“Not to worry, Mrs. Hughes,” Hayward added. “He’ll be all right. Windham here has the hardest head of anyone I’ve ever encountered.”
Mrs. Hughes drew herself up with terrifying dignity. “I beg your pardon, my lord, but Lord Windham is most certainlynotall right. He looks as if he’s been run down by a barouche!” She backed away from the door, waving them inside. “I’ll send for Dr. Champion at once.”
“No doctors, if you please, Mrs. Hughes.” Cass limped through the door with Hayward on his heels, Mrs. Hughes clucking over them both like a hen over a pair of baby chicks. “A rest will set me right again.”
Mrs. Hughes stared at him, aghast. “But you’rebleeding, and your eye is turning black. You were gallivanting around Covent Garden again, weren’t you? For pity’s sake, will you never learn, my lord?”
If she’d been another one of his servants, he wouldn’t have tolerated such insolence, but Mrs. Hughes had been his father’s housekeeper as well. She’d known him since he was a boy of eleven years and had come to live with his father in this very townhouse, and she’d been kind to him, even when all the other servants were whispering behind his back.
She’d been kinder to him than his father ever had been. She was the closest thing he’d had to a mother since his own mother had died, and in his eyes, she could do no wrong.
He wasn’t a good man. That much was plain. But he was loyal, and he never raised his voice to Mrs. Hughes, no matter how much she scolded.
“Finley, come here at once and see to his lordship.” Mrs. Hughes beckoned to a footman waiting in the shadows. He wasa big Irish lad who’d performed this service for Cass more than once before. “Help him up the stairs, Finley.”
“Aye, Mrs. Hughes.” Finley sprang forward. “All right there, my lord?”
“I daresay I’ll survive, Finley.” He’d had worse, but his head was throbbing, he could no longer see out of his injured eye, and he was struggling to keep his feet underneath him.
“Take him to his bedchamber, Finley. Now then, Lord Hayward…”
Cass made his way up the stairs, leaning heavily on Finley, chuckling as Mrs. Hughes cajoled, bullied and then ordered Hayward up to the blue bedroom in the guest wing. The Albany wasn’t far, but Mrs. Hughes wouldn’t hear of Hayward setting foot outside the door again that night.
But later, as he lay alone in his bed, his ribs aching and his eye swollen shut, the incident was a good deal less amusing.
He’d persuaded himself it would be different this time. He was the Earl of Windham now, and London aristocrats adored their earls, particularly the wealthy ones.
But this was no different than St. Giles had been, or Eton, or later, Oxford.
Thetontolerated him, but he’d never truly be one of them. He didn’t fit here any better than he did anywhere else.
He’d only ever found his footing once. That had been more than a decade ago, and that time, that place, and that friend was lost to him now.
As lost as if they’d never existed.
