Page 83 of Murder at the Seven Dials
The carriage tottered around a sharp corner, and outside, he spotted the familiar wrought iron fence and elms outside Thornton’s home. At last.
The driver whistled to the horses. The next collection of minutes was a blur of shuffling Audrey out of the carriage without causing her too much agony, sending Sir ahead to alert the butler and Thornton himself, and then Hugh pushing his way into the foyer.
“Goodwin, tell me he’s in.”
The butler snapped his fingers to a footman and maid, who’d rushed into the front hall to view the commotion. “Yes, of course, sir. Take her straight to the back wing,” he said, but Hugh was already on his way.
Thornton kept an office in his home at the back of the house, where patients could enter and leave without being seen from the square out front. Hugh kicked open the door and was two steps inside the office when Thornton entered through a side door, Sir on his heels.
“A bullet to the upper right shoulder?” Thornton asked, already serious and focused. Ready. Hugh’s thighs trembled, knowing Audrey would be cared for now. He laid her onto the examination table.
“Yes. And a dunk into the Pool of London.”
Thornton scowled at the poor luck as a young maid rushed through the door Sir was still holding open, her hands swiftly tying on a pinafore. His assistant, Hugh presumed.
“And yourself?” Thornton inquired as his assistant produced a pair of steel shears and handed them to him. He made an incision in the sopping green fabric of Audrey’s bodice and began cutting upward, toward her collar.
“I am fine. Uninjured,” Hugh answered, impatient. The duchess’s cheeks were ashen, her lips dusky purple, but her eyes were partially open.
“So c-c-cold,” she stammered.
“You’ll be warm soon, Your Grace,” Thornton assured her.
The gown’s fabric fell away, and Thornton gently rolled Audrey to her side.
“W-what are you—” Her stammering objection fell silent as she continued to shiver.
The assistant sliced the ribbons from her boned corset.
“Your Grace, forgive the impropriety but I need access to your wound,” Thornton informed her.
At the first glimpse of her bare back, Hugh stepped away, averting his eyes.
Lying her down flat again, Audrey made small mewling noises. Each one daggered Hugh in his gut. Thornton pulled off her sopping corset just as his assistant draped her with a swath of white cotton.
“The bullet entered the outer deltoid and has lodged there,” Thornton announced. “Miss Mathers, hot water, alcohol, and forceps.”
Audrey moaned as the assistant flushed debris and blood from the wound, and then held her still as Thornton inserted the narrow forceps. Hugh’s stomach turned and he fought the irrational desire to clock his friend in the jaw. He was helping Audrey, saving her life, and yet anger roiled inside him. Not for Thornton, no. For that Fellows blackguard. The man who’d murdered Miss Lovejoy, had most likely killed Bernadetto too, and who’d held no qualms about shooting the duchess.
“Mister Hugh,” Sir whispered, appearing at his elbow, as usual. The normalness of it relieved him. “Want me to keep my blinkers on this Wimbly lady?”
He’d been listening in the carriage. The marchioness hired Fellows to frame the duke. What he couldn’t be sure of was if St. John had been in on it or not.
“Got it,” Thornton announced, followed by a clink of metal as the extracted bullet fell from the tips of his forceps and onto a tray.
Audrey had lost consciousness, her waxy complexion giving Hugh another curl of fury mixed with nausea.
“A clean entry,” Thornton said, stepping away as his assistant staunched the bleeding.
“She’ll live?” Hugh asked.
“I’ll clean the wound again, suture it, and get her warm and dry. Infection is a possibility,” Thornton answered as he wiped his hands on a length of linen. “But the damage is minimal. There is nothing more you can do right now, Hugh. If there is somewhere you need to be regarding whatever happened here, this is the time.”
His friend knew him well. Hugh looked at Audrey and nodded tightly.
“Take care of her,” he said, needlessly. Thornton would not leave the duchess’s side. He motioned for Sir to follow him from the room. “I’m going to Wimbly Manor. Head to Bow Street and find out what’s come of Fellows’s arrest.”
Sir nodded and dashed away, disappearing before Hugh even emerged onto the front steps.
