Although Garrett didn’t smile, she appreciated the touch of humor, which helped to stave off an attack of nerves. One mistake—an air bubble in the vein—would finish Ethan off in short order.

The earl came to her. “What now?” he asked.

She handed him a sterilized glass vessel. “Fill this with boiled water.”

While the earl attended to the task, Garrett listened to Ravenel’s heart with the stethoscope and checked his pulse. He had the heart of an ox, the rhythm strong and regular. She filled the water aspirator of the transfuser and tied a length of surgical bandage firmly around the thick muscle of his upper arm. “Make a fist, please.” His brawny forearm flexed. “A perfect median basilic,” she said, swabbing the inside of his arm with isopropyl alcohol. “I could find it without even tying a band around your arm.”

“I would preen and bask in your admiration of my vein,” Ravenel said, “if I didn’t see that three-inch needle attached to one of those tubes.”

“I’ll be as gentle as possible,” she said, “but I’m afraid it will be uncomfortable.”

“Compared to a bullet in the chest, I suppose one can’t complain without sounding like a milksop.”

His older brother told him kindly, “We all know you’re a milksop. Go ahead and complain.”

“You may wish to look away, Mr. Ravenel,” Garrett murmured, “and keep making a fist.”

“Call me West.”

“I don’t know you well enough for that.”

“You’re draining the life essence from my median basilic,” he pointed out. “I’m on a first-name basis with women who’ve done far less to me than that. Son of a bitch!” The profanity burst out as he felt Garrett ease the hollow curved needle into his vein. He frowned down at the sight of his blood running along the rubber tube into the aspirator. “How much of this is he going to need?”

“Probably no more than ten ounces. We’ll replenish his vessels just enough to restore his pulse to its normal rate and volume.” Garrett tied a band around Ethan’s lax upper arm and hunted for a vein. None were visible. “Lord Trenear, if you would help me by applying pressure to his arm here, and here . . .” The earl clamped his fingers on the places she had indicated.

Nothing. No vein.

No pulse.

Ethan’s last breath escaped in a sigh.

He was gone.

“No, you don’t,” Garrett said fiercely, swabbing his arm and picking up a scalpel. “You’re bloody well not going to do this to me, you sow-buggering bastard!” Deftly pinching a fold of cool skin, she made a quick incision to expose a depleted vein. “Hand me the director,” she said through gritted teeth. As Trenear hesitated over the tray of instruments, she snapped, “The pointy one.” Immediately he picked it up and handed it over to her.

Within seconds, Garrett had lifted the vein with the director, made a transverse cut with a scalpel, and inserted a cannula. While Lord Trenear held the cannula in place, she connected it with the transfuser and used the pumps and aspirator to withdraw every dram of air in the line and flush it with sterile water. Although she’d never used this kind of transfuser before, her hands somehow knew what to do, guided by a part of her brain that was thinking ten times faster than usual. A twist of a silver stopcock, and blood began to flow into the vein.

The two men were now connected by a hermetically sealed channel.

Garrett exerted pressure on the balloon pump to release the blood into Ethan’s arm at a slow pace, to keep from overwhelming the heart. Her lips moved in a ceaseless incantation: come back come back come back . . .

After one minute had passed, a miraculous change came over the lifeless form. His pulse resumed. His color rose rapidly. His chest lifted once, twice, and he began to breathe in deep, fitful gasps. Another minute, and he was perspiring and twitching.

Garrett let out a sigh of relief that sounded embarrassingly like a whimper. Feeling her eyes brim, she covered them with one hand and fought for self-control. A few profane words escaped her lips as a tear slid down to her chin.

“You curse so beautifully,” she heard Ravenel say dryly. “Few women can do it with such natural ease.”

“I learned at the Sorbonne,” Garrett said with her hand still over her eyes. “You should hear me curse in French.”

“I’d rather not, or I might fall in love with you. By the way, does Ransom have enough blood now? Because I’m starting to feel a bit light-headed.”

After Garrett had cleaned her instruments and the transfuser equipment, she checked Ethan’s vital signs for the tenth time. Pulse, one hundred. Temperature, ninety-nine. Respirations, thirty. He was sweating profusely, and stirring uneasily as the effects of anesthesia slowly faded.

Leaving him in the care of Mrs. Abbot, Garrett unsteadily made her way to a corner of the library and sat on a small carved stepladder. Bending forward, she rested her head on her knees. She was distantly aware that she was shaking as if from a seizure. She couldn’t think what to do about it, only crouched there and quivered until her teeth rattled.

Someone was beside her, lowering to his haunches. A large, warm hand settled high on her back. A sideways glance revealed that it was West Ravenel. There were no glib comments, only a calm, friendly quietness that soothed her. His touch reminded her a little of the way Ethan would sometimes stroke or gently grip the nape of her neck. She began to relax, the tremors fading. He stayed like that, the pressure of his hand light and comforting, until she let out a shuddering sigh and sat up.

