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It was the lack of a quip that gave her away. Usually after a chase, a clash with a criminal, a dodge into cover for fear of bullets flying their way, she would have a comment at the ready, a repartee to assure him that she was fine, and so was he.
This time, though, when he sat up from the floor, dirt flying, trying to catch his breath after their inauspicious crash through the ceiling and his subsequent brawl with the forger, Hosea Cornwall, she said nothing. Nothing about the man escaping through the window, but leaving all his tools. Nothing about her hat being ruined, squashed under a piece of board. Nothing about his trousers being ruined, torn through at one knee. Nothing at all. He dragged himself out from under the remains of the table he had crashed through and scrambled to the door, trying to push it open, but with no success. The man had dropped something in front of it before haring off into the abandoned work yard covered in his own inventive booby traps. Jack turned his attention to the windows, and was considering heaving a chair through one before it registered that Miss Fisher had said nothing that she normally would. Merely: “You’d better get after him,” in a voice that in any other context, would have suggested disinterest to the point of boredom. Jack’s eyes narrowed, and he whirled around. She was sitting on the ground, debris around her, but nothing that seemed to be stopping her from charging through the window as he’d half expected. A few motes of dust floated in the sudden ray of sunshine from behind the broken blackout panes. Outside, their forger had vaulted the palisade fence that surrounded the remote property, injuring himself by the looks of it. He was moving slowly, and Jack felt confident he wouldn’t get far. But Miss Fisher hadn’t made any effort to get up.
“Are you not coming?” Jack gave her a searching look, but she didn’t move. His stomach suddenly had a knot growing in it.
“I’ll be right along,” she said, her voice tripping into a telltale upward hike. “Just need a moment to collect myself.”
“Collect—!"
“He’s getting away, Jack,” she insisted, and he risked a look out the window to where the man was still limp-staggering his way towards the bush. Maybe they’d get lucky and he’d step on an adder. When he turned back to her, she was easing herself out of the pile of wood and splinters, but still hadn’t stood.
“He’s headed the wrong direction,” Jack said, trying to sound reassuring. “Here.” He held out a hand, but she didn’t take it. Instead, she shifted uncomfortably, and he noticed with a start, there was a reddening splotch creeping across the blue skirt she was wearing, starting slightly above her left knee, but spreading both upward and downward. A bead of blood rolled down her calf, staining her skin in an ominous trail. “Did something catch you across the leg?” He knelt, and moved to help her again.
“Not…” she paused, gritted her teeth, and moved away from his offered hand. “Not something from the ceiling.”
“He didn’t manage to shoot you, did he?” Jack fought to keep the panic from his voice. He was an officer of the law, he had been a soldier, this wasn’t new territory. (Except that this was Miss Fisher and something happening to her did not bear thinking about.)
“I haven’t been shot,” she snapped, and the tone of her voice pulled him out of his spiral of worry. Phryne Fisher…embarrassed? She groaned under her breath and gingerly clamped her hand around her thigh. That was when Jack noticed another salient detail. The stocking on her leg had fallen down, leaving it bare. Her garter had been cut. She saw his eyes travel down to her ankle, flicker around the room in confusion, and then dart back up to meet hers. “Hoist by my own petard,” she said, more than a trifle defensively. “My stiletto embedded itself in my leg.”
“Is it still there?” Jack wanted to know. She hauled up the skirt to reveal a gash etched into the pale skin of her thigh, then quickly clamped the heavy fabric back over the ragged edges of the injury as new blood welled up.
“Tore itself through my garter and my leg too,” she said, and he could hear the wobble in her voice. “You should worry about the suspect though, this will only slow us down.” She made to push him away.
“We have all his tools,” Jack said roughly, resisting her. “And from the looks of it, several customers’ worth of money, and run of his property to search for the missing Warner siblings. Either he will be back shortly, or we’ll round him up when our backup gets here.” She pushed at him again, but he shook his head, trying and failing to affect sternness over worry. He looked around and spotted a long swath of muslin that the man had been using to reinforce his window curtains. He gathered a few handfuls and brought them over to her, along with the bucket of well water that had been standing outside the door, a bottle of dubious spirits cooling in it. “Let’s see to you for the moment.”
“Jack,” she pled, but he gave a curt shake of his head.
“You’re both hurt,” he explained. “If I mend you, then that leaves us in a better state to catch him, since he’ll either be risking the bush on one leg, or coming back here to an armed and dangerous Phryne Fisher.” He handed her the bottle, and she cracked it open and swigged, bracing herself for what was to come while he poured it over his hands.
