“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be taking him back to the theater for a bath and to patch up his scratches. And I’ll do the same for… erm…” Good Lord, what did the other gardeners call Caliban? She gestured vaguely at him.
“What?” Mr. Herring glanced at her in alarm. “But I’ve already lost the new man—ran off who knows where. I’ll be needing Smith.”
Smith? Lily drew herself up. “I’m afraid I must insist, Mr. Herring.”
“Oh, very well.” The head gardener waved her off wearily. “Probably won’t get much work done the rest of the day anyway. Don’t know what I’ll be tellin’ the master.”
“I have a feeling that won’t be a problem,” Lily muttered under her breath, ignoring Caliban’s warning glare. She turned to Indio. “Can you walk to the theater, love?”
The question seemed to prick her son’s male pride—a fickle, easily provoked thing—and he snapped back, “Of course, Mama.”
His hauteur was rather ruined, though, by the drooping of his shoulders. Now that the excitement was past it was evident that the accident had taken its toll upon Indio’s stamina. He yawned widely even as he stumbled down the path. In another few steps Caliban scooped him up without a word.
The thought made Lily eye the big man carrying her son on his shoulder. He could talk—or at least he had spoken. One word, true, but surely where there was one there were more? Lily spent the rest of the walk to the theater with myriad questions swarming her brain.
Maude was away shopping for the afternoon, so the theater was empty when they arrived.
She waited until they were safely inside before turning to Caliban and demanding, “Can you talk?”
He opened his mouth and for a terrible moment nothing happened, but then sound emerged, creaking and halting. “I think… yes.” He swallowed and winced, as if the words physically hurt.
“Oh,” Lily whispered, pressing her fingertips to her trembling mouth. “Oh, I am glad.”
“Told you,” Indio said sleepily from Caliban’s shoulder.
“So you did,” Lily replied, wiping at her eyes with her fingers. She was turning into a veritable watering pot. She inhaled to steady herself. “I think you need a nap, little man.”
It was a measure of how exhausted Indio was that he didn’t even protest that he was now much too old for naps. Lily relaxed her cleanliness standards far enough to simply insist she wash his face for him before laying him down, already mostly asleep, in her own bed.
She gently shut the door to her bedroom and looked up to find Caliban reading her play in the outer room.
He set down the sheet he’d been holding and cleared his throat. “It… is… good.” He looked at her. “Very… good.”
His voice was naturally deep, but there was a strained, hoarse quality about it that suggested damage.
“Thank you.” She’d had compliments on her plays, but they’d always been filtered through Edwin. No one had told her in person that they liked her writing. “It’s not done, of course, and I need to work quite hard on it if I’m to get it finished in time—I’ve only a week—but I think it might well be one of my better ones. That is, if I can do something about Pimberly. He’s rather priggish at the moment. But”—she reeled in her wandering words with a deep breath—“you don’t want to hear about—”
“I do,” he said, interrupting her.
“Oh.” She stared and then had to look down shyly—she was never shy! “That’s good. I mean… I’m glad, but you’ll be wanting to wash your face and see to your wounds right now, surely?”
He nodded, perhaps saving his voice, but he kept his gaze on her, watching her as she fetched water and cloths. She came to where he sat at the table and placed the basin there.
“May I?” she asked, surprised at how husky her voice was.
He nodded again, tilting his face up.
First she peeked beneath the bandage on his head. The wound was scabbing over and didn’t look damaged, so she replaced the bandage and left it as it was. In the silence she dipped a cloth in the water and wrung it out, then gently patted at his face. Up close she could see it was badly scraped in several places, and she thought of his bearing the brunt of that tree for her son.
She rewetted the cloth. “How is your back?”
“It’s… fine.”
She smoothed over his right cheekbone where the bloody cut was. “I’ll check it after I’ve washed your face.”
“There’s no… need.”
She smiled, sweet but insistent. His back would’ve been the hardest hit when he’d covered Indio and Daffodil. “I want to.”
He made no reply to that, so she continued, gently wiping around his nose, over the broad brow, and up the craggy cheekbones. Not a handsome face. Not pretty or comely. But it was a good face, she thought. Certainly masculine.
Certainly one she was attracted to.
She paused, swallowing at the thought. She did not know this man. She knew of him—knew that he would without hesitation fling himself into a filthy hole to save her son, knew he was kind to silly dogs and quarrelsome old women, knew he could, with a single, certain look, make her insides heat and melt—but she did not know him.
She straightened, concentrating as she wetted the cloth again, watching her fingers wring brown water out. “How did you lose your voice, Caliban?”
When she turned back to him, his face was closed, his eyes shuttered.
“Please,” she whispered. She had to find out something—some small thing about him.
Maybe he understood her plea. Or perhaps he was so tired he could no longer fight her.
“It was a… beating,” he said, his voice croaking. He cleared his throat, but it sounded the same when next he spoke. “He… a man stood… on my neck.” He touched his hand to his Adam’s apple.
She stared. He was big and brave and she knew he could move swiftly. How could he have been bested in a fight? Unless…
“How many were there?” she whispered.
His eyes flicked to hers, sardonic acknowledgement in them. “Three.”
Even so… “Were you drunk or asleep?”
He shook his head. “I was…”
He looked away from her as if ashamed. Her eyes narrowed. What had happened to put that look on Caliban’s face?