Chapter 11
Rosalind was whisked up the stairs by the ladies shortly after the gift-giving, leaving Matthew alone in his sitting room, staring at the empty boxes and wondering what they were saying to her as she was being changed out of her wedding gown and back into comfortable, loose clothing to accommodate her leg.
She’d be wearing those modified nightgowns they mentioned and some of the lovely new dressing gowns she’d been gifted today for at least the next week, from what he gathered. And he wasn’t supposed to touch her yet.
Not the way he wanted.
He clenched his teeth and glanced up into the beam of sunlight streaming in through the sitting room window, welcoming the blaring obliteration to his sense of sight that came with it.
“There, now, Matthew,” said Roland Reed, returning from the kitchenette with a refreshed glass of champagne and coming to squat onto the ottoman opposite where Matthew sat on the sofa. “Shall I tell you all about what happens on your wedding night?”
Matthew clicked his canines together, blinking away the sun spots in his vision and shifting his annoyed attention back to his friend, lounging on the round cushion of his footstool like a grinning cat.
He tipped the champagne into his mouth and pushed his pink-gold curls behind his shoulders, grinning as he swallowed. “Are you a blushing groom, my friend?”
“Leave him alone,” Tod called from the kitchen, too far away to hear the specifics of what was being said but close enough to know that Reed was speaking, which was evidently enough.
Matthew narrowed his eyes and leaned forward, pushing his elbows into his knees as he drew closer to his old friend. “What do you think,” he asked quietly, “I was doing during those years I spent at Cambridge? Praying quietly in a corner?”
Reed’s eyes sparkled, a turquoise blue filled to the brim with mischief. “Why, yes,” he drawled. “That was always my assumption.”
“Do you want to know what I think?” Matthew asked, the corners of his own lips quirking up. “I think you’re trying to distract yourself from the fact that you’re in the same house as Miss Casper by antagonizing me. Coward.”
Reed leaned back, still smirking, but with a dimming to that gloating sparkle. He tutted at Matthew. “Don’t worry,” he cooed. “Lovely Rosalind will be gentle when she deflowers you.”
“Enough! I said leave him alone,” Tod repeated, coming into the archway between the two rooms with a towel between his hands. “If you two start punching each other today, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Who’s punching?” Ambrose Aster asked, popping out from the same partition with a sudden interest. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” all three other men said in irritated unison, making the poor man frown and deflate.
“I thought there might be a spot of punching by the end of it, is all,” Ambrose lamented, leaning against the curving arch and crossing his arms. “The newspaper boy had one coming, at the very least.”
“What is your fascination with casual violence?” Reed asked him, looking genuinely baffled.
“Me?” Ambrose returned, raising his pale brows. “You are an enforcer by trade!”
“Not because I find it particularly enthralling,” Reed answered, his pitch going up a bit.
“Enough,” Tod said again, and turned back into the kitchen, rubbing his hands into the towel and grumbling to himself.
Matthew found himself chuckling as he watched him go.
“Poor Tod,” he said with a sigh. “Always the only adult in the room.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Ambrose with a sniff. “I am also fully grown. Is there any more cake?”
Matthew sighed and leaned back on the sofa cushions, letting Reed and Ambrose scuttle off in search of remaining sweets until he was summoned up the stairs.
To be completely frank, wearing a full kit of proper men’s clothing was starting to wear on him.
Between the very high, very tight cravat, the double embrace of the waistcoat and jacket, and the clash of multiple fabric textures, he was feeling a bit jealous that Rosalind was about to change into midday sleepwear when he still had several hours to go in this emerald-green prison.
He was going to divest himself of the cravat, at the very least, as soon as everyone had gone.
“Mr. Everly!” came Hannah’s voice from the top of the stairs. “We are ready for you! Please bring the ointment.”
He panicked. Only a little.
He found himself standing over the couch, searching frantically as though the ointment had grown legs and slithered off under the cushions or behind the furniture, until Tod tapped him on the shoulder and pointed, very politely, to where it sat on the sideboard, where it had always been.
He cleared his throat and nodded, hoping he was not blushing too furiously as he snatched up the little metal pot and bounded up the stairs.
Hannah, Millie, and Vix were gathered on the landing, ready to depart as he arrived. They were clustered together, giggling amongst themselves, very likely at his expense, as he passed. He nodded at them anyway because he, too, wished to be an adult.
