by Jackie Ivie
There weren’t any witnesses as she got the first nightgown off, howling in pain the entire time. The remaining ones came off the same way, and she found that, once she began, it wasn’t all that difficult. She was getting soft. That wasn’t good. One day away from that hellhole and she was going soft? Of course, Lord Tremayne’s bouncing carriage ride hadn’t helped, but she was still alive and unmolested, and she meant to remain that way.
The water was hot. Brandy stiffened as her feet touched it, torturing the bites on her toes. And just look. Lord Tremayne had left her a fancy bar of soap. Wasn’t that wonderful of him? How could she force soap onto skin that was already in agony over a little hot water?
She decided to wash her hair first. Brandy gasped several times before submerging, even though short breaths made the fire in her shoulder start up again. She cursed Regis and his tantrum again, but it didn’t help. That stupid guard. Any of his other charges could have slapped him, and he would’ve let it go with an answering slap, but not Brandy. He made certain she’d never even look up when he came around, let alone fight him.
“Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.”
Each word filled her breast with as much fire as the one that was eating her back, and she howled again at her failure to banish the pain.
“I won’t cry. You hear me, God? Nothing on this earth will make me do so! Ever!”
The vow cost her. She couldn’t even suck in air to finish. It was better to bathe as quickly as possible, and dress. Mrs. Wright would return soon and Brandy had to be covered before them. Nobody ever saw Brandy without the barrier of clothing.
Nobody.
Water lapped over the side as she knelt, rubbing the bar of soap with her working hand against the other one, as she forced herself to prepare for scrubbing. She kept telling herself that washing away dirt wasn’t that difficult. It was done every day, a thousand times, to a thousand other folk.
There wasn’t much to her body, but every bit of it was burning when she’d finished. She was also exhausted. She tried to sit back, but finding a part of her back she could lean against took time, especially because her left side wouldn’t work.
Why…if she was a man, she’d return and run Regis through, despite the consequences. That was useless as well as stupid. Revenge never did anybody any good. Sherry had lectured on it often enough…when she wasn’t on her back with a sweaty, rutting male on top of her, or coughing out her lungs into a bucket Brandy had to empty.
Brandy shuddered at the memory and looked up into the face she least wanted to see.
“Water not hot enough, love?”
It was that handsome gent, standing right at the edge of her tub, looking her over. From the expression on his face, it didn’t look like he liked what he saw, either.
Brandy shrank into the water, ignoring the scrape of wood against her back. “The water...is fine.” She looked over his shoulder at the closed door and added a silent curse to that Mrs. Wright. If she couldn’t stand the smell, she could have kept it to herself, couldn’t she?
“Looks like you’re finished. Here. Allow me.”
Brandy couldn’t prevent the cry as he yanked her up by grasping her shoulders and lifting her. His move caused a blizzard of dots to dance right before her eyes. She watched them in amazement.
“Oh…my God.”
He was shaking. That made it hard to capture the elusive faintness. And she hadn’t any reservoir of strength. There was nothing for it. The dots dissipated as Brandy just hung limply while he examined her.
That’s when she faced it. There was no God.
Brandy had slaved, starved, cursed loud and loose and fast, and ignored her cleanliness, all for one thing - to keep her safe and unmolested. And look. It had all been in vain. A man would finally take the only thing left to her.
“Take...your pleasure...and go.”
She forced the words through lips that felt like they belonged to someone else, and all he did was stare.
“My God, Brandy.” The words sounded choked or something. “How in hell—? How could anyone...?”
“I know. I’m not...pretty, My Lord,” she managed to stammer.
The hands holding her tightened until she almost cried out. He took a heavy sigh that lifted her and even that hurt.
“This is going to be difficult. I’ve never broken a bad knit.”
Bad knit? she wondered. She’d been called many things, but that had to be the most original.
“Your compliments…turn my head.”
She smiled, but her stupid mouth drooled, and she watched him glance at the blood that slid over her chin.
“Good God! Even there? Who hit you there?”
She supposed he was trying to be gentle, but his hands made it difficult to think clearly. “Who didn’t...is easier...to answer. Can I go now, My Lord? You— my shoulder....”
She saw his jaw tighten and then she knew. He wouldn’t let her go. And she wasn’t fighting him. After all the years of sacrifice, she felt herself giving in to the pain? All the years of stifling every emotion, yet she was too weak to withstand the hurt that came from him doing nothing more than holding her up.
That was ironic, she decided.
“Please, My Lord? I’ll…even go back to the Bingham’s…if you’ll just let me go.”
His mouth twisted, and she liked the movement. He had sensual lips, just right for teaching a maid the wonders of a kiss....
Wonders? After what Sherry went through? Why would she even think such a thing?
“I’m afraid you sold yourself too high, Brandy.”
She supposed the expression on his face was a smile. It made him even more handsome if that were possible. It also made him look younger and a bit more approachable.
“And I’m afraid I can’t afford ten pounds.”
He started walking with her, holding her shoulder tightly in place. The pain settled to a dull throb. She was so grateful she could’ve kissed him. Her mouth probably wouldn’t make that motion, but she told herself it was the thought that mattered.
