No Place for a Dame (24 page)

Alfie smiled. “Wash yer sins away in the river, me mum used to say.”

An image of lovely Anne Seward being dumped like so much refuse in the Thames darkened Strand’s voice. “Find out what ship those two came in on. Find anyone who spent time with them.” He withdrew a small purse and let it fall on the table between them. “I’ll pay handsomely for that bit of news. You can reach me in the usual manner.”

“You’ll come down here?”

“Don’t I always?” He pushed his chair back, preparing to rise.

Chapter Twenty-Five

I
t was well past midnight by the time Giles made his way down the short flight of steps to his townhouse’s servants’ entrance. The only person he expected to find awake was Travers, who would hold vigil despite Strand’s repeated orders not to wait up. With a rising time only four hours away, the rest of the staff would be ensconced in their beds.

And, indeed, Travers hovered just inside the doorway, clad in a paisley robe and holding a lantern. Without preamble, Giles stepped inside and thrust the dog into his arms. The little bitch looked up into his startled face, drew her lips back, and snarled.

The display did not faze Travers. He closed the door and sniffed, scowling. “What is this?”

“That is my dog. Its previous owner, a scrawny little urchin, is lurking about in the garden. He’s laboring under the misconception that I have not noticed he’s followed me. I’m afraid the boy is equally malodorous. Find the boy a bed with Sam in the stables tonight, then in the morning have Mrs. Silcock clean both the boy and the dog up.”

“Yes, sir.” Travers scowled, moved closer. “M’lord, is that
blood
on your coat? It
is
blood. Are you… have you been injured?”

“Nothing that won’t heal.”

“What happened? An accident of some sort? Is your arm broken? I shall send for a doctor at once—”

“No,” Giles said. “You will not. There is nothing broken. I wasn’t in an accident. It’s a knife wound.”

“
What?
”

At the sound of the female voice echoing down from the servants’ staircase, both Travers and Giles swung around. Avery materialized from the darkness and flew to his side. Without a second’s hesitation, she began pulling off his coat, her brow knotting fiercely.

Though she hadn’t bothered to cinch his dressing gown round her waist, leaving it billowing out and concealing the figure beneath, and the lighting was poor, she still managed to look damnably appealing. Her bare feet peeped from beneath the hem and her hair sprang in a tousle of auburn curls around her pink, scrubbed face. She managed to pull off his greatcoat and let it fall in a heap to the ground then set to work on his coat, her head bent to search for his wound. The nape of her neck looked vulnerable and silky and tender.

His fingers itched to touch her there. To touch her anywhere. And kiss her once more—

She let out a cry of dismay as she peeled his coat from his shoulder, exposing the bloody wad of his handkerchief. Her gaze met his accusingly. “You need to have this attended to at once.”

Her vehemence took him aback. “I will.”

“I’ll send for the doctor,” Travers said.

“No.” Avery stabbed her finger at Travers. “They’ll only bleed him and he’s bled quite enough as it is. I’ll tend to him.”

“You? I don’t think that’s proper,” Travers said.

“Proper or not, I don’t care.” Her chin rose obstinately. “My father sewed up more dogs and horses than most doctors have men and, I’ll warrant, with far fewer of their wounds turning septic. And you know it, Mr. Travers. Just as you know that I helped him.”

She turned to Strand, eyes narrowing in challenge. “You are going to wait for me in the kitchen. You”—she glared at Travers—“are going to bring a bottle of the strongest liquor the house owns while I sneak into Mrs. Silcock’s sitting room and pinch her sewing kit.”

The two men regarded each other mutely.

“What shall I do with the dog?” Travers finally asked, holding up the little terrier as if she were somehow preventing them from taking any further action. The cur eyed Avery with open malevolence.

Without a word, Avery strode to the servants’ door and yanked it open. A small, raggedly figure tumbled in at her feet.

She reached down and hauled him up by his ear. “
You
take that dog to the stables and you tell the stablemaster—Sam is his name—to find you a bed. You and the dog sleep there.

“First thing in the morning you present yourself at this door. You tell whoever answers that Lord Strand wants you clean. Very clean. You’re to bathe not once, but twice. With hot water.

“
Then
you go back to the stables and you do the same to that dog. Then, and only then, you can come back and have a proper, hot meal. Do you understand?”

The boy stared at her, round-eyed and open-mouthed. Giles empathized. He was very much afraid that his mouth was a little slack, too. She had just commandeered not only Travers and his own person, but his dog and his boy, too. He wasn’t sure he liked it. But it was damn amusing.

“
Do you understand?
”

“Yes… sir. Ma’am. Sir,” the boy stuttered.

Avery rolled her eyes. “
Now
.”

With a squeak, the boy nabbed the dog from Travers’s arms and bolted back out the door, kicking it shut behind him.

She turned and regarded Travers and Giles with an expression that did not brook any argument. “Well?”

There was nothing for it but to obey.

Five minutes later, Avery returned with the lidded basket she’d stealthily procured from Mrs. Silcock’s sitting room and plopped it down on the tabletop. Giles was looking about uncertainly, holding a napkin pressed
to his shoulder. It occurred to her that he’d never been in this kitchen before, though as a young man at Killylea he’d been as comfortable in the kitchen as the drawing room.

She did not like the color of his face, or rather the lack thereof. “Sit down before you fall down.” She pointed at the chair.

