“Another sad life’s lesson you are about to learn,” she said grimly. “I can, and I will. You will thank me for it later, and so will Ashes. I should hate to have to feed him to my cat after all.”
“I doesn’t think so,” growled Olly. “And you don’t got no cat. Least not one I seen.”
“I do not think so,” she corrected again.
“Why not?” he asked.
Catriona sighed.
*
The startled expressionon her maid’s face was the first indication Catriona received that something was dreadfully amiss.
The second was her words.
“My lady, forgive me, but Mr. Olly is not…that is to say, he is ashe.”
Catriona blinked at Sadler. Being in possession of precious little experience with children, she had deferred to the domestic’s expertise in matters of scrubbing. But she had been hovering in the hall beyond the guest chamber, waiting for the deed to be done.
“What do you mean, Olly is not a he?” she asked, even though the answer to her question was already apparent.
It made no sense.
Olly was a lad.
Short haired.
Ill-tempered.
Evasive.
Dirty.
Pretty beneath all that grime, however. Perhaps too pretty for a lad.
“Olly has…a bosom.” The last was whispered into the silence of the hall, color rising to Sadler’s cheeks in the wake of the word. “And, and…”
Catriona held up a staying hand. “You mean to say the lad is a girl?” How could it be? How could she have failed to notice? “A bosom? How?”
“Bindings,” Sadler said simply. “I would guess her to be twelve or thereabouts. Dressed as she was, and covered in all that dirt, it was easy to mistake her for a boy of nine or ten. She is a slight thing, even for a girl. I would guess she has not been well-fed as a child ought to be.”
Dear Lord.
This development rather complicated matters.
“What shall I do?” she asked, perplexed.
Part of her felt betrayed by Olly’s deception. Part of her felt all the more concerned for the child’s welfare. What had led her to hide herself as a boy? To pretend she was a young boy when she was in fact a girl on her way to becoming a woman? It certainly explained Olly’s reluctance to bathe.
But it explained precious little else.
One thing was certain.
Catriona needed answers.
“You may want to ask her some questions, my lady,” Sadler offered. “She seems rather distraught that I’ve made the discovery.”
She sighed. “Thank you, Sadler. I shall see to her.”
