Page 2 of Snowy and the Seven Doves
Mr. White washis usual surly self. He disapproved of a lady like Margaret visiting the slums, and particularly a house like this, or that’s what he’d said, though his mocking bows hinted it was Margaret herself to whom he took exception.
Or perhaps he was like this with everyone. Certainly, he walked past the two scantily clad women upstairs as if they did not exist, though they were clearly displaying themselves in the hopes of attracting his attention.
Her deepest scars came from men like that in her own world. Arrogant, conceited men convinced that everyone else—and especially every female—was inferior. Men who paid attention to others only when it served their purposes.
Men like her deceased father and brothers. Like the officer who’d courted her in her dismal first Season so her father would pay him to go away, which he did, out of Margaret’s dowry. Like the suitors who had clustered about her since she’d become an heiress, eagerly in lust with her title, her lands, and her bank account.
Mr. White was like the rest of them, and her fascination with him was ridiculous.
Perhaps it was a by-product of his rescue, which had admittedly been spectacular. If she closed her eyes, she could see him again, as she saw him in dreams that replayed that terrible evening.
She is walking through a narrow alley in the dusk, her mind still on the patient, a badly beaten woman, whom she had visited in a tumble-down building in the stews.
Without warning, men appear out of the darkness. Her footman goes down before either of them can react, felled by a cosh to the head. She shrinks back against a wall, and they gather around her, hooting and laughing, enjoying her fear. She understands little of their thieves cant, but she is not a fool. She knows what they have in mind.
She stands over the footman’s unconscious body, jabbing at her attackers with her umbrella, vowing to inflict as much pain as possible before they take her.
Suddenly, another man is there. An incredibly handsome man, with close-cropped dark hair and the build of a Greek god. Two of her five attackers go down under his assault, out of the fight.
She fights the other three at his side until they flee. He turns to her, and she looks into his grey eyes and prepares to thank him. He speaks first.
“What the hell is a lady like you doing here? This is not Mayfair, princess. You cannot walk around the slums as if you own them.” A well-educated voice. The tones of a gentleman of her own class. An indignant reply is on the tip of her tongue, but before she can say a word, her mind disappears down a spiral of darkness.
The dreams ended there, but in real life she woke up in the House of Blossoms, being treated for a cut to the arm that had bled profusely and several blows to the head. Her footman, too. And the driver and groom who had been waiting in the street, and whom her assailants must have attacked before they came after her.
Mr. White, she was told, had loaded them all into her carriage and driven them to the brothel. When she tried to thank him, he berated her again for stepping out of her place. “I should never have had to bring you and the men you endangered here,” he complained.
Mr. White was a conundrum. Educated, as she had noted from the first. He bowed like a courtier but worked in a brothel as their bookkeeper. Apart from those two scolds in the heated aftermath of the attack, he was always exceptionally polite, but he made his disapproval clear with every overly ornate bow, every frown, every quirk of a sardonic eyebrow.
She did not know the source of his objection. Was it because he thought Margaret should not be in a disorderly house, or because it was his home?
What would he think of Mistress Lily’s proposal? He would refuse it, of course. She should have refused herself, except that Mistress Lily said allowing Snowy to escort her to three ton events would repay her debt to the House of Blossoms and Mr. White for preventing her rape and murder. That’s what she said. Rape and murder. Harsh words for a harsh reality.
Honest words, shocking to the ears of one who lived in the Polite World, where truths were unspoken or decorated to the point of invisibility, and where lies were told with sincere conviction.
“Say nothing of this,” Mistress Lily had said. “Now that I have your agreement, I will speak with Snowy.”
Which left Margaret with nothing at all to talk about, and Mr. White was uncommunicative at the best of times. They descended to the kitchen in silence.
Poppy, the cook, was alone in the kitchen. She was a statuesque redhead in her forties, much the same age as Mistress Lily. Unlike the brothel owner, Poppy was a friendly soul with a warm smile, which she turned to Margaret as she and Mr. White entered the kitchen.
“It is the countess! What can I do for you today, my lady? Have you come to sample my apple tarts?”
“Lily says her ladyship is to show you how to make a poultice for Jasmine,” Mr. White grumbled.
Poppy spared him a glance. “Is that right?” She beckoned to Margaret. “Come over here, my duck. You can spread your doings out on the table and tell me what they all are.”
Mr. White put the basket on the table and stepped out of the way.
Margaret began to take the ingredients out packet by jar by bundle, opening each one and explaining its place in the poultice.
The cloth—finely woven muslin—would have boiling water poured on it to heat it. The prepared herbs would be boiled, too, then wrapped in the cloth. Margaret had chamomile flowers, licorice and ginger root, both to be grated, and cinnamon bark. Some swore by mustard seed, and others used the fruit of the fennel plant, but Margaret’s mother had good results from those four items, and Margaret continued using her recipe.
The last item was a bottle of almond oil.
“When the cloth and its contents are cool enough not to burn, spread a palmful of the oil on the patient’s abdomen, and then place the poultice over it. When the pain is particularly bad, I find it effective to put a wrapped, heated brick against the poultice to keep it warm, so it will work for longer.”
Poppy nodded. “I understand. Now go ahead and make one, and I shall watch.” Without looking away or changing her tone, she picked up a wooden spoon and cracked it down, almost catching Mr. White’s fingers as he attempted to take an apple tart that was cooling on a rack at the end of the table. “Snowy. No pinching.”
