Hull’s eyes widened. “Uh, you ain’t wed yourself, are you, Tiger? If you are, I meant no offense.”
“I’ve not yet fallen victim to the parson’s mousetrap, thank God. Though I congratulate you on your acquisition of so lovely a wife.”
“Tanks. Liddy’s comely still, ain’t she?”
“She is.”
In the face of this purely masculine exchange, Isabella felt suddenly uncomfortable. Her hair had long since escaped its pins, her borrowed dress was ripped and dirty and had the neckline cut down to there, and she was alone in Alec’s company. Probably she should feel flattered that Tim Hull might suppose she was Alec’s wife. For the first time in weeks, Isabella was acutely aware of the unconventionality of her position. Only a wife or a female relative could respectably travel unchaperoned with a man and keep her reputation. Only a wife could share a man’s bedchamber and still retain any claims to the title “lady.” Clearly she and Alec were to share a single chamber. Alec seemed to take it as a matter of course, as did the innkeeper and his wife. Requesting a separate room would be ridiculous, even if Hull could be persuaded to cast out another patron to accommodate her. Alec needed tending, and she had no intention of leaving him to anyone else’s care. Besides, she had come too far beyond the pale to start worrying now about the proprieties. If ruin was to be her lot, she had already thoroughly embraced it.
XXXVI
J
ust then a great cry went up outside, making all of them look toward the open door and what was visible of the innyard beyond it.
“ ’Tis the red, the red!” screamed a grimy youth perched on the steps just outside the door. Beside him, an equally unprepossessing youth jumped up and down with excitement.
“Mr. ’Ull, Mr. ’Ull, it be the red!” The second lad came streaking through the door, skittering to a halt as he found the one he sought. “Mr. ’Ull, ’tis the red!”
“Bloody good!” Hull pounded the youth’s back at the news of the victory. “Blimy, I ’ad a packet ridin’ on that one!” Then he remembered his audience. “Jimmy, now it’s all over, do you go take care of the ’orse that’s left in front o’ the barn. And if Mistress ’Ull ’asn’t already told ’im, tell Mick to ride for the doctor. We’ve a guest who needs ’is attention. Tell ’im ’e’ll be well paid for ’is trouble.”
“Aye, sor.”
With a curious look at Alec and Isabella, Jimmy scampered back out the door. Hull’s eyes followed him, the expression on his face almost wistful. Isabella guessed that he wished he could follow the youth, and join in the excited celebration that had erupted in the innyard in the wake of the red’s victory.
Then, as Hull’s attention was distracted, Alec swayed, making Isabella almost lose her balance as she sought to hold him up. She took a quick step sideways, her arm tightening around his waist, her eyes flying to his face. He was whiter than before, and sweating noticeably as he gritted his teeth. For just an instant he seemed to slump. Then, with what Isabella knew was an effort of sheer will, he pushed himself a little away from her, standing more or less on his own as he fought to conceal the full extent of his weakness from the man whose eyes were even then swinging back to him. Apparently Alec’s trust in Tim Hull was something less than one hundred percent.
“Alec …” She tried to prop him up unobtrusively with her body.
“I’m all right,” he muttered for her ears alone.
But he looked as if he might collapse at any moment.
“Mr. Hull, I’m sorry to hurry you, but I am beginning to feel distinctly unwell. Do you suppose we might go on up, whether the room is quite ready or not?”
By taking the onus upon herself, Isabella hoped to attain two objectives: get Alec a place where he might lie down while at the same time concealing just how weak he was. If Alec did not truly trust the innkeeper, then she would not either.
“Oh, o’ course. What a clunch I am, keepin’ you standin’! And you injured, too, Ti—”
“Just plain Alec, while we’re here.”
“Certainly, certainly! I understan’ completely. I—”
Before he could get under way again, Liddy reappeared, gliding toward them as silently as a ghost.
“Room’s ready,” she said brusquely. “And Mick should be back with the doctor anon.”
“Good, good. Come on then, Ti—uh, Alec, and I’ll show you and the lady up. This way.”
With Isabella’s support, Alec managed to follow Hull down the dark hall to an even darker one in the rear. A narrow flight of stairs led upward from that, too narrow to permit two to walk abreast. Reluctantly Isabella dropped her arm from around Alec’s waist. He didn’t even sway. Only Isabella could guess what it cost him to grasp the oily banister with nonchalance and trudge up the steep stairs on his own. ’Twas a performance worthy of a master.
