Truly Yours

by Barbara Metzger

  He pulled the countess’s overlarge nightgown down so fast and so hard the shoulder might have ripped. Miss Carville was clean enough in his view, and far too long in his view, also. He did not think any of her ribs were broken, nor were any of her cuts deep enough to need stitches. He moved her over, between the sheets, and coveredher to the chin with the blankets. Then he could breathe again.

  When he gathered her ruined garments to toss out into the corridor for burning, Rex heard steps on the staircase again. This time Dodd brought the doctor up. The butler did not meet Rex’s eyes when he mumbled that none of the neighbor ladies agreed to come, and none of the nearby maidservants, either.

  “Perhaps the doctor knows of a willing woman,” Rex said, looking toward the older man in hope. “An experienced nurse, fit for a gentlewoman’s care.”

  The physician was already examining Miss Carville, making snorting noises, while Rex kept his back turned. “I’ll try to find one who isn’t a drunkard. The countess wouldn’t want one of those in her house. Not that she’d want this, either, poor lady.”

  “Are her injuries that dire, then? Or is it the fever?”

  “Hmph. I meant Lady Royce, not the murderess. This one will do, with some willow bark tea for the ague, laudanum for her nerves, basilicum ointment for everything else.” Rex could see the man’s certainty in bright color as he laid out the powders and potions, and was relieved until the doctor said, “But I still say it seems a shame, the same as I told Dodd here when I arrived.”

  “That a gently bred woman could be treated so savagely?”

  “No, that Lady Royce will be bothered with such a mare’s nest, and that I have to waste my time over a killer.”

  Rex turned and glared at the physician. “Thank you for coming. You need not send over a nurse. We’ll manage. You may send Lady Royce your bill. Good day.”

  “Hmph.”

  “How?” Dodd wanted to know, despite the impertinence. “How are you going to take care of the female? There is already enough scandal to see Lady Royce’s good name destroyed.” What use was a good position if he was laughed at when he visited the pub his fellow butlers frequented? How was Dodd to collect vails from callers if no one visited her ladyship?

  Rex wanted to say “Hmph” himself. Reputations be damned, he would not see Miss Carville ill-treated or insulted. He could not say precisely why he felt protective of the girl, but it was certainly not because he’d touched her soft, silky skin, or that her appearance, battered and bruised with her hair lopped off, appealed to him. Even clean she still looked like something the cat dragged in, and then dragged outside again as unappetizing. No, he’d felt the surprising tug of tenderness the moment he’d glimpsed her in prison. Why, he could have bribed the warder to have her moved to a more comfortable cell. He could have paid a matron to tend to her, and see that she was fed and bathed and doctored. Maybe he should have done just that, leaving her there. No one, not even his father, could have expected him to do more. He was in London to determine guilt or innocence, to investigate a murder, to hire a competent barrister. Lud, he was not here to play nursemaid to a wench weeks away from the hangman’s noose. Rex looked at Miss Carville, pale against the pillow, though, and knew he’d had no choice. It was as simple as that, not a matter of duty or chivalry or justice. He, and no one else, had to make her safe.

  He smoothed the blankets around her and told the butler, “Caring for Miss Carville is not your concern. Just find someone to cook a meal—porridge or something that a sick person can eat. Find a coffeehouse or a bakery if you need to. And find me another bottle of brandy.”

  Dodd shook his head on his way out. “There’ll be the devil to pay, for sure,” he muttered, whether Lady Royce found out about Nell or not.

  Rex did not have to see any colors to know the truth of that.

  He waited until Dodd’s footsteps echoed down the hall, then grimaced at the stuff the physician had left. The tea he could brew, the laudanum he could dose, but damn if he did not have to half undress Miss Carville all over again to spread the healing salve on her wounds. He’d done the same many times for soldiers, he told himself. And for his horses. This was another act of charity, nothing else.

  Then why was his sight swimming in a sea of red lies? Because no matter what he told himself, he wanted another glimpse of Miss Carville’s delectable body, hoping the sight was not half as lovely as he recalled.

