“You will make it through surgery, and you will definitely have fever. A nasty one. After being doused in that filthy river, you’re teeming with inflammatory microbes. Fortunately, I’ve brought a variety of antiseptic solutions. Before long I’ll have you as clean as a bobbin.”

“For God’s sake, woman—ahh, damn it, what is that?”

“Morphine,” she said, depressing the plunger slowly to release the medicine into the thick muscle of his upper arm.

Ethan subsided, realizing there would be no stopping her. “You haven’t one romantic bone in your body,” he muttered.

That sounded so much like his usual self that Garrett almost smiled. “I reassembled an entire disarticulated skeleton in medical school. There’s no such thing as a romantic bone.”

He turned his face away from her.

Garrett was wrenched with love and agonized concern. She felt her lips tremble, and she clamped them shut. She knew Ethan understood how close to death he was, and had resigned himself to what he thought was inevitable. He wanted to spend the last few minutes of his life lucid and aware, in the arms of the woman he loved.

But instead of caressing him, her hands would be plying surgical instruments. Instead of gazing at him adoringly, she would be examining inner contusions and lacerations.

No, her way was not romantic.

She wouldn’t be the woman he loved, however, if she didn’t use all her skills in an effort to save him.

Setting aside the hypodermic syringe, Garrett looked down at the perfect shape of his ear. She bent to rub her lips softly against the lobe. “Éatán,” she whispered, “listen to me. This is what I do. I’ll bring you through this and take care of you. I’ll be with you every minute. Trust me.”

His cheek nudged back toward her. She saw that he didn’t believe her. All the light in his eyes had vanished save a last glint or two, like the ember of a candlewick that had just been snuffed.

“Tell me you love me,” he whispered.

Panicked words fluttered and darted inside her . . . I love you I need you Oh God please stay with me . . . but she had the terrifying premonition that saying it would allow him to let go. As if she would be giving him permission to pass away peacefully instead of fighting for his life.

“Later,” she said gently. “When you wake up after the surgery, I’ll tell you.”

By the time Dr. Havelock had arrived, Ethan had been transferred to the massive oak library table. It had taken the combined efforts of West Ravenel and three footmen to move him as carefully as possible, in the fear of dislodging possible bone shards or lead fragments, or causing other damage. Ethan had slipped into a delirium, only letting out an occasional groan or wordless exclamation.

With Kathleen’s help, Garrett had wiped Ethan’s form from head to toe with disinfectant solution and shaved around the gunshot wound in preparation for surgery. They had draped a towel across his hips for modesty, and covered him with clean cotton blankets afterward. A blue-white pallor gave his flesh the illusion of cool marble perfection, sculpted and polished to a silky sheen.

It was somehow worse to see a man of such robust health reduced to this condition. The morphine had taken what effect it would, but Ethan was still in obvious pain, and Garrett didn’t dare give him any more with his blood pressure so low.

Garrett had never been so relieved as she was when Dr. Havelock arrived. His capable presence made her feel that together, they would pull Ethan through. Havelock’s distinctive shock of snow-white hair had been brushed back hastily, his cheeks and chin glinting with the day’s growth of silver beard. He examined Ethan with quiet efficiency, responding to the wounded man’s incoherent murmurs with a few soothing words.

When Havelock had finished his evaluation, Garrett went with him to the far end of the library for a private conference.

“He’s on the verge of circulatory collapse,” Havelock said quietly, his expression grave. “In fact, I’ve never seen a patient with a capacity to endure such severe hemorrhage. The bullet penetrated the left pectoral muscle. I wouldn’t be surprised if an artery has been completely severed.”

“That’s what I thought—but if so, it should have been immediately fatal. Why has the bleeding stopped? If it were leaking into the chest cavity, his lung function would be impaired, but it isn’t.”

“It’s possible the artery has constricted and retracted within its sheath, thereby sealing itself temporarily.”

“If it turns out to be the axillary artery, would there be enough blood supply left for the arm if I tie it off?”

“Yes, there would be sufficient collateral circulation. But I wouldn’t advise it.”

“What would you advise, then?”

Havelock regarded her for a long moment, his gaze kind in a way she didn’t like. “Make the poor fellow as comfortable as you can, and let him die in peace.”

The words were a slap in the face. “What?” Garrett asked dazedly. “No, I’m going to save him.”

“You can’t. Based on everything you’ve taught me about antiseptic medicine, this man is so contaminated, within and without, there’s no hope. Subjecting him to unnecessary surgery is folly and selfishness. If we did manage to delay his death for a day or so, he would go through unspeakable agony. His entire body would become riddled with sepsis until all his organs failed. I won’t have that on my conscience, and I don’t want it on yours.”

