Flowers From The Storm (11 page)

So the Ape had gone to dry himself, and Christian, back in his cell in a blue dressing robe that didn’t even belong to him, that disgusted him, had Maddy for his valet.

Dress like peasant.

Christian glared at the vulgar clothes laid out for him.

“Wo,” he said. He crossed his arms and set his mouth, clamping his teeth to keep them from chattering, tensing to prevent the shudder that overtook him and sent pain shafting through his back.

The Ape would have gotten help, tied him up and forced the lunatic’s jacket on him instead. Christian waited to see what Maddy would do, trying to hide the shiver that came with every deep breath he drew.

His hair was wet; he was cold to the bone. He had no intention of carrying any battle of wills far enough to chance getting the Ape back; he wanted Maddygirl desperately, her calm and straight-spined figure sitting in the chair outside his cell:
white stiff… cap… peace
.

“Whon?” she asked.

He scowled at her.
Wrong
? Wrong, did she mean?

Decent clothes
! he wanted to snarl.
No wretched raw bad sew rubbish
!

He grabbed up the coat, meaning to point out the awkward stitching, the ill-matched buttonholes, but he couldn’t do it. He just held the coat, muddled again, stuck between the intention and the action.

With a hot sound in his throat, he threw the garment down. A heavy shudder went through his frame.

“Sh’boh?” she said. She touched his hand, caught it between hers, and he couldn’t hold himself still, couldn’t conceal the cold tremors or contain the catch in his back on each indrawn breath. He pulled his hand away and went to the window, holding on to the bars that seemed hot beneath his freezing palms.

She was silent for a long time behind him. He knew she could see the shaking—what difference did it make? He put his forehead against the bars and let it have him.

The brass lever that controlled the bell creaked. No bell-pull here, too easy for a man to hang himself from the velvet rope. Christian had already thought of it, but they were well ahead of him. They had it all designed, they’d been at it for years; a bumpkin keeper like the Ape had a preternatural ability to anticipate resistance and counter it. Christian was taller, faster, younger; God knew, he hoped he had more brains—but the Ape knew all the tricks. The razor and that incident in the bath had been the first real victories Christian had managed, and his back ached and throbbed where the iron bar had struck him, sparking sharp agony whenever he turned.

He heard the Ape’s voice in the hall and tensed, starting another shiver in the depth of his muscles. But there was no sound of the barred door opening. Maddy spoke, the Ape hesitated and then made a grunt of assent. His footsteps thudded away.

Christian turned around. Maddygirl was looking at him, frowning a little, chewing her lower lip. As she met his eyes, she smiled briefly.

“I’ve runcoles,” she said.

Runcoles?

She pointed at the empty grate, hugged herself, and shivered.

Coals. Coals, fire, yes
. They’d never done that before, only lit the grate at night.

He wished to say thank you, and could not say it. He nodded briefly.

She picked up the coat where he’d dropped it and offered it to him. As she held it out, he put his hand on the badly made collar, ran his finger down it, pointed at the clumsy buttonholes.

“Donderstan,” she said, looking up at him with a helpless expression.

He gritted his teeth and shivered.
All right. Try again
. He touched her sleeve, moved his forefinger up the underside of her arm, where the tiny stitches were invisible, neat and elegant, if plain, as her black dress and white collar were plain. Then he traced the same seam on the coat.

She looked from her own arm to the coat. She shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Doono.”

He gave it up, pulling the coat out of her hand and gesturing for her to leave, so he could dress. She just stood there. He took her by one shoulder, turned her, and pushed her toward the door.

“No.” She set her feet against him and turned back. “Thamus dress.”

Course dress yes, remove she, any female respectability understand
. But she stood stubbornly. The Ape came clattering in with a pail of coals. Christian drifted back a little, away from him, prudent. The fire lit, they jabbered together, the Ape shrugged and nodded at whatever she said, gave Christian a carefully neutral glance, and closed the solid door as he left, blocking out the hall.

Christian stared at her.
Not think… God’s sake… not suppose dress here full view she
!

But she did. She walked right up to him and took hold of the buttons on the robe and began to flick them open as if she’d done it every day of her life.

Christian grabbed her wrist and thrust it away with an indignant sound. He gestured at the door, and gave her another light shove.

“Tha ish lark?” she asked.

He took a deep breath, straining for words. “Hunh…”

She didn’t seem to realize the depth of his disposition toward her—that he would go so far as to try to speak, to allow her to hear it. “Lark?” she said again, with her hand on the bell-lever.

He realized suddenly that she meant to call the Ape. “No!” He shook his head. “No.”

“Sikrunus.” She laid her hand on her breast. “Ver per-yence.”

A deep shiver went through him. He kept himself at a guarded distance from her.

“Nuse,” she said. “Thow. Nurs.”

Nurse.

Oh, dashed nurse, was it
? His nurse. And she supposed that just because she imagined herself a nurse, he would let her undress him as if he were some invalid child, did she?

Maddy was secretly relieved when that familiar ironic smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. Clearly he was probing her position; if Larkin and Cousin Edward came back and found him still in the dressing robe, she would look as if she had no authority over the situation. While Cousin Edward’s approval of her new responsibility was so precarious, she desperately wished to avoid any impression that Jervaulx was becoming more unmanageable rather than less under her influence.

It was more difficult than she’d expected, to keep plainly in mind that he acted out of adult reasoning which might not be obvious to her. This interest in the seams on her dress and his coat while he stood shaking with cold baffled her. She wished to get him into good warm clothing, with his hair drying in front of the fire—and then later this evening, after Larkin took her place, she intended to examine into the true nature of the therapeutic baths.

