He returned the ewer to the washstand and took up the shampoo jelly to cleanse her hair. Gingerly, he worked the floral-scented jelly through her locks, taking special care where the lump on the back of her head had formed. Feeling it with the pads of his fingertips sent fury and anguish coursing through him anew.
She jerked away from his touch as he inadvertently brushed against a particularly sensitive area, and he could have kicked himself. “I am sorry, sweetheart. I did not mean to hurt you.”
“It is fine, Your Grace,” she said, still clinging to her formality.
It irked him now more than ever, for it was almost as if she denied what was between them. And how could she? He knew she felt this—whatever the devil it was—just as surely as he did.
“It is not fine, damn you,” he said then, bitterness lacing his voice, along with all the pent-up rage he carried toward the Fenian menace. “This never should have happened to you.”
She remained still as he worked the lather through her hair. “It is not your fault, Benedict.”
Her use of his name—at long last—made him freeze. Gratification, the likes of which he had never experienced, settled over his chest. For a breath, he could not find his tongue or his wits. How right his name sounded in her rich, mellifluous voice.
“I hold myself responsible even if you absolve me,” he told her, struggling to keep the thickness and unwanted emotion from his voice.
He had not ever been so vulnerable to a woman. He was not sure he liked it.
In fact, he bloody well knew he did not.
“You do not owe me anything, and yet you have been most kind to myself, and to Betsy as well.” Her voice was quiet—so quiet, he nearly had to strain to discern her words. “I have been remiss in failing to thank you for your hospitality.”
Here, now. What was this? Could it be that the way to slay the dragon Miss Hilgrove was to wash her hair?
“I owe you a great deal,” he countered, swallowing against a rush of more unwanted emotion. “My hospitality and concern are the least I can offer you. I… When I thought something ill had befallen you earlier, I was beside myself. I never would have forgiven myself if anything worse had happened. What happened to you was evil enough, but if it had been something more…”
He could not bring himself to finish the thought, for something more would have been either her rape or her murder. Perhaps both. He thanked God the villains who had taken her had possessed some manner of conscience and had not harmed her as severely as they could have.
“If you are acting out of guilt, sir, I beg you to cancel any such debts you feel you owe me,” she said then, still facing away from him.
How he wished he could see her face, read her expression, her eyes.
“Nothing I have ever felt for you has had a thing to do with guilt, Isabella,” he assured her then, even if he did not know precisely what it was he felt for her. He had no inkling, though he harbored a suspicion that the unthinkable had befallen him.
He rose then, and filled the ewer once more before sitting behind her.
“And what is it you feel for me?” she asked him, as if guessing his thoughts.
He stilled, the filled ewer heavy in his hands, rather symbolic of the heaviness weighing upon his heart. “I cannot define it, other than to say it is more than I have ever felt for another.”
He waited, holding his breath, for an admission in kind.
“You ought not to feel that way for me, Benedict,” she said at last, to his eternal disappointment. “I do not belong in your world. When this storm passes, I will return to where I belong, and you shall go on with your life.”
He wanted to argue with her, but time was slipping away from him and he knew it. He would save this argument for another day. For now, he had to finish washing her hair and leave her chamber before his presence here was discovered by the diligent Whitmore. Or worse, Callie.
“Tilt your head back,” he ordered her instead.
Once more, she obeyed. He tilted the ewer, watching as the water trickled over her hair, washing the suds into the bath. If only the emotions inside him could be cleansed with the same ease.
Chapter Thirteen
Isabella woke the day following her abduction with a head that still ached and a heart filled with regrets. Morning light spilled through the window dressings, and she blinked the sleep from her eyes, stunned again at the sumptuousness of her surroundings. The bed beneath her was softer than any she had ever slept in, rather like a cloud. The ceiling overhead was molded with scrolls and acanthus leaves and nymphs.
The damask roses in the wallpaper were more beautiful in the rich light of day than they had been the previous evening by the glow of electric light. The pictures on the walls were whimsical and enchanting. So much so that she suspected Callie’s influence in the decoration of the chamber itself. The bathing room, however, with its solid, dark wood, was all Benedict.
“Benedict,” she whispered his name aloud to herself, though she knew, for her own self-preservation, that she must not think of him so familiarly.
She must, instead, cling to her battlements. Maintain the distance between them. Because if she allowed herself to soften toward him, she was in great danger of sacrificing everything she had worked her entire life to gain—her independence and her school. She could not afford to lose either one.
But the Duke of Westmorland was not making it easy for her, that much was certain. He had been so tender in the bath yesterday, tending to her as if she were
