“Her Ladyship sent clean clothes for you,” Dain said, indicating a chair upon which Phelps had heaped the garments. “But you must wash first.”
Dominick’s gaze darted from the clothes to the tub and back again several times. His expression became anguished.
“You must wash first,” Dain said firmly.
The boy let out an unearthly howl that would have done an Irish banshee proud. He tried to struggle up and away. Dain caught hold of him and picked him up off the bed, oblivious to pounding fists, kicking feet, and deafening shrieks.
“Stop that racket!” he said sharply. “Do you want to make yourself sick again? It’s only a bath. You won’t die of it. I bathe every day and I’m not dead yet.”
“No-o-o-o!” With that piteous wail, his son’s louse-infested head sank onto Dain’s shoulder. “No, Papa.Please. No, Papa.”
Papa.
Dain’s throat tightened. He moved his big hand up the lad’s woefully thin back, and patted it gently.
“Dominick, you are crawling with vermin,” he said. “There are only two ways to get rid of them. Either you have a bath in that handsome copper tub…”
His son’s head came up.
“Or you must eat a bowl of turnips.”
Dominick drew back and gazed at his father in blank horror.
“Sorry,” said Dain, suppressing a grin. “It’s the only other remedy.”
The struggling and wails ceased abruptly.
Anything—even certain death—was preferable to turnips.
That was how Dain had felt as a child. If the boy had inherited his reaction to laudanum, one might reasonably deduce that he’d also inherited Dain’s youthful aversion to turnips. Even now, he was not overly fond of them.
“You may have the hot water sent up now, Phelps,” said His Lordship. “My son wishes to bathe.”
The first wash Dain was obliged to handle himself, while Dominick sat rigid with indignation, his mouth set in a martyred line. When that was done, however, he was rewarded with a glimpse of the peepshow, and told he might play with it as soon as he was clean.
Dominick decided to conduct the second wash himself.
While he was making puddles about the tub under Phelps’ watchful eye, Dain ordered dinner.
By the time it arrived, the boy had emerged from the tub, and Dain had towelled him dry, got him into the old-fashioned skeleton suit Jessica had found, and combed his unruly hair.
Then the coveted peepshow was put into Dominick’s hands, and while he played with it, Dain sat down with his coachman to eat.
He took up his knife and his fork and was about to cut into his mutton when he realized he’d taken up his knifeandhis fork.
He stared at the fork in his left hand for a long moment.
He looked at Phelps, who was slathering butter on an enormous hunk of bread.
“Phelps, my arm works,” said Dain.
“So it do,” the coachman said expressionlessly.
Then Dain realized his arm must have been working for some time now, and he hadn’t noticed. How else had he held his son’s head up while spooning tea into him? How else had he carried him and patted his back at the same time? How else had he moved the boy’s rigid body this way and that while bathing him and washing his hair? How else had he dressed him in that pestilentially impractical suit with its rows and rows of buttons?
“It stopped working for no known medical reason and now it’s started working for no reason.” Dain frowned at the hand. “Just as though there had never been anything wrong with it.”
“Her Ladyship said ‘tweren’t nothing wrong with it. Said—meanin’ no offense, me lord—’twere all in your head.”
