A Wicked Pursuit by Isabella Bradford

itself, leaving his hand to close, empty, over where hers had been. Each time as he struggled to reclaim her, he woke, covered in sweat and gasping as he fought against the tangled sheets and pillows and the leather splint bound around his leg.
    “Be easy, my lord, be easy,” murmured Sir Randolph as he pressed him back down onto the bed. He was wearing a blue apron over his waistcoat, an apron marked with fresh blood.
    “Damn you, what have you done?” Harry demanded hoarsely, trying to shove the other man’s hands aside. He’d overheard them speak cavalierly of amputation when they’d thought he was asleep. Surgeons were always ready with the knife, ready to cut a man in the name of healing. He’d an old acquaintance from school, an officer, who’d lost his leg fighting in the American colonies, and he’d seemed half a man ever since, hobbled like a graybeard. “If you’ve maimed me—”
    “You’ve been bled, my lord, that is all,” Sir Randolph said with maddening calm. He held Harry’s arm before him so he could see the fresh wound from the knife and the bloodstained linen wrapped over it. “We wish to bring the fever down.”
    “That is all, that is all,” Harry repeated darkly. “What of my leg, eh? What have you done to it?”
    “Your leg remains in a perilous state, my lord,” Sir Randolph said, “though it is my every intention to preserve it, despite the increase of morbid matter around the break, which has brought on your fever. It is my belief that a course of bleeding will serve to correct the humors and restore you to health.”
    “Mumbo jumbo, mumbo jumbo,” Harry muttered, shifting restlessly. The motion made his leg throb with pain, trapped as it was in the vise-like splint combined with the fracture-box: a good sign, for at least it meant his leg was still there, and the doctor wasn’t lying.
    “I assure you, my lord, that what sounds like nonsense to you is the very key to your restoration,” Sir Randolph said. “You must trust me to do what is best for you.”
    “Then open a window, Peterson, so I might breathe,” Harry said, impatiently shoving at the sheets and counterpane. “It’s hot as blazes in this room.”
    “That is the fever, my lord,” Sir Randolph said as the nurse pulled the covers back over him. “The air from an open window could be fatal to you in your present state.”
    Exhausted and frustrated, Harry stared up at the bed’s pleated canopy overhead, watching it spin before his eyes like a Catherine wheel. It made his head ache, yet he couldn’t force himself to look away.
    Where the devil was Miss Augusta, anyway? She could make this infernal bed stop spinning. Why wasn’t she here?
    “Here, my lord, this will help ease your discomfort,” Mrs. Patton said, pressing a warm, damp cloth over his eyes.
    “The hell it will.” He reached up and snatched the cloth away. “Where’s Miss Augusta?”
    Sir Randolph and the nurse exchanged glances in a way that did nothing to reassure Harry.
    “Miss Augusta is not here, my lord,” Sir Randolph said carefully. “I’ve told you before that this is not the proper place for an unmarried lady—”
    “When have you told me?” Harry demanded.
    “Several times, my lord,” Sir Randolph said. “While this is the fourth day since your fall, the delirium of the fever may have disturbed your, ah, judgment.”
    Four days , thought Harry with increasing despair. That shocked him. It was bad enough that he felt weak as a puling baby and as helpless as one, too. His leg throbbed and his head ached and his entire body felt on fire. Could his life truly be in the danger that Peterson and the others claimed?
    “Send for her,” he said wearily. “Now.”
    “Perhaps it is rather Miss Wetherby you wish to see, my lord?” Sir Randolph asked delicately, as if Harry were too stupid to know the difference between the sisters.
    “No,” he said bluntly. The last thing he wished was for Julia to see him in this ruinous