Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Minerva was barely aware of the ride, but she could feel the leashed tension pounding through the man at her back as he held both himself and the horse beneath them in check.
She thought he would return her to Cliff Cottage and only became aware of their destination when Carrek emerged from the mist, dark granite against a flat sky.
After tossing Cato’s reins to the groom, Dashiell dismounted and lifted her down. Her feet would not hold her, her legs trembling and weak. Dashiell swung her into his arms and though she made a soft sound of protest, he ignored her and she did not persist.
He ordered his man to dispatch a boy to Cliff Cottage to let Kitty know Minerva was safe and to send men to collect Teague.
He said something else, his voice low and fierce, but her thoughts drifted away for an instant and she did not grasp it.
Then he carried her up a set of wide stairs and through an iron-banded door of heavy oak to a hall of flagged stone.
She did not know if the hall was unreasonably cold or if the icy chill came from within her own body.
She only knew that she trembled like a leaf in the wind.
A woman appeared, tall and austere, her gray hair scraped back from her face, covered by a pristine white cap.
“A bath, hot as you can manage, Mrs. Chegwidden,” Dashiell said. “Immediately.”
The woman asked no questions. She was already moving.
Dashiell took the stairs two at a time, carrying Minerva to a room with dark wood paneling to shoulder height and plaster the color of old cream above it.
A dressing room or private sitting room, she thought.
A washstand stood against the far wall, its basin and ewer plain white ceramic, functional rather than decorative.
There was a second door, slightly ajar, through which she saw the edge of a bed, the dark post of it and the side of the coverlet, smooth and neat.
Dashiell turned toward the fire that crackled in the grate, the sight so welcome that Minerva felt tears sting her eyes.
Before the fire were two brocade chairs facing each other across a low table.
It was in one of these chairs that Dashiell set her, lowering her with the care he might offer a treasure made of spun glass.
He swung off his greatcoat and settled it around her shoulders, then went through the second door and dragged the coverlet from the bed, returning to wrap her in that, too.
Still, she shivered, unable to stop the tremors that shook her, her teeth clacking like castanets.
“C-C-Cold,” she managed, her voice hoarse and rough, so foreign that she barely recognized it. Her throat felt bruised from the inside, a deep, aching pressure. It hurt to swallow. It hurt to speak.
He crossed to a cabinet in the corner and returned with a shallow layer of amber liquid in a glass.
Crouching before her, he wrapped her hands around it.
She saw then that the skin of his knuckles was cracked and bloody, the sight summoning the memory of his fists battering Teague’s prostrate form.
She did not let herself wonder if Dashiell would have killed him. In the end, he had not.
“Brandy,” he said. “It will help.”
She trembled, unable to grasp the glass properly. He took it from her and brought it to her lips, tipping it just enough that she could sip it slowly. Swallowing hurt in the way a bruise hurts when pressed. The brandy burned all the way down.
“All of it,” he said. “But slowly.”
She did as he said, taking small sips until the glass was empty. Each swallow was laced with pain, but the warmth that bloomed as she sipped made it easier to bear.
There came a knock at the door.
“Enter,” Dashiell said, setting the empty glass aside.
Mrs. Chegwidden entered followed by two maids, each carrying buckets of steaming water.
A third and fourth girl followed, then two boys wrangling a copper tub which they placed before the fire after dragging the second chair out of the way.
The housekeeper supervised the filling of the tub, waiting in silence while the girls scampered off and quickly returned with more buckets.
Moments later, she tested the water with her wrist and gave a satisfied nod.
“I will assist,” she said with a direct look at Dashiell, who rose reluctantly. It was only in that instant that Minerva understood he had not intended to leave.
“I will be right outside the door,” he said, his attention fixed on her, and only when she gave a slight nod did he withdraw.
Minerva resisted the urge to reach out to him, to plead with him to stay. Instead, she stiffened her spine and met the housekeeper’s gaze. There, she read neither judgement nor pity, a kindness she appreciated.
“Up you come, Miss,” Mrs. Chegwidden said, her tone calm, efficient.
“I am n-n-not certain I c-c-can,” Minerva admitted, the words choppy and slurred, her thoughts sluggish. “My l-l-legs feel like jelly.”
