Adam sat on the bed, holding her foot in one hand and washing it with the other. The ministrations were oddly calming, reassuring. He hated feeling useless and knew, in that moment, that he was helping. Not just helping in a general sense. Helpingher.Somehow that distinction was important to him.
“I can do that, Your Grace.” The abigail apparently expected him to relinquish his duties.
Adam silently shook his head, softly rubbing more blood from her ankle.
“It is not seemly for a duke to be acting as a lady’s maid or a physician, Your Grace.”
“Perhaps not.” Adam didn’t take his eyes from his task. “But a husband is charged with keeping his wife in sickness, is he not?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The maid sounded more confused than anything else.
“Then I would venture that tending to my wife is perfectly seemly.”
Lud, her ankle was terribly swollen, and tender, if her continued grimace were any indication.
“It is highly unusual.”
“And when has the Duke of Kielder cared what was usual?”
The bones didn’t feel out of place. If anything, there might be a small crack. Persephone was fortunate in that, at least.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The abigail quit her lecture after that, contenting herself with retrieving needles and tweezers to help Adam clean the debris from Persephone’s wound and providing fresh cloths until a second maid arrived with the next can of water from the kitchen. In silence the two of them worked, Adam cleaning gashes and washing Persephone’s leg and foot, the abigail tending to her bleeding head and swollen eye.
Persephone didn’t say a word.
Adam personally cleaned every drop of blood off Persephone’s leg, from knee to toe. He counted four deep gashes, each measuring several inches in length, some two dozen more superficial wounds. Her ankle worried him most, especially as he knew he could do nothing about it.
Two footmen were enlisted to hold Persephone still while Adam poured nearly an entire bottle of brandy over the cuts in her leg. She broke her silence for the first time in over thirty minutes. No words escaped her tongue, only a heart-wrenching cry of agony.
By the time he’d finished cleaning her wounds, Adam was spent. Hearing her obvious suffering and knowing he’d caused it—no matter how necessary the infliction—proved nearly too much for him. He placed his hands, shoulder length apart on the bed, hunched over, and hung his head. He could not continue. He hadn’t the willpower.
“I will stitch up her leg, Your Grace.” For the first time in the months since she had been employed, Persephone’s abigail spoke to Adam with entirely unfeigned kindness and respect. Before, she’d seemed more awed and impressed by his title and, perhaps, his reputation. In that moment, she seemed most impressed with Adam himself. It was an unprecedented experience for him.
Adam turned his head enough to look at her. She offered a small smile, something he might once have disapproved of from a servant. But Adam only nodded and moved away enough to allow her to finish tending to Persephone.
An upstairs maid, the same who’d assisted their ministrations, cleared away a large pile of wet, bloodied linens. She, too, smiled empathetically at him. Adam couldn’t remember ever being the recipient of so many smiles. It was unnerving.
“She’s lookin’ better, a’ready,” the maid said. “Not quite so pale.”
Adam glanced at Persephone and knew in an instant it wasn’t true. She had grown paler than before the brandy, more still and quiet. Lies, however white or well-meaning, had never been permissible in his mind. Until that moment. He needed the lies.
The little maid, one he’d seen around the castle dozens of times, was offering him comfort. She generally bobbed a nervous curtsy then scurried away. All the staff did. But there she stood, unafraid, unquaking, offering him what reassurance she could.
“Thank you,” Adam muttered.
She held a clean cloth out to him. “’Tis fresh water.” She nodded toward the basin. “So you can wash your hands clean.”
Adam looked at his hands then. Every inch was stained, the shade varying from pink to nearly black. He could do nothing but stare at them.
“You’ll feel better cleanin’ it off, Your Grace,” the maid told him gently. “’Twould ache any man’s heart to have to see his wife’s blood that way.”
He nodded, mutely crossing to the washbasin. Adam thrust his hands into the warm, still water. Wisps of red began to swirl and cloud the clearness. The water alone wouldn’t be enough. Adam took the cloth—the only clean one left in the entire house, he’d guess—and began to scrub.
’Twould ache any man’s heart.Adam couldn’t imagine the sensation being described in any other way. He had escaped their ordeal physically unscathed, and yet he was in pain—an internal, aching pain.
Adam glanced at Persephone. She wore a look of utter anguish on her face. Tiny moans of pain escaped her throat as her abigail painstakingly sewed closed her wounds. Adam remembered that pain, the feeling of being sewn together. It was pain added onto pain. He hadn’t allowed himself to think of those times in years, of the brutal surgeries and long, difficult recoveries.
