“Do you wish me to help you into a nightgown?” Jelsa didn’t do something as obvious as glance at the door to the bedchamber, but something in her stance gave her thoughts away.
Tonight, there would be a man in Adeline’s chamber. In her bed.
True, she had every expectation that that man was in no shape for pressing any advances.
If only she could have told Thaddeus to put Lord Lorne in the connecting room to her own. But there must be no doubt that this marriage was valid, starting with sharing her room with the lord for at least these first crucial days.
“No. Help me into a day dress.” Hopefully one of those would be loose and comfortable enough for sleeping, should she find herself drifting off. “I will be called to my grandfather’s side as soon as he arrives. I’d rather remain dressed for that.”
“Yes, milady.” Jelsa disappeared deeper into the room for a moment as she searched through the dresses, finally pulling out a day dress in a soft yellow.
Perfect. It was old and at the point where she didn’t wear it often anymore. But it was exactly what she needed for tonight.
As Jelsa started helping Adeline out of her ruffled, pink evening gown, the outer door opened and shut, followed by the sound of male voices.
That was likely the physician. He wasn’t the royal physician, as that man was waiting in her grandfather’s chamber for him to arrive. Nor did she trust the royal physician enough to send for him for something clandestine.
Instead, this physician was the one who tended the guards and the servants. He was a brother to one of her personal guards, and both he and his brother were loyal enough to her for her to risk sending for him.
Once out of her evening gown, Adeline pulled the day dress over her head, tying the front laces loosely.
With that done, she took a deep breath and forced herself to walk on shaking legs to the door between her dressing room and bedchamber. Her hand trembling, she lifted the latch and tugged the door open just as a cry of pain rang out in the other room.
Her groom lay on his side on the bed, his back to where she stood. As he no longer wore a shirt, she got a good look at his broad shoulders…and the mess of red gashes and scabs that covered his back from his neck all the way to the waistline of his trousers.
The physician had pulled up a chair to the bed and was currently dabbing at Lord Lorne’s abdomen with a rag, which came away bloody. Thaddeus stood beside him, holding a candle to provide more light.
At the sound of the door, or perhaps her gasp, both the physician and Thaddeus looked up.
“Highness.” The physician bowed as much as he could while sitting down. Coming from him, it wasn’t an oversight but a practicality. “Perhaps you should wait in the sitting room. This will not be…pleasant.”
“I understand that.” Adeline forced herself to walk closer, aiming for the bed rather than the door. “But he is my husband. I need to see what my grandfather did to him.”
Lord Lorne and his men had crossed the border under a flag of truce. This never should have happened to him or the others.
Her grandfather would argue that her parents had been riding under a flag of trucewhen they’d been killed in an unprovoked attack when their kingdoms hadn’t even been at war yet. But returning Lalsacian war crimes with war crimes of their own was no way to fight a war.
“Then if you are going to stay, I could use another set of hands, if you are willing to lend your maid.” The physician turned his attention back to his work, pressing the rag to a wound.
Lord Lorne jolted, muffling his cry by pressing his face to the pillow.
Her stomach swooped into her toes, but she forced herself forward. “Jelsa may help if she wishes, but I would like to help as well.”
No matter how much her stomach churned, she needed to do this. This man was now her husband. Perhaps that didn’t mean much to him, but it did to her. She’d made her choice, and she desperately needed him to be her ally. And she couldn’t expect him to be that if she wasn’t that to him as well.
She carefully climbed onto the bed and crawled across the large mattress to sit next to Lord Lorne’s back, trying not to jostle the bed, and thus him, too much.
This close, she could see all too well when the physician grasped what appeared to be a stained bit of cloth stuck to gaping wounds across Lorne’s stomach and yanked.
Lord Lorne flinched and cried out again. Thaddeus leaned forward and grasped Lord Lorne’s wrist before he could shove the physician away.
“Jelsa, could you please fetch me a basin and hotwater? I can begin washing his back.” Adeline somehow kept her voice somewhat steady, despite the flipping in her stomach.
Standing in the doorway of the dressing room, Jelsa bobbed a curtsy before she hurried toward the door to the sitting room. “Yes, milady.”
Lord Lorne turned his head, cracking one eye open to peer at her. “You don’t have to stay.”
“You don’t have to guard my sensibilities. I can handle this.” Adeline forced her voice to remain calm, collected.
