Nightingale (6 page)

“You probably think he’s right about most things,” Jessica said, using her snippy tone, “since he is your lord and master.”

Odessa narrowed her eyes, regarding the young woman who stood before her, arms folded protectively over her chest and wearing only what appeared to be boy’s underdrawers. “He was mistaken about you. He told his mother you were a child of ten or eleven.”

Jessica looked down at her nearly naked body, which had done unconscionable things in recent years. It was when those changes became apparent that Jessica’s mother began begging Muffet’s old clothing, even though other older girls closer to Jessica’s size offered their castoffs.

Her mother insisted that while Jessica served in the manor house, working for Mr. Maxwell, she must wear the oversized clothing. It meant so much to her bedfast matriarch that Jessica saw little reason to object. Now, of course, Jessica had little choice. She would wear whatever was available, as long as it was decent. But why was Odessa staring at her with such open chagrin?

“No one else can know,” Odessa muttered and waited for Sophie’s nod before she grabbed the kettle and stirred a new supply of hot water and suds into the tub.

“Please, I must save these,” she said, patting her underdrawers, making them jingle. “My purse.” Both serving women nodded their understanding. Certain that the secret pocket sewn into her underdrawers was securely tucked; Jessica dropped that last item of clothing, and placed a foot in the steaming water. She closed her eyes and sighed at the pure pleasure of the warmth closing around her foot … her ankle … her calf.

Slowly, deliberately, she submerged the one appendage. The water rose to her knee. She hesitated only a moment before allowing the second leg to join the first. She stood basking in that pleasure for several heartbeats before she lowered her body, luxuriating in the warmth as it embraced her.

Jessica had never bathed in a tub, and considered herself lucky to dip in an occasional trough. In the summer, she swam as often as she could in the river. She loved feeling clean, loved having her long, thick hair free of debris and dust and accumulated filth.

She continued lowering herself into the tub, her chin, her nose, her forehead, the crown of her head. Completely submerged, she felt an epiphany, a baptism so thorough that she did not want ever to leave the watery confines. In moments that passed too quickly, she had to surface to breathe. One necessary gulp of air and she returned to the silence beneath the water.

A rap at the door to the bathing chamber startled all three occupants. Jessica’s head popped out of the water as Odessa went to answer the knock.

“Is the child all right?” A woman’s deep, melodic voice floated into the room.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“May I see her?”

Stiffening, Jessica heard Odessa hesitate before she stepped aside, swinging the door wide to admit an unusually tall, strikingly beautiful woman of advanced years.

Although matronly, the visitor did not seem to be nearly the age of Jessica’s own mother, who was the ancient age of forty and four.

“Hello,” the woman said, gazing at Jessica’s face. “Welcome to our home, my dear.”

As Jessica said, “Hello” and “Thank you,” the woman’s eyes drifted. She looked startled and dismayed as she surveyed Jessica’s body, particularly studying the swells of her breasts that hinted of more hidden beneath the suds.

“But, my dear … I mean to say, my son said … Well, it’s just that I thought you to be much younger. A child of nine or ten or eleven.”

“Your son?”

“Devlin. The duke. Forgive me, darling. I am Lady Anne Miracle, the Dowager Duchess of Fornay. Devlin’s mother.”

Jessica realized she should stand and curtsy to a duchess, yet here she sat in a tub of water and bubbles, naked, displaying too much of herself, and no manners of any kind.

The dowager bit her lips and, for a moment, appeared to be overcoming good humor. Hastily she waved aside all thought of curtsies, obviously reading Jessica’s mind.

“You are fine where you are, my dear. Perfectly fine. We don’t seem to be observing any of the amenities. I would never have dreamed of barging in on a young woman guest while she was bathing. It’s just that I thought you … Well, that a child might need reassurance.” Her gentle words and pleasant smile dwindled, leaving only a frown. “How in the world did Devlin determine your age?”

“I don’t know, Your Grace. He dismissed my repeated denials that I was a child. I told him rather persistently that I was a woman fully grown.”

“It should have been obvious.”

“He couldn’t see and wouldn’t listen.”

“How old are you, Jessica Blair?”

