July 7
Paisley needed to pace. But walking was difficult enough with crutches, so pacing was out of the question.
It was almost four o’clock in the morning and Paisley had been sitting up in his chair, unable to sleep as he waited for the sound of his lordship’s step in the corridor. Usually, the only reason his employer would be out so late was that he’d visited a woman or one of the dimly lighted businesses that could be found tucked away even in the better parts of town, where the smoking of opium seemed to become more fashionable and popular by the day.
But his employer did not have a woman in New York—at least not that he knew of—and he’d only just returned from one of his “repairing leases” a few days earlier. Generally, Lord Jasper went months in between visits to opium parlors.
It was a sign of Paisley’s current state of mind that he hoped Lord Jasper had fallen back into his unhealthy habit, rather than into some other, more lethal, trouble.
Somebody hammered so hard on the front door that Paisley actually felt the vibrations through the legs of his chair. He lunged for his crutches and banged his damaged foot on the doorframe in his haste to get out of his room and down to the foyer.
Even before he was halfway down the hallway, Thomas appeared at the top of the stairs, with Detective Law beside him.
“Where is Lord Jasper?” he demanded, his gaze taking in the big American’s bruised and battered appearance. “You are bleeding.”
Law looked down and frowned. “Oh, dern. I thought I did a better job than that.” He lifted both hands, which had several fingers bent in odd directions. “I had a tough time wrapping the damn thing.”
Paisley winced; it hurt just looking at the mangled digits. “Good God! How were you able to do anything with them?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “They need proper splinting—and quickly—or they’ll be permanently damaged.” He hesitated a moment, weighing the disagreeable notion of taking a stranger into his quarters against the wisdom of trooping downstairs, with Law trailing more blood all the way.
“Thomas, fetch a basin of hot water and come back to my chambers. Detective Law,” he said, crutching back to his room. “Come in here and sit in this chair beside the lamp. I will take a look at your foot while you tell me where his lordship is,” he said as he pulled out the box of bandages and sticking plasters that he kept in his medicine cabinet.
Paisley turned all the way around when the other man didn’t answer. Law was slumped in the chair, staring sightlessly at the doorway he’d just come through.
“Detective,” Paisley repeated, startling them both with his sharp tone. “Where is Lord Jasper?”
“He was fightin’ a man we’d gone to arrest, Adolphus Vogel.” He stopped, shaking his head.
“Yes?”
Law swallowed. “He went off the pier.”
Paisley dropped the box to the floor with a clatter. “What do you mean off the pier? Why didn’t you get him out? Why isn’t—”
“I tried to find him—just seconds after he went over,” Law protested, half rising from his chair. “But it was dark, and he didn’t answer when I called his name—neither of them yelled or made a sound and—”
“And you just left him there?”
“No! Of course I didn’t leave him there. We got four boats looking for him, Mister Paisley.” Law’s expression was a mix of guilt and anguish. “Don’t you think I wanted to find him? The man saved my life again tonight. Those bastards would have killed us both if he hadn’t acted as quick as he had.” He shoved a hand through his curly ginger hair and then grimaced and dropped it.
They stared each other, Law’s anguished words heavy in the air between them.
Paisley’s brain seized like a piece of machinery that had rusted shut; he had no words.
Law rubbed his eyes hard enough to make Paisley wince. “I was out there for the first three hours lookin’ for him up and down the pier. My cousin knows a man with a skiff small enough to go between the pilings, just in case he got caught up on one. I’m goin’ right back to help after I leave here. I just came here to tell you,” he added miserably. “Christ,” he said with a dead look in his eyes. “It happened so damned fast.”
Paisley shook his head: this could not be happening. He could not have cared for Lord Jasper all through the nightmare of their time in the Crimea only to have him die here, in this wretched, filthy, savage city.
He pursed his lips and glared at Law. “His lordship is an excellent swimmer and has spent a great deal of time around water.”
Law nodded. “I figured he might be a swimmer—I know he spends a goodly amount of his time hittin’ the bag, so he’s tough. He was awake and conscious when he went over.” Law snorted softly. “He was in prime fightin’ shape. I don’t think Vogel even got in a hit, except right at the end, with that big damned knife.”