In the bedroom, Rosalind and Mae were chatting next to his bookshelf, perusing the spines.
Rosalind was wearing the salmon-colored dressing gown, a light gauzy one that would not weigh her down or make her overheat in the late-summer air.
Her crown of roses was on top of his chest of drawers, glowing in the afternoon light.
Mae turned first, brightening as he entered. “Ah, there you are,” she said. “And you brought the ointment. Wonderful. Do me a favor and roll your sleeve up. I’m going to demonstrate the correct amount of pressure on your arm first. I have found that is the easiest way to get the lesson across.”
“My arm?” he asked, a little stupidly, already moving to unbutton his jacket.
“Yes, and then you will try it on mine. It’s best to perfect the technique before you go digging around in an actual injury, wouldn’t you agree?” she said cheerfully. “I see you’ve a copy of The Canterbury Tales. May I borrow it?”
“You may,” he said, though he realized as he spoke that it sounded like a question.
He threw the green jacket on the bed and removed the cuff link on his left sleeve, moving to quickly roll up the linen.
“Given your prolific knowledge of literature, Miss Casper, I am surprised that you have not already read it.”
“I am too,” she agreed, tilting her head to the side. “Sometimes something obvious misses us, I suppose. I haven’t read 1,001 Nights either, if you’ve a copy of that lying around. Yes, just to the elbow is fine.”
“I have that one,” Rosalind said, sounding exceptionally pleased to be able to offer it. “I have it at home. Or … oh, I mean at Abe’s house.” She blushed at the correction, touching her cheek. “This is home now.”
Matthew glanced at her as he tightened his sleeve into place, his stomach twisting lower into his body.
Her eyes were on his forearm, blinking politely at where he’d exposed the flesh. She drew a few steps closer, as though she wished to also learn how to tend to her own wound.
“I would do it myself,” she said with a hint of apology, turning to gesture at how both hands could not twist around to grip the rear of her own thigh. “It is only that I cannot reach.”
He blinked, attempting not to stare at the location where she was pointing, and nodded. “It is no trouble,” he managed to say. Somehow.
Mae pulled the ointment jar from his hands and twisted the top off, tossing it onto the bed with a little plop. She took a tiny little dab out with the tip of her finger and set the jar aside, pulling his wrist forward and smearing onto the skin directly above the joint.
“You will use both hands,” she said, gripping his forearm with her palms and looking up into his face to make sure he was listening.
He shifted his weight and turned his attention to her, because he hadn’t been, until she checked.
“Both thumbs,” she said for emphasis. “Use an arc motion like this,” she said, picking up the salve with the motion of her thumbs and using gentle pressure to push it into the muscle of the top of his arm. “Do you feel how it is deeper than the skin but shallower than the bone?”
He nodded, watching the way his skin pulled around her glossy thumbnails and the darker pads of her sleek fingers against hair-dappled arms. It was surprisingly pleasant, he thought.
“If you push too lightly, it will do nothing,” she said, dropping his arm.
“And too hard will hurt her. Her injury won’t feel like your arm.
The bruise is a hard clot of pooled blood, sort of like a scab but deep under the skin and quite large.
What you’re doing is trying to encourage it to break up and heal faster. Now try it on me.”
She flung her arm out so suddenly that he startled, her dark brows raised in expectation. “Go on,” she said. “If you bruise me a little, I will not be cross. I’d rather you get it right with some trial and error than lose the opportunity to help with too much caution.”
He grimaced but reached for the pot and made an attempt anyway.
It took three tries to get the amount of pressure right, or at least right enough to satisfy the exacting Miss Casper.
When she pulled away, she nodded and gave him a little smile, holding up their matching glossy forearms, and then turned to Rosalind.
“We ought to have a little trial run now, just to take advantage of my presence,” she said. “I’d like to see the state of it anyhow. We’ll only use a little of the ointment, I promise. You won’t be stuck here all afternoon.”
Rosalind frowned but nodded. “Yes, I suppose that is sensible,” she said with a little sigh, already turning to shrug off the dressing gown.
Matthew wondered if, in the absence of the option to flee directly out the window or down the stairs, he might simply melt into a puddle and drip through the floorboards.