“More a danger to myself than anyone else,” she scowled. But her irritation was a poor mask for her pain, even as she nodded for him to continue. She gripped hard on his arm as he peeled back the stained and crusting skirt, even though he was as gentle as possible removing the fabric from the wound. It had already started to dry and stick in the heat. "Work fast, my courage will only be at the sticking-place so long, I'm afraid."
“It’s clotting well,” he observed. “If I can get this washed out, we can bandage you up and get you to safety in no time.” He worked quickly, rinsing the cut with the alcohol and pulling stray threads and splinters away with one of the forger’s pairs of tweezers. She hissed and clenched at his arm once or twice, but said no more. The knife, unfortunately, was a very good one, and had slid down her leg with ease. She was almost definitely going to need stitches, but he didn’t think it was a good idea to try and stitch her when help wasn’t far off. And she would never let him hear the end of it if he left an inept scar. He said as much, and she gave him a thin-lipped expression that couldn’t quite be called a smile.
“I’ve seen how you mend things, Jack. I wouldn’t object to your handiwork in a pinch, but I’d prefer somewhere with carbolic, if you don’t mind.” He wrapped another strip of muslin around her knee and tied it off, trying to balance compression of the wound against depriving the rest of her limb of blood while she fought to stay still. “Aren’t you going to say, ‘I told you so’?”
Jack gave her a blank look. “Pardon?”
“My knife,” she explained. “Who knows how many times you’ve warned me that my garter isn’t ideal for a blade without a sheath.”
“I’ll scold you later,” he shrugged. “After you’ve stopped actively bleeding.” He knotted another strip of fabric around her leg, pushing away the faint but growing awareness that he had his hands quite intimately placed, and if it were any other sort of situation, she would have already taken the action as suggestion and made more than a few of her own. The fact that she had not indicated that she was even further off balance than he had originally guessed. He tied his last knot and sat back. The blood was no longer soaking, or even seeping through, that he could see. Her skirt was likely ruined, and her color was even more pale than usual, but she hadn’t passed out, and she was still watching out the window for their man, her eyes fixed on middle distance despite her pain. Once again, Jack marveled at the steel that underpinned her Society exterior. “For now,” he said. “Why don’t I find you somewhere soft to sit, and you can keep watch for Collins with the cavalry.”
“Should I affect an American accent?” She eased herself onto his arm and finally smiled at him. A small one, but a real smile this time. “If I’m going to be the rescued lady in a Western, I really ought to be wearing some cowboy boots as well, I think.” She flinched as she moved, but no new blood shone on her makeshift bandages
“I can picture you much more easily as Annie Oakley,” he replied, relieved. “Though I would prefer if you would refrain from riding a horse while shooting trick shots until after we’ve had someone look at your leg.” He drew her to the un-shattered sofa on the other side of the room and helped her settle herself. He passed her the black pump he had drawn off, and she gave it a long, measured look, shook her head minutely, and set it on the ground, then tugged off her other shoe as well and paired them neatly.
“Adventuring in fabulous footwear is reserved for those who don’t mutilate themselves,” she said sourly when he raised an eyebrow. “And Dot will be furious if she has to take those back to the cobbler three days after I ordered them.” She propped herself on her elbows so she could better peer out the window. “I’ll send them your way.” He gave a nod that was almost curt, trying to remind himself that he had a job to do. And removing her shoes was a sort of tacit admitting that she wouldn’t be going anywhere, so there was that. As he scrambled through the window, he spared one last glance back at her. She had her head up, her lips drawn in a thin line, and she gave him a nod in return. They were a team. Now, it was his turn to cover her. He drew his pistol and strode off to find their man.
When he got back to Cornwall’s hideout, twilight was drifting down. Cornwall himself had gone to ground, and Jack knew he couldn’t cover enough of the area on his own. He saw that the doorway was cleared, and assumed that Collins must have done it, but when he ventured inside, there was no evidence that his constable or anyone else had come to their aid yet. “Miss Fisher? Phryne?” There was a murmur from the corner where he had left her. When he finally found her in the dimming light, she was a worryingly quiet heap on the sofa. “Phryne,” he shook her, fear infecting his voice. “Phryne?”
“I’m alright, Jack,” she said, pulling herself upright. “I wasted some energy unblocking the door in the forlorn hope that our help would be here soon.” He knelt down next to her, relief almost embarrassingly palpable. She gave him a gentle pat on the knee. “Hugh may lose his chance at starring in a Western if he doesn’t hurry.”