With a mocking tip of his head, he did as told, leaving her to examine the huge, modern, enameled stove that squatted against one wall. It took her a few minutes, but she soon figured out how it worked. She started a fire in its cast iron belly and set a pot to boil on its top; then, satisfied, she wiped the soot from her hands. She turned to find Giles watching her.

She was well aware that few men would allow her to do what she intended to do and she wasn’t certain Giles was amongst their number. He would be used to being tended by trained physicians and was bound to be more confident in their abilities than hers. She would have been, had their positions been reversed. She had a great deal of respect for doctors, but—and herein lay the rub—her respect was for their academic acumen.

Her observations suggested that people like her father and Mrs. Bedling and the midwife in Killylea Village, with their years of hands-on experience, had a greater understanding of how to
practice
medicine.

“Do you trust me?”

He smiled wryly. “To do what?”

“To tend that cut.”

He grimaced. “For heaven’s sake, Avery. It’s a simple cut. Travers will bandage it and that will be that.”

“That would be most ill-advised. I assume you were cut by a knife. I also assume that it was filthy. My father has long observed that the wounds that hounds or horses receive from dirty or rusted blades or nails often fester. By cleaning them thoroughly before they begin to scab over, he found he could prevent a great many of them from becoming putrid.”

“You want to wash the cut.”

“Yes. Then, possibly, sew it shut.”

He regarded her with a quizzical look then shrugged. “Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Yes. Fine. It’s obvious neither you nor Travers will be content until something further has been done to my person and as I’d like to retire to my bed, I acquiesce. Have at it.”

She’d expected him to put up more of an argument. Now that he hadn’t, she felt unaccountably awkward. “Take off your shirt.”

“You promise not to faint?”

She rolled her eyes at that, her equanimity fully restored. “As magnificent as your physique is reputed to be, I have every faith that I shall be able to maintain consciousness in its presence,” she said dryly. “I have been to museums, you know.”

His brows shot up with what she was sure was feigned amazement. “Why, Miss Quinn, I was referring to the sight of my blood, not the sight of my body.”

Her equanimity vanished. Her gaze dropped from him and heat boiled up into her cheeks.

“Of course, now I shall be on tenterhooks worrying that my reputation promises more than I actually deliver.”

She peeked up. He was grinning at her, his gray eyes sparkling like sunlight on an icy sea. She refused to be chased from the room by his laughter. She lifted her chin.

“I’ll let you know.”

She didn’t expect him to laugh, but he did. She pointed at his ruined shirt. He unbuttoned the top and, with a slight grimace, pulled the ruined shirt over his head.

Thank heavens the pain distracted him from noting her reaction because as far as she was concerned his reputation could not possibly have overstated his beauty. Yes, she had seen statues, idealized versions of masculinity, but they were fashioned of cold marble; Giles was vibrant, living flesh.

His body was a hard, muscled landscape, from the dramatic hills of his shoulders and pectoral muscles, to the smooth valley along his spine, to the chiseled steppes of his ribs, all of it perfect. Deep bronze hair covered his chest, darkening as it narrowed to trace a path down the middle of his belly and disappeared beneath his waistband.

Unwillingly, her imagination conjured up the memory of his kiss, the feel of his mouth covering hers, and his arms surrounding her.
Just a kiss
, he’d said. She’d reminded herself of his trivializing words a hundred times since and still could not begin to match his insouciance.

But at least she could pretend.

“Well? How do I measure up?”

She turned away so he couldn’t see her blush. “Frankly, you are average at best.”

He chuckled. “Oh, I think we both know that’s not true.”

“You are the most vain, narcissistic man I have ever met.”

“I know,” he said cheerfully. “I was cosseted to a criminal degree as a child.”

She was about to make some caustic reply but then she remembered that he
hadn’t
been cosseted as a child. At least, he had not been cosseted as a sixteen-year-old, which was how old he’d been when she’d first met him. His father had been aloof and distant with his second son, his mother absent, his siblings dead or gone. She might well be one of the few people who knew that but he’d forgotten she did.

She frowned, thinking how odd it was that he would purposefully misrepresent his upbringing. Like her padded corset, an over-indulged childhood seemed to be part of some disguise, just like his vanity and narcissism.

A clean towel hung on dowels above the huge sinks. She took it down and used it as a mitt to carry the pot of simmering water to the table. She looked around until she spied a pot of soft lye soap near the sinks and brought that over, too, just as Travers returned.

He handed an opaque bottle over to Avery. “ ’Tis some sort of spirits made from potatoes that the Russian laundress swears will numb any pain, mental or physical. Shall I pour him a glass?”

“It’s not to dull his senses, it’s to clean his wound.”

“You’re going to use the liquor to
clean
his wound?” Though Travers sounded doubtful, he didn’t outright object.

“Yes. I intend to wash it with soap and water then soak a bandage in this liquor and apply it. Tomorrow, I shall rebind the wound with a poultice of honey and herbs.” She glanced at Giles. “With your permission.”

“I’m assuming the request is merely a matter of form.”

She wasn’t sure how to answer.

“Truth to tell, I never saw a beast that Dermot Quinn treated that didn’t recover.” Travers’s unexpected championship made her smile. “Mostly.”

“Ah. Mostly.” Giles nodded, blew out a little breath, and looked up at her. “I don’t suppose you’d consider following the proscribed route of simply letting my poor shoulder be?”