Hannah sat in the small wooden chair while a maid dumped the last bucket of warm water into the large copper tub. She was a bit nervous, truth be known, which was preposterous. It wasn’t as if she’d never taken a bath before. But it had been a long time, and part of her worried that Dr. Alcott was being too aggressive with his treatments.

She gulped down her apprehension. Something had to change. Something had to give—either she would die or get better. But she couldn’t stay in that bed wasting away the rest of her life.

“Are you ready, my lady?” her maid, Alice, asked. She’d not had much use for her over the last couple months. Her brother had a staff of thirty, and seeing as Hannah hadn’t been out of bed, well, Alice had been scarce.

Hannah stared at the tub for a long moment and then finally nodded. Alice took her by the elbow, slowly and gently guiding her to the tub. Hannah swung her good leg over the edge and into the water. It was warm, but not too warm, on Dr. Alcott’s instructions. Poor Alice was forced to support the bulk of her weight while helping to lift her wounded leg over the edge. In truth, they could have used an extra pair of hands to help her in, but obviously, Dr. Alcott couldn’t be one of them, and Mother had taken herself off to do her correspondence. But it was too late to call for an extra maid, so they had to make do, carefully, slowly, until at last Hannah was sinking her body into the warm cocoon of water.

“Oh, Alice,” she sighed. “How I have missed this!”

“Unfortunately, I can’t let you linger, my lady.”

“Yes, I know,” Hannah replied. Dr. Alcott had made it clear that she not luxuriate in the water too long, lest the bandage be breached by the water. She was to get in, wash, and get out. “Go on.”

Alice set to washing her, starting at her hair and face, then moving on to the rest of her body, finishing with her feet. The smell of rose oil and lye wafted about her, sending shockwaves of joy and relief through her body. How wonderful it felt to finally be washing off the dregs of the last many weeks. With every stroke of Alice’s washcloth, Hannah felt renewed.

“If you can stand, my lady, I’ve another clean bucket of water to do the final rinse.”

Whatever it took, Hannah would find a way to stand long enough to be rinsed. The water in the tub was gray by the end—if she wasn’t going to rinse it off, she might as well not have taken a bath at all. “I will try, but you must help me get there.”

Hannah placed her hands on the edge on the tub, using it as a cantilever to pull herself up, while Alice pushed from behind. It was all rather humiliating, being completely helpless and relying on everyone else to push or pull or hold her weight. She silently prayed that Dr. Alcott knew what he was saying when he purported that she would walk again.

She winced as she came to her feet, the effort sending waves of pain to her wound. Stars danced before her eyes, and she worried, momentarily, that she might fall back down into the filthy water.

“You’re shaking, my lady,” Alice said, alarm lacing her tone.

Hannah took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I’ll be all right,” she promised, not wanting to alarm her maid. “Let us rinse me and get me back to bed as soon as possible.”

She hunched over, holding on to the edge of the tub, but when the deluge of water came over her, she lost her balance, and went tumbling back into the tub with a scream.

* * *

Graham had been unable to keep still in the parlor after giving explicit orders to Cook for his poultice, so he’d decided to come back upstairs and simply pace the corridor until he was called back in. But the scream he’d just heard coming from her chambers was good enough.

He burst through the door and followed the sounds of commotion to her ladyship’s dressing room, where they’d set up the bath.

The little maid was leaning over the copper tub, speaking calmly to her mistress, while Hannah shook and struggled to get out of her grasp. Damn it all. She’d gone into some kind of shock.

“What happened?” he demanded, coming to the other side of the tub.

“Dr. Alcott!” The maid was clearly scandalized at his presence, but this was no time for propriety.

“Get me a towel.”

She did as she was told, and then held the towel open, awaiting further instruction. Graham lifted Hannah easily from the tub and held her trembling body against him, no matter she was dripping wet and clothed only in a thin, wet bathing gown. Surely her family would be horrified, but he was a doctor, for God’s sake. A fact of which he had to keep reminding himself when in the presence of Lady Beeston.

He sat on the wooden chair nearby, with her still in his arms. “Bring me the towel.”

The maid crossed the room and handed over the large, white cloth that had been heated for Lady Beeston’s comfort. He wrapped it around her shoulders, and her body immediately relaxed against his. Thank God.

Her eyes, which had been wild and unfocused, fluttered closed as she sucked in deep breaths. Graham resisted the urge to rock her or kiss her forehead—that would surely be crossing some kind of line. Instead, he held her firmly and watched her face, waiting for her to come to.

“What in the world is going on in here?” came the sharp tones of the dowager duchess.

