Page 49 of By Any Means

Whatever Chary had said, this wasn’t his room. It wasn’t the master bedroom, nor the nicest. He’d lain down like it was a stranger’s bed. Tentative.

It was the only room that had even the slightest shine of wear, the smell of recent inhabitance, the tidy freshness of the maid’s—Sarah’s—upkeep. Maybe Chary didn’t sleep there regularly, but somebody else surely did. A younger-brother kind of someone.

This time, upon entering, Sarah had less spectacle: Chary was totally out, and Laurie had moved to the little wrought-iron table and chairs on the balcony, to take in the breeze and the evergreen view.

“Don’t wake him,” Laurie said, rising. “I’ll do that.”

Handed to him, basin-bound, the poultice was warm, almost hot, earthy-smelling.

“Thank you, Sarah. Thank the housekeeper for me.”

“The cook, sir. Mrs. Simon. You were right; she knew right away.”

“Sounds like a treasure.”

She gave him a strange, lingering look, curtseyed, and fled. Not afraid of him, he thought—or even them, together, as absurdly common as that was—but insatiably curious and mortified to be betraying it. But then, housemaids, the most of all belowstairs folk, had never liked Laurie, and it had usually been mutual. So maybe it was that.

Laurie sat on the bed. Chary’s breathing didn’t change, so he grabbed the towel and the basin, then hesitated. The poultice was best put on warm. It seemed a harmless-enough thing to do. And he needed rest. Caretaking.

Laurie brushed soft hair away from his bruised brow.

Chary really wasn’t all that handsome, features taken together, and each one was average itself. The most attractive thing about him was the alabaster sheen that belonged to a much-younger man, the peachy blush that often spread across it. A little of it was there now, a sleep flush touching his cheeks, his lips.

I’m glad you took care of the bastard that did this.

What really wasn’t fair about Chary lying to him every minute he breathed: Laurie had been honest there. There and otherwise. He was glad Chary Wright wasn’t dead.

Somebody wanted him to be, though.

“Which life caught up with you, hmm? Yours or your brother’s? Who wants you dead?”

No response from Chary. Of course, in his meager sleep schedule, eight in the morning was his midnight oil. He was exhausted.

No leads, no answers, no culprits. Just one not-dead had-been-inheriting brother, one not-a-butler cowboy, and one millionaire heir who spent fifty hours a week playacting a workingman. A dead source.

They all had to be connected somehow.

Laurie put his hand carefully beneath Chary’s neck and skull, fingers splayed, and lifted. He slid a towel beneath and over his shoulders. A courteous lover wouldn’t want Chary to wake with his collar sodden, after all.

He snorted softly at the satin ribbon that accompanied the poultice but slid that beneath Chary’s skull, too, just above his ears. He let him back down onto the pillow, removed his hand from boneless, sleepy-animal warmth. He found himself smiling.

The poultice oozed green and mud where he knotted the ribbon like a gift. “Gonna look ridiculous,” he singsonged beneath his breath.

Whoops—it was dripping. He tilted Chary’s chin to one side, swiped his eyebrow clean before the ooze could fall farther—and felt that brow furrow, felt the body beneath his reaching arm tense at last. He looked down to sleep-unseeing eyes opening.

“Hiya, Chary.”

Chary’s focus sharpened on him, narrowed against the daylight. “More ridiculous than the goose egg?” he murmured. “Lord. I thought I was dreaming.”

“No. Go back to sleep. It needs a couple hours.” He slid off the bed and dried his hands on his vest—to hell with all his clothes in Chary’s presence, apparently. “So do you.”

“I suppose.” Chary exhaled. “Thank you.”

“Yep,” Laurie whispered. “No problem. Just doing my job.”

Getting Chary to trust him—with his body and otherwise—would be easy. Too easy.

He’d do it anyway.