Chapter Ten
The next morning, Isaac went to look for Nell. He felt bad about how their dancing lessons had ended. Although he had not meant to upset her, he obviously had, and he wished to apologise.
He was crossing the yard when he spotted her, staggering under the weight of a grain sack nearly as large as she was. Her arms were trembling with the effort of keeping it balanced against her hip as he hurried toward her.
"I can manage," she said before he had said a single word.
But she promptly proved herself wrong by lurching a step sideways as the sack's weight shifted, nearly toppling her into the mud.
Isaac crossed the remaining distance in three strides. He lifted the sack clean from her arms with an ease that seemed to offend her more than it relieved her.
"I told you I could manage it," she said, glaring up at him with an irritation so genuine that Isaac laughed, despite his best effort not to.
"Course you could."
He settled the sack easily against his own shoulder, watching her attempt to compose herself.
"For someone so determined to prove she needs no help from anyone, you've remarkably little strength above the waist."
"Not every problem in life is solved by brute strength, My Lord." She straightened, brushing dust from her apron. "Some of us manage well enough with cleverness instead."
"Cleverness won't carry a sack of grain to the stables, though, will it?"
He was still grinning, and the sight of her flustered indignation only widened it further.
"Nor will it do you much good if you're set upon on some empty road between here and the village of an evening, come to that."
Something in her expression shifted, the irritation giving way to a more guarded wariness.
"I don't take your meaning, My Lord."
"I mean," Isaac said, an idea settling into place even as he spoke it aloud, "that a woman living as you do—travelling alone, working in a house full of strangers, with no family near enough to look after her—ought to know how to defend herself, if it should ever come to that.
The roads aren't always safe. Servants walk them alone often enough, and not every man they meet along the way means them well. "
"I've no interest in fighting anyone, My Lord."
"Didn't say you'd interest in it. Said you ought to know how, in case the choice isn't yours to make."
He held her gaze steadily, watching her weigh the suggestion with visible reluctance. Then something in her posture eased, just slightly, into grudging consideration.
"I suppose," she said finally, "there wouldn’t be any harm in knowing the basics."
"Precisely," he agreed. "And it's only fair that I should teach you the basics. A lesson for a lesson."
They made their way to the training barn behind the stables, the old leather sack still hanging from its beam where Isaac had left it. He set the grain aside before turning his attention to the more delicate business of teaching a lady how to throw a proper punch.
"Feet apart," he said, demonstrating. "One before the other, so. Weight balanced between them, knees soft, not locked. You want to be able to move quick in either direction, not planted like a fence post."
She attempted the stance with determined concentration, planting her feet at an angle that would have toppled her at the first real contact.
"Try it," he said, nodding toward the sack.
She closed her eyes, as though bracing for some blow rather than delivering one, and threw a punch so tentative it barely disturbed the leather's surface. The movement itself was so poorly balanced that she staggered half a step backwards from her own momentum.
Isaac could not help himself. The laugh escaped before he'd made any real effort to contain it, and Nell rounded on him with her arms crossed and her cheeks colouring with fresh indignation.
"You are a terrible teacher," she informed him.
"I'm an excellent teacher. You're simply terrible at this."
He was still grinning, though he sobered somewhat at the genuine frustration in her expression. He crossed to stand behind her, close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her.
"Here. Let me show you properly."
He settled his hands at her shoulders, adjusting their angle. As he did, he felt her go rigid beneath the touch before easing, slightly, into the correction.
"Square your shoulders, so. Not turned away from the target—you want your whole body behind the strike, not just your arm.
He moved to her hips next, guiding them into a slight rotation with a touch he kept as light and impersonal as the lesson required, though he was aware, with an awareness he did his best to ignore, of exactly how close this particular instruction demanded he stand.
"The power comes from here, not your shoulder. Turn your hips as you throw the punch. The strength of your whole body goes into it, not just your arm alone."
"Like this?" she asked, looking at him over her shoulder.
"Close. A touch more turn."
He adjusted her hips again, his hands lingering a beat longer before he stepped back.
"Try it now."
She squared herself properly this time, drew back, and threw the punch with more force than her previous attempt.
