her. “I shall need to fetch supplies. Perhaps comfrey as an astringent for his wounds.”
“A fresh cravat,” Lord St. Raven groaned, and then the poor man fainted.
* * *
Dominic Stanford, reluctant earl of St. Raven, woke from pleasant dreams to even more pleasant humming. He stretched before a spasm of pain in his ribs reminded him of his unfortunate altercation with a group of vagabonds. He’d almost had them beat, too, he remembered with a half-edged smile.
With that comforting thought in mind, he opened his eyes a crack, just enough to find the source of the humming. The woman’s voice was melodic. Husky and flavored with a depth rarely heard in young ladies. She came into view, her unassuming clothes attesting to her station.
An ordinary housemaid.
A seemingly productive one, though. She wore a serviceable cap in which strands of hair escaped in tendrils about an ordinary face. In fact, there was nothing about her to draw his attention, and yet he could not look away.
Perhaps it was the sound of her low humming that welcomed him. Or the purposeful way in which she moved. It was not that she bustled, as he’d often observed the servantry doing, but she glided with a purpose. A singularly minded woman.
“You’re awake,” she said, without even turning to look at him. She stood at a small table at the side of the room, clinking metal against cup, as though mixing something. He could not see what. Her voice was as soothing as her unworded song. “How do you feel?”
A good question. How did he feel? He tested various parts of his body, flexing his fingers, drawing a deep breath that ended shortly with a stab of pain in his side. “I believe I’ve a broken rib or two.”
Full consciousness returned. He jerked upward, then fell back as daggers sliced across his torso. “My niece,” he rasped. Had he protected her? Had he saved her from those men?
“She is fine, my lord. Safely here at Lady Brandewyne’s.”
He struggled to breathe past the pain still lacing his chest. “She is safe. And we are at the dowager countess’s home?”
“Correct.”
“Where is the doctor?”
“The village apothecary is on his way.” If his question surprised her, she showed no sign of it. “I am your nurse, for the present moment. You have been unconscious since yesterday, when you were brought here. You’ve a few contusions and most likely some bruising to your internal organs, though no hemorrhaging that I can tell.”
“So, for now, I shall live,” he said drily, his body relaxing as he was convinced that Louise had not been harmed. He suspected the convulsions that had plagued him these last months would be the death of him, anyhow.
“Indeed, you shall certainly live.” She chuckled, and once again, he was struck by the cadence of her voice. Her pronunciation was rounded with a foreign flare. American? She did not speak like a servant, but neither did she sound wholly English. For the first time in what had been months of a terrible lethargy of the spirits, the tiniest flicker of intrigue stirred within.
Swallowing against a throat that had gone dry, he said, “Fetch me water.”
Her gaze flew up to meet his, her fingers pausing. Such direct eyes, a deep brown at odds with her lighter hair and fair skin. They chastised him. “No manners?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “You dare criticize me?”
At that, the corner of what he realized was a very pretty set of lips tilted upward. A housemaid he had not noticed in the room brought her a different glass filled with water. The woman turned to him, a sparkle in her eye. “Your lack of observation is forgiven, as you’re no doubt groggy, but I am not a maidservant. I shall speak to you however I wish.”
“Point taken, madam.”
“As well as it should be.” She reached behind his head, gently lifting him to allow his mouth to connect with the cup. “A gentleman always admits to being wrong.”
He almost choked on his water, but managed to swallow without his laughter killing him. The chuckle that had bubbled up at her words was quickly sobered by reality. In truth, he was no gentleman, but he did not intend to disclose such a thing.
He drank deeply, ignoring the ache in his midsection and concentrating on filling the thirst that beset him. All the while he was aware that she studied him. Not in the way he was used to being studied, though.
He was well aware of how ladies used to ogle him. They wanted his family lineage, his wealth. They liked his darkly handsome features and green eyes, telling him so on numerous occasions in which propriety was lightly skirted. With their fluttering lashes, their colorful fans, their shallow giggles, they admired his elegant cravats, his French tailoring, his expensive rings.
And he had enjoyed it until ten months ago.
They knew nothing of his damage now. And he enlightened no one, for should society know, it was almost certain that he’d be sent to an insane asylum. Or at best, confined to his estate, talked about with condescending pity while someone else enjoyed his title, his lands and his inheritance. Little was known about his disease, but most assumed it stemmed from mental illness.
He knew he wasn’t crazy, but he couldn’t return to his old way of life until he found a cure.
Therefore, due to the uncertain nature of his illness, he had hidden away at a little cottage he owned in northern England for these past few months. He had ignored his duties, both to Louise and to the St. Raven estate where she lived.
Until he’d received the letter from his sister threatening to take Louise from the St. Raven estate and send her to a girls’ school on the Continent. That threat, combined with yet another governess quitting, urged him to leave his self-induced solitude to collect his wayward niece from St. Raven and take her back to his cottage in the north.
Then they’d been attacked by bandits. He’d successfully coerced the criminals to follow him away from his party, but alas, had not been able to keep them from attacking him. Thankfully his party had followed at a distance and found him.
He shuddered to think of what might have become of them all, but this woman insisted Louise was well. She was his main concern.
He grew aware of the woman staring at him. Her gaze was intense. Scientific, even. Completely devoid of personal feeling. As if he was a specimen beneath the light. He shifted, handing the cup back to her.
She took it, a puzzled expression on her face. “Forgive me if I speak out of turn, but whatever are you doing so far from London in such finery? Especially with the Season in full swing.”
She did not sound contrite over her impertinence. He met her curious look with a crooked smile. “Ah, that is a question I do not care to answer... Mrs.?”
“How is our patient, Miss Gordon?” A man who looked to be the epitome of physicianhood walked into the room. He must be the village apothecary. He came to stand above Dominic. The man rubbed at his finely tuned mustache, studying him with all the objectivity of a cat studying a mouse.
These people were all the same.
“Your
