“I’m going to close my eyes,” he said as he tested her on her feet. Her legs buckled and his arms snapped around her body, preventing her from collapsing to the cool tile floor. “Sit on the edge of the bath for a moment.”
Panic set in as she realized that he had drawn the bath.
“It’s only Tilly and Molly now. I didn’t want to wake them,” he said, as if reading her mind. “But I give my word that—”
“Not necessary. I can wait until morning.”
“I can be a gentleman about this. Trust me.”
That was the core of the problem. She had trusted him once and he had fled, crushing her heart and soul. She was a ragdoll shoved in the deepest corner of the toy chest in comparison to the young girl who had arrived at Burton Hall three years ago.
“If you were, you would allow me to take the bath with Molly’s aid in the morning.”
“Is that what you want?”
She sighed, running her hand through the warm water. All she wished was to wash the lingering threat of death from her skin. “Please give me a towel.” It was ridiculous trying to attempt modesty with Bly, but that was another time, and they were strangers now.
He handed her a towel and lifted her to her feet again. “I am going to give you your hem and you can wrap the towel around you. My eyes will be closed.” He crossed his heart and she saw the disappointment on his face when she did not laugh.
She watched him with an unwavering stare, making sure he was true to his word as he placed the hem of her gown into her palm. Clara pulled the gown off and wrapped the towel around herself as Bly’s hold steadied her.
“I’m ready.”
He nodded, slowly opening one eye in her direction. “May I open my other eye so I can deposit you in the bath and not the sink?”
“Yes.”
He lifted her again in a swift move and slipped her into the warm water. It enveloped her like a pot of honey. Her body relaxed, sinking back into the tub, and all but melting into the heavenly water.
“Your soap, Madame.” He bowed and waited for her smile, but she could not bring herself to do it. Bly scrubbed his hand over his face as if he was attempting to hide his disappointment.
Clara saw it plainly and wished to do nothing to ease it.
“I’ll be just outside if you need me.” He left before she could say anything further.
With measured effort, Clara pulled the towel free from around her body so her flesh could breathe for the first times in weeks. She stopped when she saw the state of her skin—scarred, spotted, and covered in sores. She raised her fingers to her face, feeling the same roughness there as mirrored on the rest of her body.
Carefully, she lathered the soap and washed. It was liberating to be doing something for herself again without the help of others.
It was a certainly a little victory, but it felt glorious.
*
“May I come in?” he asked from the darkness of the doorway. Splashing water was his sole response.
She had spoken little, smiled even less, and laughed hardly at all since his arrival.
And there was the small matter of their son that she had yet to confess. Bly wondered if she would finally tell him the truth each time she looked at him, but he had received only silence so far. He wished to repair what he had broken between them and yet she continued to hate him.
“You may,” she said at last. A coughing fit gripped her, cutting off what she had for air.
He brought in a chair and set it beside the bath, then held out a cup of water for her to sip as she regained her breath. His heart thudded to a loud stop when he gazed down and saw her clutching a towel to her chest, her long legs stretched up to her chin. She looked at him as if he was about to murder her. When had she grown so frightened of him?
He cleared his throat and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “You missed a spot,” he said, his voice suddenly scratchy.
“I did not.” Disgust filled her quiet answer.
“Your hair, I mean.” He swallowed. “I made a promise to you and I mean to keep it, Clara. Wet your hair and I will wash it for you.”
She dipped into the water, her honey hair fanning out around her as her eyes shut tight. With a slow rise, she sat back up in the tub.
Silence still as she waited for him to proceed.
“Hold still,” he managed while he lathered lemon soap into her hair. He stopped as he discovered the scabs covering her scalp and eased his touch. “Does that hurt?”
Her eyes were large pools of crystalline. The candlelight flickered, casting a beautiful peach glow over her pale body. She froze, her knees tucked tight to her chest, her head leaning into his hands as his fingers laced through her hair.
Bly never washed anyone’s hair before, except his own. This was something far more intimate than any of the more wicked delights he experienced during his life. It was a tender act, which was surprising because he was only ever good at breaking things.
Clara reached up and traced the scar running through his right eyebrow and across the bridge of his nose. It was the result of a sword fight in Iran six months ago. He was lucky he kept his eye. Hell, he was lucky to still be alive, if he were being honest. Graham had sent him on a string of impossible missions since his departure from England.
“Tell me what happened,” she said, curling her long fingers over the edge of the tub in a bracing grip.
What a big question to ask, and what an unending answer waited on his lips. Instead, he told her of Minnie’s continued recovery, mindful of her pocked skin and open sores as he washed her hair. She was beautiful to him even then. So very beautiful.
He helped her from the tub and lifted her to the chair. He handed her a fresh towel and brought in a new nightgown. He allowed her a few moments to dress before he returned to pick her up once more, placing her in a chair by the fireplace. With steady hands, Bly brushed her hair, all the while telling her every manner of story, anything to take her mind away from her discomfort. In time, she fell asleep, so he carried her to bed and tucked her into the fresh sheets. He stopped himself from crawling in beside her and pulling her into his arms. He no longer deserved to hold her, though he still cherished her. It was a hellish truth to stomach.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“If you step over that threshold, you better not have known, or you won’t make it back out of this room alive,” Bly warned the man approaching from the hallway. He remained at his desk, his head resting in his hand as his went over the estate’s ledgers. Bly fired the steward just earlier that morning. Seems his aunt appreciated his bottomless purse.
