cheery under different circumstances. But not now. Not when a pair of chambermaids was collecting soiled clothing and linens and towels from the floor beside the bed and a male servant—Dominic’s valet perhaps—was removing a basin of bloodied water. A gray-haired, bespectacled gentleman—who had the look of a physician about him—was in the process of rolling down his shirtsleeves and fastening his cuffs.