“You shouldn’t be up.” Fanny folded her arms across her chest, blocking his way to the door.
“Where have you been sleeping?”
“Across the hall, in Wil’s room—and before you ask, he and Rob have been sleeping in Horace’s room.” Rob, not Sir Robert, he noticed.
“Remind me why I’m not there,” he demanded.
“You needed quiet and a room to yourself and… It doesn’t matter. Rob said I was right.”
Loath though he was to show weakness, Eli sat, suddenly light-headed. “Where are my clothes?”
“Rob brought your valise up here,” she said, nodding toward the corner of the room. “The clothes you were wearing when you were injured smelled as if you sat in garbage.” She made a sour face as if she could scent it still. “Rob said you hid behind the Happy Cock’s rubbish.”
Rob again. Eli rolled his eyes. Rob, he’d noticed, wore the same clothing as the other night and was fresh as a daisy. “Couldn’t be helped,” he muttered.
“They are freshly laundered. I was folding them when I heard you,” Fanny said, staring at his chest.
Eli pulled the coverlet tighter. “Do you suppose you could hand me my valise? I have a spare—”
“You should be in bed.” Miss Fanny Hancock had a stubborn streak, he noted.
“We’re meant to take the remaining inventory to Wagner’s Tailoring today.” Eli could be stubborn as well, if he needed to.
“Done. Rob and Wil managed the thing earlier this morning, and Rob spun Mrs. Wagner some tale of my sad ordeal until she urged her husband to pay us a bit more,” Fanny told him.
Eli stood again, still wrapped in the coverlet. Fanny took a step to urge him to sit but backed off when he glared down at her. His shoulders relaxed. “That’s one thing off our list, at least.”
“We sold more of the finished goods yesterday, too,” Fanny said. “Rob suspects curiosity about the skirmish at the Happy Cock brought the sudden influx of people.”
“Ghouls,” Eli muttered, making her laugh, a musical sound that gave his tumbling emotions a modest boost.
“Rob said something similar!” she said.
“You and Rob appear to be managing fine.”Without me, he added silently.
“We are indeed,” she said, beaming up at him. “Oh, Eli! He’s my brother. I never dreamed such a thing. Amy and Wil can’t get over the resemblance. Our births may not have been all that is respectable, but—we’re blood. It’s a miracle. My brother!”
“He was my brother first,” Eli muttered, directing his words to the floor.
Fanny ignored him. “Rob says I am in for more of it when I meet the earl. You didn’t tell me the earl is my half-brother as well.” Anxiety seeped into her joy. His little warrior let her mask slip, revealing more vulnerability than he had seen before.
“I thought you guessed,” he said gently, wanting to sooth the tension from her face.
“No, I never—” Her words caught in her throat even as his eyes captured hers, searching. For what he couldn’t say. His gaze slid to her mouth, and a small voice in his head whispered,She may be Rob’s sister, but she isn’t yours…
The moment passed. “If you are going to be stubborn about getting up, your valise is on the chair.” She gestured to the corner of the room, then hesitated. “Do you need help? Rob would…”
“I can manage. Tell my brother I’ll be down shortly,” he said. “And he was my brother first…,” he repeated at the door she shut behind her.
*
Fanny leaned againstthe door, then started down the narrow attic steps. She had to pause halfway down to take a breath, overwhelmed by a maelstrom of emotions. Concern for Eli, and the flow of neighbors and customers gave her no time to deal with her terror and trauma after her ordeal.
When she told Rob Benson and Mr. Holliday about the gravel-voiced man and his words about a customer who wanted a woman with red hair, they’d terrified her with the urgent need to leave Manchester. She had already agreed to go, but Rob’s rush to pack up Grandfather’s store and get them all to Ashmead gave her no room to process her grief and disappointment at leaving it all.
She could hear Eli moving around in her little room under the eaves. Seeing him in her bed there had sent shivers of warmth through her for two days—desire to heal, desire to nurture, desire… Desire. She may be an innocent, but she had no doubt about the nature of the emotions and the sensations she felt in her nether regions. They were unexpected, unfamiliar, and unprecedented, and she had no idea what to do with them. Seeing him just now, rumpled and shirtless, sent them spiraling.
Between them, the Benson brothers had her tied in emotional knots.
