“And for this, I snapped your head off,” said Theo, filled with remorse. “It was kind of you to think of me. I would be glad of any assistance you would care to offer—although if you’ve changed your mind after the rude welcome I gave you, it will be no more than I deserve.”
Miss Drinkard hastily denied having any such thought in her head, and Theo invited her inside—being careful, of course, to nudge the doorstop in place with his foot in order to satisfy the demands of propriety by keeping the door open. She gave him a shy smile at his ready understanding of the potential awkwardness of her situation, then commanded him to take a seat on the room’s only chair, the one positioned before the writing desk. He obeyed this behest, albeit not before taking the tray from her—ignoring her protests that he must consider his poor hands—and setting it on the desk.
“First, you must turn up your sleeves,” she cautioned him as she plunged a cloth into the bowl of hot water. “The nights have grown quite chilly, and you will not want to sleep in a wet shirt.”
Theo submitted to these instructions with a good grace, rolling his sleeves up halfway to the elbows and revealing a pair of forearms lightly dusted with golden hair. “Tell me, Miss Drinkard, does it often fall to your lot to act as physician to your mother’s tenants?”
“Mama prefers to call them guests,” she confided, lowering her voice. “It is all a pretense, of course, but one can’t really blame her. As for my acting as their physician, I wouldn’t say it occurs ‘often,’ but it is not unusual. Just last winter, poor Mrs. Jennings was so ill with the influenza that we feared we might lose her. Mama did not quite like me tending her, for fear I should fall ill myself, but I couldn’t bear to see the poor old dear suffer so.” She wrung the excess water from the cloth, then set about dabbing away the dried blood that had crusted about the worst of Theo’s blisters. “And then there was the time I was obliged to splint poor Mr. Potts’s arm until the surgeon could be sent for.”
“I expect he enjoyed that,” Theo remarked drily. In fact, he was aware of a certain pleasurable sensation himself. Miss Drinkard’s hands were gentle on his, and he found himself wondering what it might be like were she to touch him for reasons unrelated to the practice of medicine. Gentle, certainly, but if her labors in the kitchen were anything to judge by, then possessing a surprising strength as well . . .
She looked up abruptly from her work. “Oh, so you noticed that, did you?”
Theo gave a guilty start. “What? Oh—yes—Mr. Potts. Well—forgive me, Miss Drinkard, but he makes it rather difficult not to.”
She gave a little huff of annoyance. “I have told him he must not—must not entertain hopes in that direction. Even if I were to—to return his very flattering sentiments, Mama would never countenance such a match.” She glanced up from her work, giving him a glimpse of speaking dark eyes before lowering them once more. “Mr. Potts is not the only one to entertain hopes, you know, and Mama has not entirely abandoned hers. She wants to see me make a brilliant match.”
He had guessed as much, of course, and yet was taken aback nevertheless at hearing it so baldly stated. “I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, Miss Drinkard, but in your present situation, such an outcome seems unlikely.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Under the circumstances, I daresay the arrival of Sir Valerian must seem like a godsend,” observed Theo.
By this time she had finished cleaning his blistered hands and had progressed to swabbing them with the basilicum ointment, but at the mention of Sir Valerian, her gaze shifted to the fireplace, from whence indistinct voices could still be heard. “Yes, but although Mama could not but welcome the extra money, Sir Valerian must not be allowed to inconvenience the other guests. If the noise from his meetings will disturb you, he must find somewhere else to host them.”
“No! Er, that is, no,” said Theo, modulating his tone. “I daresay it will be just as you predicted, and I shall be able to sleep through any disturbance, now that my hands will no longer pain me. It is very kind of you, Miss Drinkard.”
“Surely we’re not back to that!” protested Daphne, deftly unwinding a length of cotton lint.
“Back to what?” asked Theo, all at sea.
She bent upon him a roguish smile with a dimple at the corner of her mouth. “Your telling me how kind I am, and my assuring you that it is nothing at all.” In a more serious vein, she added, “I am often lonely, Mr. Tisdale. You seem to have some understanding of my predicament, and yet you do not seek to placate my pride by mouthing well-meaning platitudes. I had thought perhaps we might be—friends.”
“I am sure Mrs. Drinkard would say I am not at all a proper ‘friend’ for you to have.”
“Yes, but Mama does not—does not understand,” she confessed, albeit a bit grudgingly. “She would say you are only a mill worker, and that you are not a proper person for me to know.”
“And what does Miss Drinkard say?”
She picked up the scissors and sliced through the cotton lint, then gave him a long and searching look. “I think you and I might understand one another very well, for we have something in common, do we not?”
“Do we?” he asked warily.
“Come, Mr. Tisdale, it must be obvious to the meanest intelligence that you are no ordinary mill worker! You are, or were, a gentleman, although you appear to have fallen on hard times. Deny it,
