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He peered down. Winced. Then raised her right foot. “Isabelle?”
“I trod on the glass,” she whispered. “I had boots on, but a shard went through the sole. They’re quite old.”
Blood soaked a hastily folded handkerchief over the arch of her foot, tied on higgledy-piggledy with a woollen stocking.
“Isabelle, this much blood… It looks to be a severe wound.”
“I thought to tidy it up in the morning. It’s not deep.”
Hell and damnation, he could not abide the sheer weariness to her tone, wished she’d smooth her skirts back down and glare at him or rage against such destruction of her possessions.
Some worthless arsewit had caused this forlorn despondency beneath his roof, and if it took him till the last judgement, he was going to find out who.
“No, we shall do it now, Isabelle. Such a wound can fester, especially in the damp autumn air, and I have plenty of experience what with Hugh.”
A slight smile curved her lips, so Rhys stood, shrugged off his coat and began gathering candles for light, the pitcher of water, linens from the table, a foot stool and that brown sludge which held pride of place on her mantelpiece like a Wedgewood vase – but possibly more useful.
He kneeled on the rug beside her ankle.
“You’re a duke, you shouldn’t–”
“I will tend to you, Isabelle. I take personal responsibility for everything that happens beneath my roof. I will not permit this.”
In silence, she nodded and allowed him to care for her foot. A hitching of breath accompanied his actions as he unwound the stocking and lightly dabbed then prodded, but there appeared no glass in the wound and ’twas shallow, as she’d said, but a nasty affair, nonetheless.
Her foot was slender with neat nails and he endeavoured to ignore her smooth legs and the scent of jasmine, the intimate atmosphere, the sound of trickling water as he cleaned the dried blood away, her shallow breath.
“This will hurt,” he murmured, preparing to dab the wound with the salve, but she uttered not a whimper, merely a slight jolt to her frame. “Isabelle…” He peered up. Her eyes were tightly shut. “May I ask…about your parents? Your family?”
A distraction for them both, but for a while he thought she would not answer.
“I was an only child,” she whispered. “And so young when my parents were alive that I do not remember them much. But when I think back, I feel…joy. I recall laughter and sunshine, Papa’s steady hands and a new foal. My mama had weak lungs though. I recall her coughing often, yet I never heard her complain. She smelled of jasmine.”
“Then the Revolution came?”
“We thought… We lived deep in the countryside, thought…” She rubbed a hand across her eyes. “One night, when I had but six years, some soldiers came for us… Papa was away and… It was so dark and I was so scared. One dragged me from the house and I cried out and…he slapped me.” Rhys’ hand tightened its clasp on her ankle; his throat taut. He glanced up and by candlelight, her gaze was open but flat, as though recounting a distant legend. “I remember a long journey, then being thrown into a gloomy room, a prison, and we… We were there for… It felt endless.”
“But you escaped, I assume?”
She nodded. “I don’t truly know how. Only that I awoke and Papa was there. I saw a soldier in the corner before my eyes were covered. He w-wasn’t moving. And then…we…we went outside to a carriage. I was so relieved we were leaving but…” She swallowed. “There were loose boards in the floor. And below them…that was for Mama and I. To smuggle us to the coast.”
“Hell, Isabelle…”
“I don’t remember getting in or… I just remember a kiss on the forehead from Papa, a bag of keepsakes stuffed next to us, and then…then the boards were nailed over the top.” Her voice choked. “I wanted to scream and cry, but Mama… I still remember her words. She told me I must be quiet. So very quiet.” Her voice broke on a sob.
Rhys likewise could not speak, unable to imagine such horror for a child. For a young Isabelle to be nailed in like a corpse in a coffin.
Now he understood why the dark of that tower storeroom had affected her so.
“And you escaped France like that?” Rhys swallowed. It must have seemed as if in a pit of hell, the pound of hooves, the jarring of every bone, the lack of air…
A nod. “To me, it felt like days till the coast. It was so cramped and we’d no water but apparently it was only nine hours or so. Twice soldiers searched the coach but all they found was a farmer crowing how he’d stolen it from some rich folk and was using it to haul straw.”
“And your father?”
“He was to join us at the coast but had to travel t-to Paris first. I do not know why. But… Father was caught. Mama received a letter… He was taken to the….” She gazed to him, eyes lifeless. “Mama died nigh a year after we’d reached England – her lungs, her heart were broken, and I became a ward to a distant relative.”
“Isabelle…” He caressed her cheek, stretched up to kiss her forehead. A feeble acknowledgement of her deep sorrow, yet it was all he had. “You were treated well?”
