The Hero Least Likely

by Darcy Burke

  He pulled away from her and began running.

  “Seth, wait!” she called, dropping her carafe of soup and running off after her son. The sun was already so low in the sky that in an hour or so it’d be completely dark. While she was confident he could find his way home if necessary, she didn’t want him to be out wandering around while a strange man lurked in the woods. Her heart jumped to her throat. What if this man grew angry when Seth didn’t bring Lucy back with him? She ran as fast as she could to keep up. It was hopeless to believe she, a woman of nine-and-twenty, could keep up with a boy of eleven, but as long as she could still see him, she wouldn’t panic. Yet.

  He led her through the woods and in the direction of his favorite place: the Old Elm. She should have known. It was his favorite place to go during the day. While most boys his age would have stripped off all the tree’s branches and fashioned swords out of them, Seth preferred to sit under the shade the Old Elm provided and read. She swallowed another round of emotion. Just another way her son was different.

  Seth came to an abrupt stop and Lucy almost ran into the back of him, then dropped her eyes to the ground and a strangled sob erupted from her throat at what lay on the ground in front of her.

  “I told you he needed help,” Seth said, his voice full of raw emotion.

  Lucy fell to her knees at the side of the lifeless, dark haired stranger. Discarding all reservations and decorum, she reached a hand toward his blood-covered face. His skin was still warm. Whether that was a sign of life within or the blood that covered so much of him, she couldn’t know until she examined him better. She moved closer and rolled him over onto his back.

  “I thought you said he was rich,” she said, trying to keep herself calm as her eyes scanned over this man’s beaten and bloodied body.

  “I presume he was—before he was robbed,” Seth said simply, dropping to his knees next to her.

  Lucy couldn’t stop the slim smile that spread her lips. Her boy was clever, he was. He might be a bastard and seemingly unable to fully comprehend what that would mean to him and the things he’d never have because of his bastardy, but he was clever and the only ray of joy in her life these past eleven and a half years.

  Not sure if the man who was lying before her was still alive or not, but not wanting to hurt him more if he was, she gingerly touched his wrist and felt for a pulse. She felt one. Barely. Releasing a breath she didn’t know she was holding, she looked up to her son and met his tear-filled eyes.

  “He’ll be all right,” she lied. “But I need you to help me.”

  He nodded wordlessly.

  “We need to carry him back to the house so I can clean him up and examine him better.” She moved to stand at the man’s shoulders. “I’ll lift him under his arms and carry him as best I can. I need you to hold his ankles and make sure we don’t drag him.”

  Seth looked at her for a moment in disbelief, then shrugged and grabbed the man’s ankles while Lucy slid her hands under his shoulders and closed her fingers in his armpits. Then, together, they lifted. And grunted. The man was heavy. No, not just heavy. There had to be another word that was more accurate. She just didn’t know what it was.

  Fortunately their house was only a quarter mile away.

  Even more fortunate, for Lucy, Seth and the man they carried, they only dropped him twice and neither time was on his head!

  Of course it did take them thirty minutes to get back to their house, but without those breaks every two to three minutes they might have all been dead.

  “Let’s put him on my bed,” Lucy said on a gasp. It’d be a wonder if she didn’t collapse any moment.

  Seth grunted as he helped heft the chunk of lead shaped like a human up onto her bed.

  When the man was secure on top of her mattress, mother and son exchanged a quick look before Lucy gave her son orders to go fetch a basin of water and an unused sheet from the hall.

  “You’d better not die on me,” she whispered to the dark-haired man lying motionless on her bed. “I’m about to rip up my last sheet for you. The least you owe me is to live.”

  A moment later Seth entered the room with a white sheet draped over his shoulder and dragging on the ground behind him and a basin of water in his hands so full that with each step he took some splashed over the side.

  Normally she’d chastise him for making such a mess, but not today. There was more than enough to chastise him for later. Right now, she needed his help if this man was to have half a chance at life.