“If Cornwall’s booby traps were enough to disable our vehicle, it’s possible there were more that have delayed him too,” Jack said heavily. The what-ifs were swirling in his head, and he found himself scanning her minutely, hunting for things to worry about. She caught his gaze and leaned into it.
“No fever, no more bleeding,” she murmured, not breaking her look. “Just tired, Jack. Tired, furious, and ready to pelt Cornwall with his own stamping tools, if only for the inconvenience of ruining my garters.”
“It might have been a little inevitable, don’t you think?”
“Usually my garters get ruined for other reasons,” she said, crossing her arms. But she was too tired to banter for long. She lapsed into silence, and he wrapped an arm around her waist to lower her back to the cushions. She gave a yawn and tried to move away, but only wound up hissing in pain as her shifting put pressure on her leg.
“I’ll keep watch,” he murmured, and she nodded, head pressing more deeply into the cushion. Gingerly, he leaned back against the worn plush of the sofa, trying to ease her back without moving her leg and make himself a physical barrier to her falling off. He tuned his ears, listening intently for footsteps, either Cornwall’s or his constables, but the only sound was the whimpering huff of her breath in his ear. He drew a deep sigh, nearly inhaling several strands of her hair, and gagged. Not precisely the romantic interlude he generally pictured when thinking of keeping her company through the night. When every move ran the risk of her reopening a serious injury, he foresaw more aches in his back from holding still than anything else. But the night was peaceful, with the faint noise of bugs and wildlife whiapering in through the broken window. At least things had cooled down.
It was several hours past sundown when Jack heard human noises. He tensed for action, but the rapid steps were accompanied by the bobbing of a torch and a shout from Collins.
“Sir? Sir?” He pushed his way through the door, eyes darting from wall to wall until he spotted his boss, standing watch over a restless Miss Fisher. Despite the dark, Jack could see Hugh resist the urge to turn the torch off and walk right back out the door, rather than have walked in on a tête-a-tête. He spoke up.
“Collins, she’s hurt. Do you have a car?”
“Yes, Sir,” Hugh replied, drawing near. “It took us some time, your forger had repurposed some old equipment from the opal claim to damage vehicles…”
“Yes, Collins, we’re aware,” he growled. At the rumble, Miss Fisher stirred.
“Oh,” she said blearily, “Hello, Hugh. Did you catch him?”
“Er…” Hugh looked blankly at Jack, who shook his head. “It’s… er… a work in progress, Miss.”
“Then I’m not leaving until the work is done.” She tried to sound stern. The effect was spoiled when she flinched at Jack’s shifting to meet Hugh. Both men turned to her at once. “I’m… oh if I say I’m fine, you’re not going to listen, are you.”
“Sorry, has…” Hugh’s eyes darted from Miss Fisher’s to the Inspector’s and back. “Has something happened?” But as she opened her mouth to explain, Jack interrupted.
“Miss Fisher sustained an injury to her leg while attempting to subdue the suspect,” he said in his firmest, most official voice. “We need to get her safely out of here and to some medical attention.”
“Of course, Sir,” said Hugh, proffering his hand to Miss Fisher. With Jack under one shoulder and her leaning heavily on Hugh’s arm, they transported her to one of the vehicles and loaded her very gingerly inside. As they settled her, there was a sudden shout from behind the outbuilding.
“We have him, Sir!” Jack’s head snapped around, but he didn’t leave the window of the car until she squeezed his hand as a sort of permission. Only then did he pull himself away and allow the car to drive off with her while he immersed himself once more in the business of policing.
---
He was desperate to see her again, but everything seemed to set against him. The evening and morning, of course, were spent booking Cornwall in, compiling his crimes, and logging boxes upon boxes of evidence, always with the double oversight that forged currency required. By the time he finished his shift that evening, he was so exhausted that he took the wrong tram, and actually did wind up at his own home, rather than hers, as he had intended. Then, he had only meant to put his hat and coat down, splash his face, and turn around, but his brain simply refused to cooperate. Thirty-one hours of work and a full banquet of anxiety was simply too much. It was gone 3pm by the time he woke back up, groggy and feeling as if he had consumed a woolen overcoat, toggles and all. Jack shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs and reorient himself. He raked his hands though his hair and they came away sticky. Shower, then. But before he could choose between undressing and simply collapsing back on the bed, he remembered why he had slept in his clothes in the first place. The reminder hit him hard enough to turn his stomach. He didn’t even know if she had been stitched up decently. But surely someone would have called him…? He turned his attention to the telephone, and realized it had been knocked off the receiver at some point the evening before. In a bleary panic, he located his coat once more, uncertain if it would be better to go to the station, Wardlow, or even, God forbid, the hospital. But before he could decide on a course of action, he was interrupted by a light tapping at the door.
