Make Me Love You (11 page)

Alfreda snorted. “Just because you take pity on every sick dog you come across doesn’t mean you need to feel sorry for a wolf.”

“Pity is the last thing I feel for him right now.”

“Then why do we want to help him?”

“Because then he might be inclined to deal with me more reasonably and not see Robert whenever he looks at me.”

“Well, we’re going to have lunch first to give him a bit of time to take in his first glimpse of you and realize the remarkable favor the Prince Regent has done him.” Alfreda put her arm around Brooke’s waist to lead them back up the corridor. “Besides, we are not in a hurry to fix him after the insult he’s dealt you.”

“You were listening at the door!” Brooke accused, hearing Alfreda use the word
fix
and the same phrase she used with the wolf.

Alfreda didn’t admit whether she had, she just nodded toward the tower. “I’m talking about that room we just left. That was an insult, poppet, of the worst sort.”

Brooke agreed, but she still grinned. “Lunch sounds like a good idea. He’s not going to get worse in the next few hours—I don’t think.”

B
ROOKE AND ALFREDA FOUND
a big kitchen at the back west corner of the house. Two men and four women were in it, and two older children doing menial chores. Two Biscanes, three Cotterills, one Jakeman, and two others who weren’t members of those three families that had worked at the “big house,” as they called it, for hundreds of years. But the two newcomers didn’t learn all that until Alfreda got angry when their lunch was set before them in the dining room.

Brooke felt discouraged as she looked at her plate. It was obviously another ploy the wolf had arranged to get them to leave his house. But Alfreda was livid when each of them was served a plate with only two thin slices of toasted bread, burned actually, on it and nothing else, not even a crock of butter.

“Come with me,” Alfreda said, going straight to the kitchen.

Brooke agreed that something needed to be done about the shabby way they were being treated, but she wasn’t expecting the approach Alfreda took. First, Alfreda demanded that the
servants introduce themselves. As the staff warily gave their names and positions, they stared nervously at Brooke. They probably weren’t used to a lady invading their domain, but she might have confused them, too, when she sat down at the kitchen table. They didn’t know that she was used to eating in a kitchen.

Marsha Biscane, the cook, was much older than the other women in the room. Short and blond, she had laugh lines around her blue eyes, which hinted at a jolly disposition. Unfortunately, she wasn’t displaying it now as she stood quite stiffly, looking offended by Brooke and Alfreda’s presence.

Alfreda pointed a finger at the cook, saying, “You’ll serve us a proper meal if you don’t want to grow warts.”

Marsha turned quite red in the face. “I follow his lordship’s orders.”

“To starve us? How many warts would you like? I can be very accommodating.”

Brooke almost laughed, the other servants looked so horrified. But frightening the servants probably wasn’t a good idea, especially if she ended up marrying Dominic. So she told Marsha, “She’s joking.”

“She don’t look like she is.”

“She has an odd sense of humor,” Brooke assured Marsha before she got assertive herself. “I’m sure you know I am to marry your lord and eventually bear his children, so I do need to be in good health for that. You can either agree that he wasn’t serious when he told you to feed us scraps, or you can vacate the kitchen and we will make our own meal.”

Alfreda added as she sat down at the table, “And you might also want to keep in mind that once Lady Whitworth becomes Lady Wolfe, she’ll be wielding the household ax, as it were. If
you like your jobs, you might want to agree that Lord Wolfe, being in a feverish state, wasn’t thinking clearly about any orders he’s given you concerning my lady.”

Absolute silence followed that. It probably wasn’t the best time for Raston to wander in and hop onto Alfreda’s lap. Or maybe it was. “Witch” was whispered from more than one direction, but the cook filled two new plates in a hurry and set them on the table. Were all the servants here superstitious? Possibly. But Brooke didn’t want herself and Alfreda to be treated as pariahs
if
they were going to be living in this house, so she needed to put the staff at ease.

