Chapter Three
“Miss Wyndham remains in residence, Your Grace.”
Rowan’s hand stilled upon the letter he had been pretending to read.
Three days.
Three days since the surgeon’s daughter had arrived uninvited. Three days since she had first looked upon him without flinching. Three days since she had calmly declared she would remain available, and then, infuriatingly, done precisely that.
“I am aware, Graves.” He did not look up from the meaningless correspondence before him. “Has she made herself a nuisance?”
“No, Your Grace.” Graves’s tone possessed the perfect neutrality of a servant too well trained to reveal his opinions. “Miss Wyndham has been… remarkably unobtrusive. She has spent much of her time in the stillroom, I believe. Organising the medicinal stores.”
Rowan’s jaw tightened.
The stillroom had been neglected for years—certainly since before the war, when his mother had still lived to oversee the household remedies and herbal preparations that had once formed part of a duchess’s domain. It was a sensible occupation for a healer with idle hours.
A useful one, even.
He resented it intensely.
“She asks nothing of the household?” he pressed. “Makes no demands? Does not attempt to insert herself where she is not wanted?”
“None whatsoever, Your Grace. She takes her meals in her chambers, walks the grounds only in the early morning before the household is stirring, and has expressed no desire for entertainment or company.” A slight pause.
“Mrs Finch reports that she is… pleasant. The staff appear rather fond of her already.”
Of course they were.
Rowan set the letter down with more force than necessary. Miss Eliza Wyndham, with her calm voice and steady eyes, was making herself indispensable without seeming to try. Not through manipulation or charm, but through usefulness—which was somehow worse.
Well. He would not be managed.
“Send for her,” he said abruptly. “I wish to speak with her in my study. At once.”
“If you wish, Your Grace.”
The door closed behind the butler.
Rowan pushed himself slowly to his feet. His leg protested immediately; it had been a difficult morning, the joint stiff and swollen after another restless night. Still, he forced himself upright.
He moved to the window where a narrow gap in the curtains admitted a blade of afternoon sunlight, positioning himself deliberately so that when she entered, she would see the scarred side of his face in full illumination.
He had done something similar three days earlier.
She had not flinched.
He wanted to know whether that composure had been genuine, or merely the disciplined courtesy of a first encounter.
The minutes dragged.
Rowan counted his breaths, an old discipline from the field, using the rhythm to steady the distribution of weight between his good leg and his ruined one. Standing had become an exercise in endurance, every movement measured, every adjustment deliberate.
A knock sounded.
“Enter.”
The door opened.
Miss Wyndham stepped inside dressed, once again, with studied simplicity.
Her morning gown of pale blue suited her colouring, drawing warmth into her complexion, while her dark hair remained neatly pinned beneath the same modest cap.
She closed the door quietly behind her before dropping into a curtsey.
“Your Grace. You wished to see me.”
Not a question. Not hope.
Simply acknowledgement.
“Miss Wyndham.” Rowan kept his tone cold. “I confess myself surprised to discover you still in residence. I believe I was quite clear regarding the temporary nature of your stay.”
“You were, Your Grace.” She straightened smoothly. “You permitted me one night beneath your roof. I chose to regard the absence of any direct dismissal thereafter as permission to remain until told otherwise.”
“A remarkably convenient interpretation.”
“A hopeful one, perhaps.”
The faintest suggestion of amusement touched her mouth.
“I have found that gentlemen determined to refuse assistance often require time in which to reconsider. I thought it prudent to remain available should reconsideration occur.”
“It has not.”
“So I gathered.”
Again, her gaze moved steadily over his scarred face, mercilessly illuminated by the afternoon light. Again, Rowan searched for the recoil that did not come.
“Yet here I am, summoned to your study,” she continued evenly. “One might almost conclude you wished to speak with me.”
Something in her tone—not insolence precisely, but awareness—made Rowan’s hands curl at his sides.
“I wished to speak with you,” he said deliberately, “because your continued presence in my home has become an irritation. You are wasting your time, Miss Wyndham. Whatever my cousin may have promised you, whatever compensation you expected, you shall not receive it. I have no need of a healer hovering over my condition.”
“I do not hover, Your Grace. It interferes with observation.”
“There is nothing for you to observe.”
“On that point, I must disagree.”
She took a single step nearer—not enough to crowd him, merely enough to shorten the distance between them.
“Your leg is troubling you more severely today. You are carrying greater weight upon the right side than you were three days ago, and your shoulders are tense with the effort of compensating for it. The inflammation has worsened, likely from insufficient rest and continued strain upon the joint.”
