“I told Riley to let 'er go, didn't I?”

She scowled at him. “If you want to earn your pay, at least go and untie my husband.”

“Ellie,” Helen said, “let me look at your arm.”

Ellie looked down at where her hand clutched her wound. “I can't,” she whispered. If she let go, then the blood would start pouring out, and…

Helen tugged at her fingers. “Please, Ellie. I must see how serious the wound is.”

Ellie whimpered and said, “No, I can't. You see, when I see my own blood…”

But Helen had already pried Ellie's fingers from her arm. “There now,” Helen said. “It's not so bad. Ellie? Ellie?”

Ellie had already fainted.

“Who would have thought,” Helen said several hours later, when Ellie was comfortably settled in her own bed, “that Ellie would have turned out to be so squeamish?”

“Certainly not I,” Charles replied, lovingly smoothing a lock of hair from his wife's forehead. “After all, she put a row of stitches in my arm that would set any seamstress to shame.”

“You don't need to talk as if I'm not here,” Ellie said peevishly. “Cecil shot me in the arm, not the ear.”

At the mention of Cecil's name, Charles felt a now-familiar rush of rage. It would be some time before he would be able to look back upon the events of this day without shaking in fury.

He had sent someone out to collect Cecil's body, although he hadn't really decided what he was going to do with it. Charles certainly wasn't going to allow him to be buried with the rest of the Wycombe family.

Baxter and Riley had been paid and sent on their way after Riley showed them where he'd left poor Leavey, who hadn't even had a moment to scream before Riley had clubbed him over the head and grabbed Helen.

His attention was on Ellie, and on making certain her gunshot wound wasn't any more serious than she'd claimed. The bullet didn't seem to have hit any major vessels or bones, although Charles had had the scare of his life when Ellie had passed out.

He patted his wife on her good arm. “All that matters is that you are healthy. Dr. Summers says that with a few days of bed rest you should be as good as new. And he also said that it's quite common to faint at the sight of blood.”

“I don't faint at the sight of any blood,” Ellie muttered. “Just my own.”

“How peculiar,” Charles teased. “After all, my blood is the same color as yours. It looks quite the same to me.”

She scowled at him. “If you can't be nice, then just leave me to Helen.”

He could tell by her tone that she was also teasing, so he leaned down and kissed her nose.

Helen abruptly stood up and said, “I'll fetch some tea.”

Charles watched his cousin leave the room and shut the door behind her. “She always knows when we want to be left alone, doesn't she?”