The boy was breathing,
thank God.
Richard turned Jamie over. To his surprise, he found, instead of broken and bleeding skin, thin bandages covering most of the boy’s back.
Richard crossed to his desk for scissors, then cut through the bandages from waist to shoulder. He was relieved to find that a few fine red lines were the only sign of the beating Jamie had received.
Gently he turned him on his back to make him more comfortable. The bandages fell away. To Richard’s astonishment, he found that his hands were cradling, not the body of a thirteen-year-old boy, but the breasts of a fully formed girl.
Richard’s head spun. He remembered everything that had happened since Jamie had come into his life. All the strange attraction he had felt toward the boy. His hands continued to cup her breasts.
At that moment Jamie’s eyes opened and she looked up into his.
‘It’s Cinderella, all over again. Who says fairy tales don’t come true? The only difference is, I’m a mite short of fairy godmothers.’ With a heartfelt sigh, Jessamyne sank into a hard, straight-backed chair, the only one in her spartan bedroom.
‘Oh, miss, you mustn’t take on so. If my lady should hear you—’
‘The wicked stepmother? Come now, Biddy dear, she knows precisely what I think of her, as you are well aware. But she also knows there is nothing I can do about it, since she has my father’s ear as well as control of the purse-strings. Papa will not help me. And without money, I cannot help myself. Now, if you were but a fairy godmother, Biddy…’
‘Oh, give over, Miss Jamie, do. Them things only happen in fairy stories. There ain’t no Prince Charmings in the real world. P’raps if you was to make more of an effort to please her ladyship—’
‘I’ve tried that, Biddy. You know I have. It doesn’t work. She simply walks all over me. But if I stand up to her, she has to acknowledge I exist, however little good it may do me.’ She glanced at the empty grate and the layer of crazed ice on the inside of the window pane. Drawing her threadbare shawl more closely round her shoulders, she smiled bravely at her old nurse. ‘At least she doesn’t make me scrub floors and sweep cinders.’
‘No,’ agreed Biddy, ‘but it would make little difference if she did. Your hands are little better than a scullery maid’s, with all that gardening you do. In the depths of winter, too! If only you would—’
She was interrupted by a scratching at the door— a maid with a message summoning Miss Jessamyne to her stepmother’s dressing-room.
Jamie swallowed hard. Such a summons always boded ill. Sometimes she would simply be berated, belittled for her looks or her behaviour. Sometimes she would hear of punishments to come, for real or imagined transgressions. And sometimes both. Never, in all Lady Calderwood’s time in the house, had she spoken a single kind or loving word to her stepdaughter. There was no reason to suppose that this summons would be any different.
Although Jamie entered those stern precincts with head held high, she could not wholly conceal the uncertainty she felt. Lady Calderwood was seated at her dressing table while her abigail put the finishing touches to her hair. Jamie was left standing by the door, unacknowledged, for several minutes. Her uncertainty was soon replaced by indignation. How dared that woman treat her so?
At length, her ladyship was satisfied, and her woman was dismissed. She turned slowly to look at her stepdaughter, scrutinising her from head to toe with ill-concealed dislike. Her lip curled slightly. ‘Well, Jessamyne, you may guess why I have sent for you.’
‘No, ma’am,’ replied Jamie evenly, ‘I have not the least idea.’ She noted, without surprise, that she was not invited to sit. She was deliberately being left to stand like a disobedient child awaiting punishment. Well, she would not help her stepmother to play her little games. Jamie lifted her chin a fraction. She would not say anything more.
After a moment, Lady Calderwood continued grimly, ‘Very well, I shall tell you, since you do not wish to venture an opinion.’ She gave a very nasty smile at which Jamie shivered a little, in spite of all her efforts at self-control. She felt so helpless when she was in the power of this woman.