AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Much worse.
“I did not stop to inquire if you know your way around the actual sickroom,” Rothhaven said. “Clearly you do.”
Robbie had lapsed into a fitful slumber, though Althea wasn’t fooled. His fever had been building quickly when she’d arrived. He was comfortable for now, but the worst was likely ahead.
“The poor have no physicians to speak of,” she said, “and what few medical men open their surgeries to charitable cases crowd every patient—consumptive, fevered, rheumatic, poxed—into the same airless waiting rooms. A visit to the quack is all too often followed by a visit from death itself. We learned to take care of our own.”
Rothhaven poked at the fire, though Robbie’s bedroom was warm enough. “You truly were wretchedly poor.”
Althea could be honest with him, which was both a relief and a little sad. Rothhaven saw her for exactly what she was—a woman on the outside of society longing to be welcomed into it. How ironic, that a man who’d set aside all the entrée and influence in the realm should be her confidant.
“I was so poor that by the time I turned ten years old, my father encouraged me to be friendly to any man who put a copper in my begging bowl. Jack Wentworth was nasty when drunk, but he was cruelty personified when sober, and gin is not free.”
Perhaps she’d been a little too forthcoming, but the hour was late, and Althea was already tired. Robbie had grumbled about drinking willow bark tea, grumbled about sipping the whiskey with honey and lemon. He’d refused a sponge bath until Althea had taken his hand and put it in the bowl of tepid water so he could feel its temperature.
He was still, apparently, terrified at the prospect of an ice bath.
He’d muttered about damned women and damned infirmity and damned brothers who worried about every damned thing, but he’d also been far hotter than he should have been when Althea had arrived. Chills might come next or another bout of fever, and the grumbling would be nigh constant until he was well again.
Assuming Althea was still here to tend him.
And assuming he recovered.
“Were you?” Rothhaven asked. “Friendly to the gentlemen?”
With only the firelight to illuminate him, he looked like a dark angel of justice, ready to pronounce sentence upon her—or possibly on Jack Wentworth, may he suffer eternal unrelenting agonies of every description.
The clock ticked quietly on the mantel, the fire crackled in the hearth.
“I let some of them touch me,” she said. “Stephen wasn’t nimble enough to work, and Papa said a boy who couldn’t work had no business being alive. He’d eat in front of Stephen, using a stale crust of bread to torture a small boy. So yes, I let some of those men touch me or look at me—only that—but they paid first and paid handsomely.”
Rothhaven rose and paced silently before the fire. He’d taken off his coat an hour ago in deference to the room’s warmth. His cuffs were turned back, and his cravat had long since lost its starch.
And yet, his appearance remained imposing, his expression severe.
The quiet took on a density, while Althea waited—for judgment, for disappointment, for awkwardness at the very least. The Wentworth family never spoke openly of the past, not if they could help it, but in Althea’s experience the pain and rage only festered more virulently for being consigned to silence.
She faced the memories squarely, of drawing up her tattered skirts while some fiend rubbed his crotch and stared. She’d not closed her eyes then, she didn’t close them now, but her throat hurt as badly as if she’d fallen ill, the ache familiar and bitter. She was on the point of rising to see herself out when Rothhaven spoke.
“Please assure me,” he said, “that the gin truly did kill your father. If he yet lives, he won’t for long.”
The clock ticked a few more times before the meaning of Rothhaven’s words came together in Althea’s mind. “You’d kill him?”
“With my bare hands, at the first opportunity. The wrath of God should have struck him down before allowing him any progeny, but then you would not be here. For my brother’s sake, also for my own, I am very glad you defeated the monster you were compelled to acknowledge as your father.”
“He was a monster,” Althea said, the words imparting an odd lightness. She hadn’t put that name to Jack, not aloud. “He lacked humanity, lacked…basic decency. Something in him was broken, dangerously so, and nobody dared intercede. I’m convinced my mother died from the sheer weariness of spirit that comes from living in proximity to such evil. He’s dead, and yes, the gin did him in.”
As far as the world knew. The truth was more complicated and not Althea’s tale to tell.
“I am pleased for the sake of all humanity that he no longer draws breath. A father like that…” Rothhaven’s gaze went to the bed, where Robbie slept on. “A father like that should be left to the mercy of the elements on the moors, preferably in January. No walls to shelter him, no light to illuminate his path.”
January was the coldest, darkest month of the year—an ice bath—and yet, Rothhaven’s sentiment lit a warmth inside Althea. “Just so, with a hole in his boot, a broken compass, and a storm bearing down.”
“I do admire a woman with a sense of justice and a vivid imagination,” Rothhaven said, his smile tired. “I can stay with Robbie if you’d like to rest. My room is across the corridor. You’re welcome to use it.”
Althea wanted to tarry in the warmth of Robbie’s chambers, wanted to bask in the pleasure of Rothhaven’s ire on her behalf—when had a maneverexpressed lethal indignation for her sake?—but Robbie was far from out of danger, and what lay ahead could be taxing.
“A nap makes sense,” she said, rising. “I will rest briefly, then wake you so you can take a turn at napping.”
