No Place for a Dame (25 page)

She sniffed. “It’s up to you, of course. But if I were you, I would opt for my treatment rather than risk having to have a putrefying limb chopped off.”

He stared at her, bemused. “You haven’t an ounce of finesse in you, do you?”

“Not an ounce,” she agreed, though inside she cringed. He thought her not only unwomanly, but common.

She’d thought… Oh! Who knew what sort of inane nonsense she’d thought? That there was some sort of sympathy between them? That he enjoyed her company? That his kiss had, in fact, not been “just a kiss”?

She turned and applied some soap to the towel and dabbed it in the hot water, her brow knotted. The simple truth was that Giles found it easy to speak to her because he didn’t feel the necessity to edit what he said. If he was always a gentleman with her, it was only because that was his nature, just as her “lack of finesse” was hers. He would speak to his dog in just such a friendly, open fashion. The dog wasn’t going to be affronted.

Well, neither should she. She knew they were not equals, could never be equals. She’d always known it. Or, if there had been a short time when she had thought it could somehow be something else, well, she had been very young and it had been very long ago, and the sound of Giles’s voice coming through the heavy library door saying, “
She’s your gamekeeper’s daughter
, by all that’s holy. And now she has no place in
any
society, either that to which she was born or that which her father serves,” had set her straight on that accord.

“Avery?”

She ironed the ridiculous anguish from her face and turned around. “Yes?”

He frowned, searching her face. “I said that as having an arm lopped off would be bound to upset my tailor, you’d best get on with it, hadn’t you?”

“Yes.” She began wiping the blood from his forearm and biceps, working quickly, trying to keep her concentration fixed on the task at hand and avoiding his eye. It proved an impossible task. Because though it only showed her to be as base and common as he supposed, she could not entirely ignore how his muscles played effortlessly beneath his smooth skin, or how warm he felt, or how smooth. And though she worked as gently as possible to avoid hurting him, she feared she failed for more than once she felt him tremble.

When she’d finally cleaned the blood away, she was relieved to see that the knife wound was neither as long nor as deep as she’d feared.

“If you can manage to keep the arm inactive for the next few days, I believe I shan’t have to stitch it up.” She looked up from frowning at the wound to discover his face only inches from hers. He was regarding her with a frown of his own.

“I’m sorry.” She picked up the laundress’s bottle and took out its stopper. She gave it a quick whiff. Her eyes began watering. “I’m afraid this is going to sting a bit.”

“Ah, well. Good for my soul, I imagine.”

She tipped the flagon and spilled the liquor over his cut. He flinched and shot her an aggrieved glare. “That didn’t sting a bit. It stung like blue blazes.”

“I know,” she admitted. “I cut my leg on a rusty scythe when I was fourteen. My father dealt with it in the same manner. I cried.”

“I may still yet. Next time I’m injured, I shall make sure you are nowhere in the vicinity.”

“Mr. Travers, I will need some strips of linen to bind his lordship’s arm. Could you find me some?”

With a bob of his head Travers left the kitchen. Carefully, Avery pressed the wash cloth over the wound. Now that Travers had left, she could ask the questions that had been plaguing her.

“How did you come to be cut like that? Who is that boy and why are you dressed in this fashion? Why did you come in through the servants’ entrance so late at night? Where have you been that you smell of gin and smoke and your boots are caked with excrement?”

Though he regarded her with a mild, quizzical expression, Giles’s eyes were as sharp as steel spurs. “I would much rather know what you were doing lurking about the servants’ staircase in the middle of the night. If
you weren’t so committed to your masquerade, I would suspect you of meeting a lover.”

She had no answer for such a patently ridiculous statement.

“You weren’t, were you?”

“Of course not. I was up in the attic.”

“The attic.”

“Yes. The attic. The only way up is by the servants’ staircase.”

His deceptively mild expression segued into one of long-suffering equanimity. “And what, pray tell, were you doing in the attic in the middle of the night?”

“Looking out the window.”

He nodded encouragingly. “Because…?”

“Because that is the highest point in the house and tonight has been the first evening since my arrival that the miasma called London fog has not befouled the sky. Tonight I could finally see the stars again.”

“You were in the attic looking at stars.”

She nodded. “Yes. I brought with me a viewing lens such as is used at sea. It’s not a parabolic telescope, but one makes do. I was taking down some notes when I chanced to see a figure approaching the house from the mews. Thinking we were about to be robbed, I made my way down the stairs.”

He stared at her, appreciation for her courage and resourcefulness nowhere in evidence. “With an aim to what end?”

“With an aim to preventing the robbery.”

“Are you a fool?” he exploded. “What if I
had
been a thief and you had surprised me? I might have slit your throat!” He surged to his feet so swiftly that in her haste to back away she bumped into a kitchen chair and nearly fell over.

He caught her by her upper arm, hauling her back to her feet. He did not release her. He stood glaring down at her, his jaw clenched tight and his eyes ablaze.

She glared back.

In her entire life, no one had ever called Avery Quinn a fool and for a very good reason. She wasn’t. The one thing she had, the only thing she possessed that no one could deny or take from her, was her intelligence. And now he dared to call her a sapskull!

“Don’t
ever
do something so reckless again.
Ever
,” he ground out.