“ ’Tis our best,” Hull said proudly, throwing open the door to a room just beyond the top of the stairs. It was small by the standards Isabella was used to, furnished with an iron bedstead that might sleep two if they lay very close, a washstand, chest and chair. The walls were simple whitewash, the oak floors bare. The smell of boiling cabbage was everywhere—the odor pervaded the establishment—but the room seemed reasonably clean.
“You’ve done well for yourself, Hull,” Alec said, passing by him into the room. “ ’Tis a fine place you have here.”
“ ’Tis all thanks to you, Tiger. Uh, Alec. If you ’ad not—”
“Excuse me, but I’m very tired and I must lie down. I hope you will not think me rude if I hurry you on your way.”
“Oh—oh, no, ma’am, not at all,” Hull stuttered, looking at Isabella with as much surprise as if she’d been a two-headed goat. She supposed she had offended him, and didn’t much care. Alec was getting weaker by the minute.
Alec shrugged and smiled apologetically, as if to say, “You know what women are.” Hull nodded with transparent sympathy as he backed from the room.
“I’ll send the doctor up when ’e comes. Can I bring you anything? A meal? The missus is cooking cabbage and hocks.”
“A meal would be fine—and Hull, I’d appreciate the loan of a pistol if you have it.”
Hull never even blinked. “Anything you want, Tiger, and ’tis yours.”
“I’ll remember this, Hull.”
With that promise in keeping, Hull took himself off. Isabella closed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock. When she turned back to the room, Alec had sunk down on the end of the bed, where he slumped wearily against the chipped footrail.
“You shouldn’t have stood about so long,” Isabella said in a scolding tone, crossing to the bed and pulling back the covers. She only hoped the bed did not house bugs—but she refused to let such squeamish thoughts daunt her. They were lucky to have found a haven, even such a one as this.
“ ’Tis always a mistake to let anyone see you vulnerable. Hull was my man once, but time and circumstance have a way of changing things.”
“You don’t trust him.”
“I don’t distrust him. I am just taking reasonable precautions. You learn to, after a while.”
With the bed readied, Isabella came to kneel in front of him. Instinctively, as she might have started to undress a tired child, she undid the buttons of his shirt so that she might peel the filthy garment from him. Alec suffered her ministrations without protest, watching her with a queer little gleam in his eyes that she did not see. His shirt fell open, exposing a chest that definitely belonged to a man, not a child. With her head bent over her task, Isabella never even noticed until at last her fingers brushed the warm, muscle-ridged skin of his belly. Unbuttoning his shirt when he was so weak had seemed perfectly natural until she touched his flesh; then tiny sparks seemed to shoot through her fingers all the way down to her toes and back up again. Blushing, she pulled her hands away, leaving the shirt hanging open to his waist.
“There, now, I’ve unbuttoned your shirt for you. You must do the rest yourself.” Her tone was brisk to cover her confusion. She didn’t look at him as she stood, but rather turned away to busy herself with the pillows.
“Shy, Isabella?” There was a note to Alec’s voice that made her cheeks grow even warmer. She thought of all the extremely coarse remarks he could make about how she no longer had reason to be shy with him, and almost cringed as she waited for one. Instead he said softly, “I appreciate your care of me.”
Isabella looked at him then, to find those golden eyes fixed on her with an odd expression that she could not quite decipher.
“I would do the same for anyone in need.”
The words were gruff, because the truth of the matter was that she was lying. There was no one else in the world she would do the same for, unless duty or charity compelled her rather than the tenderness that had come over her when she had looked at Alec, injured and weary. The thought of undressing a weakened Bernard made her shiver with distaste. Her feelings for her husband were in no wise tender. And her father—after years of neglect on his part, she could not truthfully say that she felt for him any degree of tenderness, either. He was her father, and for that he was owed her respect and obedience, but love?
For the first time it occurred to her just how very lacking in love her life was.
“Would you indeed?”
“What?” Lost in thought, it took her a minute to return to the present.
“Never mind. Aren’t those pillows sufficiently plumped yet? You’ve pummeled them to within an inch of their lives.”
