The Serving Girl // Book 2 in the Rosie Grey series

Chapter Two

The pencil I was holding clattered to the desk and rolled onto the floor, the action went completely unnoticed by Doctor Ealing who unravelled the rest of the rag to expose the injury underneath. Robert however, glanced over from the cabinet for a brief second before flicking through the files and pulling one out. As he passed by me to give his father the file, he reached out and gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. He had noticed what Doctor Ealing hadn't and, in a way, I was grateful.

As Doctor Ealing exposed the injury beneath the rag, I took a moment to really look at the man that had been carried through the front door. He had dark brown, almost black hair that curled up in all sorts of angles and lay flat across his forehead and small ringlets. Sweat beaded around his eyebrows and ran down the side of his face as Doctor Ealing pressed a bandage against his hand. When he opened his eyes, they were a piercing ice blue, the same as my own. When I heard his name, I hadn't wanted it to be true. I didn't want to acknowledge that after all these years I was finally coming face to face with someone I had tried to forget.

"Rosie, can you grab me a bowl of water and some clean towels and cloth?" Doctor Ealing said, lifting the bandage up to inspect it once again.

"Of course," I said.

Snatching the pencil off the floor and dropping it back onto the table, I hurried out of the room and into the small room. After filling up a large bowl with water I grabbed several small towels and pieces of cloth from a shelf and carried them into the other room. I placed them down a small table that had been placed beside Doctor Ealing who muttered a small word of thanks and took the cloths and towels from me. As I walked away, I took the opportunity to get a closer look at Mr Matthew Greyson. His eyes watched me as I took a second to scan his face, noting the freckles that covered his face and the small scar above his eyebrow.

Whilst his eyes remained fixed on my movement, I crossed the room and stood next to Robert who was waiting for his father to say something. As I moved to stand beside him, he gave a small, reassuring smile but said nothing. Neither of us really wanted to discuss it, not with Doctor Ealing and the others in the room. Whether Doctor Ealing had made the connection remained to be seen, but there were more important things going on.

"I'm going to need the suture needle and thread sterilised with Carbolic Acid, Robert. There's a cut along the back of his hand that needs suturing and then we can address the bruising. I think it's going to be a rather substantial, so you may not have full use of your hand for a while. Once that goes down, everything should be fine."

"My boy's going to be devastated when I tell him I can't finish his treehouse. My brother even more so, it's in his garden," Mr Greyson said, laughing slightly.

"Maybe next time you'll move out the way when someone yells about a hammer," one of the other men said.

"I just thought someone needed a hammer. You need to be more specific."

As Mr Greyson and the other man engaged in a back and forth discussion over the right thing to yell when someone drops a hammer, Robert nudged me in the side and nodded his head towards one of the other cabinets. Nodding in response, I followed Robert towards the cabinet and watched as he grabbed a small needle and thread as well as a bottle of liquid. He took the needle and thread and dipped them into the bottle, keeping his fingers on the very tip of both objects so he didn't get the liquid on his hands. Despite the intense concentration on his face as he soaked the needle and thread, he was still able to do what he did best. Talk.

"You recognise him, don't you?" he muttered.

"I'm not sure. I didn't recognise him at first, but when they said his name I started to see the similarities," I mumbled.