4. Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
F ood.
Food had to be the answer. Wasn’t that why the girl was such a nuisance to her village? Food.
So he would toss out some damn food to tame the beast.
After visiting the kitchens where he’d cobbled together a platter of food—bread, meats, and cheese—he pushed open the door of the drawing room as he balanced the plate and a tin cup of wine in his left arm.
He heard rustling, and he saw Izzie scurry into her original corner, sinking down and curling into the ball she liked so much.
Nothing more than a scared little animal.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice notched softer than he expected it to be for all the trouble she was causing him, and he stepped into the room and closed the door.
She wouldn’t look up at him, not that she’d be able to see him through that dark mess of wild hair that hid her face.
“I only bring you food. Something to drink, that is all. Not here to hurt you.” He moved across the room to her and set the platter down on the floor by her bare feet. “Eat.”
Slowly, with his hands open and fingers spread in a nonthreatening way, he stood straight and backed out of the room.
Pulling the door closed, he saw her reach out for the glass of wine just before she disappeared from view.
A smile came to his face.
It wouldn’t take long.
He stood outside the door, listening.
The silver platter clinked against the stone floor. The tin cup clanked onto the plate, metal against metal.
Fifteen minutes, and it was silent.
Thomas cracked the door open.
A moment too soon, and he caught sight of her dropping forward from the corner, splaying out on her side. A groan, long and drawn out, came from her mouth. Then barely audible words. “Don’t cut.”
It could have been a groan, or it could have been actual words. She’d not actually said anything except for screeching the word ‘no’ since she’d arrived.
Don’t cut?
Don’t cut what? Her hair?
There was no way that mad creature cared about her hair.
Her body stilled, not moving.
He held his breath, his stare focusing in on the ragged shirt draped over the side of her ribcage, waiting for it to move. It lifted slightly, her arm twitching, and he exhaled a breath.
Good. Sleeping. Not dead.
The laudanum he’d slipped into the wine hadn’t killed her.
That had been a distinct possibility with her slight frame.
He had a few hours, at most, to get her into that salt water bath and scrub the fleas and lice and filth from her skin.
Only then could he have her in the castle without his own skin crawling every time he looked at her.
He still couldn’t see her face under the tangled nest of hair on her head.
He stared at it, trying to figure the real color of it under the wide swathes of dried mud clinging to the strands.
Did it matter?
He needed to figure out who he could pass her along to so she wasn’t his problem, but she was taken care of. And soon. He would do that, at the very least, for kin.
The slightest duty to his ancestors and his station, when he’d done very little to honor either of those things in the last year.
He sighed, trying to overcome the visceral feel of phantom bugs crawling across his skin.
He needed to get on with it.