  Seth set the basin down on the crude table beside her bed and without being told started shredding the sheets. Lucy checked for a pulse again. It was as weak as before, which she took as a good sign. They hadn’t killed him on their way to the house.

  Lucy picked up a strip of linen that Seth had pulled from the sheet and soaked it in water. She wrung out the excess and brought it to the man’s face. Exerting a hint of pressure so she could actually clean off his face, but not hurt him, she gently wiped away the blood that surrounded his mouth. The cloth absorbed so much blood she rinsed it out, then made another swath. Then another. Slowly, she cleaned the majority of his face, leaving the water a dirty reddish-brown color. She dropped the rag into the water and took a moment to look him over. Despite the bruises forming on his chin and around his eyes and the cuts that covered his face, he was undoubtedly very handsome. High cheekbones, a strong angular jaw and chestnut brown hair. He looked young, too.

  Her eyes traveled down to the rest of him. His clothes, though once undoubtedly among some of the most expensive to be found in London, were tattered and dirty, indicating that his injuries were likely greater than just those on his face. Tentatively, she unfastened the buttons of his light brown waistcoat.

  “Are you undressing him?” Seth asked.

  “I don’t have a choice,” she murmured, not daring to look up at him.

  A moment passed, then his hands joined hers in undressing the good-looking stranger.

  Wordlessly, the pair removed his clothing, gasping and shuddering as more painful bruises and abrasions were revealed. It was a miracle the man was still alive.

  Seth dropped the man’s torn silk stocking to the floor and looked back to where his mother was unfastening the man’s black trousers.

  “You plan to undress him all the way?” The terror in his voice was unmistakable.

  Lucy nodded, but couldn’t force herself to meet her son’s eyes. He was reaching an age, if he hadn’t already reached it, where changes would happen. Changes she couldn’t bring herself to talk about with him. A lump formed in her throat. He really did need a father. She blinked back those traitorous tears and said, “I don’t have a choice. He might have been hurt—”

  Seth made a sound that would suggest he’d been the one hit or kicked there. “I’ll do that,” he said a moment later, the conviction in his voice stole Lucy’s attention momentarily.

  She stilled her hands and looked at her son as he seemed to straighten to his full height of four feet and eight inches.

  “I’m a man, like him,” he continued, his face turning crimson. “There’s no need to embarrass you—or him.”

  Or him.

  The words stole her breath away. Seth did have some concerns. Ones he’d likely never bring to her. She licked her lips, but couldn’t speak and just moved out of the way when he took over unfastening the man’s trousers.

  Wordlessly, she made her way out of the room and to the hall where she leaned against the wall, closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands. If the idea of Lucy seeing a man’s naked form caused her son to panic so much, the very idea of just how he came into existence might kill him. Especially since it’d be her who’d have to inform him.

  TWO

  When she awoke, the sun was already shining in her window, letting her know she was late for her post at the bakery. She scrambled off the settee she’d dragged into Seth’s room to sleep on and after giving the beaten man a very quick once-over, she rushed to work. Mr. Swenso
n, her employer, wouldn’t be pleased she was late, but she prayed he’d be understanding when she explained the events of the previous evening.

  He wasn’t.

  Worse yet, she was sacked.

  “But I need this post,” she said before she could stop herself. There was nothing worse than begging; but though she detested begging, she did need this position. Without it she and Seth couldn’t afford to stay in their house past the end of the month.

  “Then ye shouldn’t be late.”

  “But it was only the first time. Surely—”

  “No,” he snapped, his lips thinning. “If yer too tired after a night of entertainin’ a strange man in yer bed, then ye don’t need the post that bad.”

  Understanding filled her then. Two months after she’d begun working for Mr. Swenson, he’d offered her a proposition that would allow her the freedom of staying home to tend her house and make friends about the village while spending her nights with him. She’d declined. She might be a fallen woman, but she would be no man’s mistress. Ever.

  Biting her tongue to keep in a stinging retort that would likely only make her look bad, she bobbed a quick understanding and with a chest filled with dread exited the bakery.