“Five?” she asked, hopefully, as he laid her on clean sheets. Brandy assumed Mrs. Wright had already changed them to avoid getting vermin back on Brandy’s clean body.
“Too much.”
He looked a little white around the mouth, and Brandy longed to take away his horrid expression.
Am I really such an ugly trollop, she wondered, to make a man look at me like that?
“Be quick, then.” She asked it as she lay back on such downy softness that her back didn’t even complain.
“Granted.”
And without notice, he slammed a fist into her collarbone.
***
Ah! Heaven was full of lavender-scented sheets, soft feather pillows, and warm broth. Sometimes, it was flavored by a male voice whispering about her welfare. Brandy focused on that when the pain became unbearable. Those were the times she knew she wasn’t in heaven. It was just a dream, but Lord, how she wanted to stay in it!
Reality came late. At least, it looked late, because only one candle lit the cavernous area in which she opened her eyes.
She wondered why anyone would redecorate the sanatorium in such a lavish fashion? Those stupid guards are always mumbling about how the patrons don’t pay enough and which women they can use and sell to get the most money. And then, look at this. When they do get money, they waste it by papering the walls with flowered patterns while the rest is paneled in expensive wood.
It was so like her old bedroom at Chateau Montriart that she buried her face in a pillow and tried to stop breathing. Heaven had been nicer.
“That’s not a very reliable way to commit suicide, Brandy. Although, since it’s you, you’d probably succeed.”
She’d heard that voice before.
Brandy lifted her head to find him, and when she did, her eyes widened and her breath caught. I really am in heaven. She had to be. Where else would she find such a handsome man?
He rose from a chair beside a window
and approached the bed. He was tall. His head grazed the canopy. Brandy watched as he sat gingerly on the edge of her mattress.
“I’m not coming closer.”
He smiled, and that got her squirming against the straitjacket that held her. Tears flooded her eyes at God’s latest cruel joke. They were harder to send back than usual.
“That’s another very unusual talent you have,” he commented. “I wonder how you do it. And why. It’s not such a shame to cry, you know.”
Oh Lord, it’s even harder to send tears back if this man the guards have sold me to talks in such gentle, dulcet tones!
“It’s almost like your eyes suck the moisture back in. I’ve never seen anything like that in my entire life.”
Back at Chateau Montriart she’d had a papa who talked in such tones to her, along with several nursemaids and a governess who professed her love, but not here. Not now.
“Go away,” she muttered.
“Brandy....”
He reached for her, and she gave her banshee cry, filling the canopied area with the echo until the constriction from the straitjacket made her stop.
“You don’t need to do that. I won’t touch you. You have my word.”
He didn’t raise his fist, curse, or look at her like she was something spawned from the bowels of hell. He simply spoke matter-of-factly, while watching her.
“What...do you want?” she finally whispered.
“You to get well.”
He smiled. Oh no. She had to do something quickly, before she released a fit of sorrow that would shame Mama and Papa in their graves. So, she did. She called him every name she knew, in every dialect of French, even the filthiest learned from the gutter, and all he did was look at her.
“I think that was very impressive,” he said, when she’d finished.
She’d turned her face from the blow he was sure to give her. When it didn’t come she had to turn back and see why. He had brilliant, light-blue eyes, with brown lashes that were so thick they shimmered in the candlelight.
She might as well get it over with. Any man who had a woman trussed up and helpless in his bed had only one thing in mind. He was far fairer than any gent Sherry had to service. That helped a bit. But not much.
“I can’t say for certain, since I must not speak French, but I hope some of it was directed at getting you well.”
Well. She had no choice. Might as well call a spade a spade and get it over with.
“I can’t get well unless you unfasten my straitjacket,” she informed him.
He chuckled, and his eyes glowed as if they were covered in a fine sheen of tears, but that was ridiculous.
“You aren’t wearing a straitjacket, love.”
“Then why won’t my arms move?” She lifted her chin, daring him to lie more.
“Because we had to tape your arm into place for it to heal properly this time. And don’t think we didn’t have a devil of a time doing it, what with you screaming and hurling invectives at us through the process, either.”
Brandy felt the blush clear to her cheekbones; then pallor as it receded. She hadn’t blushed like that since she was a child, and it was unfamiliar enough to make her shy, and why? It had to be because a god-like man sat on the edge of her bed, chatting with her, and making her feel like a little girl with a bad case of calf-mooning, love-sick fever.
What is the world coming to? she wondered.
“I think I know why they call you Brandy, and not Helene.”
“Helene’s dead.” She said it quietly. Without any inflection.
He looked at her nose for a moment before looking away. “It’s because your eyes are the deepest shade of burgundy right now, it isn’t even a very challenging mystery.”
“And you are a puling liar,” she hissed, looking away so she wouldn’t have to see the blow coming.
“Compliment not asked for, but taken.”
She turned back so rapidly, his image blurred, and then she swallowed on the surprise. She insulted him, yet he did nothing?
“Are you hungry?”
He prepared to stand, but, for some strange reason, she didn’t want him to go. She wouldn’t admit to raving starvation if it made him leave.
“Not especially.”
