susceptible to such nonsense.”

It wasn’t nonsense. Not really. More like self-preservation. With a deep breath, she stuck out her injured right foot. He slipped her shoe off and ran his fingers over her stocking-clad ankle. “A little swelling. Not as bad as I’d feared. Can you undo your stocking? I want to see if there’s any bruising.” To her relief, he rose and stepped back to the washstand while she hurriedly undid her garter, rolled down her stocking, and tugged it free of her toes with a little gasp of discomfort.

The sound did not escape his notice either. “Let me see,” he commanded in a brusque, businesslike voice she had never heard him use before. He dropped to one knee, lifted the hem of her skirt, and took her foot in his hands. “Can you bend it this way? Like that?” Slight pressure of his fingers directed which way she was to flex her ankle. She felt the heat of his palm against the sole of her foot as he asked to her press against him. “Good, good. Clearly not broken. Just strained a bit. It should be easy enough to rest it for a couple of days. By the time you reach Dublin, it should be back to normal. I’ll just—” He held up one of the linen towels, ripped it in two neat halves, and began to wind one strip around her foot and up her ankle to support the injured joint. She raised the hem of her dress a little higher to watch him work. How had he acquired this skill? Was it wrong to take pleasure in his touch?

“What’s this?” His fingertips skated over an old scar, a series of jagged lines that stood out pearly white against the pale skin of her calf. When she did not answer, he lifted his face to hers, questioning; his hands did not release her leg. His position on the floor before her allowed her to see him quite clearly, even without her spectacles. His dark eyes clouded with uncertainty. A frown notched the space between his brows.

“Nothing,” she said, dropping her skirt so that the fabric draped over the scars and his wrists too. “It happened when I was a child.”

“What happened?” Without looking, he tucked in the end of the bandage to secure it, but still he did not let her go. She could feel his gentle touch tracing the rough edges of the scar over one side of her calf, then the other. “It’s shaped like a—”

“Like a dog bite. Yes.” Though it sent a twinge through her ankle, she tugged her foot free of his grasp. “I was six—no, seven, I suppose. Erica was almost two. I don’t have any memory of it, really. Mama says we were playing in the square, inside the walled garden, when our neighbor’s dog broke free of its leash and began to chase us. Erica ran, of course, because she was of an age when she ran everywhere. It made the dog…wild.” She’d heard the story so many times, she could almost see and hear what her mind refused to recall—the dog’s growls, flecks of spittle flying from its jaws. Erica’s squeals. Her own screams. “I picked her up and ran with her to the gate.” It hadn’t been locked, but panic had made her little fingers fumble nonetheless. “When we couldn’t get through, I lifted her over and was just scrambling up after, when—”

His kiss was swift, hard. Intended more to silence than seduce. But not without passion, for all that. When she reached for something to steady herself against the surprise, her hands settled on his shoulders and she felt the tension there. “My God, Camellia.” He pulled her closer, buried his lips in her hair. She tried to steel herself against his reaction, his embrace. Tried and failed. “That’s why you… Foxy’s pups…and that damned Chien. He—he growled at you. The day we met. And you were expected to—to—”

It was her turn to quiet him. “Shh,” she soothed. “Aunt Merrick said it was high time I conquered my fears, and I daresay she was right.”

“It was heartless and cruel!”

She pulled away to look him in the eye. She would not be enticed into wanting—to say nothing of needing—a man’s protection. “If there are a hundred ladies’ companions in London, ninety-eight of them are surely tasked with worse things than looking after a bad-tempered, gassy pug.”

His answering expression was skeptical, but reluctantly amused by her description of the dog. He rocked back on his heels, increasing the distance between them. “I did not mean to… I should leave you to your rest.” Standing, he wiped his hands on the remaining scrap of toweling and tossed it over the washstand. “Do you—do you wish for me to call for someone to help you—?” With one hand, he gestured toward her clothes, which were streaked with mud, and likely worse.

“Undress?” She fought down a laugh. So he still imagined she was some sort of grand lady accustomed to having a maid at her beck and call? “I’m sure I can manage.”

“Right.” He moved hesitantly toward the door. “Anything else?”

“My spectacles?”

She saw his head turn in the direction of the window and the yawning blackness beyond. The little sparkles of light against the glass must be a scattering of raindrops. “Can you manage tonight without them, do you think? It’ll be impossible to find anything in the dark. I’ll go out at first light to look for them myself.”

Hesitantly, she nodded her agreement. She did not need them. After all, she was just going to undress and slip into bed.

But when she heard the rattle of the door latch, her pulse quickened. Not fear of being alone. Longing for a few more moments with him. She flailed about for something to stay him. “Did you mean it?”

She watched him turn toward her, wondering about the expression on his face, which at this distance, was unreadable to her. Without her spectacles,

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