  It was.

  Murchison finally arrived. The valet clucked his tongue when Dodd brought him to Miss Carville’s bedchamber, but blessedly did not say anything about the highly irregular situation. Verity the mastiff skittered around the room in joy at being reunited with Rex, then took an interest in Miss Carville—or the salve on her face. She was fast asleep. Rex had spooned some food into her, a thin soup that was all the weepy scullery maid could manage, along with the physician’s powders. Her skin was cooler to the touch, her breathing more even, the pucker between her eyebrows smooth, her cheeks showing some color besides the purplish bruises.

  “She’ll live to the trial, at any rate. Call me if she wakens.”

  Murchison’s jaw dropped open, but with Dodd in the room he could not curse or complain in any language.

  Rex took the opportunity while Miss Carville slept to claim a suite of rooms across the hall for himself, one with a dressing room with a cot for Murchison. He desperately needed to wash and eat and rest his leg, too. And figure out how he was going to find a respectable woman to come take over the sickroom until the countess returned. He refused to think about the situation if Lady Royce, as was her wont, turned her back on her responsibilities. Heaven help them, but Murchison would have to do for now.

  But the mademoiselle slept on, and Murchison’s duty was to his master, whose instructions were to keep the viscount looking and acting as civilized as possible, like a proper heir to an earldom. So the valet left Miss Carville’s door open and went across the hall to unpack a change of clothes for Lord Rexford, while his lordship bathed. The captain’s uniform, to Murchison’s disgust, was covered in dirt and soup and dog hair, with a trace of Miss Carville’s blood. At least Murchison hoped it was Miss Carville’s, lest Lord Royce’s son be charged with murder, too. He took the coat below stairs to sponge it off and press it.

  Amanda was having another dream. She was drifting on a cloud; no, she was being carried aloft by a great bird, held gently between its feet. The giant eagle would never let her fall, never let her grow cold or weary or hungry. When the bird bent its neck to look down at her, she smiled. Then she noticed that her winged companion had flashing blue eyes, not the fixed, staring golden ones she expected. The bird’s eyes were brighter than the skies they flew through, circled with a black rim, and shielded by thick black lashes. She laughed out loud. Eagles did not have blue eyes or eyelashes, but this was her dream, and the bird could have a mustache if she wanted, or a scar down its cheek. Either way, she could sleep in safety and wake in peace, watching soft white clouds pass by.

  She never wanted the dream to end, but her mother was washing her face. “Do not scrub so hard, Mama. I am too tired to get up now. My head feels heavy. Maybe I do not need to go to church this morning.”

  Her mother did not listen. She never did. Amanda opened her eyes to argue some more—then screamed. No gaunt, scarred pirate with a knife hovered over her this time. No calm, confident soldier, either. No blue eyes looked at her with concern. Instead, beady, bloodshot eyes watched her from mere inches away from her face.

  Great gods, a hound of hell was about to claim her soul for the Devil! Huge, slavering jaws opened, showing long white fangs in the wrinkled, Stygian dark face. She screamed again.

  The beast let out a howl, then scrambled under the bed, thumping and bumping until Amanda feared the whole structure would collapse, tossing her to those gnashing teeth. Should she try to escape out the door, or look for a weapon? What weapon was effective against a demon sent by Satan? How could she hope to outrun her fate? The demon was
keening loudly enough to wake the dead anyway.

  Then the door burst open. “What the deuce?”

  The beast bounded up from under the bed and threw itself at a man wearing nothing but a towel and a few drops of water. He was Lord Rexford, Amanda recalled, Lady Royce’s son, her own rescuer. Now she had to rescue him. She grabbed up her pillow, to go to the viscount’s aid. Maybe together they could smother the creature. No, there was water in the pitcher by her bedside. Perhaps she could blind the creature, or bash it over the head.

  But Lord Rexford was petting the beast, telling the huge animal that she was safe. “Good girl.”

  “Good . . . girl?”