“Let me worry about my own conscience. Just help me, Havelock. I can’t do this by myself.”

“Operating when the medical facts don’t warrant it—when it will only cause the patient needless suffering—that is malpractice by any standard.”

“I don’t care,” Garrett said recklessly.

“You’ll care very much if this destroys your career. You know there are many who would leap at the chance to revoke your medical license. The first female physician in England, driven out of the profession because of scandal and misconduct . . . what would that do to the women who dream of following in your footsteps? What about the patients you’ll never be able to help in the future?”

“If I do nothing for this man, I’ll never be of any use to anyone,” Garrett burst out, trembling from the force of her emotions. “It would haunt me forever. I couldn’t live with the thought that there was a chance to save him but I didn’t take it. You don’t know him. If our positions were reversed, he would do anything for me. I have to fight for him. I have to.”

The older man stared at her as if he didn’t recognize her. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

“I’m thinking more clearly than I ever have in my life.”

“This is the man you met at Lord Tatham’s house last evening.”

Garrett flushed but held his gaze as she admitted, “He and I were already acquainted. He’s my . . . he’s . . . important to me.”

“I see.” Havelock was silent then, stroking his white whiskers, while precious seconds of Ethan’s life ticked away.

“Did you bring the transfuser?” Garrett burst out, impatient to decide on a course of action.

Havelock looked grim. “I’ve attempted blood transfusion on seven different occasions, and every case but one ended in shock, pain, and stroke or heart failure. No one has yet discovered why some blood is compatible and some isn’t. You haven’t seen what happens when the procedure fails. I have. Never again will I knowingly inflict such agony on a patient.”

“Did you bring it?” she persisted.

“I did,” he grated. “God help you and that poor wretch if you try to use it. Be honest, Dr. Gibson: Are you acting on behalf of your patient, or yourself?”

“Both of us! I’m doing it for both of us.”

She saw from his expression that it was the wrong answer.

“I can’t help you to do something against your own interests as well as his,” Havelock said. “This is madness, Garrett.”

He never used her first name.

As she stood there in stricken silence, he gave her a look that was somehow both pleading and stern, before departing the library.

“You’re leaving?” she asked in bewilderment.

He continued past the threshold without replying.

Garrett felt hollow and numb. Dr. William Havelock—her partner, advisor, supporter, and confidant, a man with the unfailing ability to discern right from wrong even in the most complex situations—had just walked out on her. He would take no part in what she was doing. Not because he was wrong, but because she was. He was sticking to his principles, whereas she . . .

She had no principles when it came to Ethan Ransom. She only loved him.

Shaken, despairing, she blinked against a burning wet blur. She was choking on her own breath.

Damn it, damn it, now she was crying.

Someone was standing at the doorway. It was West Ravenel, leaning a broad shoulder against the jamb, his gaze level and appraising. His blue eyes were startling against the sun-browned richness of his complexion.

Garrett lowered her head, swallowing repeatedly against the needling pain in her throat. She had no defenses left. He must have contempt for her, or pity, and either way, one word from him would destroy her.

“Go on and take a crack at it,” she heard Ravenel say casually. “I’ll help you.”

Her head bobbed upward. She stared at him, dumbfounded. It took her a moment to realize he was offering to assist with the surgery. After clearing her throat twice, the clenched muscles loosened enough for her to speak. “Do you have any medical training?”

“Not a bit. But I’ll do whatever you tell me.”

“Do you have any problems with the sight of blood?”

“Lord, no, I’m a farmer. I’m around blood all the time, both animal and human.”

Garrett regarded him dubiously, blotting her cheeks with the edge of her sleeve. “There’s that much blood involved in farming?”

Ravenel grinned. “I didn’t say I was any good at it.” The flash of his smile was so oddly like Ethan’s that Garrett felt a sharp pang in her chest. Tugging a handkerchief from inside his coat, he came forward to give it to her.

Mortified for him to have seen her crying, Garrett wiped her cheeks and eyes, and blew her nose. “How much did you hear?”

“Most of it. Sound carries all through this library.”

“Do you think Havelock was right?”

“About which part?”

“That I should make Mr. Ransom comfortable during his last few minutes on earth instead of torturing him with surgery?”

“No, you’ve already managed to ruin a moving deathbed scene. I couldn’t wait to hear what came after ‘your shadow on the ground is sunlight to me,’ but then you started giving orders like a drill sergeant. You might as well operate on Ransom: we won’t get any more good lines out of him tonight.”