FIC: Gentlemen of Last Resort (Tim, Tony, Gibbs, Everyone, Victorian)
Chapter IX
Not a one of them knew how to remove Anthony’s jacket. Unbuttoning it and taking it off the ordinary way was clearly out of the question-judging by the blood and the stiff, still way Anthony had been sitting ever since they had gotten him inside once more, it would be agony to even attempt it. Finally, Gibbs shook his head, said, “To hell with all of it,” and fetched a pocket knife to slit the jacket up the back and unpeel it from Anthony’s skin as best he could.
To Timothy’s surprise, Anthony flinched away from the blade. “You’ll spoil the cut, this was expensive.”
“It’s spoiled already, Tony,” Gibbs said. “There will be other jackets.”
He put his hand high up on Anthony’s shoulder, trying again to avoid any place he might hurt-though Timothy saw Anthony’s mouth pinch in suddenly at the pressure-and sawed as quickly and carefully as he could through the fabric. It did not fall away as it ordinarily would have done but stayed on as tight as ever, glued to him by the blood. Gibbs’s mouth became a straight line.
“Why did he recognize you? Why not McGee?”
“If McGee had gone out for the horses perhaps it would have been McGee,” Anthony said. Gibbs began to peel the separate pieces of the jacket and shirt away from Anthony’s skin. Anthony’s breath rushed in, but he kept talking throughout. “He recognized me. As your assistant, I mean. Oh Christ. Mr. Gibbs’s dog, he called me. I had the knife but he had the reach-oh Lord, sir, you’ll flay me alive.”
The jacket was off. Anthony’s back was a mess of blood. He looked half-flayed, at least.
“Water, Abby,” Gibbs said, and she ran off for some.
“Should she be here?”
“She’s seen worse than what I’ve got, McGee,” Anthony said. “Or so I would assume, not being able to see it myself. You forget she’s Ducky’s ward, after all, he has not the scruples of ordinary men when it comes to exposing young ladies to the evils of the flesh.”
“Then should we not wait for the doctor?”
“This is not medicine, McGee,” Gibbs said, as Miss Abigail came back with the pitcher and, sensibly enough, a few clean rags. Her face was damp. “This is just work.” He dipped one of the rags in the water and held it under longer than he’d really needed to-he was reluctant to start, Timothy saw, when he knew what effect it would have.
“I know it will hurt,” Anthony said, sensing that same pause. His eyes were closed. “It must be done, get on with it, you only make things worse by waiting.” Miss Abigail caught hold of hand and Anthony squeezed it, holding tightly to her as Gibbs began to clean the blood from his back. His face was forcibly immobile, masklike. Exposed in one way, he would not give himself up in any other-all there was to him now was the blood and the torn skin and that lifeless, rigid expression. And the pressure of the pain he was dealing so carefully and so trustingly into Miss Abigail’s palm.
Timothy had a sudden idea and went from the bedroom to the parlor. He returned bearing the bottle of whiskey he had glimpsed much earlier.
“Like an angel of mercy,” Anthony said. “Oh, quickly, please-no, don’t bother with the glass, there’s no need for all that,” and, having been given the bottle, tumbled a huge quantity of the whiskey straight down his throat. “All my thanks, McGee.”
What Gibbs was gradually uncovering from his back did not look like something that could be fixed, let alone healed, even by the very best of doctors. His jacket and shirt had protected him only a little, just enough, perhaps, for the whip not to have cut down deep into the muscle, but his skin was cross-hatched and welted everywhere one looked, and even as Gibbs sluiced off the blood, more rose in thin lines, as if there would never be an end to any of it.
What would the doctor make of it? Scars, Timothy supposed wearily-he would take the open wounds and knit them together into closed ones, but no power on earth or heaven could make them into anything but wounds, new or old. Like his jacket, Anthony had been slit, bloodied, spoiled. Timothy stole back the bottle and took a generous drink of his own and, after a pause in which he debated propriety and then condemned it as useless in such an absurd situation, offered it to Miss Abigail, who drank as quickly and readily as he and Anthony ever had.
“Save some,” Gibbs said, without looking up at them.
“There is more in the parlor.”
“Then do with that as you like, but make sure there is some left somewhere once you’ve finished.”
Anthony took it back from them first and finished off the bottle. “If you are going to drink, the least you could do is stay and distract me. It’s like hot coals on my back.”
Miss Abigail twisted her handkerchief in her hands. “Oh! I know. Tell me about the play, The Fox.”
Timothy snatched the bottle away. Only a drop left.
