“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Preparing a fire.”
“It’s not that cold.”
He twisted around on the balls of his feet and looked up at her, could see the small stack of folded linens she’d placed on the table. “Ice has formed outside.”
She wrung her hands. “We save the coal for when it’s truly needed.”
“You might not be cold, but I am. In the morning I’ll send over coal to replace what I use. Besides, I need to heat this water up a bit.” He wasn’t cold, but he wanted her warm and comfortable when he left. He took satisfaction from her moving a chair nearer to the hearth in anticipation of the warmth he was going to provide. Normally, he wanted no appreciation from those he assisted, didn’t know why he wanted a grain of it from her. Perhaps because he saw it as a signal that she was coming down from Mount Olympus. He went to work.
“When we moved here, my brother didn’t even know how to lay a fire,” she said quietly. “We always had servants to do it.”
Naturally, she’d had servants. “Laid my first fire when I was eight. It was my chore every fourth morning.”
“You rotated it with your brothers.”
He wasn’t surprised she’d deduced that, or that she knew he had three brothers. Of late, the details of his family were on a good many gossips’ tongues and taking up an unfathomable amount of ink in the gossip rags.
The fire began licking greedily at the coal. Simply wanting to get the chill off the water, he held the bowl as close to the flames as he could without burning himself. He was in no rush to leave, intended to take his time tending to her in order to reassure himself that she wasn’t in need of the surgeon before he went in search of her brother.
“Did you kill him?” she asked with no emotion reflected in her voice. “The man in the alleyway.”
“No. Smashed his jaw.” Not that he hadn’t considered inflicting far worse damage, but he’d needed to get to her as quickly as possible. He’d arrived in the alley in time to seethe man fling her against the wall and to hear the thud of skull against brick. Knowing the damage an injury to the head could cause, he’d very nearly panicked. She might be a blueblood, but she didn’t deserve death at such a tender age. She warranted having her hair turn silver and her face wrinkle.
“IthoughtI heard bone crunching.”
“If a man with a broken jaw comes into the Mermaid, have Mac send for a constable. Then for me. I can identify him, ensure charges are brought.”
“Do you think I might have served him at the tavern?”
“Possibly.” The scapegrace had seen her at least one other night, knew her routine. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been there, ready to pounce. “I do think he was waiting for you.”
“Like you were.”
How could three small words bludgeon so effectively?
He touched a finger to the water. Warm enough. Unfolding his body, he set the bowl on the table, met and held her gaze. “Do you truly think I’m anything at all like him?”
She didn’t. Not for a single minute. She didn’t know why she’d implied she did, except that she wanted to keep distance between them. She hadn’t taken a dislike to him. Far from it.
But the fact he’d thought so little of her as to make her a proposition that no doubt involved him having his way with her—it had hurt and never would have happened when her father was alive. She’d been treated with respect, admired simply by virtue of the fact she was the daughter of a duke. But of late, men were always seeking to take advantage of her.
“Can we get on with this? I’m worried about my brother.”
He scraped the other chair over the floor, set it behindher, dropped into it, and began removing the pins from her untidy coiffure.
“Is that really necessary?”
“You have so much hair, it’ll be easier to get to your wound if I’m not having to go through piles of it as I did before.” His actions were slow, gentle. “I’ve never felt anything so soft.”
He cleared his throat, and she wondered if he’d not meant to say the last aloud, or at least meant not to say it as though he were awed.
“Why no furniture?” Clipped. Crisp.
“We haven’t lived here long and haven’t gotten around to purchasing things.” And they hadn’t the coins for purchasing things. “Why a brothel?”
Equally clipped, equally crisp.