Graham took a steadying breath—wasn’t it enough he’d failed Lady Beeston? And now he had to suffer criticism from her shrew of a mother.

“She fell, Your Grace,” he said, steeling himself for her blows.

“This is your fault,” she said.

And just as Graham was about to open his mouth to both apologize and defend himself, the little maid whimpered and muttered an apology of her own. Graham looked up to find the dowager’s beady gaze fixed on the young girl. The poor thing.

“It most certainly is not,” Graham said, trying to keep calm in spite of the outrage he felt on the girl’s behalf. “She was only trying to do her job, and admittedly, that job required more than one small maid. I should have insisted there be another set of hands.”

The dowager, thankfully, looked properly chastised, even if she did try to hide it behind a steely façade. “Well, then…you live another day, Alice.”

“Alice, would you be so kind as to retrieve the poultice from the kitchen? It should be ready by now.”

The little maid sniffed and nodded her head eagerly before running from the room. Graham couldn’t help but feel for the girl—or anyone who was forced to come into contact with this woman, really. She was the very antithesis of pleasant. However, she was all Graham had at the moment.

“We need to get her into dry clothing.”

The dowager stared down her long nose at him. “Then you shouldn’t have sent Alice away.”

“You and I can more easily handle the task, I think. And besides, I think she’s been through enough.”

“Oh, has she?” Her Grace bit back. “I rather think Alice failed in her duties today—it is my daughter who has been through a rough time.”

“I didn’t say otherwise. It goes without saying that Lady Beeston is suffering greatly. But she’s resting peacefully now, whereas the maid is quite shaken up from—as you put it—failing her mistress.”

“If you think you’re going to participate in undressing my daughter, you are sorely mistaken.”

“Then I shall leave her in your capable hands, madam.”

The woman sucked in a sharp breath. “I will have you removed from this house post haste, Dr. Alcott. I will not tolerate such disrespect from someone in your position.”

Damn. He didn’t want to get himself dismissed. Lady Beeston needed him, and she was his primary concern. He could make nice with this shrew if it meant keeping his post.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out. The words tasted like dust on his tongue. “I mean no disrespect. Perhaps you could ring for more help, then? Even when Alice does return, she is not capable of doing this alone—not when Lady Beeston is fast asleep and unable to assist.”

This seemed to douse the flames a bit, and the dowager did as he suggested, making her way through the next chamber and ringing the bell pull. Within minutes, they’d gathered a team of maids, including Alice, who had returned with the poultice. Graham waited outside the room while they changed her, and when they were done, and all but the dowager had left, he reentered the room, ready to apply the poultice.

But when he saw her, his feet came to a halt on the thin rug beneath his feet. If he’d thought her beautiful before, she was a thousand times more so now. They’d left her hair unbound, and the long locks of slightly damp curls framed her face and tumbled over her shoulders. They were the color of coffee, dark and rich and shiny. There was color in her cheeks now, presumably from the warmth of her bath. And her eyes fluttered, as if she were deep inside a dream. To think of all this woman had been through broke his heart, for she deserved only the most wonderful things that the world had to offer.

“Much better, isn’t it?” the dowager asked, her voice actually low and relaxed for a change.

“She will certainly feel better,” he replied, not wanting to admit to finding her breathtakingly beautiful. “I am hoping this poultice,” he continued, moving to where the maid had left the concoction on the bureau, “will make her feel even better still.”

“What is in this poultice of yours?”

“Oils,” he said simply.

“Oils?”

“Derived from plants and flowers. They have been using them for centuries in the East.”

“No doubt you learned of them in one of your symposiums.”

Actually, he’d learned it from what some might refer to as a witch doctor, but there was no need to share that bit of information. “One can learn a great deal from these lectures and symposiums,” he replied. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

The dowager walked to the other side of the bed as Graham pulled back the covers to reveal Lady Beeston’s leg. They’d dressed her in a fresh nightgown, made of soft, white cotton. She looked like an angel lying there, and it was all Graham could do to keep himself from crawling into the bed and holding her against him until she forgot every nasty word that had been said to her, every horrific act committed against her. But he couldn’t ever do that. It would be in his best interest to assume a more professional view of his patient.

“Will it hurt her?”

It seemed odd that the woman cared whether the poultice would hurt or not, but he answered her just the same. “Perhaps, a bit. Some of the oils can be a bit…hot, for lack of a better term. But hopefully she is sleeping deeply enough that she won’t notice.”

With that hope in mind, he lifted the baroness’s gown to reveal her wound, unbound it, and then pressed a cloth laden with the concoction against her leg.