Chapter 12 #2
The boy did a good job, and much more thoroughly than Madelaine would have dared with all his bruises.
She kept up her work with the cup, washing the soap from his skin.
But the boy’s ribs were too sore for him to reach round and do his back, so Lord Cotereigh silently took the cloth and did that part, including a very thorough scrub of the boy’s neck and behind the ears, which made him utter a curse even Madelaine hadn’t heard before.
“Ladies are present,” Lord Cotereigh firmly reminded him. “You watch your tongue.”
“You watch yourself! You nearly had me ear off!”
“Oh, was that an ear? I thought it was some sort of mushroom, growing from this filth.”
“And how clean would you be if you ain’t never had no bath!”
Madelaine couldn’t help but smile at that, meeting Lord Cotereigh’s frown with a silent breath of laughter. “He’s quite right, my lord, sorry as I am to say it. We’re all of us flesh and blood the same.”
He dropped the wet cloth into the bath with a disgusted look, but there was an answering gleam of humour in his eye as he briskly dried his hands.
“Your three minutes are up. And now it’s surely high time we washed the rats from your thatch.
Where is the lice treatment, Mrs Ardingly, and how do we apply it?
Which, I admit, are not words I ever expected to find myself saying. ”
She smiled at him as she got to her feet to retrieve the bottle.
How strange to be almost glad it was Lord Cotereigh here and not her aunt.
But his firmness and briskness were exactly what the task needed, and his humour lightened what would otherwise have been a sore trial to her nerves.
Her aunt would have lamented and wept until the whole room was thick with sorrow and the boy nothing but a victim to be pitied.
Not that her aunt’s softness was without merit.
It was her motherly fretting and the insistence on cake that had first broached the boy’s reserve.
Without that, Lord Cotereigh’s high-handedness might have felt too bullying.
But the boy had come to life a little under her aunt’s warmth, his guard had lowered, and now his spirit was set free to do battle with the viscount’s.
She picked up the bottle from the side table where she’d put it, unsure which one of them would win.
“Surely it would be better to shave his head,” said Lord Cotereigh as she returned to kneel by the bath.
She handed him the bottle and set to work with the cup, wetting the boy’s hair, advising him to close his eyes.
Lord Cotereigh was right. Shaving the boy’s head would have been easier.
But how could she explain that her soft heart protested the idea?
He was a beautiful boy, despite all his bones and bruises.
Those blue eyes and that black hair… She hadn’t been able to order it shorn.
It would’ve made him even more of a victim somehow.
They did it to convicts, before transportation.
She’d been down to the docks several times, on one of her inconsequential missions of mercy…
She set her jaw. What good did any of it do?
Lord Cotereigh uncorked the bottle, took a sniff, and winced.
“Good Lord. What is this stuff?”
“Mainly turpentine, I believe.”
The boy, too, had caught the pungent, chemical scent. “What’s that?” He opened his eyes, jerking his head round to look, and consequently got a whole cup full of water down his face. He spluttered, wincing at the soapy water in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, but you really do need to stay still,” she told him. “Here.” She picked up a dry washcloth and folded it into a pad. “Put that over your eyes. This treatment might sting even worse than soap.”
“But what is that? Smells like poison. I don’t want—”
“It’s only poisonous to the pests who plague you,” cut in Lord Cotereigh. “So stop plaguing us, boy, and sit still and do as the lady tells you.”
The boy muttered some undoubtedly coarse oaths under his breath, but he did as Lord Cotereigh commanded, clamping the folded washcloth against his eyes with his good hand. The other arm, in its bandaged splint, still rested atop the bath’s rim, as unclean as it ever had been.
There wasn’t much they could do about that now. It would be a long task, reclaiming this boy from the sewers.
Once his hair was thoroughly wetted, Madelaine poured a little of the oily, stinking treatment into it and worked it in as well as she could.
She tried to rinse it out, but even scrubbing with soap made little difference.
With a shrug and a conferring look at Lord Cotereigh, who seemed to be of the same mind, she repeated the treatment.
Now they had the boy here in the bath, they might as well do as thorough a job as they could.
But it proved very hard to wash out the oily substance, and they had to scrub and rinse with soap five times before his hair seemed clean.
It was hard work. Her shoulders, back, and knees ached from leaning over the bath.
The boy was complaining, sore and tired now in the cooling water.
And no matter their efforts, the stuff did get in his eyes and make him howl.
Lord Cotereigh took over the washing and rinsing.
They were both soaked and tired when it was finally done.
The boy was just a boy now, all his canny bravado gone, along with most of his filth. He sniffled, shaking, cold despite the fire, and found it hard work to climb out of the bath. Lord Cotereigh lifted him.
Madelaine picked up a towel and started to dry the shivering creature as he hunched, arms folded, all his pains undoubtedly making themselves known.
Lord Cotereigh went to the bell pull, and it was only minutes later, as she was helping the boy into the nightshirt his aunt had packed for him that she discovered why.