“Knife?” Paisley shrieked.
Law recoiled. “No, he didn’t get cut—the blade hit more on the flat.” He held up his mangled hands in a placating gesture. “Look, I went to the harbor patrol, and they’ll start sweeping for him at dawn to make sure he doesn’t go out with the tide. He got lucky in that it’s an incoming tide. It’s a high tide—the highest of the month. He could have been pushed up quite a ways.” He hesitated and then said. “We found the other man—Vogel.” Law grimaced. “Well, we found parts of him.”
“What in the name of God do you mean?” Paisley demanded.
“Oh,” Law pulled an unhappy face. “I’m doing a bang-up job, ain’t I? Vogel got caught up in a steamship. We found him not an hour after the two went into the water.”
Paisley stared at the blood pooling on the wooden floor. “Let’s get your boot off.”
“I’ll do it.” Law gritted his teeth as he toed off his bloodied boot with a wince, exposing a wad of cotton that had been clumsily wrapped around it.
Paisley lifted the foot onto a footstool and then knelt beside it. He removed first the cotton and then the stocking, hissing in a breath. “This is quite serious,” he told the younger man. “It’s gone all the way through. There might be damage inside. You should go to—”
“A doctor won’t do no more than stitch it shut, sir.” Law chewed his lower lip, his sun-browned skin pale. “Er, do you think—”
“I’ll stitch it. But first we need to wash it.”
The door opened and Thomas entered, a steaming pitcher in one hand and a basin in the other.
Behind him was Mrs. Freedman, bearing the inevitable tea tray.
“Good Lord,” she murmured, bustling into Paisley’s bedchamber as if it belonged to her, her eyes on Law’s oozing injury. She clucked her tongue, her bright gaze shifting to Paisley. “It’s not been a good month for feet,” she said, setting the tray down on the secretary desk and coming closer to inspect the wound.
She wore a plain white sleeping cap along with a quilted dressing gown and matching slippers. It was eminently proper garb and yet Paisley felt an unaccustomed thumping in his chest when she knelt down beside him, bringing the faint scent of lavender with her.
She was a small woman—a good eight inches shorter than Paisley’s own five foot nine, but she had large hands. Although she couldn’t be more than thirty, he knew she’d led a hard life to have such hands. Law was a ginger, and her dark fingers made his pale, freckled skin look unhealthily white next to them.
She glanced at Paisley. “You were thinkin’ to tend to it?”
“I can stitch a wound,” he said stiffly, annoyed by the challenge in her tone and the knowing look in her light brown eyes.
She snorted. “Could I please have some of that water in a basin,” she asked the hovering Thomas, and then turned to the scattered mess of Paisley’s box and began to assemble the necessary bandages. “And some of his lordship’s whiskey.”
“Oh, thank you,” the young detective murmured.
Mrs. Freedman cut Law a quick, amused glance. “I suppose you could have a little to drink, too, although I’m really wantin’ it for your foot.”
Thomas returned a moment later with the basin, a bottle, and a glass.
Paisley poured two fingers, reconsidered, and added another two before handing the glass to the detective.
Mrs. Freedman took the bottle. “This will sting,” she warned, splashing the wound with whisky and then holding a cloth against it to keep the liquor on the wound.
Law sucked in a harsh breath and then threw back the contents of his glass.
Once she’d cleaned both sides of the wound, she put his foot in the basin of hot water and stood. “I’m going to fetch a needle and thread.” She paused and then asked the detective, “Did something happen to Lord Jasper?”
Paisley left the room without speaking, unwilling to hear the dreadful story again.
Only when he was standing in the corridor did he recall that the triage was in his bedchamber. He couldn’t go back in there.
He cudgeled his brain, but it was like flogging a dying horse. He could not think right now; he needed to do.
Yes, that’s what he needed. Lord Jasper might be back any moment, and who knew what condition he’d be in? Paisley would go get things ready for when his lordship returned.
He stumped slowly down the corridor and opened the door to his master’s room, closing it quietly behind him.