The Light in the Darkness by Ellen Fisher

with a shrug. “Ah, well. That was long ago. If only Grey did not behave as though it were yesterday.…” She gestured to the girl. “Into the tub with you.”
    Jenny shot her a look of absolute horror, but Catherine was not someone accustomed to being disobeyed. “In your case, child, modesty is foolish. I can scarcely believe that several men, at the very least, have not sampled your charms. Take off those horrid clothes and get into that tub.
Now
.”
    Slowly, with every outward evidence of reluctance, Jenny obeyed. She had never before been naked in the presence of another. She had always slept in a shift and, upon arising, had simply pulled one of her few gowns on over the shift. And now she was being forced to disrobe both in the presence of this steely-eyed aristocrat and a young black woman who held a cloth in one hand and an imposing amount of lye soap in the other.
    “I am remaining,” Catherine said in her elegantly cultured voice, “to ensure that you are entirely clean, when what you so plainly perceive as an ordeal is completed. Step into the tub, please.”
    Though politely phrased, it was clearly an order rather than a request. Jenny obeyed meekly. The water was extremely hot, a most unusual sensation. Jenny had rarely bathed in her life, and then usually in cold water. She gingerly sat down in the tub.
    At that moment the door slammed open, and to her horror Edward Greyson stormed into the chamber. Sinking chin-deep into the water, she stared at him helplesslywith huge dark eyes. He returned her look coldly, then turned to address his sister.
    “So.” His voice was slurred, and Jenny realized that he had had a great deal to drink. But Catherine seemed completely unmoved by the anger on his aquiline features. “You have actually installed this—this
creature
in her room.”
    “It’s a shame to let this lovely chamber go to waste,” Catherine said mildly. “There’s quite a good view of the James.”
    “I don’t give a goddamned—” Grey began angrily, but Catherine cut him off.
    “Really, Grey, you’re a dreadful influence. The child must not be exposed to such language. At any rate, let me point out that
you
are the one who brought her here. I am merely trying to make the best of the impossible situation you have created. Accordingly, we are currently bathing her and making her presentable, as befits the wife of a Greyson. Good-bye, Grey,” and to his surprise Grey found himself gently propelled into the hall and the door closed nearly on his nose. Fuming, but aware that he had been outmaneuvered for the time being, he raged back down the stairs.
    Still flaming with embarrassment, Jenny found her hair being lathered with the lavender-scented soap, rinsed, and lathered again. Then the slave handed her the soap, indicating that she was to wash herself most thoroughly. Jenny thought to protest, but one glance at Catherine’s implacable face silenced her.
    Catherine Greyson was a handsome woman, she decided. She might have been beautiful but for the aquiline nose so like Grey’s, which was far more suited to masculine features. Her eyes were a flinty gray, darker than her brother’s; her mouth was wide and full but seemed humorless. Her chestnut hair was gathered in an unattractive but practical style at the nape of her neck, and she wore a high-necked, spinsterish gray woolen gown. All in all shewas a woman Jenny found to be most intimidating. She scrubbed herself thoroughly under the scrutiny of those piercing eyes.
    At long last clean, cleaner than she had ever been in her life, and being dried by the slave with a finely woven linen towel, Jenny dared to ask another question. “Why d’ye call ’im Grey instead of Edward?”
    “Oh.” Catherine shrugged. “He’s been called that since he was a child. Partly because of his gray eyes, of course, but partly because he has always been so somber. So intense. It always seemed appropriate, somehow.” She hesitated, then added a word of