She nodded, briskly going to undo the tie he’d made in the sheet and saying, “In you get now, while it’s still warm. Aunt, can you—”
But she cut off, frowning at her aunt behind her. The woman had turned white, hand pressed to her mouth as she saw for the first time the bruises that covered the boy’s body. Tears welled in her eyes, and her chest heaved on a shaky breath.
“Oh the poor boy, the poor, poor boy, how could anyone… I can’t…”
No doubt she’d seen the old weals scarring the boy’s back and buttocks too. Sebastian had seen them last night, the sheet falling as the boy tossed and turned in a nightmare, the pain waking him with a cry. Sebastian had pulled the sheet back over him.“You’re safe,”he’d said.“It’s over.”
The scars were silvery in the daylight. Mrs Ardingly spotted them now too, mouth set in a flat line. She looked from the boy and back to her aunt, who was still staring, horrified, tears on her cheeks. “Aunt…if you’re overcome…” She looked at him. “Can she sit somewhere and wait, another room?”
“Of course.”
The boy had twisted around to look at Lady Pemberthy too, confused by her reaction, and frightened by it. “What is it? What’s wrong with me? Why’s she staring like that?”
“Nothing, nothing,” soothed Mrs Ardingly. “My aunt isn’t used to seeing bruises such as yours, that is all. Here, I will help youinto the bath.” She came to where Sebastian stood and reached out to replace his grip on the boy’s arm. “Please take my aunt to another room and get her some tea? I can bathe the boy myself.”
Her voice was brisk, but her eyes were shadowed with concern. She clearly wanted to be in two places at once, helping her aunt, helping the boy, and if she could have found time, she probably would have apologised to him too while doing it all.
How awful, that her charity was encroaching so fully upon his day. And he’d meant to be at his tailors this morning—andthe boot makers too.
He nodded, stepping back. “Of course. I’ll just be a moment. And then I’ll come back to help you.”
Twelve
Madelaine didn’t turn asLord Cotereigh softly but firmly ushered her weeping and apologetic aunt from the room. She felt he would look back as he closed the door, and she couldn’t be sure what her face would reveal under the glance of those dark eyes.
She was close to being overcome herself, with the boy’s weakness and his pain, and her aunt’s distress, and the embarrassment of having brought all this messy, needy humanity into Lord Cotereigh’s perfectly ordered house.
The man himself was overpowering too. Imperious and hard and demanding. She’d only ever been able to meet him toe-to-toe and eye to eye because she’d felt so sure of her own superiority—in all those areas that mattered. She was good, and he was not, and so all his haughty finery, all his height and certainty, all his dark, masculine authority—that oh solordlyair—it had been easy to brush aside like the superficial puffery it was.
But now…now she was guilty and grateful, grateful in a way she hadn’t been for bonnets and dresses given to her to serve his own ends. She was grateful now for…for his kindness. How could she hate him if he was kind?
And how could she be safe if she didn’t hate him?
“Come now,” she said to the boy, “you can step in, see. The side here is low.”
It would hurt him, this bath. The walk from the sofa had already left him trembling. But there always came this moment in nursing, in caring, whether it was taking one of her small brothers to the dentist to have a tooth pulled or as simple as changing a bandage on a tender wound or digging out a recalcitrant splinter. One inevitably caused pain in the process of doing necessary good.
She knew it, but she still felt the boy’s torment, the guilt of it cold and slippery down her spine, hurting all her insides as she made him sit down in the bath.
His strength gave out, and he half fell the last part with a cry of pain, splashing her dress as she sank to her knees with him, trying to steady him as best she could.
“There.” She let out a breath. “You’re in. The worst is over.”
The boy sat still, head bowed, only his skinny, bruised ribs rising and falling with the breaths he took against the pain. His eyes were squeezed shut. “Why…why are you doing this?”
“You’ll feel much better once you’re clean and all this itchiness stopped.”
He shook his head, eyes still shut. “No, I mean…any of it. Why did you bring me here? Why are you…? Who are you? I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Just to help you. That’s all.”
The bathtub was copper and very fine. With another sting of guilt, she realised it must be Lord Cotereigh’s own. She’d been provided with a cup, and she used it to scoop up some waterand pour it slowly over the boy’s shoulders and back. It would be better to soak some of this ingrained dirt away then to scrub his bruised skin vigorously with soap and cloth. She made sure his splinted arm rested on the bath’s edge, out of the stream of water.
“But why? What do you want? I won’t go into one of those houses.”
“The workhouse?”
He shook his head. “Not them either. But I mean those other houses. Where men pay to—”
