“Do you think this might be the reason why these people are so eager to get their hands on the journals?” Ryan asked as he turned the next page. “They could probably make a fortune with all the information your father has gathered in here.”
“I suppose it is possible,” Mary told him. “I just—”
“Well, this is odd,” Ryan remarked, interrupting Mary. He leafed through the rest of the pages in the journal as if searching for something.
“What is it?”
“I am not entirely sure. Let me see the last two volumes, please.”
Mary handed them to him and watched silently as Ryan leafed through those as well. When he was done, he looked at her with a puzzled expression on his face. “From this point on,” he told her pensively, as he pointed to a segment in Volume 8, “there is nothing but detailed accounts of surgeries.”
Mary laughed lightly. “What is so strange about that? So he stopped writing about his discoveries and decided to focus on his own work instead. He was probably so frustrated by his peers’ unwillingness to listen to him that he simply gave up on trying to make them.”
“You don’t understand,” Ryan told her hesitantly. “Your father, from what I have heard, was one of the best surgeons of our time, but all of the patients listed here. . .they all died.”
Mary sat for a moment in baffled silence. She leaned forward to peer down at her father’s neat handwriting. “That is not possible,” she finally said. “My father held the lowest fatality rate of any surgeon I have ever known. None of his patients died—at least not very often.”
“Well, I don’t understand it either, but it is all documented in here, written in his own hand. One hundred and thirty-four deaths, to be exact,” Ryan muttered as he turned to the last account in Volume 10. “He numbered them.”
“Good Lord,” Mary gasped, sinking back against her chair. “That is completely impossible, Ryan. There. . .there has to be an explanation for this, it. . .No, I do not believe it.”
Ryan turned a sympathetic gaze on her. “Perhaps we ought to take a break for the night,” he suggested. “It is almost two in the morning and, well, I think it might be wise for us to get some rest.”
“Rest? Do you honestly think that I will be able to sleep now after you just dropped this in my lap?”
“Well, I—”
“Absolutely not,” Mary told him. “I intend to read about each of those cases until I make some sense of it all.”
“You will do no such thing,” Ryan clipped. “You will go to bed and sleep; you look exhausted.” He began piling the journals back into their box. “And just to make sure that you do not hop out of bed and stay up all night, I am taking these with me.”
“You cannot do that!” Mary exclaimed. “You have no right!”
“Sleep well, Lady Steepleton,” Ryan told her jovially as he made his escape, closing and locking the door behind him before she could have another say in the matter.
Mary stood for a long time staring after him. She wanted to pummel the insufferable man until he was black and blue all over. The audacity of him to think that he could tell her what to do was enough to make her blood boil.
With a disgruntled moan, she eventually decided that there was nothing to do but change into her nightgown and climb into bed. Besides, she was likely to catch a chill if she continued standing there. Her feet were already freezing through the thin soles of her slippers. When had the month of July ever been so cold? By the time she’d finished combing out her hair, she had to admit that she was feeling a tad bit tired. Five minutes later, having snuggled down beneath the wonderfully fluffy down comforter, her head nestled in the soft folds of her pillow, Mary fell fast asleep.
Earlier that evening, in a private room of one of the most opulent homes in Mayfair, the Raven swiveled his brandy as he glared across at his companion. “You had no right to defy me,” he muttered grimly. “You have forced my hand by doing what you did.”
“Something had to be done to knock some genuine fear into that woman, to make her understand how serious of a matter this is.”
“And you thought that threatening her at the Hunterian was the way to go about it? All you have done is make her more aware of the importance of her father’s journals in all of this. Don’t you see? She will be much more possessive of them now than she ever was before. Honestly, I cannot begin to imagine what you must have been thinking.”
“What I was thinking is that the longer she holds onto them, the greater the risk of us all ending up at the end of a rope.”
“I promise you that it will not come to that,” the Raven remarked. “And if you would have exercised just a little patience, we might have been able to resolve this differently and without anyone’s getting hurt. However, you have forced my hand with your foolishness. I am sending the Messenger tomorrow. He will retrieve the journals and, if need be, will deal with her just as he dealt with her father.”
“You mean. . .?”
The Raven raised a mocking eyebrow. “What? Don’t tell me that you don’t have the stomach for sending the lovely young marchioness to an early grave.” The other man stared back in horror. “Better her than us. Is that not so?”
“I only meant to frighten her.”
“I understand.” The Raven smiled sardonically. “And if she is fortunate, then perhaps that is all that will happen to her. But I should warn you about getting cold feet, my friend—unless, of course, you intend for them to stay cold, if you understand my meaning.”
