“What the devil are you doing here?” he demanded. “And where is my dunnage, Zeb?”
“Back there, sir,” Zeb quavered, jerking a thumb toward the growth behind the lean-to. “I couldn’t find your tent and I didn’t want to leave it, see.”
“But I told you—and what about you, Baragwanath? Are you still ill?” William demanded, kneeling down suddenly and thrusting his head into the shelter. Colenso looked bad, pale as a cup of soured milk, and plainly in pain, curled up into himself.
“Oh . . . ’tisn’t nothin’, sir,” he said, swallowing heavily. “Just must have . . . ate . . . something.”
“Did you see the surgeon?”
Colenso turned his face into the bed sack, shoulders hunched. Zeb was edging away, apparently thinking of making a run for it.
William grabbed him by the arm; the little groom yelped and he let go. “What’s wrong? Did you not have that arm seen to?”
“They’re afraid of the surgeons,” Jane said sharply.
William drew himself up to his full height and glared down at her.
“Oh? Who told them they should be afraid of the surgeons? And how do they come to be in your care, may I ask?”
Her lips pressed tight together, and she glanced involuntarily into the shelter. Fanny was looking out at them, doe eyes huge in the fading light. She swallowed and put a protective hand on Colenso’s shoulder. Jane sighed deeply and took William’s arm again.
“Come with me.”
She led him away a short distance, still within sight of the little shelter but out of earshot.
“Fanny and I were waiting for you when those boys came along together. The bigger one—what did you say his name is?”
“Colenso Baragwanath. He’s Cornish,” William added shortly, seeing a look of amusement flit across her face.
“Really. I hope it isn’t catching. Well, he was so ill he couldn’t stand, and sank down on the ground near us, making the most horrid noises. The little one—yes, I know he’s Zebedee, thank you—was beside himself, half-weeping with confusion. My sister is a most tenderhearted creature,” she said, rather apologetically. “She went to help, and I followed.” She shrugged.
“We got Colenso into the wood far enough to get his britches down in time, and I gave him a little water.” She touched a small wooden canteen that hung from her shoulder, and he wondered briefly where she’d got it. She hadn’t had it when he’d met the girls by the creek yesterday.
“I am much obliged to you, ma’am,” he said formally. “Now—why is it, exactly, that you did not then take the boys in to see the surgeons?”
For the first time, her composure showed signs of cracking. She turned a little away from him, and he noticed the last rays of the sun polishing the smooth crown of her head with a faint, familiar gleam of chestnut. The sight of it brought back memory of his first meeting with her with the force of a thunderclap—and, with it, the memory of his mingled shame and arousal. Especially the latter.
“Answer me,” he said, more roughly than he’d intended, and she turned on him, eyes narrowed at his tone.
“There was a finger lying on the ground by the surgeon’s tent,” she snapped. “It frightened my sister, and the boys took fright from her.”
William rubbed a knuckle down the bridge of his nose, eyeing her.
“A finger.” He had himself seen piles of amputated limbs outside the surgeons’ tents at Saratoga, and aside from a quick prayer of gratitude that none of the disconnected arms and legs was his, had experienced no particular qualms. “Whose was it?”
“How should I know? I was too much occupied in keeping your orderly from shitting himself to ask.”
“Ah. Yes. Thank you,” he said, rather formally. He glanced toward the shelter again and was surprised to see that Fanny had come out and was hovering a little way from her sister, a wary look on her lovely face. Did he look threatening? he wondered. Just in case, he relaxed his posture a bit and smiled at Fanny. She didn’t change expression, but continued to stare at him suspiciously.
He cleared his throat and took the sack off his shoulder, holding it out to Jane. “I thought you might have missed your supper. Have the boys—well, Zeb, at least—eaten anything?”
Jane nodded and took the bag with a celerity suggesting that it had been some time since the girls had had a meal. “He ate with the other grooms, he said.”
“All right, then. I’ll take him in to have his arm seen to and perhaps get a dose for Colenso, while you and your sister refresh yourselves. Then, madam, we can discuss your own situation.”
He’d been intensely aware of her physical presence for some moments, but when he said that, she turned the full effect of her eyes on him—cider, he thought vaguely, or sherry wine?—and seemed somehow to flow, shifting in some indefinable way. He hadn’t seen her move, but suddenly she was standing near enough to touch, and he smelled the odor of her hair and imagined he felt the warmth of her skin through her clothes. She took his hand briefly, and her thumb moved across the palm, slowly. The palm tingled and the hairs on his arm rippled.
“I’m sure we can come to a reasonable accommodation, my lord,” she said, very grave, and let him go.
He dragged Zeb into the surgeon’s tent like a recalcitrant colt and stood by, only half-attending, as a young Scottish surgeon with freckles swabbed the boy’s wound clean of dirt. Arabella–Jane didn’t smell of the whorish scent she’d worn at the brothel, but, by Christ, she smelled good.