Ravenel’s hand slid away. Wordlessly he gave her a glass filled with a small portion of whiskey, or brandy—something alcoholic—and she took it gratefully. Her teeth clattered against the edge of the glass as she took a swallow. The smooth amber fire helped to drain a few last shudders of nervous tension.

“It’s been almost an hour,” Ravenel said. “The transfusion was successful, wasn’t it?”

Garrett drank again. “He won’t die from the damage done by the bullet,” she said dully, her fingers clutched around the glass. “He’ll die from what was allowed inside by the bullet track. Viruses, bacteria, lethal microbes, chemical contaminants. I’d rather have immersed him in poison than that river. The Thames would turn up Neptune himself within five minutes.”

“I wouldn’t say death is a foregone conclusion,” Ravenel said. “He comes from tough stock. A long line of vicious bastards. As he’s already proven, he can survive things other men wouldn’t.”

“You’re acquainted with his family?” she asked.

“He hasn’t told you, then. The Ravenels are his family. His father was the old earl. If Ransom hadn’t been born a bastard, he would be Lord Trenear right now, instead of my brother.”

Chapter 17

West smiled slightly as Garrett Gibson stared at him with dazed green eyes. “That explains the resemblance,” she said after a long moment.

How very small she seemed, tucked in the corner of the library with her knees drawn up. For the past hour and a half, she had been a commanding figure, strung tight with energy, her gaze stern and steely. She had worked in millimeters, doing tiny, crucial things to veins and cellular tissue with astonishing precision. Although West knew nothing about surgery, he’d understood that he was witnessing someone perform with rare skill.

Now, in her exhaustion, the brilliant surgeon resembled an anxious schoolgirl who had taken a wrong turn on the way home.

West liked her a great deal. In fact, he was rather sorry now that he’d kept shrugging off Helen’s efforts to introduce them. He’d envisioned the female doctor as a severe matron, probably hostile toward men, and Helen’s assurances that Dr. Gibson was quite pretty hadn’t been at all convincing. Helen, with her completely unjustified affection for humanity, loved to overestimate people.

But Garrett Gibson was more than pretty. She was riveting. An intelligent, accomplished woman with an elusive quality . . . a suggestion of hidden tenderness . . . that intrigued him.

The evening had been one surprise after another, starting with Ethan Ransom being carried in half dead by a pair of terrified river police who clearly wanted nothing to do with the affair. Having stopped their patrol boat beneath Blackfriars Bridge for a forbidden drink of whiskey from a flask, the officers could hear the murder in progress above them. After the assassin had left the bridge, they’d managed to haul the wounded man aboard and searched his pockets, and had found nothing to identify him other than West’s calling card. But they’d heard enough to realize that reporting the matter would result in more trouble than they cared to deal with.

“Who did this?” West had asked Ransom as he lay in a filthy, crumpled heap on the settee.

“One of Jenkyn’s men,” Ransom had gasped, fighting to stay conscious, his eyes unfocused.

“Jenkyn ordered it?”

“Yes. Don’t trust police. Felbrigg. When they find me . . .”

“They won’t find you.”

“They’ll come.”

Let them try, West had thought, livid as he saw what had been done to his kinsman.

Kathleen had bent over the dying man, using a soft white cloth to wipe some of the grime from his face. Ransom lost consciousness for several seconds, and reawakened with a groan. “May I send for someone?” she had asked gently, and he’d responded with a string of nearly unintelligible words that she’d somehow managed to make sense of. She had turned to West with a perplexed and sorrowing look. “He wants Dr. Gibson.”

“Gibson’s in King’s Cross, isn’t she? We can fetch our family physician far more quickly.”

“He doesn’t want her as a doctor,” Kathleen had said softly. “He wants the woman he loves.”

It had struck West as a highly improbable pairing, the doctor and the government agent. But after seeing them together, he realized their connection didn’t have to be understood by anyone except the two of them.

Rising to his feet and looking down at Garrett’s strained face, West saw that she’d nearly reached the breaking point. She stared back at him vacantly, too drained and overwhelmed to ask a single question.

“Doctor,” he said gently, “I’ve just spoken to my brother, who’s arranged for us to take Ransom to Hampshire. We’re leaving in a few hours.”

“He can’t be moved.”

“He’s not safe here. No one else is, either. There’s no choice.”

Garrett snapped back to attention, her gaze sharpening. “All the jolting could kill him. It’s out of the question.”

“I swear to you he’ll be conveyed quickly and carefully.”

“On rough country roads?” she asked scornfully.

“We’re transporting him by private train carriage. We’ll reach the family estate by dawn. It’s quiet and secluded there. He’ll be able to heal in privacy.”