  He nodded, one hand on the dog’s collar, the other at the towel at his waist. “Her name is Verity. I am sorry if she frightened you, but she means no harm. And I can see you are feeling more the thing. Your lungs are working well, at any rate.”

  Now Amanda felt a blush rising from her shoulders to her cheeks. She was standing atop a mattress in a too-large borrowed night rail, brandishing a pillow and a pitcher of water. And a half-naked man was watching her chest heave with each gasping breath. She could not help but notice that his own chest—with its downy black line of hair and sharply defined planes and hollows—was also heaving, likely from a mad dash from his bath. The idea of Lord Rexford at his bath was enough to make her already reddened cheeks turn scarlet. Not that she took her eyes away from the rippling muscles and broad shoulders. Oh, no. Who knew when she would get another chance to see a gentleman’s bare chest again, if ever? Whatever precepts of polite behavior she’d had drilled into her head since she could walk and talk flew right out the window, with the eagle of her dreams. Lord Rexford was flesh and blood, and she was no longer constrained by the tenets of the ton. No one expected an accused murderess to simper. So she stared.

  Now it was Rex’s turn to blush—for perhaps the first time in ten years. Lud, the female was looking at him as if he were a fancy bonnet in a shop window, no, a bonbon on a platter that she was thinking of tasting, of biting and licking and—and if she wet her lips one more time with her pink tongue, the towel was not going to be enough to save both of them from more embarrassment. “I apologize for my undress, and for Verity’s disturbing your rest. Please get back under the covers.” Where the fire’s light could not outline her slender figure through the white lawn nightdress. She bent to put the pitcher back on the bedside table and he drew in a breath at the sight of her rounded bottom. Good grief, he had been without a woman too long if he was drooling over a sickly female with a noose hanging over her head, almost literally. “Please get down, you have been too sick to be so active.” He’d help her, but that would take two hands, and he needed one at the hastily tied knot of the towel.

  She was feeling dizzy, actually, but she did not want to go back to sleep, or to have him leave. “That is your dog?”

  “Hm?” He’d been watching her smooth out her nightgown, then gracefully slide under the blankets. She was sitting up, though, with her breasts uncovered except for the gown’s thin fabric. He could make out the dark shadow of her nipples, and wondered if she really was a virgin, or a hardened seductress. Rumors had her meeting a lover, according to his information. If she were already bachelor fare . . .

  “I suppose the beast must be yours, the way it is drooling on your foot.”

  Rex tore his gaze away from the woman’s breasts and his thoughts away from the gutter. Who was the beast? Him? “Oh, Verity. More like I am her person. She found me one day and has hardly left my side since. I apologize for not warning you. You were sleeping soundly, so I saw no reason to disturb you from the rest you need.”

  Amanda looked at the dog with distrust, then scrubbed a hand over her cheek. “I am sorry if I bothered you, after all your kindness. I think she must have been licking my cheek. The unexpected wetness startled me, that is all. I do like dogs.”

  The muddiness in Rex’s mind cleared when she added, “Small, friendly ones. I should not have screamed.”

  He shrugged. What was one more earsplitting shriek? “Half of London already believes I am torturing the truth out of you.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “That is a godsend. But speaking of the truth, will you tell me now how your stepfather died?” Rex knew he should wait until they were both properly attired, but she seemed alert and eager to talk. And he did not want to leave yet. “Did you kill him?”

  “I—”>

  “Well, I have never seen the like, in all my born days! You know better than that, Master Jordan, prancing around in your altogether—and in a lady’s bedchamber besides. Why, I’d think you were raised by wolves if I hadn’t done the job myself!”

  “Nanny?” Rex hardly recognized the gray-haired woman who had been the nearest thing to a mother he had after the countess left. She was a great deal smaller than he recalled, and stooped over. For all her bent back, she tossed her own plaid woolen shawl over his shoulders to cover his bare skin.

  “Who else do you think would come when that fool Dodd sent a man blathering about murder and disaster and the downfall of the countess? He was right, too, from the looks of things. Why, I would be mortified if the countess found out I let you compromise her goddaughter.”

