Her eyes popped open. “It’s fine.”
But she was grimacing, and the longer she looked at it, the more he felt her stiffen. Not that he could blame her. The puckered blisters were an angry hue.
“We need it perfectly dry.” He dabbed at her hand again, trying not to hurt her. “There. Now the honey…” He opened the jar, dipped in a spoon, and drizzled the sweet thick substance onto her injured palm, spreading it gently with one finger.
She sat silent as he wound a fresh linen bandage around her hand, tucked in the end, and rinsed his fingers in the bowl.
“Davis is watching the young ones.” Wiping his palms on his breeches, he rose. “Would you care to take a walk?”
Without waiting for her answer, he took her by the elbow.
TEN
THE ROAD OUT front was noisy, crammed with an endless stream of people fleeing London. A well-worn path in back of the inn led up into gently rolling hills, and it was here that Lord Greystone guided her.
It was a cloudless night, the wind having blown every wisp over the horizon, and Amy could just make out his profile, dark against the moonlight. Aided by what seemed a million stars, her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
Twisting the gold ring on his finger—the ring she had made—Lord Greystone cleared his throat.
“How is your hand?”
“Not too bad.”
“Are you right-handed, or left?”
“Right.”
“It will be a spell before you can write, then.”
She shrugged. “I expect so.”
Lord Greystone paused, and the fingers of one hand drummed against his thigh. “Amy…”
His voice sounded too serious. She didn’t want to discuss…it. Not yet, not tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Or, if she were lucky, perhaps this was all a horrible dream, and tomorrow she’d wake up back in Cheapside.
She was glad for his presence, but she wished they were back at the inn, sitting side by side with tankards of mind-numbing ale, not saying anything. If he were going to insist on talking to her, she would have to make sure the conversation stayed on safe subjects.
When the drumming stopped, she took a quick breath. “You…you’re very good with the children.”
“Thank you.” He looked relieved. “Davis is an enormous help.”
“Why are you…doing this? Caring for these children, I mean. It’s very nice, but…”
“But why am I shepherding children when every other able man is still in London, fighting the fire?” Lord Greystone led her up a rise to where he’d spotted an ancient, broken stone wall. He seated himself upon a low section. “It’s difficult to credit, but I’ve always felt a kind of…empathy, I suppose you could call it, for children who are lost or abandoned. Perhaps I would have been of more use fighting the fire, but—”
“No, not at all.” Amy levered herself up to sit on the wall, angling to face him. “The children needed you. Thousands are fighting the fire; one more would make little difference.”
Lord Greystone hesitated, then shrugged. “I know how those children feel. When I was small, my parents left me quite often. Most of the time, in fact. And I was lonely and scared all the time. I wasn’t the bravest of boys,” he admitted ruefully.
“They left you?” Amy could barely conceive of such a childhood; her parents had never left her for so much as a day.
Until today, she realized suddenly.
She felt a brief, sharp stab of grief, then pushed it down, down, far inside, like stuffing one of those new jack-in-the-box toys back under its lid.
She bit her lip. Lord Greystone was watching her. As long as she kept asking him questions, she wouldn’t have to think about it. “Why…how could they do that?”
He cocked his head. “They were passionate Royalists. Cavaliers. King and country came first. We, my brothers and sister and I, were such a distant second we barely even counted.”
“But…where did they leave you?”
“Oh, at home—with kind servants. They weren’t cruel—they didn’t actually abandon us. But to a child…well, it felt as though they did. To me, anyway.” He paused, twisting his ring again. “My brother Jason—he’s a year older than I—feels differently. He’s always idolized our parents, most especially our father.”
“How about your sister?”
“Kendra and her twin, Ford, were so young they never knew any other kind of life. They’re sixteen—about your age, I think?”
Amy nodded. “I’m seventeen. And now?” she asked. “How do they feel about it now? Your parents, I mean. Are they sorry?”
“They died. At the Battle of Worcester, fifteen years ago.”
His parents were dead…just like hers. “Oh…” she started, then couldn’t say anything more.
Mistaking her renewed grief for sympathy, Lord Greystone rushed to reassure her. “No need to feel sorry. It was Charles’s last stand against Cromwell, and my folks wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Soon afterward we were taken to Holland to live with other Royalist exiles. We were safe. After a while I realized I didn’t miss my parents much, since they had hardly ever been around anyway.”
He fell silent, gazing out into the endless dark rolling hills.
“Was your family Royalist, Amy? During the war, I mean?”
“No,” she said slowly, pausing as she thought how to explain it. “I mean…we weren’t not Royalist, either. We were—nothing, I guess. Papa just tried to keep doing business no matter what happened.” To Amy’s surprise and dismay, her mention of Papa released a floodgate of emotions. Tears began welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, chagrined that she couldn’t control herself.
“Don’t be sorry. Whether you were Royalist or nay—it doesn’t signify. It seems a fine survival tactic to me.”
She couldn’t answer. Her throat seemed to close up, and a warm teardrop rolled down her cheek and splashed onto her clasped hands.
“Amy?” Lord Greystone probed. “Where is your mother?”
She tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. “Gone,” she answered in a quavery voice. “The plague took her.
