Cheryl Holt (5 page)

“You don’t.”

“My home, my privilege.”

What an impertinent wench she was! He liked her, liked her brazen style, her insolent tongue, her sharp wit, and he was amazed that he did. Since he’d left the army, he hadn’t met a single soul whose company he enjoyed.

His stomach grumbled, and begrudgingly, he grasped the spoon and dug into the gruel, though as he sampled it, he decided that
gruel
might be too harsh a word. It was fresh, hot, and he ate every delicious bite.

“The tea.” She motioned to the cup.

“I despise tea.”

“Mine will make you feel better.”

“I don’t want to—”

“I know, I know,” she interrupted, waving away his protest. “You don’t want to feel
better.
”

To his consternation, she didn’t debate the benefits of recovery, or plead with him to try harder. She was the only
person in months who hadn’t deluged him with idiotic advice, unwelcome enthusiasm, or unbidden recommendations as to what he should or shouldn’t do.

She couldn’t care less as to how he proceeded, and the fact that she exhibited such scant regard bothered him enormously.

He stared into her eyes. They were a stunning green, as verdant as the grass in the yard, and she matched his steady look, so serene and unwavering that he shifted uncomfortably. She peered far inside, as though she could delve to his very core and see the petty fears and secrets that were buried there.

He was reluctant to have her discern so much, and he glanced away, unable to abide her scrutiny. Reaching for the tea, he swallowed it down. Sweet and heavily flavored, it appeared to be a mixture of honey, apples, and oddly, flowers.

“A magic elixir?” he mocked when he’d consumed the last drop.

“Yes.” Smiling, she offered nothing further, and he pondered whether she was joking, or if she really imagined it to be a mysterious concoction possessed of hidden powers.

“Is the carriage ready? Will I be going soon?” Strange, but now that it might be time, he wasn’t in any hurry. What was there for him at Bristol? A dismal sickroom? Whispering servants? Fretting family? Whining physicians?

“I’m hoping to borrow one from a neighbor.”

“You don’t have your own?”

“It’s a gig, for quick trips to the village, but you’ll need more space.”

“And your neighbor’s is bigger?”

“Yes, and he’s the type who’ll be incredibly flattered to escort you.”

“A man of good sense.”

She snorted. “But he’s out today. So it may be tomorrow, or the next, before you can actually depart.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to send someone to the livery in Bath. She could utilize the Chamberlin name to rent a finer coach, with promise of payment once they arrived at the estate, but something—lunacy? boredom? intrigue?—forestalled him.

“So I’m stuck with you?”

“Yes, you lucky fellow.”

He barked out a laugh, which surprised him. He couldn’t remember when he’d previously expressed any merriment, and his voice sounded rusty from disuse.

“Do you come by your caustic temperament naturally?” he queried. “Or is it honed through years of practice?”

“It must be ingrained. I’ve only ever displayed it for you.”

“I doubt that. You’re much too proficient with your cutting remarks.”

“I aim to please.” With his victuals devoured, she removed the tray and set it on the dresser, then she stood, all business, any hint of joviality tucked away. “If you’re to spend another night, you’ll have to bathe.”

“In your pool?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t wish to.”

“So you’ve said, but I won’t have you stinking up my house. As it is, I don’t know if I’ll be able to launder your stench out of the blankets. You’re quite foul.”

The slur was so deftly thrust, and so ruthlessly delivered, that he couldn’t respond. He’d never been so thoroughly insulted. Before the war, he’d been a dapper chap, with a fashionable wardrobe and fastidious grooming. Now, his hair was ragged and snarled, and he never shaved. There didn’t seem to be any point.

As to hygiene, whenever he lowered his trousers, his doctors would cluck and wail about his wounds infecting, about amputations and other extreme medical operations. The prior week, one of the bastards had shown up in his
room with a saw, prepared to do the deed. Charles’s adamant presence—and cocked pistol—had prevented the dolt from continuing.

He could profit from a stern washing, but there was no way in hell he would disrobe for her. No way in hell he would dip into a lagoon she used to treat aged invalids.

She clutched his shirt. “Let’s get this off.”

Frantically, he gripped at the lapels. “No.”

Exasperated, she scowled at him. “Hear me well, Lord Chamberlin, and understand that I am serious: If you do not agree to wash yourself, you will be deposited out in the barn. With my horse, and my cow, and my chickens. Is that your desire?”

“You would put me out in the . . . the . . . barn?”

“Without an inkling of remorse.”

He was aghast. She would do it! She would! She’d lodge him with the animals. To what a wretched precipice he’d descended!

Despite all the humiliations he’d endured so far, he’d never been more mortified. “Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t
hate
you. I just don’t like your kind.”

“My
kind
?”

“You aristocrats. I’ve tolerated tyrannical behaviors from you people all my life, and I’m sick of the lot of you. Now, I deal with you on my own terms. I refused your sister, and she dumped you on my stoop. You’re a burden I don’t want, but you’re hurt and weary, and though you’ve been forced on me, I will tend you until you leave. All I request in return is that you take a bath. I’m not asking for the moon. Don’t be so difficult.”

“Eleanor left me on the stoop?”

“Yes.”

The information was too depressing. For an eternity, he glared at her, a thousand morbid thoughts careening through his head. Why couldn’t he have died like so many of his
comrades? Why had he been spared? Was this as low as he would fall? Was it possible to plummet further?

“I’ll fight you if you try,” which he deemed an amazing threat, considering how decrepit he was.

