Darling Beast (Maiden Lane #7)(39)

She gently shut the door to her bedroom and looked up to find Caliban reading her play in the outer room.

He set down the sheet he’d been holding and cleared his throat. “It… is… good.” He looked at her. “Very… good.”

His voice was naturally deep, but there was a strained, hoarse quality about it that suggested damage.

“Thank you.” She’d had compliments on her plays, but they’d always been filtered through Edwin. No one had told her in person that they liked her writing. “It’s not done, of course, and I need to work quite hard on it if I’m to get it finished in time—I’ve only a week—but I think it might well be one of my better ones. That is, if I can do something about Pimberly. He’s rather priggish at the moment. But”—she reeled in her wandering words with a deep breath—“you don’t want to hear about—”

“I do,” he said, interrupting her.

“Oh.” She stared and then had to look down shyly—she was never shy! “That’s good. I mean… I’m glad, but you’ll be wanting to wash your face and see to your wounds right now, surely?”

He nodded, perhaps saving his voice, but he kept his gaze on her, watching her as she fetched water and cloths. She came to where he sat at the table and placed the basin there.

“May I?” she asked, surprised at how husky her voice was.

He nodded again, tilting his face up.

First she peeked beneath the bandage on his head. The wound was scabbing over and didn’t look damaged, so she replaced the bandage and left it as it was. In the silence she dipped a cloth in the water and wrung it out, then gently patted at his face. Up close she could see it was badly scraped in several places, and she thought of his bearing the brunt of that tree for her son.

She rewetted the cloth. “How is your back?”

“It’s… fine.”

She smoothed over his right cheekbone where the bloody cut was. “I’ll check it after I’ve washed your face.”

“There’s no… need.”

She smiled, sweet but insistent. His back would’ve been the hardest hit when he’d covered Indio and Daffodil. “I want to.”

He made no reply to that, so she continued, gently wiping around his nose, over the broad brow, and up the craggy cheekbones. Not a handsome face. Not pretty or comely. But it was a good face, she thought. Certainly masculine.

Certainly one she was attracted to.

She paused, swallowing at the thought. She did not know this man. She knew of him—knew that he would without hesitation fling himself into a filthy hole to save her son, knew he was kind to silly dogs and quarrelsome old women, knew he could, with a single, certain look, make her insides heat and melt—but she did not know him.

She straightened, concentrating as she wetted the cloth again, watching her fingers wring brown water out. “How did you lose your voice, Caliban?”

When she turned back to him, his face was closed, his eyes shuttered.

“Please,” she whispered. She had to find out something—some small thing about him.

Maybe he understood her plea. Or perhaps he was so tired he could no longer fight her.

“It was a… beating,” he said, his voice croaking. He cleared his throat, but it sounded the same when next he spoke. “He… a man stood… on my neck.” He touched his hand to his Adam’s apple.

She stared. He was big and brave and she knew he could move swiftly. How could he have been bested in a fight? Unless…

“How many were there?” she whispered.

His eyes flicked to hers, sardonic acknowledgement in them. “Three.”

Even so… “Were you drunk or asleep?”

He shook his head. “I was…”

He looked away from her as if ashamed. Her eyes narrowed. What had happened to put that look on Caliban’s face?

He cleared his throat and tried again. “I… was… chained.”

Chained. She blinked. The only persons she knew who might be chained were prisoners.

Suddenly she felt much better. A man might be imprisoned for many things—debt chief among them. Edwin had spent an uncomfortable month in Fleet Prison several years back.

She bent to wipe his chin, the cloth catching at stubble. “And you couldn’t speak after?”

“No.” He frowned. “I could… not…” He inhaled sharply as if in frustration. “I… was knocked out… they… the three of them…” He swallowed, grimacing, and she realized with sudden comprehension that there might be more to the story.

A big, powerful man chained, made helpless. She’d seen boys poke at a chained bear—a beast they’d run screaming from were it free to do as it would. Little boys—and weak men—fancied themselves brave in the face of such helplessness. It made them giddy with false power. And they were apt to wield that power in terrible and cruel ways.

Had such a thing been done to her Caliban?

The thought made her light-headed with rage. No one had the right to bolster his own feeble manhood by tearing down Caliban’s.

She took a deep breath, knowing that pity was the last thing he’d want. “I see,” she said, her voice level.

He shook his head, his mouth twisting. “It was… months… ago.”