“Excuse me, Inspector.” It was Mr. Butler, implacably deferential, there to escort him to Wardlow in the Hispano. “Miss Fisher has been confined, but was very eager to update you on her well-being,” the man explained as Jack climbed into the car with him. From the inflection on “eager,” Jack deduced that Mr. Butler might well have gone to the moon if it would placate her.
He tried to formulate a question, any number of questions, really, but all that made its way out was: “Serious?” Mr. Butler neither nodded nor shook his head.
“I’m afraid Dr. Mac insisted on my coming to fetch you after Miss Fisher reinjured her leg attempting to drive.”
“I see.” They rode in silence to Wardlow, where Mr. Butler let him in, then decorously retreated to put the car under cover. Given the state of the clouds, there was a better-than-good chance it would be thunderstorming before long. Jack drew a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. He owed her an apology, and he knew it. But even as he climbed the stairs, he could hear voices coming from her room, and he began to wonder if that apology was going to be delivered with an audience. He was spared from that particular embarrassment when Dr. Mac came storming down the stairs.
“Oh good,” she said, and there was more relief behind the acerbic comment than he was used to hearing from her. “Now she’ll stop her nonsense.” Jack blinked and the doctor was gone, so he proceeded, only realizing when he reached the door that his shirt barely buttoned, and had forgotten a tie to boot. He fumbled with the last button, and the doorknob jerked away under his fingers.
“Jack!” Miss Fisher looked a right mess, if he were totally honest with himself. There were white bandages trailing up her leg, marring the line of her skirt, her hair was rather standing up, and her makeup had been inexpertly removed, it appeared. There were smudges around her eyes, and he could see the remains of her lipstick at the corners of her mouth. “Jack, I’m so sorry, the Matron was being impossible, and nobody could connect with your line at the house and…” She wobbled, and sat down with a bump on her bed, her face pale. “Mr. B may have mentioned it, but I tried to come find you.” She tried to give him one of her trademark sidelong grins, but he could see the tremble in her lips. To spare her anymore anguish, he moved gently to her side and sat next to her. Reflexively, her hand reached out and entangled itself in his, and he found himself stroking her fingers with his thumb in small, gentle motions.
“I gather Dr. MacMillan was here to patch you up again after you abandoned the hospital?”
“Yes. She refused to even treat me unless I went to my bed, saying she wasn’t going to have her stitching ruined,” Miss Fisher sighed, and unconsciously ran her free hand along her bandaged leg. “I think I’m going to owe a number of people some expensive spirits after this particular adventure.”
“We caught him,” Jack offered. He was finding this melancholy version of Phryne to be unsettling. “That counts in my book.”
“And you got enough?”
“We have all the money, several incriminating implements, and the bodies of both Oliver Warner and his sister were found on the property. You were right. They had discovered the operation. You broke a counterfeiting ring big enough to finance quite a few dirty deeds.”
“You’re being remarkably conciliatory.”
“I was—” He paused, saw the curl of her lip start as she anticipated more pity, and drew her hand to his own. “Meaning to come earlier, to- to see how you were faring.” He felt his own shoulders droop. “And I fell asleep.”
Phryne blinked, and for the first time, her eyes trailed up and down her companion. “Oh Jack,” she breathed. “You needed it, I’m sure.”
“You’re the one who got—” he paused, and whatever impolitic ending the sentence was going to have, it was interrupted by a monstrous yawn.
“You still need rest, by the sound of it,” she smiled. A real smile again. Not that Jack was counting, but… “And you need a wash too, I’d wager.” She sniffed. “Actually, no wager at all. I’ll ring for Mr. B, you go clean up.”
“Only if you lie down,” he said. But the compromise was moot. She flopped back on her pillows with a sigh composed of equal parts anticipation and true exhaustion and jangled the bell someone had helpfully placed by her pillow. Concealing his own smile as he shrugged free of his jacket, Jack went to take a bath.
