“No,” she said quickly. “It is nothing like that. Do you know of charity? There are people and organisations who like to help less fortunate people, simply because it is the right thing to do. It is like that.”
“Some church thing?”
“Almost. I suppose it has something in common with that.” The steady rhythm of scooping the water and hearing it fall soothed her—soothed the boy too, she thought, as did the wonderful properties of the warm bath. His shoulders gradually dropped and he sat with his eyes open but his expression fixed, scowling at the end of the bathtub.
“Who is he, then? I heard you call him lord. He’s some gentry sort; seems as fine as a duke’s, this house.”
“Lord Cotereigh is a viscount. His father is the Earl of Arnon.”
The boy let out a breath that was all hard scorn but perhaps as close as he came to a laugh. “Fancy me in a viscount’s house. Jem would—” He cut himself off, scowling harder than ever, a blackened grubby thumbnail picking at a faint bump in a hammered seam of the bath’s rolled copper top.
“Is Jem your brother? A relative?”
“He’s no one.” The shoulders had tensed back up, even higher than before. “I won’t say nothing.”
“Very well.” She knew, anyway, who Jem would be. The leader of his gang, most-like, some older, even more vicious boy. Or perhaps even an adult, the head of whatever criminal group recruited these boys into picking pockets for them, and in return gave them a little dubious protection and a roof of some kind to sleep under.
“Are you his missus, then? And that woman with the cake, she’s your mother, or his?”
“Ah. No. That lady is my aunt, Lady Pemberthy. And Lord Cotereigh…he is a friend. Not my husband.”
It was at that moment the door opened and Lord Cotereigh himself returned to the room.
Caught unawares, she looked up and straight at him, but whatever her expression said, the loudest part was probably the blush that burned unaccountably across her cheeks. She busied herself again with cup and water.
“Is my aunt all right?”
“I left her sitting comfortably in the drawing room with a pot of sweet tea and my housekeeper, Mrs Clare, on hand to keep her company or attend to any needs she might have.”
“Thank you.”
She heard his tread. Gleaming boots and closely tailored buff-cloth encasing knee and thigh came to a stop to her left.
“Goodness. This water is brown already.”
“I didn’t ask for no bath—”
“Peace, boy. You clearly needed one. I take one every single day, and so shall you, while you’re under my roof.”
His leather boots creaked, there was the rustle of luxurious cloth, and then Lord Cotereigh was kneeling beside her, shrugging out of his coat.
He twisted, setting it on the floor behind him, looking at her as he did so. There was a faint smile in his eyes. But then hisattention snagged on her dress front. Oh. Yes. She was wet there from being splashed.
He looked away as she blushed, though really—she glanced down to check—nothing untoward had been revealed, the cotton and all her layers were too thick for that.
Lord Cotereigh began unbuttoning his wrist cuffs. He folded the crisp linen of his shirt sleeves up to his elbows. Surprisingly strong, his wrists and forearms, for a man who did no real work for a living. And she was no stranger to men’s physiques—one couldn’t be when one lived near the sea and saw all the fishermen and farmers about their work in all the hot, high days of summer. One couldn’t be when one had been married.
But his strength shouldn’t surprise her. She’d felt it already when he so easily lifted her down from the sideboard that time she’d been fixing the wallpaper. The impression of his hands at her waist had lasted even longer than her affront.
He rode, she supposed. And did all those other sports gentlemen thought fit to fill their idle hours. Boxing and fencing and games of cricket. Did he row? He took up a washcloth and dipped it in the water, wetting both his hands. Did he swim? Did he ever cut strongly through cool, green-blue water, sun making diamonds of the droplets on his broad shoulders…
No. No…that was Alfred. Alfred who those thoughts belonged to. It was Alfred who swum like a fish and laughed like a water sprite, grinning and wicked and strong and lithe. Lord Cotereigh’s skin was pale, not Alfred’s roguish tan. There was no wildness there, despite the muscle, despite the dark hairs that crested each ridge.
“Here, boy.” Lord Cotereigh lathered the wet cloth thoroughly with the soap. “You rub yourself; you’ll know how best not to hurt those bruises overmuch. But you’ll do a good job, and you’ll do it for…” He’d dried his hands on a cloth then pulled out his watch. “For three whole minutes. I’ll give you ten pence. Deal?”
The boy clenched the soapy cloth in his good hand. “Ought to be fifteen pence. Then that’s five a minute.”
Lord Cotereigh raised a brow as Madelaine smiled at the boy’s audacity. Whatever terrible things the streets had done to him, they’d certainly made him tough.