“Eighteen, ma’am … er … that is, Your Grace … ma’am.”

“Eighteen? Oh, but my dear.”

Jessica was momentary perplexed before she had a thought. “Oh, please, Your Grace, don’t be alarmed. I didn’t come expecting reward or seeking work.”

“Ah … well, no … of course I wasn’t concerned about that, particularly.” The duchess looked to Odessa, apparently seeking guidance.

“I believe our guest is unusually — charmingly so, of course — naive.” Odessa shot a warning glance at Sophie, as if signaling. Jessica couldn’t help wondering at the exchange.

What did that mean, unusually naive? She might lack formal schooling, but Jessica’s parents were learned people. They had diligently taught her and her brother and sister to read the classics and to do their sums. Further, Jessica could tat, knit, cook, clean a house, and dress a variety of fish and fowl. And she had memorized most of what she considered the important verses of the Bible.

Things like that were not readily discernible when one was sitting naked as a babe. It was hard to make an impression crouched in a tub of water. “Madam, it seems premature and not at all fair for you to pass judgment on me or my abilities with no more information than you have.” She didn’t intend for her words to sound quite as curt as they did.

The dowager’s vivid blue eyes twinkled as she lifted a handkerchief to cover her mouth.

At that moment, a rap on door between the bedchamber and the corridor announced another visitor and the duke called from the hallway. “May I enter?”

“No!” the dowager, Jessica, and both maids chorused.

“What is going on in there?”

The dowager hastened out the door from the bathing alcove, through the bedchamber and to the open doorway where Devlin stood. He sounded tired.

“Devlin, shall I see you to your bed?” his mother asked.

At the duke’s side, the immense man called Bear loomed, having retreated only a couple of paces.

While her husband and all three sons held Bear in the highest regard, the dowager only tolerated him, thus, the huge man was seldom inside the house. Her attention turned back to Devlin as he responded.

“Madam, you have neither said my prayers nor tucked me in for the past twenty years, thank God.” She took his arm and turned him, but he balked. “I want to see Jessica.”

“She is bathing.”

“It’s perfectly proper. She is a child and I am a blind man.”

“Well, then, you cannot see her anyway, so be off to bed and I will escort her when she is presentable.”

“I didn’t mean see her in the literal sense. I want to hear her voice so I may determine her well-being.”

“Do you think you know her so well, my son, after a night’s ride together, that you can discern her condition merely by the timbre of her voice?”

His shoulders squared, although the change in posture seemed to take great effort. “Regardless of your assurances, I wish to speak with her. Will you stand aside, or shall I summon Bear’s assistance?”

She studied him a moment and wondered where her jovial, ever-obedient son had gone, giving his body over to this obviously spent but determined man.

Of the dowager’s three sons, Devlin had always been the most compliant. Yet today, something about their unpretentious female visitor had aroused his protective instincts. Surely a country maid could not have acquired such influence after so short an acquaintance. Devlin had fended off courtesans far more practiced than this thin sprite.

As the duke drew a breath, pain etched his face. Seeing his effort, the dowager relented. “I will allow you to speak to her from the bedchamber, but you are not to venture closer.”

“This is my home, madam.”

“And I am your mother, Devlin. I will not have you address me in those lofty tones or I shall order the girl returned to her people immediately.”

Devlin’s shoulders bent as if under a sudden weight. Bear stepped close and said, “Please, Your Grace.”

Neither Devlin nor his mother seemed certain to which of them Bear addressed his appeal.

“All right,” Devlin said, first to yield. “I only want to hear her voice to assure myself she is not feeling threatened among so many strangers.”

The dowager regarded him skeptically. “You think you will be able to determine that merely by hearing her voice?”

“Yes.”

The older woman studied him another moment, acutely aware of his fatigue.

The duchess took Devlin’s arm, led him through the bedchamber and positioned him at the door to the bathing room. She did not, however, allow him to stand where he would be able to see Jessica should his eyesight suddenly, miraculously return.

“Jessica,” she said, needlessly summoning the girl’s attention, “Devlin is here and concerned for your well-being. Please reassure him that you are all right so that we may return him to his bed.”