By the time he returned, steamed, scrubbed and feeling infinitely more presentable despite being clad only in a towel, Phryne had brought her frantic impulses to heel. She still looked small and sad though, sitting on the bed with her legs sprawled gingerly, hand creeping tentatively to check her bandage over and over, as if she still couldn’t quite believe how foolish the injury was. Jack swapped his towel for a robe that had appeared in the interim, and came to sit beside her, one arm urging her gently towards his side. She said nothing, only rolled gently into him and grumbled.
“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, clasping his hands behind his head so she could pillow her disarrayed hair against his shoulder, “my vaunted leg scar was obtained in an equally undignified way.” He felt her blink against his neck, and one wayward hand trailed down to the long, raised line just above his right knee that she had traced many times on the way to other activities.
“You never did explain,” she said, face still buried in the silky fabric of the robe Mr. B had supplied. “You told me it was a shrapnel wound that made you lean so handsomely against my fireplace.”
“It was,” he replied. He let his own hands roam gently, but only to tug the blanket up. He could sense how impossibly domestic the whole thing was, and didn’t dare comment. She might very well climb back out the window if she noticed. “But shrapnel isn’t always generated by direct engagement with the enemy.”
“Friendly fire?”
“Not that either.” She grumbled wordlessly into his neck again, but sleepier still. Whatever dose of pain medicine she’d been given, it was finally taking effect, or else the adrenaline from the past several days had been depleted. Even Phryne Fisher had her limits. “As it happens, a bullet striking an engine generates an enormous amount of flying metal, no matter whose bullet strikes whose engine. And if it’s a French farmer shooting at your mate because he thinks that mate is stealing his pigs, it doesn’t make the metal slice you any shallower when he finds out you were actually returning the animals.”
“It’s still a war wound,” she said. “Not stabbing yourself in the leg because a house fell on you.”
“It will make an excellent parlor story someday,” he suggested. “Shock someone into donating to the hospital board to fund more nurses and better carbolic.”
“I will lie,” she groaned, but her voice was growing slower and her hands were burrowing into his even as she declaimed. “I will claim my lover skewered me with… a... a rose... and I him… and that’s why… we… match…”
Jack smiled softly, and used his free hand to push away the dark strands tickling his nose. “I’ll wait until after Mac has given you the all-clear. I wouldn’t want to risk her wrath by ruining her work.” His only answer was a low snore. As gently as he dared, he drew the blankets up further, and without really meaning to, let his own eyes flutter closed as well. It had been a long enough ordeal for both of them, propriety could hang until tomorrow. As if to accentuate the point, a low rumble of the promised thunder growled outside the window, and began to patter down rain. He sank into the pillows, Phryne still clinging to him like a koala to a branch, and slept.
---
Dr. Mac was actually in his office dropping off the morgue’s reports when the package was delivered a few days later. Jack signed for it, then, on reading the tag, his expression prompted her to comment. “She send you an apology Glenfidditch too?”
“It,” he paused to fiddle with the wrapping, “would appear so.” He blinked several times, considering the bottle in the neat velvet box. It looked like crystal, and the liquid inside was a deep, rich amber. “I’d ask how two bottles of this got through customs to end up in her cellar, but I don’t think I’d like the answer.”
“Probably not,” Mac replied. She passed him one of his own tumblers, but let him pour. “Medicinal. For recovering from her stab wound.”
“She’s bouncing back faster than I am,” he said wryly. “I keep having to stamp down the impulse to check the floorboards at Wardlow.” Mac nodded and sipped her portion.
“She’s done it before,” the doctor said. “Terrifies us all, then stands up and walks it off.”
“Except for this time,” Jack sighed. “But maybe she’ll stop wearing the stiletto in her garter now.”
“One can hope. I don’t want to redo those stitches again. She's a horrible patient.” They sat in silence for a while, neither needing conversation while there was an end-of-day drink to be had. Mac poured again, and partway through her next glass, a wicked grin bubbled up on her face. “Do you still have any of that forger’s engraving equipment in Evidence?”
“Most of it has been sent to the Prosecutor; the only things left are things we couldn’t prove were related to his operation. Why?”
“I have an idea.”
---
When the Hon. Miss Fisher began giving parties again, after her unfortunate injury while assisting the police in capturing a forger, she told the story while leaning on a genteel oaken stick, which, when she returned to active detecting, was cut down and repurposed into a year-round parasol handle that could double as a billy club. But while she would often expound on the dangers of not securing one’s protective devices to those young ladies she mentored, she would never explain the small engraving on a metal inset in the parasol – a clumsily (drunkenly?)-executed needle and thread with the words "Sticking Place" scratched into it – that covered a small slot for a stiletto knife.