Murder in Grosvenor Square by Ashley Gardner

had sallow skin and a fringe of brown hair around a balding head, but eyes that brooked no foolishness. Surgeons would never be given the status of doctors, since they worked with their hands—setting bones, cutting off limbs, taking out bits of a man’s insides—but the best ones saved more lives, in my opinion, than any doctor I’d met.
    The surgeon turned Leland’s head to study his wounds, peeled back Leland’s eyelids, felt him for fever, and loosened the shirt I’d laboriously done up. “How long?” he asked me, his words clipped.
    “I am not certain,” I said. “He was struck down at least an hour before I found him, I would say. And it’s been the better part of two hours since then.”
    “You a surgeon?” the man snapped. “How do you know it was an hour?”
    I was too tired to be offended. “I’m a soldier, or used to be. I’m guessing from the state of the wounds and the pallor on his friend, who did not survive, that they were struck down about an hour or so before I found them. Though I suppose Travers could have taken some time to die.”
    The surgeon shook his head. “The man in the kitchen? He was dead minutes after he was hit. This one wasn’t so lucky.” He gestured to Leland.
    Cold bit me. “You are saying he will die as well?”
    “Depends on his constitution. He’s young. I’ll do my best for him.”
    The man’s accent put him from outside London, somewhere in the west I’d say, though not as far as Cornwall. I’d had a Cornish man under my command in Portugal, and whenever he’d spoken in his native dialect, I hadn’t understood a bloody word he’d said. He’d understood me well enough, though, and survived many a battle to sail happily home to his wife and brood of Cornish children.
    Brewster quickly returned with the water, so perhaps the house did have a working pump, or one close by outside. The surgeon began to clean away the dried blood, revealing many gashes in Leland’s head, face, and neck.
    The man had brought his own needles and thread, and he sewed the larger wounds closed. I reflected that it was a mercy Leland was oblivious at the moment. The surgeon worked with admirable skill, but didn’t bother softening his stabs with the needle, his tugs on Leland’s raw flesh. I’d seen many a hardened soldier screaming as a surgeon held him down to stitch him back together.
    When the surgeon finished, he rubbed an ointment on the wounds, then looked at me without expression. The man’s face hadn’t changed expression at all, in fact, since he’d entered.
    “Have someone stay with him,” he said, packing up his things. “He’ll have a fever, and thrash, and he needs to be still, or he’ll open the stitches. Tie him to the bed if you have to. Send for me if he needs tending again.”
    “Thank you,” I said. I didn’t have much money with me, but I pulled a handful of coins from my pocket and held them out to him.
    The man studied the silver in my palm then met my gaze with those unemotional eyes. “Mr. Denis pays me. Good night.”
    “Will Leland survive?” I asked, dropping the coins back into my pocket. I felt I knew the answer already, but I couldn’t help asking.
    “Time will tell,” the surgeon said. “He’s young and strong, as I said. He either will, or he’ll catch a bad fever and won’t.”
    A man not willing to commit an opinion. I could not blame him—life and death was never certain. Without further word, the surgeon walked off down the stairs, out of the house, and into the night.
    *
    I needed to send word to Sir Gideon. He might lose his son tonight, and the family deserved the chance to tell him good-bye. I did not want to risk moving Leland again so soon, and so Sir Gideon would have to come here.
    I was on the verge of telling Brewster to deliver a message to Grosvenor Square, when Grenville arrived.
    “Dear God, Lacey, what the devil?” was his greeting as he strode into the room.
    Grenville stopped at the foot of the bed and