Page 50 of My Fair Lord

“Don’t worry, Dottie. You stay with your mistress and I will go find the necessary items. Miss Wakechild, let me help you sit.”

He escorted Florence to the window and helped her to sit, fussing around, finding her a footstool, and ensuring her arm was raised on the arm of the sofa.

“Oh Miss, what on earth have you been doing?” Dottie asked after he had left. She looked at Florence’s arm and gasped. “That must hurt so!”

“Playing bows and arrows,” Florence said ruefully.

“Did you swoon?” Dottie asked. “Did you faint? Did Mr Blake have to carry you?”

“I think you read far too many romances,” Florence said, mustering the energy for a smile. “Of course I didn’t do any of those things. You know me well enough to know I’m not the swooning kind. And nor did Mr Blake have to carry me.”

“Well, that’s a waste of an opportunity,” Dottie said, grinning. “If I had a gentleman as nice as Mr Blake, I’d have made sure to faint.”

“Dottie!” Florence gave a shocked laugh. “Really, you’re quite scandalous!”

Ned had shown such tenderness, though, and she would not forget for a long time the way his fingers had travelled over her delicate skin. To think he had been about to suggest staying alone with her in her bedroom! Why, the thought of that made her feel more light-headed than the pain in her arm.

When Ned returned, Florence allowed him and Dottie to fuss around her, wrap her arm in damp bandages – which she had to admit did ease the pulsating pain – and supply her with brandy. Maybe she should have swooned a little bit, she mused as he rearranged a blanket over her lap. She ushered them both out and lay back, eyes closed. Of course Ned would accompany her to America. It was so obvious, so perfect that she did not know why she hadn’t thought of it in the first place. They’d had some hiccups on the way, but now nothing could possibly go wrong.

* * *

It always astonished Ned to discover how quickly matters could move when people put their minds to it. He’d been used to a leisurely existence, pleasing himself and accountable to no one, but now that he had fallen into the whirlpool that was Florence Wakechild, he was incapable of pulling free of her tug. He understood from casual chats with the domestic servants that it had taken Miss Wakechild almost a full day to persuade Lord and Lady Griggs to agree to Ned accompanying them on the ship to New York and only the threat that she might refuse to return herself or would insist on paying his fare herself swayed them.

So now it appeared he was going to America. It had been a ridiculous impulse but on more considered reflection, it made sense. He was getting handsomely paid and enjoyed spending time with Florence. Most importantly – and something he would never reveal to her – with the estimated date of a “happy event” almost upon him, it would give him the perfect reason to leave England for months if not forever. Let him disappear across the Atlantic Ocean, and let his worries stay behind.

The night before they were due to return to Liverpool, Ned followed the sound of the piano to discover Florence in the music room, playing the Viennese waltz they had danced to. She was alone so he knocked on the partially open door and walked in. She glanced up, then back at the music and continued playing. When she came to the end, she finally gave Ned her complete attention.

“I’m sorry, I hate to break off halfway through.”

“That’s reasonable. I don’t like leaving matters unfinished either.”

The piano stool was as long as the instrument, to allow a pair to duet. Florence moved over and patted the space beside her. Ned sat.

“I don’t play, you realise.”

“Men rarely have to learn. You aren’t expected to woo us by performing. I don’t have time to teach you now but once we’ve won the wager, I could always see if I could pass you off as a music hall artiste.”

Ned chuckled then his mood grew sober. Thoughts of what would happen when the wager was over had flashed into his mind on the occasions that it appeared in jeopardy: when he had almost doomed it by fighting and when Florence had been called home. Now he was struck by the realisation that in a matter of weeks, it would be. He would have no reason, or excuse, to remain in her company. It saddened him.

“I imagine you’d lose that wager before you even started,” he said.

Florence ran her hands along the keys, her fingers skipping daintily over them in rippling scales. She stopped when it would have meant leaning past him and placed her hands in her lap. Her sleeves were gathered tightly almost to the elbow before billowing out in stiff puffballs over her upper arms. He wondered whether the bowstring had left any trace.

“Ned, you know why I want to win and I know you want to help me, but you were happy to do that before you discovered my real motive. Is it just because I’m paying you? We have never discussed why you are so eager to prove my theory right. What do you have against the nobility?”

Ned sucked in his breath. He couldn’t explain that it wasn’t the whole of the aristocracy he loathed, merely particular examples. With the prospect of leaving England behind him, he felt safe enough to share more than he might otherwise have. He reached out and ran his fingers over the keys, wondering where to begin and what to omit.

“I grew up on an estate in Yorkshire. When I was a boy of ten, I was discovered picking apples from the trees on the earl’s property. I don’t know what you call it, but we call it scrumping. The earl apparent whipped me with a riding crop until the blood ran down my spine. Personally. Then, when flecks of my blood spattered his shoes, he gave me a kicking in retaliation.”

He slammed his fingers down on the piano keys, creating a discordant blare as the memory of helplessness and agony bore down upon him. Florence jumped. Ned withdrew his hands. He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, she was staring at him with a mixture of horror and pity. And something else. It took him a minute to remember the emotion he saw and name it as concern.

“That’s barbaric.”

He shrugged. “I should no doubt have been honoured that he did not consider the punishment beneath his notice and delegate it to an underling. All it did was make me hate him. I still bear the scars.”

Florence drew closer to him, twisting in her seat. Her face was creased with rage. He caught the scent of something floral. Violets.

“That’s brutal! Could you not seek justice?”