The woman stepped forward and removed first the coverlet Dashiell had wrapped around Minerva and then his coat, setting both aside on the second chair.
Then she worked the fastenings of Minerva’s dress, saying nothing about the tear at the back of the skirt where Teague had grabbed her or about the mud stains that marred the cloth.
Suddenly shy, Minerva hesitated when the woman went to help remove her shift. The housekeeper only made a clucking sound that Minerva thought was either an expression of sympathy or dismissal. Either way, the shift went and the housekeeper helped her into the bath.
Minerva could not stop the moan of relief that escaped her as she sank down and the heat of the water reached clear to her bones. She put her head back and closed her eyes and let the steam and the heat suffuse her. Her trembling finally began to ease.
She thought about Dashiell on the other side of the door and had the completely inappropriate wish that he had not left at all, that he was here beside her, holding her hand.
She heard the housekeeper moving about the room, but she kept her eyes closed.
Each time her thoughts tried to drag her back to the path and Teague and the feeling of his hands around her throat, she counted the seconds it took for each breath and forced her mind to think of nothing at all.
Even when she heard the door open and snatches of a whispered conversation, she did not open her eyes.
“Dress damaged…spare…” The housekeeper’s voice.
“Sleep shirt…” Dashiell’s voice.
The housekeeper said something else and Dashiell replied, “Pascoe has him…”
There was more to their conversation, but it was too low for her to catch.
The water was cooling by the time Mrs. Chegwidden helped her out and wrapped her in linen so thick and warm it felt impossible. The woman must have draped it before the fire while Minerva was in the bath.
Settling Minerva back in the chair she had been sitting in before, the housekeeper applied witch hazel and a salve Minerva did not recognize to her throat, her hands gentle and sure. She asked no questions and offered no comments, and Minerva was grateful for the silence.
When the housekeeper was done, she produced a man’s linen sleep shirt.
Dashiell’s, Minerva thought, the realization bringing a flush to her cheeks as Mrs. Chegwidden helped her settle it over her head.
The size of it swallowed her, the hem falling almost to her ankles.
Then the housekeeper wrapped her in a quilted silk dressing gown that smelled of bergamot and citrus.
Minerva surreptitiously lowered her head and inhaled, the scent soothing her.
The housekeeper’s expression was innocuous, as though dressing her employer’s female guest in his own clothes was a perfectly ordinary occurrence. Perhaps, Minerva thought wryly, it was.
The possibility did not sit well with her.
There came a knock at the door, and at the housekeeper’s instruction the maids entered to empty the tub and take it away. When they were done, Mrs. Chegwidden gathered the ruined dress without expression and said, “I will send him in.”
Minerva’s cheeks burned as she sat in the chair, wrapped in Dashiell’s sleepwear, waiting for him to enter.
Her gaze flitted around the room, taking in the dark wood panelling, the two brocade chairs, the books on the shelf.
She counted the spines automatically—fifteen.
There was a desk in the corner, positioned to catch the light from the window, its surface neat and orderly.
On the corner of the desk sat a small glass jar. Wild thyme. She recognized the same small purple flowers he had left on her gate post. He had kept some for himself. The realization made her heart twist in a strange and unfamiliar way.
“The thyme made me think of you,” he said.
Startled, she glanced over her shoulder to find him standing by the door, watching her. She had not heard him enter.
He approached and sat in the second chair, facing her, and Minerva realized the housekeeper had resettled the coverlet on the bed and taken away the coat while she was in the bath. She had barely been aware of the woman’s movements.
They were alone in the room. She looked back at the jar on the desk, the slightly wind-battered purple flowers that had made him think of her.
“I thought I was going to die,” she said.
Each word felt as if she forced it past a solid mass in her throat, but she went on, determined to tell him.
“On the path. When his hands were—” She stopped, then started again.
“There was a moment when I understood I would not break free.” He made a sound she could only describe as a growl.
She forged on, determined to get the words out.
“The thing I thought in that moment, in those last seconds before you arrived, was that I had not told you.”
“Told me what?” he asked, his voice low.