My Last Duchess (The Wildes of Lindow Castle #0.5) - Eloisa James Page 0,69
The castle’s kitchen was a vast space with a stone floor. Worktables were arrayed around the room, scrubbed to a fare-thee-well, and covered with copper pans of all sizes and shapes. It was full of people, as always: the cook, three kitchen maids, a dairymaid, and a couple of scullery maids working at the sink to one side.
They all snapped upright at the sight of Wick, except for Madame Troisgros the cook, who considered herself his equal, if not his better. The already complex hierarchy of castle staff was further complicated by Wick’s relationship to the prince. Even had Gabriel (who showed no such inclination) wished to keep their fraternity a secret, one of his elderly aunts regularly took pleasure in shocking polite company by announcing that she preferred Wick to his brother Gabriel.
By rights, a young nursemaid would find herself quite far below the cook, though certainly above the dairymaid. And yet Philippa Damson walked into that kitchen like the lady of the house. She unerringly put her eye on the cook, a lady twice as broad and four times as fierce as anyone else in the room.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?” snapped Madame Troisgros.
Without pausing for breath, Miss Damson broke into charming, if urgent, French. As all could see, she had the little prince in her arms. He needed water, but it must be special water, water boiled, then cooled. And she also needed a cloth, a clean linen cloth, to be boiled in a different pot of water, then cooled.
Madame Troisgros had the eyes, Wick thought, of a rabid French weasel, if such a thing existed—small and rather crazed-looking. As she opened her mouth, undoubtedly to refuse, Miss Damson walked across the kitchen to her.
“Regardez,” she said, drawing back the cover that protected the prince’s face.
Confronted by that tiny, exhausted face, Madame Troisgros flinched and pointed with her ladle to a chair. Miss Damson obediently sat down. A few minutes later, an immaculate piece of linen was shown to Miss Damson for her approval, then carefully placed in a pot of boiling water.
Even more servants began drifting into the kitchen, although the room remained as silent as a church as everyone strove to keep Jonas asleep. The housekeeper appeared and hovered in the background; two or three footmen had apparently deserted their posts in the front hall as they now stood quietly against the walls. The knife boy had stopped sharpening his wares and was sitting on a three-legged stool, his mouth open.
“Stop hovering!” Miss Damson ordered Wick in a low voice. “Babies don’t like nervous influences.”
“Gabriel might have woken; he might be searching for us in the gallery,” Wick said, entirely forgetting that he generally referred to his brother as His Highness in public. Miss Damson was that sort of woman. She made a man lose his head.
“Why not send a footman to stand outside the prince’s bedchamber so as to inform him of our location when he wakes? Meanwhile, you’ll have to take the baby while I wash my hands,” she said, and slipped Jonas back into Wick’s arms with no more fuss than if she were transporting a pudding.
To Wick, Jonas looked worse than he had even an hour before. The skin around his eyes was the deep blue of a bruise. His little nose stood out from his face, as if the skin had receded around it. He was an extraordinarily unattractive baby, which did nothing to assuage the feeling of pure grief and panic Wick felt at seeing his nephew in this state.
“It’s not too late, is it?” he heard himself saying. Everyone in the kitchen froze.
Miss Damson had washed her hands, and was now wringing out the cloth and dipping it in the pot of boiled, cooled water. “Absolutely not,” she said firmly. “Sit down.”
Wick thought a bit dazedly about the fact that he never took orders except from his own brother, but he sat. She bent over and slipped the corner of the wet cloth into the baby’s mouth. He sucked reflexively, realized it wasn’t milk, and let out a pained cry. Quick as she could, she dipped the cloth again, returned it to his lips. Over and over and over.
It was a messy business. Within minutes the baby was wet, Wick was wet, and Miss Damson’s dress was splashed with water. But Jonas kept swallowing, and soon he was crying only between sucks.
“Do you know if he has had normal bowel movements?” Miss Damson asked.