A glass of warm milk.
“No, don’t sit back on that sofa, it’s dirty,” he told the boy. He pointed to a comfortable armchair by the fire. “Sit there. Drink this. And eat your cake.”
“And the pennies?” The boy’s teeth chattered.
“Here, as promised.” He took them from his pocket, eighteen pennies exactly, which he set down on the table at the chair’s side. The boy gave them an avid study, milk in one hand, cake in the other.
Madelaine suspected the servant had been ordered to bring those coins as well as the milk. The Viscount Cotereigh was unlikely to walk around with mere pennies weighing down his pockets.
She busied herself tidying up, though no doubt a servant would do the job. Lord Cotereigh told her exactly that as soon as he saw what she was doing.
She looked up then laid a finger to her lips. He glanced around and saw what she’d seen. The boy—she couldn’t call him Tonks, he must have a real name—had sipped some milk, nibbled some cake, and now sat staring, transfixed, at the fire, his eyelids drooping.
Surreptitiously, she withdrew to the far side of the room, Lord Cotereigh following.
“It’ll do him good to sleep.” She used the lowest voice she could, but one that was not quite a whisper. A whisper was too conspicuous. A whisper was too…intimate.
“That sofa will need to be cleaned.” Lord Cotereigh’s voice was a murmur, as quiet as hers, but his deep pitch made a rumble in the air between them. “This whole room will. My housekeeper said something about burning sulphur candles.”
“He’ll be so much more comfortable now.”
That was easier to say than thank you. Though she knew she must say it soon. A genuine, heartfelt thank you. It frightened her.
“We can move him to my aunt’s now that we know there’s no internal damage,” she added. “If I call for the carriage now, he can sleep on the way.”
Lord Cotereigh made no immediate reply. His mouth went very flat, and he looked at the boy, his eyes staying there as he shook his head. “No. Leave the boy here.”
“But—”
“I’ve plenty of room. And plenty of servants. He’ll disrupt my household less than your aunt’s.”
“Lord Cotereigh…”
He looked back at the use of his name, but she couldn’t read the expression in his black stare.
“You’ve been more than generous enough,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly impose more on your kindness than I’ve already done. It was my decision to go to the boy’s aid, and it was my insistence on helping him that led him to be brought here. He is my responsibility—”
Lord Cotereigh gave another shake of his head. Short and sharp. “Mrs Ardingly.” He sounded as though he meant to tell her off. Indignant heat prickled over her skin, her hackles going up. Yes, anger was much, much easier than gratitude.
“If my impressions are correct,” he continued, “then I believe you spend the majority of your time in Sussex caring for your brothers, and, quite probably, your father’s parishioners too.
And when you come to London for your holiday, you spend the entirety of your time caring for your aunt and every single unfortunate soul in the entire city.
Leave the boy here. You’ve no need for another burden. ”
With a grim smile, he continued before she could even think how to respond.
“Whereas Master Tonks has been so good as to recognise that I am a gentleman, with all that entails. Noblesse oblige, et cetera. I suppose one ought to at least pay occasional lip service to the idea, lest the peasants rise up in revolt one day and we all go the way of the French.”
If he thought ending that speech in society’s bantering wit would lessen its impact, he was wrong.
Madelaine stared at him, eyes dropping from the glint in his eyes to the faintly mocking smile on his lips and then down further, to the now-ruffled state of his neckcloth, and finally, to the dampened patches on his waistcoat where the bath had splashed him.
The fabric was a grey so dark as to be almost black—indeed, the wet patches were black—and it was subtly patterned, a brocade that shimmered like the dark underside of a butterfly’s wing, the pattern visible only where the light caught it.
Such beautiful fabric. So unlike her brown-striped cotton.
How long would it be before the turpentine smell washed out?
“I…” She needed some of the boy’s bravado now, to stand up to Lord Cotereigh. Instead, all she had was the boy’s confusion about why people were being nice.
“It is like charity…” Her own voice came back to her. “There are people who like to help people, simply because it is the right thing to do…”
Because none of this helped the man win his wager.
“You are very…good.” The doubtful way she uttered that last word made her wince. But it would be both easy and stupid to start believing Lord Cotereigh had a good heart beating underneath that pretty waistcoat. “I mean…you are being very good. To the boy. Thank you.”
He inclined his head, and whether it was amusement or embarrassment that crossed his face, she didn’t know, because he looked away and nodded to the armchair by the fire. “Asleep.”
His voice was still low, that soft rumble. They both looked at the boy for a moment, his head drooped against a wing of the armchair. He looked smaller and skinnier than ever in the large chair and the white nightdress. His dark hair was black, glinting in the firelight now that it was clean.
His bare feet didn’t quite touch the floor.
“I’ll carry him to a bedroom upstairs,” said Lord Cotereigh. “And yes,” he added, when she made to speak, “I’ll be mindful of his bruises.”
Thank you, was what she’d been going to say.
Thank you. You are very good.
It would be dangerous to believe it.