There was a splash, followed by coaxing voices. Then he heard Jessica’s musical giggle, joined by two other women whose laughs he did not recognize.

“Jessica? Are you being well served?”

Her giggling continued. “Yes, Your Grace, I am.”

“What was that splashing? Did you fall?”

“I was alarmed to hear you speak when I am … when I was … ”

“My voice frightened you?”

“I am not accustomed to the ways of a great house, Your Grace. In Welter, women do not converse with men from the bath or, well, when they are inadequately clothed.”

His throaty chuckle prefaced a comeback. “Oh, I suspect such conversations do occur. I am pleased to learn, however, that you have not yet participated in those communications.”

Her laughter pealed with his. “Perhaps they do occur, but as you rightly suppose, I have not experienced them, at least not until now. Would you please be away to your sickbed?”

“Only if you will come visit me, when you are adequately clothed, of course.”

She peeked at Odessa, who had withdrawn into the corner but who nodded, granting a servant’s permission for the visitor to interview the lord of the manor in his bedchamber when she was properly attired.

“I will be there before you sleep, Your Grace,” Jessica said.

He muttered, “I am certain of that.”

Hearing the aside, his mother peered at him and wondered at this son’s peculiar behavior, marveling again that he had always been the most sensible of her three.

The eldest of her three boys, Rothchild, had been haunted throughout his short span by the prospect of someday assuming the duties of a duke. Studies came hard to Roth. He dedicated himself to pleasing his father, and her, too, she supposed.

Their youngest son, Lattimore, on the other hand, was frivolous, more interested in playing and hatching mischief among the servants or the livestock or the neighbors.

Devlin, the middle son, the moderate one, seemed more like her family, particularly her father. Devlin was the levelheaded one, the son who exercised the soundest judgment.

She guided Devlin back through the bedchamber, ignoring Bear, who waited silently a step beyond the outside door. She handed Devlin off to his valet Henry after extracting assurances the duke would be put directly to bed. Then she returned to the bathing room, eager to reevaluate this mysterious person who had entered their lives so unexpectedly and already exercised such influence on Devlin.

Jessica caught the dowager’s perplexed look.

“Now,” Lady Anne said, “you may continue with your bath.”

Jessica brooded, sensing that her initial interview with the dowager had not gone well, even before Devlin’s interruption. She didn’t know exactly why not.

The noble woman returned to stand near the side of the tub and regarded Jessica oddly, as if she wished to resume their discussion. How had she offended the lady?

“I am to address you and your son both as Your Grace,” Jessica said, attempting to discover where she might have misstepped. “That is correct, isn’t it?”

The dowager bestowed a judicious smile and a nod, maintaining a probing look as if trying to fathom the girl’s mind.

Jessica rescrubbed her face with the cloth, hoping to cleanse any residual smudges that might be the reason for the dowager’s determined scrutiny.

“How do you think he is, Your Grace, beyond the temporary blindness, of course? I thought perhaps he was acting strangely, if you will forgive my saying so. Of course, I have no idea of how he normally behaves.” She floundered for more to say. “And you do.”

Jessica pulled the cloth down to watch as the studiously solemn face of the Duchess of Fornay broke with the most beautiful, infectious smile Jessica had ever seen. She returned the smile, blossoming in the glow of what appeared to be approval.

“Did I say something right?” Jessica knew her confusion showed in her face, which she suspected was transparent as always.

“You did, my dear.” There was a lilt in the woman’s words. “Devlin was absolutely right. You are quite disarming.”

Gloom reformed in the duchess’s face. “He has a nasty gash across the back of his head.” The woman hesitated and Jessica nodded, indicating she was aware of the injury. “It appears to have bled profusely, which is probably a godsend. The doctor has seen him.”

“My, your physician certainly came promptly.”

The older woman again registered her approval. “Yes, Dr. Brussel is a friend and a neighbor, as well as our physician.”

“Is the gash Dev … the duke’s only injury?”

“They tell me he has bruises and scrapes, but nothing else of consequence.”

In all the activity and conversation, Jessica had forgotten the pleasure of the tub. “What word did the doctor have concerning his eyesight?”