“Of course you do, sweeting,” Grace soothed. “We will take you to her as soon as may be.” Lucien glanced down at the child. Grace had wrapped her shawl around the girl’s tremblingbody. One stick-thin leg stuck out, the cotton stocking carefully darned. It was a miracle she wasn’t hurt worse.
“Child, where do you live?” Lucien asked.
She looked at him in the light of the coach lantern, her eyes too large in her pinched face. “L—Little White Lion Street.”
One of seven streets that made up a hell of crime and poverty and vice.
He turned to Grace. “I’d not send the devil himself into the Seven Dials tonight. We’ll take her to Raven’s Court, and then, once the streets are quiet, we’ll return her home.”
“Did you hear that, Sibby Rose?” Grace said, stroking the little girl’s hair. “You’ll sleep tonight in a princess bed with velvet curtains and eat all the cake you want. Then, as soon as the angry people are gone, Lord Everdene and I will take you to your mama ourselves.”
Not quite what Lucien had envisioned, and yet, he suddenly thought of the daughter he and Grace might have one day. How vulnerable any child would be.
Grace peered up at him, her face so drawn it made his chest ache. “Her mother will be frantic,” she whispered.
Would she be? Lucien wondered. Or would the child’s mother be one of those gin-soaked, hate-filled women Pinchbeck so often spoke of? The type of woman urging the mob on?
CHAPTER 28
“Ihave dismissed the servants,” Lucien explained, once the child was bathed, wounds tended, then put to bed in yet another one of his shirts. “I intend to examine you myself, make certain you are not hurt. Sometimes, in heightened excitement, one does not feel pain until the crisis is over.”
He led her to the chair beside the fire and she sank down, wincing, her gown smudged, lawn undergarments peeking through rents in the fabric. “Nothing but a few scrapes and bruises, I’m sure,” she said, “but I am glad to have you here. I have never been so frightened.”
He knelt, slipped off her shoes one by one, then rolled down her stockings seeing a crescent-shaped bruise, likely from someone’s bootheel, some scrapes where someone in the crowd had bumped her as they tried to get away. Her skin was warm as he gently felt the bones in her foot, her ankle, her calf. Satisfied that nothing was broken, he urged her to a standing position, unfastening her gown with deft fingers. As he peeled away the layers of cloth, he found more bruises on the creamy white skin, a long, raw scrape marred her left side—from the jagged edge of Sibby Rose’s shattered box, perhaps?
When she was naked, He traced the outline of the abrasion with his fingertip, his voice low, rough. “God, when I think about what could have happened when you disappeared in the crowd….”
“I knew you would find us.”
Her faith in him made his gut clench, and he knew he would fight his way through lions to reach her.
“Sibby Rose is so little…,” Grace said, a catch in her voice. “I tried to shield her…”
“You did.” He kissed her bare shoulder. “The child’s wounds will heal in no time.”
But would Grace’s? Lucien wondered. She’d nearly been trampled, experienced violence unlike anything she’d ever seen.
He drew the pins from her hair one by one, her silky locks tumbling over his hands. Gently, he felt her scalp for any lumps or abrasions.
“I fear the cuts will sting when you get in the water, but they must be cleaned.”
He took her hand and led her to the copper tub before the fire. The water was still steaming. He held her hand to help her balance as she stepped in, and she gave a soft moan of pleasure as she sank down in the hot water. Lucien rolled his sleeves up past his elbows, he scooped soft, jasmine scented soap into his hands and smoothed it over her skin. He had never performed such a task. Her drawn-up knees were like little islands in the sudsy water, and he noticed bruises darkening the creamy flesh. She must have fallen hard to hurt herself through all of those petticoats.
“Mmm.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the rim of the tub as he skimmed a cloth over every inch of her, his little finger straying off to brush the silky, damp skin. He had only ever seen his mistresses after they’d been polished and pinned and rouged to perfection. Never this way. Like Evein Eden, naked and tousled and so very vulnerable. The slopes of her lovely breasts were just visible, her nipples a mere hint beneath a crest of foam. He couldn’t resist lingering over them, his cock hardening beneath the fastenings of his trousers. He wished he could wash away the memories of the altercation at the Theater Royal from her mind as well. Freyne’s insinuations, the ugly shouts of the mob, stones and rubbish hurtling through air thick with danger.
And the sudden stomach-churning fear that he wouldn’t reach her in time.
“Shall I wash your hair?”
She looked up at him, smiling. “No. I am too tired to dry it by the fire. Perhaps another time.”
Lucien felt a jolt of desire at the prospect that there would be another time. He imagined slipping into the tub behind her, cradling her naked body between his legs. Soaping each other languidly until the fire they kindled became too hot. But tonight was for Grace alone.
“As you wish,” he said softly, then retrieved the towel warming by the hearth. He helped her from the tub, her skin was rosy with heat, a few stray froths of suds clinging to her breasts and the curve of her hip.
He dried her with a tenderness he hadn’t known he possessed. Every scrape and bruise sickened him. He wanted to press his lips to them, cover her with his body, protect her.
But she seemed so fragile as he slipped a nightgown thin as mist over her head. The fabric cascaded down her lissome body, and a wave of scent drifted up to him—jasmine, fresh, clean cotton, and that scent that was Grace’s alone. He brushed out her long hair then guided her toward the bed.