“I could ask why it took you three years and an urgent telegram to return to England,” Barnes replied. “I hate Shanghai. I doubly hate opium dens. And I detest having to pull a friend out of one who was determined on killing himself. Two years since, and not a word but through Graham.”
Bly dropped his pen but did not look up. “Did you know, Barnes?” his voice edged with steel. He was not against sending a fist into that ducal face. If anything, a brawl was just what Bly needed to pull himself together.
“I have no idea what you are on about, so no. But I am starting to reconsider the length of my visit if this is how you treat the man who saved your life—”
“—My son,” Bly pointed to the small boy seated on the carpet by his desk. “Did you know about my son?”
“S-son?”
“Yes, you knew about Minnie’s illness. That’s why you sent the telegram, isn’t? I’m assuming you spoke with Clara. So did you know, Barnes?”
“She sent me a telegram asking to pass word about Minnie, but—” He walked in, even as Bly straightened in his chair, ready for a tussle. Barnes approached Rhys like some mysterious relic, something that piqued one’s curiosity, but could hold a horrible end if touched. Rhys did not look up from stacking blocks, even as Barnes sank to his haunches in front of the babe, “—nothing of this little man.”
“He doesn’t speak,” Bly confessed. Rhys
was a lot like his mother in that regard.
“Well, can he…” Barnes’s voice trailed off.
Bly snapped his fingers and the boy’s head turned immediately to the sound.
“Hmm,” Barnes said. “Well, there’s no denying it, he’s yours. God save us all. There are two of you now.”
Bly did not find any humor in the situation. Mostly, he was angry. And when he waded through the anger, he was disgusted with himself and even, much to his own shame, scared.
Barnes stood up and walked over to the dusty brandy bottles on the sideboard in a few long strides. “You left and you knew there could—”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Bly shot back. He did not mean to frighten Rhys, but the boy dropped his blocks and looked as if he were about to have a tantrum. Barnes had been a close friend, but his relationship with Graham made the truth about the real reason why left hard to confess.
“If he wasn’t in the room, I think I’d find myself wanting to throw a few punches in your direction. There are rules about that sort of thing that even gentlemen like yourself know well,” Barnes said, opening the bottle with a violent pull. “Drink?”
Bly sank further into his chair, turning back to his silent son, disgusted that his friend felt the need to test him so cruelly. “No.”
The pair said nothing for a time, the quiet ripening like a summer thunderhead, brewing and waiting to burst into violence.
“You said you were here for a visit,” Bly finally said. It quelled the threat of rain, but he expected the lightning soon enough.
“I had a feeling you were back and I thought—” but Barnes stopped himself from whatever he was about to say. “I offered to marry her,” he confessed instead. “And I didn’t even know about her circumstances. She turned me down.” Barnes placed the brandy bottle down with a thud onto the sideboard. “Clara would have been a duchess now and your son an heir.”
There it was—the first flash of lightning. Bly gripped the edge of the desk in an effort to dull the thunder.
“I’ve met with Graham in London,” Barnes said, stirring the conversation away from the personal.
Graham hadn’t pulled a gun on Bly since his leaving, but he swore it had been there every day. He wasn’t surprised to learn Graham had already arrived in England. “I want nothing to do with him.”
“He told me you were taken captive in Cairo.”
“I don’t wish to speak of it.”
“Well, you might want to reconsider. It seems there’s a group set on hunting you down, and Graham heard they’ve reached the green shores of England.”
Bly gnawed at his thumb like an animal caught in a trap. He remembered his time well in that prison, being tortured about some jewel he did not possess. Well, not then, anyhow. That jewel had been sold at auction on the black market for a fair deal. But that had been the plan, hadn’t it? Graham arranged for him to take that brick to the back of his head by a group of thugs if he refused the mission.
Barnes’s fist settled firmly on the desk, drawing Bly’s attention back, but only just.
“Word is out in London about your heroics last year in Afghanistan. It won’t take them any time to find you here since the papers are calling you a hero. Somehow, you left the devil and have arrived a savior.” Barnes tapped the edge of the letter opener with his finger, sending it into the air. He deftly moved it between his fingers in a fast wave. “Even if you wish to stay and right your mistakes, you aren’t safe.” He pointed to Rhys. “They aren’t safe here with you.”
“And what am I supposed to do? Not that you’ve asked, but Clara is upstairs, having just narrowly escaped dying. She can barely walk. I’m not leaving her.”
Barnes sank into the chair on the opposite side of the desk and studied his glass. It was only then that Bly noticed the glass was nearly empty. Barnes never drank unless he was truly troubled.
“Is that how you found her?”