  They’d likely have to move.

  Once news got out that she’d been sacked from Swenson’s Bakery, and why, she might not be able to get another decent post.

  No. She shouldn’t think like that. She’d worked at the bakery for three years. Surely she’d be able to find another position.

  Mulling over her other employment options, she took the longer way home. The dark-haired stranger who was still sleeping (and breathing) when she’d left hadn’t been wearing a coat. She wondered if perhaps she’d find it somewhere along the lane or among the sticks and trees.

  She saw nothing.

  Not even her carafe.

  Of course.

  “Mama, he’s awake!” Seth hollered just as she’d come into view of the house.

  Finally some welcome news, she thought as Seth ran over to her. “That’s wonderful, Seth.” And she meant that. “Has he said anything?”

  He nodded and fell in step beside Lucy. “Lots.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, he’s from London. He works with his father who does something with a bank so he has pots of money.”

  “I see you asked him the important questions,” Lucy said only a fraction sarcastically.

  “Indeed,” he chirped, not daunted one jot by her tone. “He’s unattached. Not even a betrothed or anything.”

  Lucy wanted to groan, but before she could, her son continued.

  “Just think, Mama, you could marry—”

  Lucy halted her steps and pulled him to a stop. “Seth,” she began, turning to face him. “I know you’d like a—” she swallowed so she wouldn’t choke on her words— “father, but Mr.—” she waved her hand through the air then frowned. “We don’t even know his name.”

  “We could ask him,” he said with a carefree shrug.

  Lucy didn’t even want to know why that wasn’t the first thing Seth had thought to ask the man, but neither did she want to. “And we will ask him,” she said matter-of-factly. Then she’d ask who his family was so she could post a letter to have them come collect him so she could stop worrying about him and start looking for another position.

  Seth tugged on her hand. “Why are we just standing here?”

  Indeed. Why just stand there when there was a naked man in her bed to go interrogate?

  Simon Appleton was damned uncomfortable lying in a strange bed with nothing more than a thin sheet covering his naked body from the world. But that was hardly anything compared to the scrapes and bruises that covered his body or the steady tattoo of painful drumming that sounded in his head. Not to mention the never-ending string of questions from a boy who Simon still couldn’t determine if he was real or a figment of his imagination. Perhaps taking the indirect way back to London from Telford wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had. He wanted a chance to wander and think. Instead, he was in pain and had been interrogated.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The boy was real. He might not be present right now, but why on earth would Simon’s mind have made up a story about a young boy and his mother having carried him into their house and disrobing him? He wanted to groan, but didn’t have the energy to. Perhaps that was a figment of his imagination, too.

  Oh, hell, he didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. But if the boy was real, then he’d been robbed, beaten, and then carried here to be cared for by said boy and his mother. This time he did groan. The identity of the boy—and even his existence—was still very foggy to Simon, but the aching of his body declared that he had indeed been beaten quite severely.

  A door creaked in the distance and Simon snapped his eyes open. Were those voices?

  The voices grew closer. One he recognized right away as that of the boy who’d plagued him with inane questions, presumably to keep him conscious, if he were indeed conscious to begin with, then regaled him with his own heroic tale. The other was new. Perhaps it was the boy’s mother? He closed his eyes to regain his bearings, banishing the voice along with his view of the room.

  Suddenly, the boy’s excited voice floated to his ears, and just as suddenly, it was gone.

  “Perhaps he went back to sleep,” a decidedly female voice soothed.

  Simon’s eyes snapped open as quickly as they could under the circumstances. That voice sounded like that of an angel, and he must see her form to verify. Of a medium height, with raven hair and blue eyes, she stood gracefully near the side of his, no her, bed. She looked younger than he’d expected the boy’s mother to be so she must be a sister or cousin. Or just someone from the village. Not that he cared just what her relation to the boy was she was welcome to his bedside anytime.