“You need to eat more. At eighty-some pounds, you’re smaller than most girls your age.”
“What would you know of my age?”
“Guilty as charged once again. I don’t know much about girls at all. Tell me how old you are, and we’ll figure it out from there.”
“Too old.” She sighed.
“Fifteen?”
She snorted.
“Sixteen? Surely not a day older.”
“I spent my sixteenth birthday wallowing in stable mud outside Calais. I was waiting for my uncle, a great English lord, to arrive so he could take me away from my own personal hell.”
“He didn’t come?” he asked softly.
Brandy snorted again. “Of course he did. How else could I have spent my eighteenth birthday resting in the sanatorium? The devil take it, but it’s difficult to rest there. Do you think my uncle knows?”
She winked, and watched him flinch before he replied.
“You’re eighteen, then? That makes things easier, I suppose.”
“Easier...on whom?”
He had lulled her with gentleness, and she’d been a fool! Brandy clenched the sheets in her fingers, cursing herself for every type of idiot. She’d let down her guard. Hadn’t Sherry instructed her well enough?
“On everyone.”
He stood from the bed, looking down at her like Papa used to. That sent tears to threaten before she sent them away.
He found out I’m old enough, there’s no guardian to worry over, and yet he’s still leaving me without expecting payment for anything? Not even for this comfortable bed?
“Who are you, anyway?” she asked.
He made a sound similar to someone choking.
“I’m your husband.”
Her lips twitched. “Oh, go away with you! I’m not that lucky.”
His laughter filled the room as he left, disappearing into the shadow-land beyond her circle of light before shutting the door. The sound made her smile, too.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Come along now, ducky. Let’s have a nice roll so we can get done with that back.”
“Done with that back.”
Brandy chirped the words at the woman with the face of a thousand sufferings and hands that inflicted worse.
“We’re not going to be difficult this morn, are we, Mum?”
“Difficult? Of course not, love.” Brandy used the woman’s voice and watched the wrinkled face frown. “But…let’s have a change, shall we? What say if you lie on your front while I have a go at you with the hot poker this morn, eh?”
Brandy cackled at the woman’s expression and then that handsome masculine god of a fellow had to go and spoil her fun.
“Now darling, have a care with your tongue. Nurse Gunther only needs to rub salve on your back. She’s never had to resort to hot pokers. Not to my knowledge that is.”
He winked and she smiled glassily back.
“Nurse Gunther has the touch of the whip to her fingers then, My Lord,” Brandy replied.
She didn’t mimic either of them. His sigh of relief was barely audible over her outburst as she rolled over.
“Filthy baggage of a gutter whore! Rotten! Filthy! Damn it all, Woman! Leave off the worse spot, will you? Can’t you see I’m late for my privy?”
Such venom coming from such a small body was shocking. Gil listened passively while he wondered at the learning and the execution. He’d never heard a lady of quality having knowledge of and then using such language, but he’d never visited a sanatorium, either.
“Christ woman! Can’t ye give it a wee rest?”
The man she mimicked wouldn’t be flattered with that imitation, since it sounded uneducated and uncouth. Gil would have smiled if Nurse Gunther hadn’t droppe
d the jar on the carpeted floor, bringing him back to the reason for Brandy’s performance.
“Only another whore would do it so softly!” Brandy snapped. “Where’s yer bloody sense of honor? Just put yer shoulders into it when you slap it on, and then have a heave-to. Wouldn’t ye agree, M’Lord?”
Blank eyes touched his for a moment before Brandy went ramrod stiff. Gil watched her pull tears back before she spoke again. He sucked in his cheeks in consideration.
“I…I can’t finish, Gilly,” Nurse Gunther said, standing back with tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Gil released his cheeks.
“Gilly?” Brandy’s face contorted. “They call you Gilly, do they now?”
If she hadn’t been using the nurse’s voice, it would have had less impact. Nurse Gunther tossed the jar at him as she ran from the room, sobbing loudly.
“Stupid trollop. Crying at the sign of my lovers so,” Brandy continued. “I swear the woman’s more daft than me.” She cackled, adding to her performance.
“She does lack the fine touch of a lover, I’m sure,” Gil replied smoothly. “But now that you’ve gone and frightened her off, you’re left with nothing but me.”
“With you? My very own dream man? Lordy, Gov, but you’re more insane than me. No woman would consider that a bad thing. Heat it nice and hot so it’ll feel better. That’s a love.”
Gil stopped, his hand hovering over a wicked-looking two-inch long slice someone had carved into her shoulder. Then, he placed his palm on it, feeling her stiffen for a second before she laughed loudly. Falsely.
“Ooh…my yes, dream-man. That’s exactly what Brandy’s been cravin’. That she has. Give Brandy a bit more of your favor. She likes that, she does. Ah…yes. That’s a dear.”
“I’m not doing this for my health.” The words whistled through clenched teeth as the wound seeped a bit. “It’s for yours. The least you could do is give your tongue a rest while I do it.”
“Give me tongue a rest? What kind of nonsense is that? Why, I can holler all I like and thank my lucky stars the wondrous fella didn’t try carving out my whole name.” This time her laugh was brittle sounding.