This time, when she picked up the shirt and went forward, Jervaulx stood still, allowing her to approach him. Maddy had dressed her father a thousand times; she had her own routine—a system that required him to sit down, which Jervaulx did docily enough when she motioned toward the bed, though he grimaced a little as he did it.

She began again to unbutton the robe. By the time she had released the first button, she was aware that he was watching her intently, his face near hers as she bent over. By the third, she had become very conscious that this man was
not
her papa, that the solid shape of shoulder and muscle beneath the dressing robe was nothing like. By the sixth, the perception of his breath, soft and steady on her hands as she worked, seemed intimate beyond anything proper or acceptable.

She lifted her eyes. His one-sided smile deepened. He lifted his hand and drew his forefinger down the line of her jaw, catching her chin, raising it a little. Their eyes were at level, inches apart.

His were dark blue.

Maddy pulled herself back. She stood straight, her shoes making a loud sound on the wooden floor as she shifted.

He rose. Without a word, he declared himself ruler of the moment. He lifted his eyebrows a little, as if to ask if she wished to continue. Maddy looked at the open gap in the dressing robe and away from it, having stumbled into something unexpectedly beyond her competence.

He shrugged. The robe slipped from his shoulders and fell at his feet. He held out his hand for the shirt.

She really was very experienced, as a nurse. She’d bathed and dressed a number of patients, not all female; she was frequently called upon when a member of the Meeting needed attendance. And of course, she’d always cared for her father…

He was not her father. He was not a child, nor elderly nor ill. He was something she had never in her life seen before: a man in the full—she could only call it glory—of height and bone and strength of adulthood, standing without a stitch upon him, his hand open for his shirt.

Every fiber in her wanted to shove the garment at him and rush out of the room.

But she saw the mocking smile and the anger in it. His body was imposing in the small cell, broad-shouldered and powerful, imposed on
her;
and he knew it. He meant it to frighten her.

It did. At least, it felt something like fear, this mortified agitation. She saw the strength, but she saw too the symmetry, the superb length and shape of muscle. Her flustered alarm was mixed up with a dash of plain creaturely admiration that anyone could stand so: tall and straight and insolent, just the way God had made him.

And God had made him in a striking and brilliant way. A miracle of life breathed into clay. It seemed no more wrong to take note of it than to take delight in the flight of a hawk over the fields outside. That hawk had seemed a marvel to her, a city dweller all her life—and the unclothed figure of a man no less novel and dramatic.

She laid the shirt in his hand. He swept it up and pulled it on, with a faint hiss between his teeth, jerking his head to settle the fabric over his ears. The white cotton fell free down to his thighs. He took a step past her as if she didn’t exist and reached for the folded stockings and breeches.

Maddy turned away to the window, having understood his message quite clearly. She gripped her hands together, working her fingers, feeling impelled to apologize but too chagrined to try.

Worldly arrogance and wickedness were not things she’d been brought up to respect, but it was somehow fine that in spite of this place, his affliction, in spite of everything, he asserted his disdain for the circumstances. He was not only a human being; he was a duke, and not about to allow anyone to overlook it. Certainly not one plain Quaker nurse.

She waited until she heard no more sounds of movement behind her. Just as she was about to turn, he startled her into a jump when he laid his hand on her shoulder.

He was dressed—more or less. The waistcoat, breeches and coat hung unbuttoned, and the shirt cuffs seemed to be lost somewhere up inside the coat sleeves. He stood scowling at her ferociously, his jaw working. Then he took a step back and held out both his hands.

It was a strangely vulnerable gesture, abrupt and reluctant. He looked, not at her, but down at his wrists, as a monarch would look at unruly subjects, offended and enraged at once.

Maddy reached out and slipped her fingers inside the sleeves, one after the other, pulling the shirt down and buttoning the cuffs. She looked up at him.

“
No
,” he said, with a brisk nod—which she took to mean yes: she’d done right.

The breeches buttoned on two sides of the fall. Maddy waited to be asked this time, having learned her lesson. He made a brief attempt to close one button on the left side with his left hand, then gave a harsh exhalation and caught her wrist. She took a step closer under the imperious tug and quickly did up the buttons on both sides, closing the breeches over the ample tail of the shirt, stepping back as soon as she’d finished.

For her service, she received another nod. His easy hauteur dismissed any hint of personal intimacy. He picked up the cravat off the table and handed the neckpiece to her.

She tied it, on tiptoe, while he stood with his chin lifted.

When she’d finished, he felt the knot, which was the simple style that she tied for her father, and shook his head impatiently.

“I don’t know another way.” She lifted her open palms and gave a helpless shrug.

For a moment, she feared that he would grow angry. His frown deepened ominously—but then his mouth flattened. He cast a glance of amused exasperation at the ceiling. With a little flick of his hand at the loose waistcoat, he demanded that it be fastened, too.

Maddy did so. The garment didn’t fit him well; it was ill-made and too tight; the buttons pulled in an unsightly manner. She wondered that he tolerated it, as fastidious as she knew he’d been in his tailoring.

He seemed to accept it, though, turning away from her and taking up the damp towel to dry his hair.

Next to the metal washbasin, a comb lay: that he used with no hesitation.

Having combed the left side of his head with his left hand, he stopped. He put the comb down on the table and stood still a moment, looking at it. He glanced at Maddy, opening and closing his fingers uneasily. Then he shut his eyes, felt for the comb, and picked it up with his right hand, finishing the other side.