The bandages were in the bottom drawer, which she had found earlier while methodically going through every inch of the room looking for anything useful. A letter opener. A window latch that might give. Something heavy enough to matter. She hadn't found an escape route but she had found the bandages, and now at least they were good for something.
She worked quickly, cleaning the cut with water from the pitcher and pressing the gauze flat with steady hands, and Jeremy sat very still and looked at the floor the entire time with the practiced stillness of a man who had decided that maintaining eye contact with the person who had accidentally opened his forehead was not strictly necessary.
"There," Lora muttered, smoothing the edge of the bandage down. She leaned back and looked at it, then at her own hands, and frowned slightly. "I'm surprisingly good at this." She said it more to herself than to him. "Maybe I was a nurse or something."
Jeremy looked up at her carefully. "From what I understand about Miss Rosaline," he said, in the tone of someone offering something gently, "you were very capable at managing your family's estate. Whether nursing was part of that, I couldn't say."
Lora's hands stilled.
She looked at him. "From what you understand?"
"Yes." He held her gaze steadily. "Miss Rosaline arrived at the Varkis estate a few days ago. As part of an alliance between the two families." He said it simply, without drama, the way you stated something that had already happened and couldn't be helped.
Lora swallowed. She turned the information over slowly, holding it up against everything Val had said in the room earlier, feeling for the places where it didn't fit. "So he wasn't lying," she murmured, mostly to herself.
Jeremy's face did something unexpected — for a man who looked like he'd been carved out of something dense and serious, the smile was surprisingly gentle. "Master Valentino has a rough way of saying things," he said. "But he didn't lie to you about the alliance."
Lora shook her head slowly. "Something still doesn't feel right. Even if I came here as part of some arrangement — I just can't imagine agreeing to marry someone like him." She exhaled. "I wouldn't. I know I wouldn't."
"That's understandable," Jeremy said, with a small nod. "Given that not long ago you tried to kill him."
The room went very quiet.
Lora stared at him. "I'm sorry?"
"You shot him. Three times, in the chest." He said it with the same even, conversational tone he'd used for everything else, as though he was informing her about the weather. "You almost succeeded, actually. That's what started the war between your families. The marriage alliance ended it."
"Hah."
It came out of her like something deflating. Her knees went and she sat down on the floor — not gracefully, just down, landing hard, staring at her own hands spread open in her lap. Valentino's face surfaced in her mind without being invited. The way he'd looked at her. The way he'd looked at her from the very first moment, like she was something he had already decided he would destroy.
No wonder.
"Miss?" Jeremy crouched beside her, not touching her, just close enough that there was something solid nearby if she needed it.
She looked up at him and her eyes were burning and she didn't bother fighting it. "I don't know what to do." Her hand went to her chest, pressing flat against it like she could push the feeling back down. "I can't remember anything. I'm in a place I don't know, surrounded by people I don't know, and apparently I tried to murder my own husband before we got married and I can't even —" She broke off. Started again. "I feel like I can't breathe."
Jeremy stayed exactly where he was.
He didn't offer solutions. He didn't tell her it would be fine. He simply stayed crouched beside her on the floor while she talked, and she talked for what felt like a very long time — circling the same fears from different directions, running out of words and finding more, her voice dropping and cracking and steadying and dropping again — and he listened to all of it without once trying to interrupt or redirect or wrap it up neatly, which was more than she'd expected from anyone in this house.
Eventually she ran out.
The silence that followed was quieter than the one before she'd started, and she became gradually aware that her feet had gone to pins and needles from sitting on the hard floor. She reached out and grabbed Jeremy's arm to push herself up, and as her hand closed around it — solid, steady, completely unbothered by being grabbed — something formed at the back of her mind and came out of her mouth before she'd finished thinking it through.
"Help me get out of here."
Jeremy looked at her.
"Please." She was on her feet now, still holding his arm, looking at him directly. "If I could just go home — if I could see something familiar — I know I'd remember. I know I would. Please, I'm asking you —"
Jeremy's expression did what expressions did when a person felt genuinely sorry and genuinely helpless at the same time. "Miss Rosaline," he said carefully, "I'm a servant in this estate. I don't make decisions here. I don't have the authority to —"
"Then who does?"
He held her gaze.
She let go of his arm.
"No," she said flatly. "Absolutely not. You just told me I shot him three times. Why would he help me with anything?"
"Because," Jeremy said, with the patience of someone who had thought this through considerably before entering the room, "you are more useful to him cooperative than you are locked in here. And Master Valentino, whatever else he is, understands usefulness." He paused. "He is also the only person in this estate with enough authority to give you what you're asking for."
Lora stared at the floor.
"You want me to ask the man I apparently tried to murder," she said slowly, "to do me a favor."
"I want you to consider it," Jeremy said. "That's all."
"What if he tries to kill me." She shuddered.
"Miss that won't be possible because that would start another was and Master doesn't want to complicate his life any further. So i do suggest you try listening to him once and helping him out so that in return he can do you a favor." he added chewing a few words out of it like a good assistant he was. Lora went into deep thoughts. "This is a mess." She muttered breathlessly.