The Heir

flashing with conviction.

“I sent word I would be returning from Morelands today,” he said. “And the knocker isn’t up. You misjudged.”

“The post has not arrived for the past two days, your lordship. The heat seems to have disrupted a number of normal functions, and as to that, your brother does not observe the niceties when he is of a mind to see you.”

“You thought my brother would bother a chambermaid?”

“He is friendly, my lord.” Mrs. Seaton’s bosom heaved with her point. “And Morgan is easily taken advantage of.” Morgan reappeared, bobbing another curtsy at the earl then depositing the requested medical supplies on the low table before the settee.

“Thank you, Morgan.” Mrs. Seaton looked right at the maid when she spoke, and her words were formed deliberately. “A tea tray, now, and maybe a muffin or some cookies to go with it.”

A muffin? Westhaven felt his lips wanting to quirk. She was going to treat a bashed skull with tea and crumpets?

“If you would sit on the table, my lord?” Mrs. Seaton wasn’t facing him as she spoke. “I can tend to your back and your… scalp.”

Damn it all to hell, he needed her help just to rise, shift his weight, and sit on the coffee table. Each movement sent white-hot pain lancing through his skull and across his shoulders. For all that, he barely felt it as Mrs. Seaton deftly unbuttoned his shirt, tugged it free of his waistband, and eased it away.

“This is ruined, I’m afraid.”

“Shirts can be replaced,” the earl said. “My father rather has plans for me, however, so let’s get me patched up.”

“You were coshed with a fireplace poker,” Mrs. Seaton said, bending over him to sift through the hair above his nape. “These wounds will require careful cleaning.”

She wadded up his shirt and folded it to hold against the scalp wound.

“Passive voice,” the earl said through clenched teeth, “will not protect you, Mrs. Seaton, since you did the coshing. Jesus and the apostles, that hurts.” Her hand came up to hold his forehead even as she continued to press the linen of his ruined shirt against the bleeding wound.

“The bleeding is slowing down,” she said, “and the wounds on your back are not as messy.”

“Happily for me,” her patient muttered. Her hand bracing his forehead had eased the pain considerably, and there was something else, too. A scent, flowery but also fresh, a hint of mint and rosemary that sent a cool remembrance of summer pleasures through his awareness.

A soft hand settled on his bare shoulder, but then she was tormenting him again, this time with disinfectant that brought the fires of hell raging across his back.

“Almost done,” she said quietly some moments later, but Westhaven barely heard her through the roaring in his ears. When his mind cleared, he realized he was leaning into her, his face pressed against the soft curve of her waist, his shoulders hunched against the length of her thigh.

“That’s the worst of it,” she said, her hand again resting on his shoulder. “I am sorry, you know.” She sounded genuinely contrite now—now that he was suffering mortal agonies and the loss of his dignity, as well.

“I’ll mend.”

“Would you like some laudanum?” Mrs. Seaton lowered herself to kneel before him, her expression concerned. “It’s not encouraged for head injuries.”

“I have been uncomfortable before. I’ll manage,” the earl said. “But you will have to get me into a dressing gown and fetch my correspondence from the library.”

“A dressing gown?” Her finely arched sable eyebrows flew up. “I’ll fetch a footman, perhaps, or Mr. Stenson.”

“Can’t.” Westhaven tried to maneuver himself back onto the settee. “Stenson stayed at Morelands, as His Grace’s man had some time off, and no footmen or butler either, as it’s the men’s half-day.” Faced with that logic, Mrs. Seaton wrapped her arm around the earl’s waist and assisted him to change his seat.

“A dressing gown it is, then.” She capitulated easily, leaving him staring at her retreating figure as she went to fetch his garment.

How hard could it be to drape a dressing gown over a set of bare, masculine shoulders? Except seeing the earl, Anna had to refine on her question: A set of unbelievably well-muscled, broad, bare shoulders, God help her.

Anna had, of course, noticed her employer on occasion in the weeks she’d been in his household. He was a handsome man, several inches over six feet, green-eyed, with dark chestnut hair and features that bore the patrician stamp of aristocratic breeding. She put his age at just past thirty but had formed no opinion of him as a person. He came and went at all hours, seldom invading the lowest floor, closeting himself for long periods in his library with his man of business or other gentlemen.

He liked order, privacy, and regular meals. He ate prodigious amounts of food but never drank to excess. He went to his club on Wednesdays and Fridays, his mistress on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. He had volumes of Byron and Blake in his library, and read them late at night. He had a sweet tooth and a fondness for his horse. He was tired more often than not, as his father had put the ducal finances in severe disarray before tossing his heir the reins, and righting that situation took much of the earl’s time.

Westhaven appeared to have an exasperated sort of affection for his lone surviving brother, Valentine, and grieved still for the two brothers who had died.

He had no friends but knew everybody.

And he was being pressured to take a wife, hence this stubborn unwillingness to leave Town in the worst heat wave in memory.

These thoughts flitted through Anna’s mind in the few moments it took her to rummage in the earl’s wardrobe and find a silk dressing gown of dark blue. She’d bandaged his back, but if the scalp wound should reopen and start bleeding, the color of the fabric would hide any stain.

“Will this do, my lord?” She held up the dressing gown when she returned to his sitting room, and frowned at him. “You are pale, methinks. Can you stand?”

“Boots off first, methinks,” he replied, hefting one large foot onto the coffee table. Anna’s lips pressed together in displeasure, but she deposited the dressing gown on the settee and pushed the coffee table over at an angle. She tugged at his boots, surprised to find they weren’t painted onto him, as most gentlemen’s riding boots were.

“Better.” He wiggled his bare toes when she’d peeled off his socks. “If you would assist me?” He held out an arm, indicating his desire to rise. Anna braced him and slowly levered him up. When he was on his feet, they stood linked like that for a long moment before Anna reached over and retrieved the dressing gown. She worked awkwardly, sliding it up one arm, then the other, before getting it draped across his shoulders.

“Can you stand unassisted?” she asked, still not liking his pallor.

“I can.” But she saw him swallow against the pain. “My breeches, Mrs. Seaton.”

She wasn’t inclined to quibble when he looked ready to keel over at any minute, but as she deftly unfastened the fall of his trousers, she realized he intended for her to undress him. Did a man ask a woman he was going to charge with attempted murder to help him out of his clothes?

“Sometime before I reach my eternal reward, if it wouldn’t be too great an imposition.”

In his expression, Anna perceived he wasn’t bothered by their enforced proximity anywhere near as much as she was, and so she unceremoniously shoved his waistband down over his hips.

Dear God, the man wasn’t wearing any smalls. Blushing furiously, she wasn’t prepared for him to thrust an arm across her shoulders and balance on her as he carefully lifted first one foot then the other free of his clothing. Again, he lost momentum as pain caught up with him, and for the space of two slow, deep breaths, he leaned on her heavily, his dressing gown gaping open over his nudity, his labored breathing soughing against her cheek.

“Steady,” she murmured, reaching for the ends of the belt looping at his waist. She tucked his dressing gown closed and knotted it securely, but not before she’d seen…

She would never, ever stop blushing. Not ever, if she lived to be as old as Granny Fran, who sat in the kitchen telling stories that went back to old German George.