The other man had begun to tremble ever so slightly, but it was enough for the Raven to take notice. He couldn’t be happier; after all, fear could be a most powerful weapon. His eyes gleamed with pleasure as the man before him nodded, stammering an almost incoherent apology. “Now, be off with you,” the Raven said, dismissing the coward with an air of bored superiority. “You have caused enough trouble already to make my head spin.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Care to join me for a morning ride?” Alexandra asked Mary as she wandered into the breakfast room, where Mary was enjoying her morning tea together with Cassandra and Isabella.
Mary looked up and almost choked at the sight of her friend brazenly standing there in the doorway, dressed in her snug breeches and loose-fitting shirt, her riding crop held firmly in her hand. “I. . .er. . .” She nodded slowly. “Yes, I think I should like that a great deal, actually.”
“Good. I have an extra pair of breeches that you can borrow if you like.”
Mary blushed all the way to the roots of her hair. “I must admit that I did bring my own pair—just in case.”
“Wonderful!” Alexandra exclaimed. “Hurry up and get changed so we can be off. The weather is quite good at the moment, but who knows how long it will last.”
Mary cast a glance at Cassandra and Isabella before turning back to Alexandra. “But won’t. . .I mean, what will everyone think if I. . .Oh dear.”
Alexandra grinned. “Nobody around here will care one way or the other about your choice in clothes; they have all been subjected to me for so long now that I think their sensibilities will withstand your antics as well. Is that not so, Isabella?”
The duchess, who’d been following the conversation with keen interest, smiled brightly. “Certainly, my dear. In fact, if I were a few years younger, I would not mind joining in the fun.”
Cassandra’s head snapped around to stare at her mother with a great deal of surprise. “Really?”
“Oh, yes,” Isabella said. “I may look the part of a well-bred lady, but in my youth I was just as unruly as Alexandra.”
“Oh, you must tell me all about it, Mama,” Cassandra gushed with great enthusiasm.
Completely forgotten by the duchess and her daughter, Mary turned to Alexandra. “Give me fifteen minutes to ready myself,” she said.
Alexandra nodded. “I will ask the grooms to saddle our horses in the meantime. Meet me by the stables?”
Mary quickly agreed before hurrying off upstairs to get changed. Turning a sharp corner at the top of the landing, she practically collided with Ryan, who was just then leaving his room. “Oh, I do beg your pardon,” she gasped after skidding to a sudden halt.
“No need,” Ryan said with a grin, moving swiftly out of her way. “I was actually coming to look for you. I thought perhaps you might like to go for a walk since the weather appears to have improved a bit.”
“Thank you, but I have just agreed to go for a ride with your sister.” She paused for a moment while he looked back at her somewhat expectantly. She’d been looking forward to getting away from him for a little while—heaven knew he had a knack for confusing her mind, which she otherwise prided herself on being quite sound. But now it seemed as though it would be terribly rude of her not to suggest that he come along. Deigning a most ladylike facade, she said, “You are welcome to join us, if you like.”
“What an excellent idea.” There was a cheekiness to the immediate smile that graced his lips, and it made her question whether or not she’d made the right decision. “Perhaps I should ask William to come along too. It has been a long time since the three of us have raced one another.”
“Well, then you had better hurry,” she told him as she slipped past him on the way to her own room. “I told Alexandra that I would meet her by the stables in fifteen minutes, and that was already five minutes ago. Now, if you will please excuse me, I really must get ready.”
Having practically torn off her gown and left it in a heap on the bed for the maid to deal with later, Mary threw on her shirt, breeches, and Hessians before grabbing her jacket on her way out the door. As she made her way toward the stables with long, brisk steps, she adjusted her shirt, which in her rush to be punctual, she’d neglected to tuck in completely.
Rounding the corner of the house, she caught sight of two grooms holding the reins of four magnificent horses. Alexandra and her brothers, who were in the middle of some sort of animated discussion, all turned to stare at her as she strode toward them.
“Well, you certainly do look sharp,” Alexandra remarked. She nudged Ryan in the ribs. “Don’t you agree?”
Ryan did his best to stop his eyes from straying to the perfect outline of Mary’s thighs that her snug breeches offered. Instead he concentrated himself on her face. “I. . .I actually quite liked the way Lady Steepleton looked in a gown,” he confessed, adding a note of disapproval that he hoped would sound convincing. It would have been a plausible statement if it weren’t for the fact that his cheeks had turned bright red.
“Is that so?” Alexandra asked wryly. “Michael always said the same thing to me, yet there was no disputing the fact that he always loved the look of my backside in a pair of breeches.”
“Alex,” William cut in. “That is quite enough of that; there is no need to be vulgar.”