A Most Unconventional Courtship

‘Do you want me to take a message to His Nib’s place anyway?’ Fred rolled Petro’s limp body away with a shove from one booted foot and stooped to lift the victim.

‘No, don’t trouble, it will make you late. I will send Demetri in the morning. I’ll just go and get the laundry basket.’

Fred was already inside and mounting the stairs with his burden slung over his shoulder by the time she got back with the basket. Kate swung it out of her hands, then grimaced at the weight. ‘I thought this was the fine stuff! Are they wearing lace by the pound these days? Go and catch his head, Alessa, Fred’s not being any too careful.’

Alessa climbed behind the trudging sergeant, fending the lolling head off the walls and grumbling under her breath at the spots of blood disfiguring the wooden treads that she and Kate kept scrubbed white. Fred was displaying the silent contempt most soldiers felt for their lords and masters in his handling of this one, and she could not say she blamed him. What was the reckless idiot doing, wandering round the streets and alleyways at this time of night anyway? Getting himself into trouble and causing a nuisance for hardworking people, that’s what.

‘You had better put him on the couch.’ She darted forward and swept an armful of mending and a rag doll off the battered leather. ‘Are the children asleep, Kate?’

‘Like logs, bless them. I looked in not ten minutes ago, checked the fire’s safe under the cover.’ She nodded towards the dome of discoloured iron that protected the embers on the brick hearth in one corner.

Alessa rummaged in a painted chest, found a pillow and a rug and eyed the now-prone stranger. His head had stopped bleeding, but he showed no sign of recovering consciousness. ‘I suppose I had better check him over, he went down with a wallop and twisted his ankle into the bargain. And, of course, Petro administered a light clubbing, just to put him to sleep before he slipped the knife in.’

‘Right. Let’s get on with it.’ Kate rolled up her sleeves, revealing brawny forearms. ‘What are you looking at, Fred?’

Her lover ducked back from the window where he had been leaning out. ‘Big Petro’s just staggered off, rubbing his head. I doubt he’ll have a clue what happened, come tomorrow. Do you lasses need a hand? Only I need to be back at the fort soon.’

‘We’ll manage, thank you, love.’ Kate followed him out on to the landing to make her farewells, leaving Alessa to study her involuntary guest. What made him so obviously English? His skin, for one thing—he was tanned, presumably after weeks at sea, but the colour was the gold of a fair skin, not the olive of the Mediterranean. His hair was brown, which she presumed meant he was not a Scot, whom she understood were all redheads, or Welsh, who were all dark if the regiment stationed at the Old Fort were anything to go by. His hair had streaked in the sun from its natural mid-brown to honey and toffee and autumn leaves. The tips of his improbably long lashes were gilt as they lay on his cheeks.

‘Good English suit,’ Kate observed, coming back into the room and fingering the cloth of the midnight-blue coat. ‘He’s a pretty lad.’

‘Not such a lad.’ Very late twenties, she supposed, probably thirty. Old enough to know better. And pretty was not the word either. He was too masculine for that, despite even features and an elegant frame that contrasted sharply with Fred’s sturdy bulk.

‘He is to me; don’t forget I can give you a few years. Do you want to bandage his head or shall we get his clothes off first? I’ve brought one of Fred’s old shirts up, it’ll do as a nightshirt.’

‘Thank you. Let’s see the damage.’ Between them the two women lifted and tugged and finally managed to reduce the stranger to his shirt and a pair of short drawers. Alessa tossed neckcloth and stockings to one side and hung the fine swallowtail coat and satin knee breeches over a chair. ‘He must have been at the Lord High Commissioner’s tonight.’ She gestured towards the splendour of evening dress and patent leather pumps. ‘Just what you want to be wearing for wandering around the back alleys.’

Kate was eyeing the long legs sprawled over the worn leather. ‘I don’t like the look of that ankle, and is that blood on his hip?’

‘It is,’ Alessa said grimly, eying the sinister stain showing through the thicknesses of both shirt and drawers on the man’s left side. ‘He went down against the fountain base; I just hope he hasn’t broken anything. I suppose we had better get the rest of his clothes off and see.’

They eased off the drawers with more care than they had the satin knee breeches and fine silk stockings. Alessa got the shirt over his head and caught her breath at the ugly contusion that discoloured his hip. There was a purpling bruise the size of a dinner plate, a jagged cut in its centre oozing blood.

‘Hell.’ Alessa went to kneel at the foot of the couch and began to manipulate his leg. The ankle was definitely sprained—it was darkening and swelling already—but the bones felt safe as she ran the ball of her thumb up the elegant length of them. There was nothing wrong with the well-shaped calf, nor the muscular thigh. Alessa began to move the leg, one hand pressed to the hip joint, feeling for any clue that a bone might be damaged.

‘Very pretty.’ Kate sounded as though she was contemplating a fine roast dinner. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen the like since—’

‘Kate! For heaven’s sake! You are virtually a married woman, I am bringing up a boy, neither of us should be carrying on over the sight of a man in the nude…’ Alessa stopped focusing on his injuries and followed Kate’s appreciative stare. Yes, well, perhaps a naked, fully grown stranger was a different matter to a skinny eight-year-old after all. Come to that, he was a very different matter to the numerous marble statues of classical male nudes that littered the Lord High Commissioner’s residence. This was not a pre-pubes-cent boy. This was not even chilly white stone equipped with a fig leaf. This was a long-limbed, well-muscled, completely adult male with curling dark hair on his chest and—

‘He’s certainly well—’

‘Don’t you dare say it, Kate Street! You should be ashamed of yourself. You are a respectable woman now and I…I am attending to him purely in a medical capacity.’ Alessa snatched up the discarded neckcloth and dropped it strategically over the focus of Kate’s admiring scrutiny. Conscious that her cheeks were flaming, she finished her examination. ‘Nothing is broken, I am sure of it, although he probably shouldn’t try and stand up tomorrow. I’ll put a poultice on that hip.’

Kate, who had finally finished her unabashed inspection, began to pick up the discarded linen and took it to drop into one of the pails of water that stood against the wall. ‘Shall I put the other stuff to soak too?’

‘Please.’ Alessa kept half an eye on the delicate lingerie from the ladies of the High Commission as it dropped into the soaking-pails. It was a valuable source of income and she could not risk any damage; but Kate, despite her rough hands, was treating it with suitable care.

She fetched salves and bandages and a pad of old shirting from the cupboard and set them on the floor. The wound in itself was easy enough to dress, but wrapping a securing bandage around the slim hips was nothing short of disturbing and Alessa knew she was pink-faced before she had finished. Get a grip on yourself, girl! she scolded mentally, gratefully shuffling down on her knees to strap up the twisted ankle. The head wound, although angrily bruised, did not seem to call for a bandage, so she was ready by the time Kate had finished dunking the lawns and laces for their overnight soak.

It was no easier

to wrestle the limp body of an unconscious man into a shirt than it was to get one off him, they discovered, and both women were panting with effort by the time the Englishman was decently covered, his head on the pillow, a rug pulled up to his chin.

‘You going to be all right with him here?’ Kate asked, taking a grateful gulp from the cup of watered wine that Alessa held out to her. ‘I can come up and spend the night, if you like.’

‘Thank you, but, no. He can’t give me any trouble—not with that ankle.’ Alessa regarded the silent figure resentfully. ‘He is just a thoroughgoing nuisance, and another mouth to feed for breakfast.’

‘Sir Thomas will have him fetched before the day is out,’ Kate forecast confidently. ‘Whoever he is, the Lord High Commissioner won’t want English nobs cast adrift in the back streets, that’s for sure. Good night!’