Sadler dipped into a curtsy. “Of course, my lady.”
Hesitantly, she made her way to the guest chamber door, knocking soundly three times to announce herself before entering. Olly was seated on a chair by the bath that had been drawn earlier. Though she was once more clad in her breeches and shirt, the shorn ends of her hair sleek and wet, sans the layer of dirt obstructing her features, Catriona could see quite clearly that she was female rather than male. The soft, pretty lines of her face which had been mistaken for a younger boy’s, along with her slight frame, now seemed painfully feminine.
Olly’s legs were drawn up protectively against her chest, her chin resting upon her knees. “I told you I didn’t want no bath.”
“A bath,” Catriona corrected, going to the child’s side and dropping to her knees on the carpet, unmindful of her gown. They were eye to eye now. Nose to nose. “I did not want a bath.”
“I know you didn’t,” said the scamp.
“Olly,” she coaxed gently, resisting the urge to smile in spite of herself at the child’s willfulness. “What is your true name?”
“Oliver.”
She raised a brow. “Olly.”
“Fine.” She huffed a sigh. “Olivia. My name’s Olivia. But I prefer Olly. It’s all I been for years now.”
“How long?” Catriona asked, a maternal surge she had never before experienced coming to life within her. “And why?”
“Easier to be a lad than a girl,” Olly answered.
Her heart gave a pang. “What do you mean?”
“Lads doesn’t get touched the way girls do,” Olly said quietly.
“Oh, Olly.” Something inside her chest seized. She could scarcely imagine what had befallen this young girl in her life. “What happened to you?”
The child’s face became shuttered. “You doesn’t want to know.”
“You do not want to know,” she corrected gently. “And yes, I do. I care about you, Olly. If I know what happened, I will be able to better understand you.”
Olly nodded, biting her lip. Slowly, she began to reveal her past. “When Mother died, I was sent to my aunt, her sister. Her husband, my uncle…he did not treat me as an uncle ought to treat a niece. I doesn’t think Auntie Margery knew what he were about…if she had, he would have stopped. I knows it.”
Dear God.What had the horrid man done to her, an innocent child?
“Olly,” she began, “what did he do to you, your uncle?”
“He touched me,” Olly admitted, ducking her head. “Made me sit on his lap and touch him.”
Catriona felt ill. “Did he…”
She could not bear to finish the question.
The notion of a grown man forcing a child.His niece.It was repulsive. So horrible she could not even contemplate such a sin against an innocent. Such a blatant abuse of power and trust.
“Not like you think,” Olly said quietly. “Not long after I took up with them, a lung infection claimed him and my aunt. I were on my own, once more. But this time, I was smarter. I knew being a girl wouldn’t do me no good. I convinced everyone I were a boy.”
“Oh, my dearest girl.” She could have wept at the revelations. But she knew she must remain stoic for Olly’s sake. “How did you find yourself here, Bramwell’s ward?”
“He be a cousin of my uncle’s. I doesn’t know he were like him, but I feared it…”
“You do not need to explain yourself, child,” she said, hating what had happened to Olly, or Olivia as she must come to think of her now. “I am so very sorry for what you endured. But please know you need not fear either myself or Lord Rayne.”
“I doesn’t fear you,” Olly said reluctantly.
“I do not fear you,” she corrected. “And good. That is excellent. Now do come along. The library can wait. We need to get you some dresses.”
“I doesn’t like dresses,” the child argued, frowning. “Breeches is better.”