  Rex ignored the bit about compromising. “But how? I mean, how did Dodd know to send for you?”

  “Tsk. My sister is your mother’s housekeeper, don’t you know. Sadie stays with me in Richmond while the countess is away.”

  “I did not know you lived so near to London. I would have visited.”

  “Like you visited your mum, then?”

  “I do not wish to speak of that.” Rex noticed that Miss Carville was following the whole conversation, her brown eyes shifting from him—and his bare legs, damn it—to Nanny Brown.

  “Don’t you go getting all niffy-naffy on me, Master Jordan, me who wiped your bum when you were born.”

  “Nanny!” Rex saw Miss Carville hide a smile behind her hand. Lud, he wished he had his breeches, or a bigger towel.

  There was no stopping Nanny Brown. “But the trouble between you and the countess is for another day. Today is for the kettle of slops you’ve landed in now.”

  That took the smile off Miss Carville’s face.

  “Well, you always were one for trouble, weren’t you? At least this time you knew enough to come to your mum’s house. My sister is already taking over the kitchen until Cook comes back, although Sadie never could cook worth a ha’penny and she gets bilious, don’t you know. I’ll take over with the young lady.”

  That was a dismissal, so Rex headed toward the door. Nanny followed, until they were out of Miss Carville’s hearing. Then she wanted to know what the doctor said.

  “He said that she’d live long enough to hang.”

  “You won’t let that happen.”

  Her words showed as a bright yellow to Rex. Nanny really believed he could alter the course of British justice. “I’ll try.”

  “Well, get on with you then. You won’t find the guilty one sitting here. And you don’t belong in a young lady’s bedchamber in the first place. You should know better.”

  “Yes, Nanny. But—”

  “And without your clothes? Heaven help us if that’s what they teach young gentlemen in university. Or did the army give you bad manners along with a limp? You need fattening up, besides.” She poked a bony finger in his ribs.

  There was nothing like being treated like a little boy, right after acting like a rutting stag. Since he had not received the answers he needed from Miss Carville, though, Rex asked for Nanny’s opinion. “You don’t believe she is guilty?”

  “Why, look at the little lamb. And I don’t mean the way you were gawking when I came in, either. No, if she did shoot the cur, she’d have good reason. Your mother adored her, Sadie says, so there cannot be a mean streak to her. Now get on with you. Sadie is heating some stew for all of us. I made it, so you’ll like it. Until we get more help, you’ll have to take potluck
—once you are decent.”

  At least Miss Carville was in good hands. Now Rex could start unraveling the knots in her tangled circumstances. Nanny seemed confident he could. The stew was indeed good and filling, and Murchison had packed some of his old, comfortable clothes. His leg felt better for the hot bath and the rest.

  He had no more excuses for staying in, or for not finding his cousin Daniel.

  Chapter Six

  The footman who was sent to find Daniel came back with his current address, but not his present whereabouts.

  “One of the other boarders says as how Mr. Stamfield oftentimes drinks and dices at Dirty Sal’s, a low den in Seven Dials where no gentleman less’n his size and reputation would dare walk,” the footman reported. “I wouldn’t put one foot there.”

  Rex had no choice but to leave Miss Carville alone with the servants although he worried about her welfare with such watchdogs: a philandering butler and a cowardly footman, a sniveling kitchen maid and a pimply potboy, a masquerading French valet, a housekeeper who could not cook, and a bent old nanny. Meanwhile the real watchdog, Verity, hid under the bed at the first sign of trouble.

  They’d have to do, Rex decided as he tucked a pistol into his waistband and secured a dagger in his boot. His jackass of a cousin had to be stopped from committing suicide in a slum. That, too, was now Rex’s responsibility. Last week he’d been riding and sailing, with nothing but his thoughts and his dog for company. Granted his thoughts were dismal, but now he was in the metropolis, with people depending on him again, fools that they were. He’d sworn to take orders from no one, be beholden to no one, and have no one’s welfare depending on him and his one freakish talent.