“Damn but you’re stubborn,” he said and pulled her fingers from the spoon. “Now, lie back, open your mouth, and stop trying to prove how invincible you are.”
She did, and opened her mouth.
The bowl was empty and the fresh bread rested comfortably in her stomach and still she felt her mouth watering. She wanted more. She wanted the entire pot of soup. She wanted another loaf of bread, buttered liberally. He stood and removed the tray. As if he read her longing, he said, “No, any more and you’ll get ill. Trust me in this. You can have some more in a couple of hours.”
She turned her face away from him and he saw her fingers bunching at the cover.
“Are you in pain?”
She shook her head, then suddenly turned to face him and whispered, “I know Millie is here. I heard her. I wish to have her, please.”
He said cynically, “Really, Hetty, it is I who have looked after you for the past three days. You have no need of Millie. Come, what is it you want?”
“Damn you, get me my maid.”
Understanding dawned. “Very well, but listen to me, Hetty. Millie will have only fifteen minutes with you. I can’t allow any gossip to start among the servants. As you know, that would be fatal. You’re Lord Harry, don’t forget that.”
He said over his shoulder as he strode to the door, “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Then, Hetty, we must talk, if you feel up to it.”
It seemed an age before Millie’s large, spare figure appeared in the doorway, and Hetty wondered if the marquess had been giving her all sorts of orders. Probably so.
“Oh, Miss Hetty, oh my poor little lamb.”
A poor lamb she was destined to be at least for the next fifteen minutes, for Millie clucked over her like a mother hen finally returned to her lost chick.
Hetty’s more basic needs having been attended to, she nervously eyed the clock. “Quickly, Millie, tell me everything you know before the marquess returns.”
“Well, his grace isn’t a dreadful man as I’d sworn he would be. It’s a tangled state of affairs he’s saved you from, and I’d say he’s taken better care of you better than any doctor. Not, of course, that I approve of an unmarried man being so intimately familiar with a young girl, but I agree with him that it had to be this way. Yes, you must remain Lord Harry, else I shudder to think what might happen.”
“Did his grace tell you it would be all right if you brushed my hair?”
“Now, Miss Hetty, no need to get snippety.” She grinned down at her mistress. “I daresay I’ll have to since his grace hasn’t seen fit to render you this service.”
Millie was gentle, Hetty gave her that, still the pain grew with each gentle stroke of the brush. She sought to distract herself. “What have you been doing the past three days? How did the marquess justify your presence here?”
“Naught of anything, Miss Hetty. His grace said I needed a holiday after all the wild doings you put me through. Of course, Sir Archibald believes I’m attending you here during your visit with the marquess’s sister. As for what he told his servants, they simply think I’m a visitor from his sister, here to see if she would like anything changed when next she visits. I don’t think they believe it, but they’ve kept quiet. I like most of them. That Croft, now, he’s a handful. Careful as a vicar he is while the marquess is here not to fall into drunken stupors. He’s always peering around corners, afraid his grace will catch him with a bottle in his hand.”
Hetty pulled away from the hairbrush. “Millie, listen to me. It seems you’ve begun to think his grace is a virtuous, kind man. You know what he did. He’s cruel and ruthless. If his behavior now belies that, well, it’s because he doesn’t want a scandal, he told me so himself. His nobility is only word deep. He’s a sham, Millie, he’s”
“Is arrogant or evil next on your list of compliments, Miss Rolland?”