Lara Temple - Lord Stanton's Last Mistress

‘What in the name of Zeus do you mean by swoon , Ari?’ Usually people quaked when confronted head-on with the King’s anger, but twelve-year-old Ari clearly knew as well as Christina that her father’s bark was worse than his bite.

‘I heard the maids say he is as handsome as a god and they take peeks and swoon over him. So may I?’

‘No, you may not. There will be no swooning. But you have a good point. When your father died, Athena, I swore on Zeus’s head I would protect you just as I would my own daughter and that applies as much to your modesty as to your life. You will don veils while you attend to him and I will have Yannis stand guard. We know nothing of him, after all.’

‘But, King Darius, tending to a patient in veils is not very—’

‘And take some of my English newspapers to read to him.’

‘If he is unconscious, reading to him is hardly likely to—’

‘Must you argue with me over everything, Athena?’ the King interrupted, throwing his hands to the sky. ‘Perhaps hearing his mother tongue will remind him of his duties and revive him. Now go and see what is to be done, do you hear me?’

‘Half the castle can hear you, your Majesty,’ Christina replied as she brushed the remains of the herbs from her hands. ‘I will return soon, Ari.’

‘And tell me if he is really beautiful?’

Christina smiled at the King’s growl as she pushed back the tumble of dark curls from Ari’s forehead.

‘It isn’t a man’s beauty that matters, Ari, but his heart,’ she said, a little pedantically, and added for good measure as she went towards the door, ‘Not to mention his good nature and even temper.’

She didn’t wait to hear the King’s response to her mild impudence, but went directly to the prisoner’s room. She had no real expectation of being able to oblige the King by reviving the Englishman. She might share the King’s disdain for the doctor who took her father’s place, but she didn’t presume she could do better.

‘Hello, Yannis, the King sent me to see if there is anything that can be done for the Englishman.’

Yannis, one of the King’s most trusted guards, raised his brows.

‘Kyrie Sofianopoulos says he won’t survive the fever.’

‘Then I am not likely to do any harm, am I?’

‘Not much good, either. But if the King told you then of course he knows best.’

Christina smiled at the blind acceptance of the King’s infallibility and entered the room, preparing for the worst. As she approached the sickbed her mind did something it had never done before—it split in two. Sensible Christina assessed the hectic colour in the Englishman’s cheeks and all along the left side of his bare chest. The wound was just below the ribcage and was covered with a linen bandage stained orange and brown with dried blood. But even as she set to work removing bandages and cleaning the wound, a part of her that was utterly foreign raised its head and offered an opinion.

The maids were right. He might be dying, but he was the handsomest man she had ever seen.

She had sometimes watched the fishermen in the port stripped to the waist and though they, too, might possess impressive musculature, this man was on a different scale. Tall and lean, but with shoulders and arms that looked fit to topple a temple, and a whole landscape of hard planes and slopes, marred here and there by scars, several of which looked suspiciously like old knife wounds, including two rather deep gashes to his forearm. Aside from these imperfections he looked like a northern version of Apollo, with silky, light brown hair, like a field of wheat seen from afar. Even in his fever there was a tightness of action in his expression—his features were chiselled into spare lines, with no excess of flesh on the strong angles of his cheekbones and chin and the carved lines of his lips. His mouth was bracketed by two deep lines that put the final touch on a face that was more that of a statue of what Apollo might look like on a rather aggravating day of dragging the sun across the sky than an actual person.

But it wasn’t his looks that held her immobile. For a moment, as she stood over him, his eyes opened and latched on to hers. They were an ominous deep grey, shot with silver like clouds poised the moment before succumbing to a storm. His voice was rough thunder, a warning ending on a plea.

‘The snow...it’s freezing... Morrow shouldn’t have left her. Too late.’

He was looking through her, but she grasped his hand to answer that plea.

‘It’s not too late.’

‘Too late,’ he repeated, and this time his eyes did fix on hers and she smiled reassuringly because even if he was dying, he shouldn’t do so without hope.

‘No, it isn’t too late, I promise. Trust me.’

His gaze became clearer for a moment, moving over her, his pupils contracting until she could see the sharp edge of silver about them. But then his lids sank again and his restlessness returned, his hand pulling at the bandage, and she dragged her attention away from his face and focused on her duty.

A look at the ragged and inflamed state of the wound and the sickly tint of his skin under the heat of his fever told her the doctor was not unjustified in his gloom. It would take more than a newspaper to revive this man.

‘He’s in bad shape, isn’t he?’ Yannis asked conversationally over her shoulder. ‘Told you. I told the King to put him on the next boat to Athens. Let him die there. We don’t need trouble with the English.’

She unlocked her jaw. There was no point in being angry at Yannis.

‘And what did King Darius say?’

‘Nothing I can repeat to you, little nurse.’ Yannis grinned. ‘My punishment is to stand guard and help you see he doesn’t die. So. What do we do first?’

‘First you send for a large pot of water while I fetch my father’s bag and those foolish veils.’ There was no point in hoping the King would forget his stipulation.

‘Veils?’

‘The King said I must wear veils while I see to the Englishman.’

‘Good idea,’ Yannis approved. ‘Can’t trust a man without a name. Who knows what he’s running from?’

She didn’t answer. Not because it was foolish to see ghosts where there were none, but because there was something in the Englishman’s eyes and voice that gave too much credence to Yannis’s half-joking words. It didn’t matter—all that mattered was that a man might be dying and perhaps she could save him and thereby repay some of the debt she owed to her adoptive family.

* * *

Thus began of one of the strangest weeks of Christina’s life. She came several times a day to tend to the Englishman while Yannis helped ensure he drank the broths she prepared. She even, though she felt rather foolish, did the King’s bidding and read the English newspapers to him every day. Within two days what she had thought would be an irksome task took on an almost superstitious weight. It was imperative he survive, not just for the King, but because it just was. She fought for his life with the same fervour as she would for Ari or the King had they been ill, which made no sense at all.

The veils were a nuisance, but soon she found they had a peculiar freeing effect. Like a toddler who is convinced they can’t be seen when covering their eyes, Christina found herself free to truly watch the Englishman without worrying about being pierced again by his icy gaze. In the darkness imposed by the cloth, she didn’t have to avert her eyes from his face or magnificent physique, despite the shame of finding herself doing covertly what the female servants did overtly every time they brought provisions or tidied the room.

‘Isn’t he as handsome as Apollo? And look at those shoulders...’ they would sigh in Greek as Christina tried hard to ignore their raptures and her own internal upheaval.