“Never mind,” Anthony said. “I do not want company after all.”
So Timothy and Miss Abigail left Anthony in Gibbs’s hands and betook themselves into the parlor, where they rummaged through the liquor supply and tried in vain to drink the sight of Anthony’s blood out of their heads. At a certain point, Timothy realized that it was all certainly very shocking and improper, Miss Abigail still in her wilting white gown, him in his bloodied boots, both of them getting increasingly drunk, but he could not well understand why. It was something about having disposed of the body, he thought-it had tainted him, made him different, and the difference had wormed its way inside of him. He had gone with them, to this queer house with its silent rooms and its missing servants, its dangerous men, and now he was-one of them? Or something like-and as he grew sleepy and dawn turned the windows pink, he thought of kissing her, but she was already asleep.
*
He awoke in the morning in a cramped and almost backbreaking position on the sofa, his neck wrenched violently to the side. Miss Abigail was gone and he stank of alcohol. He changed clothes and scrubbed himself down as well as he could with the water in his bedroom, but he could not find the maid to heat a bath for himself, and so, feeling red-eyed and filthy and ashamed, he crept down again to find Anthony and Gibbs.
“Good morning,” Anthony said through a mouthful of toast. “You look dreadful.”
“You look… better,” Timothy said, rejecting the toast with a certain amount of horror. What he meant was that Anthony looked less broken, more like himself-though he was only dressed in trousers and a light linen shirt, clearly still unable to bear the weight of anything heavy on his back, and if Timothy cocked his head just a bit, he could see the shadows of bandages underneath. Still, Anthony could be cheerful, which was far more than Timothy could muster up at the moment. He collapsed heavily into a chair. “Do you remember much?”
“More than you do, I should think. You smell as if you crawled into a bottle.”
“I washed.”
“Not nearly well enough, and yes, I remember. Allow me to attack you with a horsewhip and we will see how quickly you can forget the experience.” He delicately buttered another slice of toast. “I remember that you stayed.”
“I was in the parlor.”
“That is not in the least what I meant, but if you insist on being thick, I suppose it’s your own business.”
There was a silence in which Timothy debated whether or not he could stomach tea. He decided that he could, if heavily sugared, and so was helping himself when Gibbs entered. The sound of him only intensified Timothy’s headache; the glare was not much better. He supposed he was being blamed for what had happened-though nothing, he reassured himself, had happened really-with Miss Abigail, which was quite unfair, since Gibbs had known their plan and even tacitly encouraged it.
Though he had been distracted with Anthony, of course.
Timothy decided to prudently ignore the situation and drink his tea without comment. Besides, pondering Gibbs’s intricacies would shatter his poor head entirely.
“Duke Bennington,” Anthony said. “How did you arrive at that conclusion? All we heard was quarrel after quarrel, why favor Bennington in particular? Or disfavor him, I suppose, since you mean that he’s most likely to attract an assassination attempt.”
Gibbs bit into his toast as savagely as if he hated it. “Most of those were local spats, some of them poisonous enough, but not what we are looking for. The men quarreling with Bennington are not regularly in London. Bennington himself is not regularly in London.”
“He and his wife came for the Season,” Anthony said. “Their daughter’s just out. What of it?”
“The man last night,” Gibbs said, “was not here regularly either.”
“His voice wasn’t London,” Anthony agreed, “but I never mentioned it to you. You are, as usual, three steps ahead of me, and it would be kind if you would slow and allow me to meet you somewhere.”
Out of toast, with nothing else left for him to sink his teeth into, Gibbs looked even more dangerous-how long had he sat up last night with Anthony? And had they left anything for him to drink once he was ready for it? One could measure Gibbs’s anger by the whiteness of his knuckles as he pressed his hands against the side of the table. At last he said, “He called you my dog. Someone in London more often than not would know better.”
“You trust more to their powers of perception?”
“I trust more,” Gibbs said, “to their interest in self-preservation.”
Anthony ducked his head a little. Only the edges of his smile were visible. He spun his teacup around idly on the table. “It’s a kind thought, sir. And not an unjustified one. But it is more a place to start than a place to end, as a man who would whip me bloody knowing that I’m your assistant is in any case a man without a strong sense of self-preservation.”
“A place to start, then,” Gibbs said. “The Lady will be able to tell us more.” And then, with a particular amount of concentrated venom that made Timothy certain that they had not left him anything to drink last night after his vigil over Anthony, he strode briskly to the window and threw the curtains open wide.
It was a bright, brilliantly sunny day, damn it all to hell.