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“Thief?” Marilee’s jaw fell open of its own accord and it was all she could do not to refute the claim. The girl was no thief and every person in the room knew it, save Mr. Crowley.
“All the same, I’m here now,” he replied with cool calm as he stepped around Marilee’s frozen form and entered the kitchen more fully.
Mrs. Cavendish threw up her hands in frustration. “Fine, let her be your problem,” she snapped. “Sew her up while I pack her things. She’s to be out of this house within the hour.” With that, the housekeeper and her two cronies left.
Marilee hastened to the crying girl and bent to brush her tear-soaked hair from her eyes. She crooned to her while the girl sobbed against her.
“What’s her name?” Mr. Crowley asked as he moved around the table and began digging through the kitchen cupboards and drawers gathering random items and finally a bottle of cooking sherry.
Marilee stared at him wide-eyed. She didn’t know. She did not even know the poor girl’s name.
“Lucy,” came a soft whimper at her side.
Mr. Crowley seemed to have noted Marilee’s silence, and her lack of introduction, but he continued his digging without speaking.
Marilee accepted a basin and cool, damp cloth from the solicitor and began to dab at the girl’s brow. When the maid had been dismissed, Marilee had only thought that she would be removed from the house. She had never expected… this. Peggy had warned her. Mrs. Cavendish had warned her. But Marilee had never truly expected that they would do such a thing.
Suddenly, her position with Lady Lydia did not seem so fortunate. Was this to be her fate? Her stomach rolled, but Marilee forced herself to keep offering encouraging words to the young slip of a girl spread across the table. The back of her dress was open but beyond that she was fully covered. Marilee wanted to pull it closed, but she knew that would only cause immense pain for the young thing. She could not bear to touch her bloodied back.
Marilee coaxed Lucy to lift her head though any arching of her back caused the girl to break out in cries of agony. She sputtered and coughed with more shrieks of pain, but eventually quieted under Mr. Crowley’s gentle hand. He took the cloth from Marilee and poured a generous helping of the sherry into a cup. “Drink this,” he said. “It will help.”
Marilee took the cup and helped her to drink while Mr. Crowley wiped the blood from her back.
“How do you know how to do this?” Marilee asked with trembling wonder.
“I’m a…have some experience. My father was a surgeon and my mother an herbalist,” he explained as he held the needle, which had previously been in Mrs. Cavendish’s mouth, over an open flame. “I have some small measure of skill. My brother and his wife are the same, in Northwick.”
Marilee dropped the cup, and it clattered to the ground spilling the remainder of the sherry.
“What?” he asked as he cleaned the girl’s wounds with a wet cloth. “I’ve been raised in it, but a third son has to find his own means. I got an apprenticeship here in London. I know a little bit about healing. Growing up as I did. The housekeeper is right. This should be stitched,” he said. “It is too deep to let be. It will hurt, but I shall be quick,” he promised.
Lucy’s sobs had subsided to hiccups, and she nodded as Marilee refilled the cup with more sherry. The girl bit her lip as he worked quickly on the worst of the cuts. It was clear she was terrified of Mrs. Cavendish, but calmed somewhat under Mr. Crowley’s gentle ministrations.
Marilee held Lucy’s hand and hushed her while Mr. Crowley worked with quick sure hands. He had rolled his sleeves up to keep them from being bloodied by the girl’s wounds, and a fine spattering of light hairs shown against his pale skin. Marilee found her eyes fixed on his skin, as she did not want to look at the girl’s flayed back.
The warmth of a blush filled her face. She had never in her life seen so much of a man’s skin; his sleeves rolled past his elbows. She brought her eyes to his face which was tense with concentration as he stitched Lucy’s wound with deft care. She moaned once and then was silent. Marilee wasn’t sure if the girl had swooned or if the sherry did its job.
Marilee pulled herself away from her musings as she marveled at Mr. Crowley’s ministrations. This man was from Northwick. Who was he? “But your surname…” Marilee murmured as she tried to make sense of the knowledge, he had unknowingly shared. He paused for a long moment before speaking, and when he did speak, he did not look at her.
She supposed all of his attention was for his patient.
“It was Harding as a boy, but I changed it to Crowley when I took over the solicitor’s business,” he explained. He barked, a short laugh. “Well, one client at least. There was no reason to change the shingle. Needless expense. We kept the business name Crowley.”
“Daniel and Martha Harding,” she whispered, bemused. Now that she looked at him closely, she could see the resemblance, albeit much younger than the doctor who only a short while ago had provided her the emetic for Miss Caroline. How long had it been? It seemed ages; years even but it had only been perhaps a week or two.
He tied off the last stitch and then he stopped short. He stared at her as if with new eyes. “You know them?”
Marilee realized her mistake too late. She rushed around the table and clasped at his shirtsleeve. “You cannot tell anyone. Pretend I never said it. Promise me.”
He shook his head. “So, you’re from Northwick, right? Who is your family?”
Both her hands curled into his lapel and she pulled him to face her with all the pleading in her eyes that she could muster. She whispered, “Promise me. No one in this house can know; who I am; where I come from...”
“Kate…” he shook his head, speaking rather loudly. “What is going on here?”
She hissed at him and covered his mouth with her hand. The recitation of her fake name brought home just how much danger lurked always nearby. “Do you want to get me killed? Or, both of us?” She realized how inappropriate her hand on his mouth was. Beneath her fingers she could feel the swell of his lips, his soft breath. She yanked her hand away from his person and wrapped her hands together as if she could wipe away the feel of his breath on her palm. Her heart was beating at an impossible rate and she felt warm all over as if fevered.
His brows drew together, but he remained silent as he began to clean up the mess of bloody rags.
