Wicked Intentions (Maiden Lane #1)(40)

TEMPERANCE STARED DOWN at Lord Caire’s infected shoulder, aware that his avowal of trust had caused sweat to break out along her spine. The last man who’d trusted her had had his faith horribly betrayed.

Now was not the time to think of the past, though. Temperance mentally shook herself. The wound was red and puffy, the edges swollen and inflamed with streaks of red radiating from it.

“Have the footmen bring fresh hot water,” she muttered to the valet as she wrung out the cloth again. This time she placed it directly on the wound. Sometimes the infection could be drawn out by heat.

Lord Caire stiffened at her touch, but otherwise he made no sign that he felt what must be awful pain.

“Why does the touch of others cause you pain?” she asked him softly.

“Might as well ask why a bird is attracted to the sky, madam,” he slurred. “It’s just the way I am.”

“What about when you touch someone else?”

He shrugged. “There is no pain as long as I am the initiator.”

“And you were always thus?” She frowned at the cloth, pressing it into the wound. Despite the doctor’s philosophy, she’d always followed her mother’s teachings on wound healing, and Mama had not liked pus, “bonum” or not.

Caire gasped and closed his eyes. “Yes.”

She glanced quickly at his face before taking up the cloth and wiping away the liquid that had oozed from the wound. “You said before that there has never been anyone who didn’t cause you pain.”

The words were a statement, but she meant them as a question, for she remembered his slight hesitation before.

He was silent as she rinsed the cloth in the lukewarm water and reapplied it. For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t speak.

Then he whispered, “I lied. There was Annelise.”

Her head jerked up and she stared at him, feeling an odd spike of something that might’ve been jealousy. “Who is Annelise?”

“Was.”

“What?”

He sighed. “Annelise was my younger sister. Five years younger. She took after our father in looks—a plain little thing with mousy brown hair and gray-brown eyes. She used to follow me about even though I told her… I told her…”

His voice trailed away as Small silently replaced the basin of water with a fresh one. Temperance rinsed the cloth in it, the water so hot it reddened her hands. She laid the hot cloth against his wound and pressed, but he seemed not to even notice now.

“What did you tell her?”

“Mmm?” Lord Caire murmured without opening his eyes.

She leaned closer to him, staring at his long nose, his firm, almost cruel mouth. Surely such a sarcastic, nasty man could not be defeated by something as mundane as a putrid wound?

Fear made her belly clench. “Caire!”

“What?” he muttered irritably, half opening his eyes.

She swallowed. “What did you tell Annelise?”

His shook his head against the pillows. “She’d follow me, spy upon me when she thought I wasn’t watching, but she was so much younger than me. I always knew. And she would take my hand, even when I told her not to. Told her not to touch me. Yet her touch never hurt… never hurt…”

Temperance reached out and did something she never would have done had he been in his right senses: She gently stroked back his beautiful silver-white hair from his forehead. It was soft, almost silken, beneath her fingers.

“And what did you tell her?”

His sapphire eyes suddenly opened wide, looking as lucid, as calm, as they had the day before he was hurt. “I told her to go away, and she did. She caught a fever not soon afterward and died. She was five and I was ten. Do not endow me with romantic virtue, Mrs. Dews. I have none.”

She held his gaze for a moment, wanting to argue the point, wanting to comfort a little boy who’d lost his younger sister so long ago. But she straightened instead, withdrawing her hand from his hair. “I’m going to bathe your wound with strong spirits. It will hurt a great deal.”

He smiled almost sweetly. “Of course.”

And somehow, with the help of Small, she accomplished the horrible job. She bathed his wound in brandy, dried it, and dressed it once again, all the while conscious that she was causing him excruciating pain. By the time she’d finished, Lord Caire was breathing heavily under his covers, unconscious. Small looked disheveled, and Temperance was fighting sleep.

“That’s done at least,” she whispered wearily as she helped the manservant gather the soiled cloths.

“Thank you, ma’am,” the little valet said. He darted a worried glance at the bed and its inhabitant. “I don’t know what we would’ve done without you tonight.”

“He is something of a handful, isn’t he?”

“Indeed, ma’am.” The manservant’s words were fervent. “Would you like me to have the maids make up a room for you?”

“I should go home.” Temperance stared at Lord Caire. His face was still red, and though she’d washed his brow, it was beaded with sweat again.

“If you’ll pardon me, ma’am,” Small said. “He might need you in the night, and in any case it’s very late for a lady to be traveling out alone.”

“’Tis, isn’t it?” she murmured, grateful for the excuse.