At his visible fury, she eased down on the bed, sitting close, leaning in, and he calmed, just from having her near.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m so tired,” he admitted, and a single tear dribbled down his cheek. She swiped it away, and he deemed it the rarest, most humane thing anyone had ever done for him.

“Of course, you are. What is making you so afraid?”

How had she guessed that fear was his primary motivation? Until that moment, he’d barely acknowledged to himself that he was scared witless.

What if he never improved? The question taunted him. He comprehended that he should merely be grateful that he was alive and proceed accordingly, but he was vain and proud, and worries kept tormenting him: What if he was forever maimed? He was supposed to marry, to start a family. How could he go to his bride, incapable of carrying out his husbandly duties, of siring the children she would be eager to have?

“I’m terrified that I’ll never mend,” he confessed aloud. He pressed his hands over his face, the heels digging in, and she clasped his wrists, pulling them away so that he had to look at her.

“This is a good place, Stephen. You’re safe. You can rest, and you don’t need to fret. Everything works out precisely as it’s meant to. It’s all ordained, so you can let your anxiety flutter away.” She linked their fingers. “Let’s get you in the pool. When you’re finished, your problems will seem less formidable.”

His resolve was weakening. “I don’t know . . .”

“I’ll come in the water with you. You won’t be alone.”

He was exhausted, powerless to be firm against her gentle insistence, and she took his silence for acquiescence.

“Can you walk, at all?”

“I can stand.” It was another brash revelation. At Bristol, he’d let them believe he was crippled, and the more he’d contended he was, the more it had appeared to be true. “But I couldn’t make it to the pond. I don’t think I could make it to the door.”

“My assistant, Kate, built a wheeled chair for me. I’ll fetch her, and she can—”

“No! I don’t want her to see me. I don’t want anyone to see me. Just you.”

“All right. Lie back and relax. I’ll remove your clothes.”

Cursing himself for a fool, he settled onto the pillows. She was so determined, and he was so depleted. It was easier to let her win than to argue. After all, it was only a bath. It wouldn’t kill him.

Plus, he was convinced that if he waffled, she would put him in the barn with her cow. While he’d braved many indignities since departing Spain on a stretcher, he didn’t anticipate he could survive that one.

He sighed. “Just this once.”

Her smile lit up the room.

 3 

“You can’t do this,” Kate Turner declared.

“Of course, I can,” Anne insisted.

“It’s not fitting.”

“Why?” Anne asked, though she already knew the answer.

“You’re a maiden.”

“A very old one,” she wryly pointed out. Though she was twenty-eight, she felt more like eighty-eight.

“Be that as it may,” Kate scolded, “you can’t be undressing a man. And you certainly can’t bathe him! What will people say? What will they think?”

“No one will find out.”

“Don’t be too sure. Even the best kept secrets have a way of leaking,” which was too true, considering that Camilla Warren had espied the Bristol coach, and Mrs. Goodman had heard a masculine voice. Any person with half a brain would figure it out.

Anne studied her friend and smiled. Kate was different from other women. Tall, big-boned, and burly, her blond hair cropped short, she was two years older than Anne, and she could pass for a man and often did, wearing trousers around
the property when they were by themselves. She was creative with her hands, could build or fix anything, and she was very strong, and thus, a perfect assistant.

After her horrid marriage to a vile, vicious—now thankfully deceased—husband, Kate was levelheaded, able to deal with any situation, which was a benefit at the spa. The very sick and the very rich were their customers, so strange incidents were wont to occur.

It was hilarious to have her nettled over Captain Chamber-lin’s presence, over his effect on Anne’s virtuous condition. There was nothing typical in how they’d chosen to live their lives, and normally, Kate wouldn’t have questioned Anne’s decision, so she assumed that Kate’s innate distrust of males had elevated her concern.

Kate was rolling up her sleeves. “Let me do it for you.”

“How would it be any more appropriate for you than me?”

“I’m a widow. A
real
widow.”

Anne chuckled. In every fashion, she was a fraud. She wasn’t a nurse. She understood naught of medicine. She had no healing powers. She’d never been married, having left for six months at age twenty to care for a dying auntie, and returning with the false yarn firmly in place. Even her gold wedding ring was fake. The list of prevarications that made up her world was lengthy and always enlarging.

“I won’t swoon if I view him in the altogether,” Anne vowed. “I promise.”

“It’s not your
swooning
I’m worried about.” Kate gestured toward the rear bedroom, where they’d lugged and heaved Captain Chamberlin the prior afternoon. “I’ve listened to the gossip about him. He’s a cad, through and through. If you start taking off his clothes, there’s no telling where it will end.”

“You believe he’d rape me?”

“There’d be no force necessary. Under all that stink and
bodily hair lurks a tempting, handsome libertine. You’d ruin yourself willingly. Then, where would we be?”

Anne laughed again. As if she’d surrender her chastity to an overbearing, pompous, wealthy aristocrat! She’d learned her lesson, and learned it well, from watching what her father had done to her mother. There’d be no nobleman’s wooing for Anne, no starry romance or pining away, no bastard child growing in her belly.

And as to his being handsome! Hah! Those mesmerizing blue eyes, and all that dark hair, hinted at an intriguing scoundrel, but he was thoroughly hidden. With that scruffy beard, and tangled mane, that emaciated torso and anatomical stench, he looked like death warmed-over, like something rotten the cat had dragged in.