“I returned to find her all but dying alone in her room in the attic after she nursed Minnie back to health. The other servants refused to help her.” Bly passed another glance over to Rhys, who continued to play with his blocks, caught up in a world Bly could not reach. Why wouldn’t he speak? He remembered a young Grace being nothing more than a fountain of unintelligible words.
“I have to stay and make right what I’ve damaged. I’ve fired the household, so only Tilly and the Nashes are here with me now. Renovations were never completed. The village and tenants were neglected. The children were never given the things they should have been. My aunt made beggars of them all when I left.”
“Where is that lovely woman?”
“In Italy. Apparently she felt she needed to rent a lavish villa a year after staying in Yorkshire. A few servants stayed behind, but from what I can tell, they did nothing for the house or the children.”
“So,” Barnes hedged, taking a last gulp from his brandy glass.
“I’m marrying Clara.”
“Bly Ravensdale, a married man,” Barnes said with a wide, easy smile. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
Bly looked over to his son, unsure why he found himself smiling. “Even the devil gets burned given enough time, Isaac.”
*
Her stomach somersaulted from hunger. She must have overslept and missed dinner. It was all a blur of days and impossibly long hours now. She could open her eyes and try to find her grasp on what remained of the day, or she could drift back to the restless slumber that constantly gnawed away at her.
She stirred a bit, moving her aching legs. Sometimes, as much as she found comfort in the lumbering abyss of her sickbed, Clara yearned to feel the sun on her skin and Rhys’s wet kisses. She had walked the hallway that afternoon with Tilly’s help until she could no longer breathe and felt faint. Clara wanted her son back, but Molly and Tilly kept him from her, afraid she would pass her infection along. If she ever told Bly, he would keep her away from Rhys too. She was sure of it.
She could smell the approaching spring through the window and knew that if she opened her eyes, Bly would be with her. She resented his attentions on nights like these. Clara wanted peace and to be left by herself. If she was destined to be alone, she did not need the added discomfort of sharing the company of a man who never loved her.
“Clara.”
His whisper had never fallen soft upon her ears. It always crashed over her as if he were shaking her from sleep. He spoke, and she became alive again.
She took in a deep breath until her damaged lungs swelled with pain. She opened her eyes, focusing on the fireplace, and running her fingers over the rough stitching of the quilt, fighting the urge to look at him as he beckoned silently by her bedside. She did not wish to do his bidding without thinking first. She hated that her heart still broke whenever she did look at him. She despised that she still found him handsome, in spite of his faults. She loathed the way he made her smile, if only briefly, even as she fought against it.
When she turned, Bly sat in the chair holding her son. She struggled to hold back the aching sob caught in her throat. Her hands ached to hold Rhys as Bly did now, but she remained an impassive front, keeping the tumult to herself.
“Our son,” he said finally when she could not find the right words. Another swell of panic and tears gripped her, but she did not show any emotion.
“My son,” she said, her voice frigid, “is a bastard like his mother.”
Clara kept her eyes on the pair—Rhys sleeping with his plump lips parted, his hair mussed about, much like his father, and Bly, staid and motionless. She had noted that he no longer moved about as he once had. He was deliberate now, often stationary and contemplative. It was hard to admit that she wondered why this was so, but she did.
“He doesn’t need to be,” Bly replied, just as coolly.
Clara understood his meaning. Her entire body understood his meaning, because the crush around her heart doubled until it felt as if her ribs would collapse and crush her lungs. She closed her eyes to fight back
the tears, but she lost that battle too.
“I thought you were well enough for a visit,” Bly continued, even as he noticed her wet eyes. He did not move to brush the tears away, even as he brought Rhys over and laid the boy beside Clara on the bed. He receded back to his chair and sat, his hands on his knees, his eyes fixed on her and Rhys.
Clara no longer cared that Bly was there; she only had eyes for Rhys.
She brushed back his silky hair, missing the sight of how the brown came alive with gold in the right light. His long eyelashes fluttered from dreaming, brushing the round apples of his cheeks. His lips were like hers, full and pink. His nose was long and straight, much like his father. Rhys was a whole of two broken parts—the better of those two parts—best on his own. A perfect whole.
“My little hero,” she whispered, pulling the quilt to cover him. She rested her hand over his small chest, feeling his heart beat against her palm.
“You weren’t going to tell me,” Bly said, his words laden with bitterness. She did not feel compelled to answer. Instead, she dropped a kiss onto Rhys’s forehead and fought the urge to hug him and never let go.
“Clara?”
She noted the thinly veiled anger in Bly’s voice, so she obliged. “I imagine you are leaving soon. I did not think it was important to tell you.”
“Not important?” Bly shot to his feet and stormed to the foot of the bed where he paced.
There, she thought, watching him with a reserved fascination, there was the pacing beast she remembered. He was not changed at all, not truly.
“Don’t wake him,” she hissed, feeling her lungs contract as if they would suck the air out of her. She did not need to be coughing. She was weak enough watching Bly appear as tortured as he did at hearing her words.
“I told you I was staying,” he said, raking a hand through his hair. “I have a right to know. He is my son, Clara. Our son,” he corrected as she opened her mouth to speak.
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