Truly Yours by Bárbara Metzger Read Free Book Online Page B

overlarge nightgown down so fast and so hard the shoulder might have ripped. Miss Carville was clean enough in his view, and far too long in his view, also. He did not think any of her ribs were broken, nor were any of her cuts deep enough to need stitches. He moved her over, between the sheets, and coveredher to the chin with the blankets. Then he could breathe again.
    When he gathered her ruined garments to toss out into the corridor for burning, Rex heard steps on the staircase again. This time Dodd brought the doctor up. The butler did not meet Rex’s eyes when he mumbled that none of the neighbor ladies agreed to come, and none of the nearby maidservants, either.
    “Perhaps the doctor knows of a willing woman,” Rex said, looking toward the older man in hope. “An experienced nurse, fit for a gentlewoman’s care.”
    The physician was already examining Miss Carville, making snorting noises, while Rex kept his back turned. “I’ll try to find one who isn’t a drunkard. The countess wouldn’t want one of those in her house. Not that she’d want this, either, poor lady.”
    “Are her injuries that dire, then? Or is it the fever?”
    “Hmph. I meant Lady Royce, not the murderess. This one will do, with some willow bark tea for the ague, laudanum for her nerves, basilicum ointment for everything else.” Rex could see the man’s certainty in bright color as he laid out the powders and potions, and was relieved until the doctor said, “But I still say it seems a shame, the same as I told Dodd here when I arrived.”
    “That a gently bred woman could be treated so savagely?”
    “No, that Lady Royce will be bothered with such a mare’s nest, and that I have to waste my time over a killer.”
    Rex turned and glared at the physician. “Thank you for coming. You need not send over a nurse. We’ll manage. You may send Lady Royce your bill. Good day.”
    “Hmph.”
    “How?” Dodd wanted to know, despite the impertinence. “How are you going to take care of the female? There is already enough scandal to see Lady Royce’s good name destroyed.” What use was a good position if he was laughed at when he visited the pub his fellow butlers frequented? How was Dodd to collect vails from callers if no one visited her ladyship?
    Rex wanted to say “Hmph” himself. Reputations be damned, he would not see Miss Carville ill-treated or insulted. He could not say precisely why he felt protective of the girl, but it was certainly not because he’d touched her soft, silky skin, or that her appearance, battered and bruised with her hair lopped off, appealed to him. Even clean she still looked like something the cat dragged in, and then dragged outside again as unappetizing. No, he’d felt the surprising tug of tenderness the moment he’d glimpsed her in prison. Why, he could have bribed the warder to have her moved to a more comfortable cell. He could have paid a matron to tend to her, and see that she was fed and bathed and doctored. Maybe he should have done just that, leaving her there. No one, not even his father, could have expected him to do more. He was in London to determine guilt or innocence, to investigate a murder, to hire a competent barrister. Lud, he was not here to play nursemaid to a wench weeks away from the hangman’s noose. Rex looked at Miss Carville, pale against the pillow, though, and knew he’d had no choice. It was as simple as that, not a matter of duty or chivalry or justice. He, and no one else, had to make her safe.
    He smoothed the blankets around her and told the butler, “Caring for Miss Carville is not your concern. Just find someone to cook a meal—porridge or something that a sick person can eat. Find a coffeehouse or a bakery if you need to. And find me another bottle of brandy.”
    Dodd shook his head on his way out. “There’ll be the devil to pay, for sure,” he muttered, whether Lady Royce found out about Nell or not.
    Rex did not have to see any colors to know the truth of