Лиза Клейпас - Chasing Cassandra

“Bazzle lives in a St. Giles rookery. Any toy you gave him would be stolen immediately.”

Cassandra’s good cheer deflated like a cooling soufflé. “He has no family to look after his belongings?”

“He’s an orphan. He lives with a gang of children and a man they call Uncle Batty.”

“You’re aware of this, and yet you allow him to go back?”

“He’s better off there than in a workhouse or orphanage.”

She nodded, looking perturbed.

Tom decided to change the subject. “How has your Season gone so far?”

Cassandra smoothed her expression, following his lead. “I miss the sun,” she said lightly. “I’ve been keeping the hours of a hedgehog. Dinners never start before nine o’clock in the evening, receptions never before ten, and dances routinely begin at eleven. Then I go home at dawn, sleep for most of the day and wake up all muddled.”

“Have you set your sights on anyone?”

Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “They’re all the same. Just like last year.”

Tom tried to feel badly about that. But he couldn’t help feeling a primal pang of relief, his heartbeat settling into a satisfied rhythm . . . Still mine . . . still mine .

They returned to the clinic with the parcel from Winterborne’s. A nurse showed him into a white tiled room with a shower bath, a steel-clad bathtub and sink, steel tables and supply cabinets, and a drain in the floor. The acrid bite of disinfectant hung in the air, along with the unmistakable scents of borax and carbolic soap. Bazzle was leaning over a sink in the corner, while Garrett rinsed his head with a spray nozzle and rubber hose attached to the faucet.

“I’ve doused Bazzle’s scalp with a chemical solution,” Garrett said, blotting the child’s head with a towel. “I’ll need help cutting his hair: I’m afraid it’s not one of my skills.”

“I can do it,” Cassandra volunteered.

Garrett nodded toward a supply cabinet. “Smocks, aprons and rubber gloves are over there. Use any of the scissors from the tray, but be careful: they’re all extremely sharp.”

“How short do you want the hair?”

“About an inch in length should do.”

Bazzle’s plaintive voice came from the towel. “I don’t want noffin’ cut orf.”

“I know this isn’t a pleasant process,” Garrett told the boy apologetically, “but you’ve been very well-behaved, and that helps things go much faster.” She lifted Bazzle onto a metal stool, while Cassandra donned a long white apron.

As Cassandra approached Bazzle and saw his features scrunched in worry, she smiled and reached out to gently push some matted locks back from his forehead. “I’ll be very careful,” she promised. “Would you like to hear a song while I cut your hair? There’s one my sister Pandora and I wrote, called Pig in the House .”

Looking intrigued, Bazzle nodded.

Cassandra launched into a sublimely ridiculous song about the antics of two sisters trying to hide their pet pig from the farmer, the butcher, the cook, and a local squire who was especially fond of bacon. While she sang, she moved around Bazzle’s head, snipping off long locks and dropping them into a pail Garrett held for her.

Bazzle listened as if spellbound, occasionally chortling at the silly lyrics. As soon as the song was finished, he demanded another, and sat still while Cassandra continued with My Dog Thinks He’s a Chicken, followed by Why Frogs are Slimy and Toads are Dry .

Had Tom been capable of falling in love, he would have right there and then, as he watched Lady Cassandra Ravenel serenade a ragamuffin while cutting his hair. She was so capable and clever and adorable, it made his chest ache with a hot pressure that threatened to fracture something.

“She has a marvelous way with children,” Garrett murmured to him at one point, clearly delighted by the situation.

She had a way with everyone. Especially him. He’d never been besotted like this.

It was intolerable.

After Cassandra had finished combing and trimming Bazzle’s hair, she stood back to view the results critically. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Perfect,” Garrett exclaimed.

“Good God,” Tom said. “There was a boy beneath all that wool.”

The mass of snarled, straggly locks had been cropped to reveal a nicely shaped head, a skinny neck, and a pair of small ears. Bazzle’s eyes looked twice as large now that they weren’t peering out through thick wads of hair.

Bazzle heaved a world-weary sigh. “Wots next?” he asked.

“The shower-bath,” Garrett replied. “I’ll help you wash.”

“ Wot? ” The boy looked outraged by the suggestion. “Ye can’t ’elp me.”

“Why not?”

“Yer a girl!” He shot an indignant glance at Tom. “I’d never let a girl see me tallywag.”

“I’m a doctor, Bazzle,” Garrett said gently, “not a girl.”

“She ’as bubbies,” Bazzle told Tom, with the impatience of someone having to explain an obvious fact. “That makes ’er a girl.”

Tom struggled to hold back a grin as he saw Garrett’s expression. “I’ll help him,” he said, and stripped off his coat.

“I’ll start the water,” Garrett said, and went to the other side of the room.

After removing his waistcoat, Tom looked for a place to set his clothes.

“Give them to me,” Cassandra said, coming forward.

“Thank you.” He handed the garments to her, and began to unknot his necktie. “Wait—take this too.”

Cassandra’s eyes widened as he began on his shirt cuffs. “How much more clothing do you plan to remove?” she asked uneasily.

Tom grinned, not missing the quick, interested flick of her gaze over him. “I’m only rolling up my sleeves.” He paused, his hands going to the top button of his collar. “Although if you insist—”

“No,” she said quickly, blushing at his teasing. “That’s quite enough.”

A warm mist had started to spread through the room, sweating the white tiles. Cassandra’s skin was turning luminous from the humid air. Little wisps of hair at her forehead had drawn up into delicate curls he longed to play with.

Instead, he turned his attention to Bazzle, who wore the expression of a prisoner confronting the gallows. “Go undress behind that curtain, Bazzle.”

Reluctantly the boy went to stand just inside the rubber-lined curtain, and began to remove his clothing piece by piece. Following Garrett’s instructions, Tom took each ragged garment and dropped it into a lidded pail partially filled with carbolic solution.

Bazzle’s pale, spindly body was startling in its frailty. Tom registered the sight with a stab of some unfamiliar feeling . . . guilt? . . . concern? . . . As the boy stepped into the falling water, Tom pulled the circular curtain completely closed.

The boy’s exclamation echoed in the tiled room. “Blarm me, it is like rain!”

Tom took a bath brush from Garrett, rubbed the bristles into a cake of soap, and handed it through the curtain opening. “Start scrubbing your little carcass with this. I’ll do the places you can’t reach.”

After a moment, Bazzle’s worried voice came from behind the curtain. “Me skin’s comin’ orf.”

“It’s not skin,” Tom said. “Keep washing.”

Not ten seconds had passed before Bazzle said, “I’m done now.”

“You’ve barely begun,” Tom replied in exasperation. As Bazzle tried to climb out of the shower bath, he herded him back inside and took up the brush. “You’re filthy, Bazzle. You need to be scrubbed, if not descaled.”

“I’ll be dirty again ter-morrer,” the boy protested, spluttering and staring up at him miserably.

“Yes, you’ve said that before. But a man keeps himself clean, Bazzle.” Tom clamped his hand on a slippery, bony shoulder and scrubbed the child’s back in gentle but steady circles. “First, because it’s good for your health. Second, it’s a mercy to those who have to be in your proximity. Third, ladies don’t like it when you look and smell like last year’s corpse. I know you don’t care about that now, but someday—confound it, Bazzle, hold still.” Exasperated, Tom called through the curtain, “Cassandra, do you know a washing song?”