She tried a simple common courtesy first. “I was very sorry to hear about Lord Wolfe’s sister. When did she die?”

“It was nigh two years ago when it happened and, and—” The girl, named Janie, wiped a tear from her eye before insisting almost angrily, “We don’t speak of Lady Eloise’s death. You’ll need to ask his lordship about that sad matter.”

Brooke wondered why no one would talk about Eloise’s death, but she didn’t press. Maybe the servants didn’t even know the circumstances. But she did wonder why the wolf had waited so long to challenge her brother if his sister died almost two years ago.

Alfreda was quite pleased with the new meal and seemed more relaxed. Perhaps to convince the kitchen staff that she wasn’t a witch she complimented them on the meal and got them talking in a more natural manner after she told a few amusing stories about Leicestershire.

Marsha took to Brooke first, or at least she stopped being so stiff and formal. More comfortable with members of the nobility than the other servants due to her elevated position in the household, she seemed pleased by Brooke’s praise for the
cottage pie she’d served them and even laughed when Brooke told a story of her own about her midnight foray to try to get her mare bred when she was only fourteen and how she’d chickened out.

Marsha was Gabriel’s mother and aunt to the young woman Janie. Once Marsha let down her guard, Brooke understood where Gabriel had gotten his chipper, good-humored nature.

Before Brooke and Alfreda left the kitchen, Marsha told her niece, “Go and inform his lordship that I’m feeding his children.”

Confused, Janie pointed out, “But he doesn’t have any.”

“He will one day and he’ll understand. Just tell him.”

Brooke hid a grin. The woman could have just kept it a secret that she’d be feeding them proper meals, but Marsha obviously didn’t fear the wolf. She didn’t appear to fear Alfreda now, either, so Brooke had accomplished at least one goal today.

When they returned upstairs after lunch, they found Gabriel still waiting outside Lord Wolfe’s room. He grumbled to them, “He’s annoyed with me. He won’t let me back in. But now that you’re here, you can help by distracting him so he won’t kick me out again.”

“So he’s sleeping?” Alfreda guessed.

“I doubt it. He’s too stubborn to actually rest. It’s been hell keeping him in that bed, er, beg pardon, ladies, but it
has
been difficult.”

Since neither Gabriel nor Alfreda appeared to want to open the door to find out if Dominic was awake, Brooke did and entered the room. “Brave, ain’t she?” she heard Gabriel whisper behind her.

It was unnerving to know that even Dominic’s friend could be wary of him. When she peeked into the room’s alcove, she
saw that the wolf wasn’t sleeping. His eyes had latched on to her immediately. And narrowed. She still led her little group forward to the bed.

“My
companion,
” Brooke stressed in the introduction, “Alfreda Wichway.”

“It took you
this
long to convince her?” Dominic said to Brooke.

She hadn’t realized that having given her permission to bring Alfreda here, he’d expected them to come back immediately. She took the blame, saying, “No, I wanted to have lunch.”

“So you kept me waiting over a trifle?” Dominic demanded surly.

Alfreda tsked, her own tone not the least bit conciliatory when she said, “She did nothing of the sort. It
did
take this long for her to convince me. And I am still not convinced. I will look at your wound, though, with your permission.”

He’d just been hit with two salvos, both pointing out that they didn’t like him much. He didn’t say another word, just nodded his head slightly. Brooke suspected he found it galling to be at the mercy of his enemies. He must feel as bad as he looked to agree to this. He probably did think he might be in danger of losing his leg, and thus their help was better than none.

Alfreda only had to glance at the wound to say, “That’s quite a serious inflammation, Lord Wolfe. Your body fights it vigorously, which is why you are feverish and likely feel like hell warmed over.”

He didn’t confirm how he felt and instead asked, “So you
are
a healer?”

“I’ve never called myself that. I am merely familiar with
remedies that have been commonly known since olden days, as are most women who grow up in rural villages. You can continue with the course of treatment your doctor recommended, or I can find an herb that will do the same thing, only quicker.”