He was teasing her, as usual, but she was too relieved that he was capable of it to take umbrage. Suddenly her world rocked back into place, and she was able to banish the unusual melancholy that had threatened to overwhelm her.
“You should be abed. If I help you with your boots, can you manage the, er, rest?” Self-conscious, she left off fluffing the pillows.
“I could—if I had any intention of going to bed. I do not.” From the obstinate look on his face, she could tell that he meant what he said. Isabella looked at him for a moment, aghast.
“Don’t be silly! You’ve been shot, you’ve lost a great deal of blood, and you’ve been looking like you could faint for the better part of an hour. Of course you must go to bed. Immediately.”
“I’ve never fainted in my life. I’ll certainly not start now, over this. ’Tis little more than a graze.”
“Alec, would you please get into bed?” She was losing all patience with him.
“No.”
They exchanged measuring stares. Isabella had to fight back an urge to clout him upside his injured head. He was being a silly, stubborn fool, and to what purpose?
“I assume there is some valid reason that you are refusing to do what any sane man would? Certainly you don’t have to prove to me what a brave fellow you are. I assure you, I’m quite impressed already.”
“I am waiting until the bloody sawbones that you insisted on comes and goes. I’ll not give anyone reason to suppose me helpless unless I must.”
“Oh.” That aspect of the situation had not occurred to her. With the wind taken out of her sails, Isabella felt vaguely foolish for not having figured that out for herself.
“Understand this, Isabella: these men are like jackals—if they sense weakness, even the most normally trustworthy of them are likely to close in for the kill. I’ll not chance it, for your sake as well as mine. Without me, you’d have about as much chance here as a nice, juicy bone thrown into a pit of starving dogs.”
“I’d not thought of that, I confess. Very well, then, if you’ll not lie down, at least let me wash some of the blood from your face for you.”
“Now, that I’ll not object to,” he said, and essayed a smile. The crooked attempt had an effect on Isabella that was far out of proportion to its relative dazzle. Her heart swelled, and she fairly bristled with protectiveness. Such a reaction frightened her. Not for the first time, it occurred to her that she was growing far too fond of Alec. She must not allow herself to fall in love with him. That way lay heartbreak.
There was water in the pitcher on the washstand. It was stone-cold, and probably stale, but it served to splash her face and wash her hands in. Catching a glimpse of her reflection in the small mirror hanging on the wall above the bowl, she almost cringed. She looked like a witch, or worse. Quickly she set about trying to remedy the damage the day had wrought to her hair. Gathering the trailing ends together, she gave the tangled mass a couple of twists to form a knot and thrust the pins through. Though her reflection did not show a great deal of improvement, under the circumstances she decided that it was the best she could do.
Isabella poured some of the water remaining in the pitcher into the matching porcelain bowl and carried it and a linen towel that had been draped over the towel rack to the bed. Sitting on the mattress beside Alec, bowl in her lap, she dipped the towel in water and reached up to gently sponge his bloody face.
He rested wearily back against the footrail, suffering her ministrations with closed eyes. Blood no longer seeped from beneath the bandage, and that which was on his face was mostly dry. She wiped at it, careful not to hurt him as she cleaned the gore from the chiselled planes of his face and neck. There was dried blood in his eyebrows, in the ear nearest the wound, along the side of his neck. More blood was caked in the curling mat of hair on his chest. By the time she was half-through, the water in the bowl was murky red.
“Can you take off your shirt?” she asked as she stood up to exchange the water in the bowl for fresh.
Alec’s eyes opened then. Isabella could feel them following her as she moved.
Again she waited for a comment or jest that would put her to the blush. Again he surprised her.
“You’ve uncommon gentle hands.” he said, then shrugged out of his shirt without another word.
Returning, self-conscious now as he sat before her bared to the waist, his magnificent torso available for her to look at and touch as she would, Isabella knelt at his feet with the fresh bowl of water, the better to get at the blood that had congealed on his chest. His shirt had absorbed a good deal of the gore, but still his chest hair was matted and sticky, and brown streaks anointed his muscled rib cage. Isabella forged herself to work slowly and carefully, so as not to betray her rising awareness of him. Yet so sensitive was she to the heat emanating from his body, to the silky texture of his body hair and satin sleekness of his skin, that by the time she had finished her pulse was tripping along at twice its normal speed.