Mission: Improper: London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy by Bec McMaster

Author:Bec McMaster
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Lochaber Press Pty. Ltd
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

"HERE," INGRID SAID, handing him a flask as she pushed him back onto the bed in his room at Baker Street. "Drink this."

Blood. Byrnes set the flask to his mouth as she sat beside him. Charlie had driven them home from the pits, taken one look at the murderous expression on Ingrid's face, and said he'd tell Malloryn what they'd seen. Byrnes hadn't had a reason to argue. His arm hurt, despite the raging chill of the craving virus, and he was fairly certain that the bullet was still inside him.

Besides, he wasn't going to argue with her either. Not in this mood.

"What are you doing?" he asked. Ingrid tugged open his coat, unbuttoning it with crisp fingers. Then he realized. "It's just a scratch, Miller."

"I'll be the judge of that," she replied, pushing his coat off his shoulder and then gently touching the bloodied sleeve of his shirt.

Everything about her expression changed. He didn't have an answer for what he saw on her face. Stricken? Perhaps stricken came closest. "The wound's healed around the bullet," she said. "I'm going to have to cut it out."

"Then do it." Feeling somewhat adrift, Byrnes tilted his shoulder toward her. Was this what had her so upset? The fact that he was injured? It didn't make any sense, as she knew he was a blue blood. "I've had worse."

“I’m certain you have.”

“This is—”

“Byrnes. Please be quiet.”

She was frighteningly proficient as she wielded the scalpel with a skill and grace that told him she'd done this before. Byrnes ground his teeth together as he breathed through the extraction. The bullet pinged as it landed in the tray.

It was as she cleaned the wound that her hesitancy came through. Byrnes watched her expressive face the entire time. When was the last time that someone had tended to him like this? He honestly couldn't remember. Perhaps his mother, bracing skinned knees. Or pressing cold meat to his face to still the heated echo of his father's fist.

That soured his thoughts. Instantly he was back there, slamming into the door in his father's study, too small, too weak, too pathetic to strike back.

Byrnes turned away from the memories, forcing them into that little locked box in his mind where he could pretend they didn't exist. He felt ill, as he always did when he thought of the viscount, but controlling it was easy. Lock it away. Lock it up tight. Don't ever let it out.

The guilt was not so easy to hide.

"Am I hurting you?" Ingrid's voice helped draw him into the present. She gently wound clean linen around the gauze that she'd packed over his wound. A chill told him that the craving virus was flooding back into the inflamed skin. By the end of an hour, there wouldn't even be a scratch.

Which made this a complete and utter waste of her time.

He said nothing though, because he quite liked those warm hands on his skin. "You're not hurting me."

The tension that had radiated through her shoulders seemed to ebb.

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