Brooke knew that Alfreda didn’t want the people at Rothdale to know they were both prepared for medical emergencies such as this one. That was why Alfreda hadn’t brought her satchel of potions, salves, tools, herbs, and plant cuttings. The less others knew of her healing abilities, the better.

“There’s actually such an herb that grows here?” Dominic asked.

When Alfreda didn’t answer him, Brooke quickly interjected, “I brought some common herbs with me from Leicestershire. One of those may be what she refers to.”

“These will need to be removed,” Alfreda added matter-of-factly, placing a finger near the leeches. “Or we can wait until they fall off. If you’ve been treated with leeches before, you know they will leave tiny wounds that will bleed. They will itch before your bullet wound does. But do not scratch them. Scratching could worsen the inflammation.”

“Stop treating me like a child.” He swiped a hand over his thigh to remove the leeches himself.

Brooke’s eyes flared at that display of impatience. Alfreda’s hand was knocked away from him as well as the leeches, which were now squirming on the bed beside him.

“That, m’lord, was very—detrimental. There was time—”

“If you insult me again . . .”

The wolf didn’t finish his threat, but threat it certainly was. Brooke was amazed that Alfreda wasn’t already on her way out the door. How had Alfreda insulted him? By not rushing immediately to help him? By giving him sound advice that he
apparently already knew? Perhaps he’d guessed, as Brooke had, that Alfreda had been about to say “foolish” instead of “detrimental”? Or maybe he was feverishly imagining some other slight?

That was possible. In fact, all of his churlishness thus far could have been induced by his fever and his discomfort. But that might just be wishful thinking on her part.

If anyone had been insulted, it was Alfreda. Brooke thought about leading her maid out of there and leaving the wolf to his fate. If only she could. If only she could defy everyone, even the Prince Regent. But she was still by law in the hands of her parents, and they had thrown her to this wolf. High dudgeon would only lead to embarrassment afterward because she couldn’t leave this place. She would still have to deal with Dominic Wolfe, and getting him beholden to her could definitely make those dealings go easier.

But she was still angry enough to tell Alfreda, “I think the less time we spend in here the better.”

She said it deliberately to direct his anger away from Alfreda and back to her. She hoped it would prompt him to kick her out of his house. If he was going to make that costly mistake, he would do it when he was in a rage. But she didn’t hear the words that would free her, and he didn’t even glance her way. He was still glaring at Alfreda.

But amazingly, Alfreda wasn’t done with offering her help. “It’s too bad your doctor doesn’t wield a needle better. Your wound is going to leave a jagged scar. We could make it much neater.”

“You or her?”

“Me, m’lord.”

“Then say ‘me,’ damnit.”

Alfreda stiffened and stood back. “I am not your maid, I am hers. Do not presume—”

“You truly wish to butt heads with me?” Dominic cut in darkly.

“I am not butting heads, merely stating a fact,” Alfreda insisted.

“Careful, wench. If this marriage occurs, I will be the one paying your wage.”

“You are welcome to, but it isn’t necessary. Lady Whitworth is dear to me. I will serve her with or without a wage.”

Alfreda was annoying him more and more with every word she said. Brooke could tell from his increasingly feral expression. Finally he growled, “I think you should stay out of my sight.”

Alfreda was quick to make that happen. Brooke was speechless as she watched her dearest friend leave the room. When Brooke looked back at the ungrateful wretch in the bed, her light green eyes blazed with anger. “That was very ungracious of you, Lord Wolfe, considering she was only here to help you at my request.”

“Do I look miraculously healed by either of you?” he shot back.

“You look like a beast determined to be a nasty churl. She
can
fix you. You would mend quicker—more’s the pity!”

Brooke marched out of the room, slamming the door behind her. The satisfying sound did nothing to quiet her rage.