Rowan stared at her.
The accuracy of the assessment unsettled him. He had said nothing regarding the pain. He had concealed it carefully, as he always did.
Yet she had seen through him at once.
“You presume a great deal, Miss Wyndham.”
“I observe, Your Grace. It is what I was trained to do.”
Her voice softened slightly.
“Your leg is not healing correctly. Without intervention, your mobility will continue to decline until walking becomes exceedingly difficult. That is not conjecture. It is fact.”
“And you believe you can prevent this?”
“I believe I may help. Whether improvement is possible depends upon many things, not least your willingness to permit it.”
She paused.
“I know you do not wish me here. I know you have convinced yourself that isolation is preferable to assistance, and that any offer of help must conceal some ulterior motive. I cannot alter your beliefs. I can only tell you what I see and leave the decision to you.”
The silence stretched between them.
She sees too much, Rowan thought uneasily.
Not the title. Not merely the scars. The weakness beneath them.
“Whatever my cousin is paying you,” he said flatly, “I shall double it. Triple it, if necessary. Name your price, Miss Wyndham, and I shall have a carriage prepared within the hour.”
Something flickered briefly across her face—disappointment, perhaps.
“I do not want your money, Your Grace.”
“Everyone wants money.”
“Not everyone.” She met his gaze steadily. “I came because Lord Marcus described a man who was suffering needlessly when treatment might help. I came because I have seen too many wounded soldiers abandoned to pain and hopelessness simply because no one was willing to persist beyond failure.”
A brief pause.
“I shall leave if you insist upon it. But I will not accept money to do so. That is not why I came.”
Rowan searched her face for calculation, ambition, deceit.
He found nothing.
It infuriated him.
“Very well, Miss Wyndham.” He turned slightly away, presenting her with his unscarred profile.
“Since bribery proves ineffective, allow me to be plain. Your services are not required. Your presence is not wanted. You may remain in the east wing until the end of the week, at which point I expect you to make other arrangements. Is that sufficiently clear?”
“Perfectly clear, Your Grace.”
“Then we have nothing further to discuss.”
He heard the soft rustle of her curtsey. Her footsteps crossed the carpet toward the door.
He waited for the latch to click.
Instead, her voice came once more, quiet but unwavering.
“The inflammation in your leg is causing the surrounding muscles to seize. That is why the pain worsens during the night and is most severe in the morning. Warm compresses before sleep, combined with gentle manipulation of the joint, would provide considerable relief.”
A pause.
“I offer the information only because it may prove useful. What you choose to do with it is entirely your own affair.”
The door closed softly behind her.
Rowan remained motionless in the shaft of sunlight, his hands unsteady with something he refused to examine.
***
Eliza did not allow her composure to crack until she reached the privacy of her chambers.
Only then did she sink into the chair beside the window and press her palms firmly against her skirts to still their trembling.
Well. That could have gone better.
She had known, before arriving at Thornwood Hall, that the Duke would not welcome her presence. Lord Marcus’s letters had painted the portrait of a man buried beneath despair, determined to drive away anyone who attempted to help him.
She had expected resistance.
She had expected anger.
She had expected the sharp cruelty wounded men sometimes wielded in self-defence.
What she had not expected was the way he looked at her.
Those grey-green eyes studied her with such relentless intensity that she felt stripped bare beneath them. And when he had offered her money to leave, desperation, not arrogance, had roughened his voice.
He fears disappointment more than pain, she realised.
That, perhaps, was the deeper wound.
It was not unfamiliar to her. She had seen the same fear in soldiers her father had treated after the war—men who had taught themselves not to hope because hope, once disappointed often enough, became unbearable.
The Duke had built walls around himself high enough to withstand a siege.
But walls could erode.
Patience and persistence, her father had always said, were a healer’s greatest tools. One could not force a wound to close. One could only create the conditions for healing and wait.
The question was whether she possessed enough time.
Four days.
Four days before he expected her departure.
She rose and crossed to the small desk where she had arranged her supplies: dried herbs, tinctures, salves—the familiar tools of her trade. Sorting them steadied her.
If the Duke refused her help, she would simply make herself useful elsewhere.
The stillroom required restoring. Several tenant families had children suffering from summer colds. There was work to be done, whether or not Thornwood’s master consented to becoming her patient.
And perhaps, in time, quiet usefulness would accomplish what argument could not.