“I heard you the first time,” she snapped, knowing she sounded petulant. “And you are hurting my arm.”

He looked down at where he clasped her tightly around her silk-covered upper arm and released her. “I am sorry.”

He stepped away and turned from her, raking his hair back. “But when I think of how you might have been—” He wheeled around. Once more she backed up. “What the bloody hell were you thinking?”

“I was
thinking
very clearly, thank you very much,” she shot back. “In spite of your much vaunted familiarity with my gender, it is apparently a very circumscribed one. You really ought to use something other than the size of a woman’s bosom or how easily she simpers at your quips as the sole criteria by which you judge her.”

She took great pleasure in the way his jaw bunched up and his eyes narrowed at that.

“Some women, myself included, are actually capable of reasoned, judicious action. I did not come down here unarmed.” She reached deep into the pocket of his banyan and produced a small pistol. “I was going to shoot him. Or rather, you. Luckily for you, I am
not
a sapskull and thus waited to see what was what before acting.”

“What in blazes are you doing with a pistol? Where did you get it?
Is that loaded?
”

She didn’t know what she had expected him to say—something about what sort of woman he found appealing being no concern of hers, maybe an apology for calling her a fool, perhaps even another spate of curses—but it wasn’t that. “I brought it from Killylea because I was traveling by public coach, some of which, on occasion, have been known to be robbed, and of course it’s loaded. A fat lot of good it would be unloaded.”

With an impeccable sense of timing, Travers chose that moment to return carrying an armful of linens. He looked from one of them to the other.

“Did you know she has a pistol?” Strand demanded.

Travers blinked. “I… I can’t say I knew specifically, but I am not surprised.”

“And this does not alarm you?” Strand’s tone was icy.

“No, sir. Why would it? After all, her father was your gamekeeper. She’s been shooting all manner of firearms her entire life.” He hesitated before adding, “And, reluctant though I am to offend your lordship, I’d
warrant she’s a better shot then you. I
know
she’s more cautious,” he added with a telling glance at Giles’s bloodstained bandage.

With Traver’s endorsement ringing in her ears, Avery lifted her chin, gave an audible sniff, and swept from the room.

At least she’d left without getting the answers to her questions.

That, Giles thought grimly, was the trouble with educated women. They thought too much. No, he amended, that was the trouble with Avery Quinn.
She
thought too much. She thought too much, saw too much, and asked too many questions, and she refused to be fobbed off with answers that did not fit her observations.

He didn’t worry about what the boy had seen or heard. His focus had been entirely on his dog. Growing up on the fringes of the ratting and fighting rings, Will would have seen plenty of “toffs” out slumming. He would doubtless think Strand was one of them. Avery was entirely another matter.

He had to figure out an explanation for tonight that would satisfy her. She already knew things about him that no one else in the ton did. Too many things. With any luck this masquerade would soon be ending and then he wouldn’t have to worry anymore… except he would. He would wonder where she was, where she would go, and what she would do when she wasn’t here bedeviling him.

Damn it. The only thing he needed to be concerned with was what to tell her, because he had no doubt that he hadn’t heard the last of her questions.

For an instant, he considered simply telling her the truth: that he’d been an agent for the crown, working sub rosa during the war. That at its end he’d retired but had been drawn back into service to aid a friend, who’d since disappeared, and that he had been injured in the course of investigating that disappearance.

What prevented him wasn’t a matter of trust. He trusted her.

But he held too many other men’s secrets. While he would willingly trust her with his life, he had no right to make that decision for anyone else.

Chapter Twenty-Six

I
can see by the way you are moving that your wound is causing you no discomfort this morning. My treatment was apparently effective. Nothing short of miraculous, considering the source. Just think what an imbecile might have accomplished.”

Giles looked up from the pile of mail he was sifting through as he ate his breakfast. Avery stood in the doorway, a ridiculous figure with her round torso, her arms set akimbo and her fists planted on her padded hips. He picked up his teacup and took a sip, eying her over the brim.

Such a proud, touchy creature. How could she be so naive in some respects and so canny in others? He motioned her in.

“Please, sit down. It’s not even nine o’clock yet. Too early for sarcasm. Even for me. I find sarcasm before noon sours the stomach.”

He said this last with deliberate nonchalance; he’d noted how much Avery enjoyed her meals.

The thunderous expression remained in place. If anything her straight, dark brows—blessedly, as yet unaugmented for the day—dipped more sharply, but he noted her gaze stray towards the sideboard.

“Why don’t you fill a plate and join me? We can discuss my shortcomings, my ingratitude, and your doubtless justified grievances against me while we eat. So much more civilized than you standing in the doorway glowering at me, don’t you think? Not to mention much less likely to provoke comment amongst the servants.”

Her head whipped around as if to catch a spy lurking behind her. She turned back. “There’s no one out there to have overheard.”

“Splendid. Pray, come in. No. Leave the door open. There’s a silver vase on the table in the hall outside. I can see anyone coming towards the room in its reflection.”

She only ventured in a few steps before stopping again.

“The scones are particularly toothsome this morning. Candied orange peel, I believe.” She had a particular penchant for oranges. “And, by the way, I do thank you. Sincerely.”