“Yes, you may. I need hot water for a bath and clean linen for a bandage. My lady is filthy and injured.”
Jackson glanced at Juliana, who looked relatively clean compared to Neil. “I will have Mrs. Koch heat water and bring it personally.” He gave Neil a direct look. “While the lady is bathing, sir, perhaps you might do the same downstairs.”
Neil frowned. He didn’t want to leave Juliana, but Mrs. Dunwitty would hardly allow him to stay while she bathed Juliana, even if he’d already seen far more of her than he ought.
“Very good, Jackson.” Neil looked at the former governess. “Shall I hold her until the water arrives? If I set her on the bed, the sheets will need washing.”
“No need,” came a small, quiet voice. Juliana moved in his arms. “I am awake. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Shock and exhaustion, I imagine,” said her former governess. “Let us just hope you have not caught some dreadful disease of the lower orders whilst you were out and about in those dreadful streets.”
“You know I am never sick,” she told the woman, pushing out of Neil’s arms. He was forced to release her, his body protesting at the loss of her warmth and her softness.
“And I intend to keep it that way. Now, out of those clothes. Jackson will draw you a bath.” Mrs. Dunwitty gave Neil a pointed look.
“Excuse me,” he said and moved into the hallway. There, he was confronted by four sets of small eyes, each wider than the last. “What’s this?” he said. “I thought you were all in bed.”
“Will she die?” asked Chester, his dark hair rumpled and his cheeks wet.
“You can’t let her die,” Charlie said, or something to that effect. His thumb was firmly in his mouth.
“She ain’t going to die, is she?” said Jimmy.
“No,” said Neil. “She will not die.”
“I told you,” James broke in, hand swiping at the wetness on his cheeks. “I told you Major would keep our lady safe.”
Neil put his hand on James’s shoulder. “And so I will. I’ll keep all of you safe, and that is a promise.” He did not know how he would keep that promise, but he meant it. “Now, back to bed with you.”
“Lory?” Charlie asked.
“No story tonight,” Neil translated. “My lady or I will read you one tomorrow.”
The boys groaned.
“I’ll read them a story.”
Neil turned and saw Robbie behind him. He also spotted Juliana leaning on the casement in her doorway. Their eyes met—hers shiny with unshed tears—before she closed her door.
“You can read?” Neil asked before glancing back at Robbie. The boy shrugged. “A little. Come on, boys. Climb in bed. Uncle Robbie will tuck ye in tonight.”
The boys cheered and raced into their rooms, all fears for Lady Juliana momentarily put to rest. Robbie made to follow, then looked back at Neil. “And if I can’t read the words, I can always make them up, right?”
Neil nodded. “A time-honored tradition among storytellers.”
“That’s what I thought.” He wrinkled his nose. “You’d best clean up, Major. You stink.”
“Thank you, Robbie.”
He moved toward the steps, listening as Robbie said something that made the little boys giggle. For the first time he could remember, Neil felt like he was home.
Eighteen
Julia closed the door and turned to a narrow-eyed Mrs. Dunwitty. “You have ideas.”
Julia blinked. “No, I don’t,” she answered quickly. Denial of all culpability was second nature when it came to dealing with Mrs. Dunwitty.
“Oh, yes you do. And I know because if I were a few years younger, I would have the same ideas.”
Julia stared at her, hoping she had misunderstood.
Mrs. Dunwitty held out a hand. “Give me your clothing. I doubt it is salvageable. Why don’t you employ a maid, for goodness’ sake? And do not stare at me so. I was young once.”
“I don’t have the funds for a maid.” Julia pulled off her gloves and the remnants of her hat. She refused to imagine Mrs. Dunwitty as young.
Mrs. Dunwitty looked at the proffered articles and motioned for Julia to drop them on the floor. “I had plenty of beaux when I was your age, and in my time, we were far less prudish.”
“Oh dear,” Julia muttered. This was not at all a conversation she wished to be part of. She bent to unlace her boots.
“How did the boys’ lessons go today?” she asked.
“But when the time came,” Mrs. Dunwitty said, ignoring Julia’s attempt to change the subject, “I decided marriage was not for me. I wanted my freedom. I think you of all women understand that.”
Julia removed her half boots. They were dirty but still serviceable. Those she moved to the side of her discarded garments, then unpinned her bodice and loosed the tapes of her dress, allowing it to fall to the floor. Once her outer garments were removed, Mrs. Dunwitty stepped forward to assist her with her stays. “I can manage,” she said.
“You are tired and have been through quite the ordeal, from what I can see. I’ll hear no argument.”
Julia was tired, and she offered none as her stays were removed, and when the hot water arrived, she wore only her chemise and stockings. She retreated behind a screen to wash. The small hipbath she had bought for the orphanage and insisted the boys use at least once a week was in the older boys’ dormitory. She always made do with soap, a cloth, and water from a basin. At least this water was hot.
“It’s obvious you feel something for Mr. Wraxall,” Mrs. Dunwitty said on the other side of the screen. Julia heard her moving about, probably straightening up Julia’s already-straight chambers. “In your absence, I asked his man, Jackson, about his presence here. Apparently, Mr. Wraxall has been living here for several days. Unchaperoned.”
Julia paused in the act of sliding the cloth over her face. “I am hardly in need of a chaperone at this point,” she said. “I have been living, more or less, in a house with twelve boys for a quarter of a year.”
“Those are boys. Mr. Wraxall is a man.”
“He is a gentleman my father sent to take me home. That is all.” She rubbed the cloth over her knife wound. It was just a scratch, really, but it still burned.
Mrs. Dunwitty huffed. “Your father might have sent Wraxall, but if he knew the man had taken up residence—”
“Mr. Wraxall has not taken up residence. He will be leaving in a day or so, and now that you are here, we are adequately chaperoned, not that anyone will care. Like you, Mrs. Dunwitty, I have chosen not to marry. In time, my father will come to accept that. He will understand that this is the life I want, and I am quite content to live here and help these boys.”
“Oh, is that why you came here? To help these boys? I thought it was because you were running away.”
“I have never run away from anything in my life.”
“You ran away from the situation with Lainesborough.”
Julia dropped the cloth and stuck her head around the screen. “I did not run away. I did everything I could to keep Davy. I fought Lainesborough until the end.”
Mrs. Dunwitty’s eyes held sorrow, but Julia did not want her sorrow. Instead, she focused on the older woman’s mouth, which was set in a determined line. Julia wanted determination. “And I lost. The court and the judge and even the bloody regent—”
“Language, Juliana.”
“—did not care about the best interests of the child or what his mother would have wanted or that his father didn’t even show the most remote interest in the child until he was half a year old. The law gives the man precedence in this case, as in practically every case. Now, you tell me why I should want to tie myself to a man when men are selfish, manipulative, and cruel at best?”
“Your father was not cruel.”