He swore rather foully.
Temperance chose to ignore that. “Is it true what you said before?”
“What?”
“That all touch pains you?” Terrible of her to take advantage of his condition to quiz him, but she was curious.
He closed his eyes. “Oh, yes.”
For a moment, Temperance stared at him, this wealthy, titled aristocrat. How could the touch of another human being possibly hurt him? But perhaps the pain he spoke of wasn’t purely physical.
She shook her head and looked at the valet. “Is there anyone we should send for? A relative or a friend of Lord Caire’s?”
The valet hummed under his breath and his eyes slid from hers. “Ah… I’m not sure…”
“Tell her, Small,” Lord Caire rumbled. His eyes were closed, but his hearing apparently was quite acute.
Small gulped. “No, ma’am.”
Temperance frowned, rinsing out the linen and applying it afresh. “I know you’re estranged from your mother—”
“No.”
She sighed. “Surely there’s someone, Caire?”
Both men were silent. Oddly the valet seemed more embarrassed than Lord Caire. Caire merely looked bored.
“What about, er”—Temperance kept her eyes on the hot linen she was holding to his shoulder, the heat rising in her cheeks—“a… a female you might be close to?”
Lord Caire chuckled softly and opened his eyes. They were far too bright. “Small, when was the last time you saw a female other than a maidservant step foot in this house?”
“Never.” The valet’s eyes were fixed on his shoes.
“You’re the first lady to cross my threshold in ten years, Mrs. Dews,” Lord Caire drawled. “The last one was my mother, the day I ushered her from my home. On the whole, I think you ought to be flattered, don’t you?”
LAZARUS WATCHED AS pink suffused Mrs. Dews’s face. The color was becoming, and even in his weakened state, he felt a stirring in his loins, a longing that was more than sexual. For a moment, there seemed to be a twinge in his breast, a strange wish that his life, his person, could in some way be different. That he could somehow deserve a woman such as her.
Mrs. Dews took away the cloth from his shoulder, wrung it out, and replaced it, the sharp sting of the heat rousing him from his reverie. His head ached, his body felt weak and hot, and his shoulder was on fire. He wished to simply lie down and sleep, and if he never awakened… well, would that be such a very great loss to the world?
But Mrs. Dews had no intention yet of letting him escape. “You have no one at all to take care of you?”
She touched, whether by accident or design, his hand, and he felt the familiar burning pain. He kept his hand still only with an effort of will. Perhaps with repeated applications, he might become used to the pain of her touch—like a dog so often cuffed he no longer flinched at the blow. Perhaps he might even come to like the sensation.
Lazarus laughed, or at least tried to. The sound emerged more like a croak. “On my word, Mrs. Dews, no one. My mother and I talk as little as possible, I count but one man I could call a friend, and he and I fell out recently—”
“Who?”
He ignored the question—damned if he’d send for St. John tonight. “And despite your romantic notions, even if I had replaced my mistress, I’d not call her to my sickbed. The ladies I employ thus have other, ah, uses. As I’ve said before, I do not bring them into my home.”
She pressed her lips together at that information.
He eyed her sardonically. “I am at your tender mercy, I fear.”
“I see.” She frowned down at him as she took off the cloth and tested the shirt beneath.
He hissed as the material pulled away from his wound.
“It has to come off,” she murmured to Small, as if Lazarus was an infant they were taking care of between them.
The valet nodded and they took off his shirt—an excruciating operation. By the time they’d finished, Lazarus was panting. He didn’t need to look at his bare shoulder to know that the thing was gravely infected. It pulsed and boiled against him.
“Ma’am, the doctor,” one of the footmen said from the door.
Behind him the quack swayed, his greasy gray bob wig sliding off the back of his shaved head. “My lord, I came as soon as possible.”
“Lovely,” Lazarus murmured.
The physician approached the bed with the overly careful gait of a man drunk. “What have we here?”
“His wound—can you help him?” Mrs. Dews began, but the doctor brushed past her to peer closely at the wound.
The stink of cheap wine washed over Lazarus’s face.
The doctor straightened abruptly. “What have you done, woman?”
Mrs. Dews’s eyes widened. “I… I…”
The doctor snatched the bit of rag she’d been using from her fingers. “Interfering with the natural healing process!”
“But the pus—” Mrs. Dews began.
“Bonum et laudabile. Do you know what that means?”
Mrs. Dews shook her head.
“Good and laudable,” Lazarus muttered.
“Quite right, my lord. Good and laudable!” the doctor cried, nearly tipping himself over with his vigor. “’Tis well known that the pus is what heals the wound. It must not be interfered with.”
“But he is feverish,” Mrs. Dews protested.
Lazarus closed his eyes. What mattered the method of physicking as long as it ended soon. He’d let his martyr and the quack argue it out.
“I shall let some blood and thus draw away the heat in his body,” the doctor pronounced.
Lazarus opened his eyes to watch as the doctor fished in his bag. He produced a lancet and turned toward Lazarus, holding the sharp instrument in a palsied hand. Lazarus swore, struggling weakly to stand. Bloodletting was one thing, but to allow a drunk to wield a knife against his person was tantamount to suicide.
Damn it, the room was spinning about him. “Send him away.”
Mrs. Dews bit her lip. “But…”
“Might as well throw me to the lions yourself as put me in his tender mercies!”
“Now, my lord…” The doctor had turned conciliatory.
Mrs. Dews met Lazarus’s eyes, her own worried and unsure.
“Please.” He was too weak, too feverish to enforce his will. She had to do it for him. “I’d rather die by your hand than a drunken quack’s.”