he sat beside Martin, his back to the headboard. His belly was full, his friend was alive, and that was really all Will had ever wanted. Happy and sated, he put his hand on Martin’s leg. Just a companionable touch, nothing they hadn’t done a thousand times before. There was nothing to it, so he was surprised when Martin batted his hand away.
“None of that,” Martin snapped.
Will’s cheeks heated. He hadn’t meant anything pointed, anything particular. He hadn’t even realized that Martin understood Will was the sort of man who could mean anything pointed or particular by a touch. “I’m sorry,” Will said, and rose from the bed to sit in the straight-backed chair by the fire.
Martin woke to the sound of a broom swishing across the cottage’s flagstone floor and furniture being dragged out of the way with more noise than he might have thought possible, given that the cottage contained about four pieces of furniture.
He rolled over to see what had possessed Will to start this clamor when the sun hadn’t quite risen, but instead of Will, he saw a yellow-haired girl in a plain dress and apron, wielding the broom like it was a weapon.
“What on earth?” Martin said, propping himself on his elbows. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m your maid,” she said. Spat, really. “He—” she pointed an accusing finger to where Will still slept on a pallet by the fire “—hired me.”
“And I’ll fire you,” Martin said, “if you let that chair topple onto Mr. Sedgwick.”
“Go ahead!”
“What on earth,” he repeated. It occurred to him that perhaps his fever had returned, and that this entire scene was a febrile delusion.
Will, finally alerted to the battle progressing mere inches away from his face, stirred. “Oh,” he said, sitting up. “This is Daisy Tanner. She’s been tidying up in the mornings and bringing us supper.”
Which meant Martin must have slept through this uproar on previous mornings. He had wondered where the food had been coming from, and who brought clean linens, but he had been raised in a house staffed with an army of servants; he was used to things simply getting done. “She seems less than thrilled about it,” he observed. “Did you win her in a card game? Buy her off a pirate ship?”
“My mother sent me here because she thinks the ostler is after me,” the girl said.
“After—oh,” Martin said. “Well, is he?”
The girl turned scarlet.
“Do you want him to be? Are you after him? Is the ostler some kind of rural Casanova? In any event, this cottage is hardly larger than a stable stall. I daresay you can finish your work in under an hour and you’ll have the entire afternoon to get yourself seduced. Now, step outside for a moment while Mr. Sedgwick and I make ourselves decent. Neither of us are inclined to duel the ostler for your honor, I assure you.” He made a shooing motion until the girl left. When the door slammed shut, he turned to Will and raised a single questioning eyebrow.
“I let myself get bullied,” Will said. “Her mother told me nursing invalids is women’s work.”
“My God. And you listened to her?”
“Don’t you feel healed by Daisy’s tender ministrations? By her womanly gentleness?”
“Well, I suppose I ought to at least put on a pair of trousers and drag my weary bones from this bed so that child—Daisy, of all the foolishness—can clatter about.” Miracle of miracles, he actually got his legs out of the bed on the first try, and stepped into a pair of trousers with minimal effort. He was weak, as anybody would be after being ill for so long, but he felt better than he had in months.
“You seem in fine fettle,” Will said.
Martin could have told him it was always like this as his body slowly returned to itself. It was a base animal thrill at continued life, nothing more, and it would dissipate. He would have said as much, but Will was looking at him, his hair rumpled, his smile tense and fragile, and Martin didn’t want to disappoint him. “I am,” he said.
“I’m glad,” Will said. He still hadn’t attempted to get up from the pallet. One really would think that his years in the navy would have made him better at getting out of bed in the morning, but evidently one would be mistaken. Besides, Martin preferred not to think of Will’s time in the navy. He had a list as long as his arm of things to