Enough force, in fact, that Isaac heard the distinct, sharp crack of poorly protected knuckles connecting against unforgiving leather.
She cried out immediately, clutching her hand against her chest while her face twisted in genuine pain.
"Let me see." Isaac took her injured hand into both of his own before she could protest. He turned it carefully in the barn's dim light.
Her thumb had been tucked inside her fist rather than folded alongside it, a mistake he ought to have warned her against before letting her throw a full strike.
But while the joint had swollen slightly at the impact, a careful examination revealed nothing broken, only bruised.
"You'll want to keep your thumb outside your fist, always," he said gently. "Tucked in like that, you'll break it against anything solid enough to be worth hitting."
"I wish you'd mentioned that before I struck the wretched thing," she bristled
"That was thoughtless of me," he said sincerely. “I apologise, Nell.”
He reached for a strip of cloth left over from bandaging his own knuckles days before and wound it carefully around her hand. It was only as he finished tying it off that he became fully aware of exactly how close they had drawn.
They were close enough now that her breath stirred faintly against his jaw, close enough that he could see, in painstaking detail, the particular grey-blue of her eyes and the small furrow of concentration between her brows.
Neither of them moved.
The barn had gone very quiet around them, the only sound the faint creak of the leather sack still swaying gently on its beam. Isaac studied her face with an attention that had nothing whatsoever to do with checking the quality of his bandaging.
Her eyes lifted slowly to meet him, and his breath caught in his throat.
Something passed between them then, something that Isaac recognised, with a lurch he felt low in his chest, as the same charged awareness that had followed him out of the study after their hands had touched.
And despite himself, he leaned forward, scarcely aware of the decision to do it at all. She did not step away.
Suddenly, the barn door swung open with a bang that startled them both apart.
Tom strode in carrying a crate of supplies against one hip, whistling some tuneless fragment of a song that died the instant he took in the scene before him: Isaac and Nell standing nearer to one another than any bandaging required, both of them visibly startled, both of them, Isaac suspected from the sudden warmth in his own face, looking rather guilty.
Tom's eyebrows climbed slowly toward his hairline.
"I'll—come back later, I think," he said, in a knowing tone.
"Thank you for the lesson, My Lord," Nell said, too quickly, already moving toward the door with her bandaged hand clutched against her chest. "I ought to see to my other duties."
She was gone before Isaac could think of a single thing to say that might have delayed her, her quick footsteps fading across the courtyard.
Tom set the crate down slowly.
"How long," he asked, suspiciously, "have these lessons of yours been going on?"
"They're precisely what they appear to be, Tom. She's teaching me how to conduct myself among the gentry, and today I asked her to learn some rudimentary self-defence in return. Nothing more to it than that."
"Nothing more to it." Tom's tone carried a weight of open scepticism.
"Isaac. I've known you since we were boys running wild through Southwark together.
I know your face better than my own, and I know precisely what it looked like just now, standing in here with that girl's hand held between yours like it was made of glass. "
He crossed his arms, his usual easy humour absent now.
"Be careful, is all I'm saying. A lonely baron and a young maid living under the same roof—that's exactly the sort of story that ends badly for everyone involved, you know it as well as I do.
She loses her position, or worse, and you lose whatever fragile standing you've only just begun to build with people who'd like nothing better than another reason to look down on you. "
"You're imagining things that aren't there," he deflected.
The defensiveness in his own voice surprised him even as he heard it. The truth was he wasn't even sure he believed the words coming out of his mouth.
"She's a servant in my household, Tom,” he added quickly. “I've no intention of crossing that line, whatever you think you saw."
Tom studied him for a long moment, clearly unconvinced, then shook his head.
"If you say so," he said, as he hefted the crate back onto his hip and paused at the door. "Just mind yourself, is all. For both your sakes."
He left Isaac alone in the barn with the grain sack still propped against the wall and the leather punching bag swaying faintly on its beam.
Isaac stood there for a long while afterwards, staring at nothing in particular, Tom's warning settling uncomfortably alongside a truth he found himself less able to dismiss than he had claimed only moments before.
He had told Tom there was nothing more to it. But, standing there now in the quiet barn, with the memory of Nell's warm breath so close against his jaw, he was no longer certain he'd been honest with his oldest friend.