  Simon cleared his throat and his thoughts simultaneously. “Good afternoon, Miss…”

  “Whitaker,” she supplied, tucking a tendril of her long, dark hair behind her ear. “My name is Lucy Whitaker, and you are?”

  “Simon Appleton,” he said without hesitation.

  “And I’m Seth,” the boy standing near Lucy said.

  Simon nodded his understanding of the boy but didn’t take his eyes off Lucy. She was a very beautiful young woman. More beautiful than— He twisted his lips in disgust that his mind had even thought of her. He grimaced in pain.

  “Is something wrong?” Lucy asked as she rushed to his side.

  He forced a smile and shook his head. “No, not at all.”

  She slowly nodded once and gave him a wary, sidelong glance.

  Simon nearly cursed himself for his sarcasm and cleared his throat. He looked to the boy to offer him some sort of distraction, and just as quickly jerked his eyes away. That inquisitive young fellow stood down by Simon’s feet, grinning. Simon scowled, then grimaced once again.

  “Have another momentary lapse?” Lucy asked, her tone light.

  Despite himself, Simon laughed. “Indeed.”

  Lucy shook her head; what appeared to be a slight smile pulled on her lips, but didn’t meet her eyes. It was hard to guess her age. She was older than him, but it couldn’t be by much. Not that he could dare ask her. “Other than suffering at your own hands by stretching your lips and contorting your face, are you hurting anywhere else?” she asked, pulling him from his thoughts.

  “No, ma’am,” he lied. Truth was, there wasn’t anywhere on his body that didn’t hurt. But that mattered very little. He might be a commoner, but even he knew that any young lady, whether of breeding or not, wouldn’t be inclined to nurse a gentleman beyond fetching him a glass of water or a cool rag.

  “That’s good,” Lucy said.

  From the corner of his eye, Simon saw Seth making an eating motion with his hands. “I’m ravenous,” Simon burst out.

  “Oh,” she said, her face turning a fetching pink. She smoothed her skirts. “Of course, I’ll go start a pot of soup.”
<
br />   Simon and Seth exchanged a look, but their victory came to an abrupt end when Lucy spoke again. “While it’s cooking, I’ll write a letter to your family to let them know you’re all right.”

  A flash of hope sparked in Simon. She’d only said she’d write them to inform them he was all right, she hadn’t said anything about making arrangements for him to return home. Catching sight of her lifted brow, he realized she was waiting for a name. He racked his brain. Who should he have her contact? He had no relations other than his parents. His mother would be on Lucy’s doorstep in a trice, making a fuss that could be rivaled only by a wounded war hero returning home. He shuddered. Of course she’d love the chance to fawn over him and reassure him that the sudden emergence by his half-brother that he never knew he had hadn’t changed the way she felt for Simon.

  That was not what he needed. Nor did he wish for his father to come. Simon was injured, but not so severely that he was about to be visited by the Angel of Death. If his father, Walter Appleton, had any reason to believe Simon wasn’t still at that blasted house party in Telford, he’d insist that Simon be the one to go visit Lord Drakely about his investments. Lord Drakely himself was pleasant enough, it was that bewitching, tart-tongued shrew he housed that Simon would rather avoid. Simon shuddered again. His last encounter with one Miss Henrietta Hughes had been more than enough for him to know spending any more time with her was at the bottom of the list of things he wished to do.

  “So many relations,” she teased.

  “Do you have to contact any of them?”

  “Yes,” she said, the same time Seth said, “No.”

  Simon and Seth grinned at each other. He had no idea what the connection between Lucy and Seth was, but it would seem that Seth would be a wonderful ally in softening Lucy. “You’ve got a good number of bruises and cuts,” Lucy began. “Though nothing looked too deadly—”

  A coughing attack came over Simon. Lucy had seen Simon’s injuries? That’d mean… Lucy was Seth’s mother? No, she couldn’t be. She was too young to be his mother. Through squinted eyes he looked from one to the other. Seth’s eyes were green and his hair sandy blond. Lucy’s eyes were blue and her hair was dark. Seth must favor his father.