‘Gladly. I would like to see even a hint of today since I seem to be sleeping so much of it away it feels like a waste of a fine summer day.’
‘You are injured, Lord Stratford. You must take care until we are sure your head injury is less serious than the doctor feared. I knew you were going to be a difficult patient the moment you started to feel a little better,’ she said with her back to him as she let in a small shaft of curious sunlight now it had moved up the sky and would not shine directly into his eyes.
She tried hard to pretend he was only a man in need of a little compassion and not in any way special as she drifted about his bedchamber, tidying little details of the room Darius had no time to worry about. If she tried hard enough, she could forget Lord Stratford possessed strength and character as well as too much money for his own good—oh, and that wretched title as well. Mother Nature had been generous with her gifts when he was born and Marianne wondered if the lady was hell-bent on mischief when she gave him energy and presence as well as an unforgettable face, even if she had withheld classically handsome features. The man was too definite for such smooth good looks, but by the time you realised that it was too late—he had already remade handsome and the rest into also-rans.
‘Who, me?’ he answered as if he would never dream of being awkward or lordly and she almost laughed.
She added charm, when he chose to use it, to that list of unfair ways Lord Stratford was unforgettable and frowned to make it clear that tactic would not get round her any better than a brusque series of orders. ‘Yes, you. It is in your best interest to rest until your head is better and trying to charm your way downstairs before you are ready to leave this room will not get you anywhere.’
‘I shall have to confound you and endure it like a gentleman then, or is that your plan, Mrs Turner? You point out how awkward I am likely to be so I will play the perfect invalid to show you how wrong you are. Is that how you keep ugly customers like me in order?’
‘I don’t know, I have never had to deal with one quite as ugly as you before, Lord Stratford,’ she lied smoothly, but this time he grinned at her as if he knew it was untrue. He thought he had her measure and that felt far too dangerous. The last thing she wanted was him knowing what she really thought of him. If he knew she had tried to sleep earlier, after far too many wearisome days and nights of worrying over Juno and then him, and failed because of him, he would know he had the advantage and play on it to get his own way. Even closing her eyes and trying to nap had been a mistake, she reminded herself.
She turned away from him again and frowned down at the short stretch of garden where the house backed on to the road to the farm and stables through the sliver of a gap in the shutters. She had thought it was prudent to allow him this so he would not get out of bed and fling them wide as soon as her back was turned. Yet as soon as she tried to relax she was haunted by silly images of him awake and aware under her searching hands, instead of unconscious and worryingly still as he was yesterday when she frantically explored his body for injuries. He had such a honed and muscular body under his once-splendid clothes as well.
She did not usually care how a man would look naked, not since she lost Daniel and thought she would never want to be intimate with a man ever again. Yet even now her fingers twitched involuntarily as if they were longing for the feel of him under them again, so she eyed them as if they had turned traitor. They still yearned to explore his firm satin skin over honed muscles and a flat belly she had been certain no aristocrat would possess, until she searched almost every inch of him for hurts she winced at finding, although she kept telling herself he was nothing to her.
‘If that does not work, I shall just have to find another way to stop you doing yourself permanent damage by doing too much too soon,’ she said and from the hot dare in his mesmerising blue eyes he had heard the mistake in that sentence just as she did as soon as it was out of her mouth. No, she would not be joining him in that bed to keep him there until he was well enough to get up and start ordering the world again. ‘A sleeping draught, perhaps, or maybe I could get Darius to knock you out with a cudgel,’ she added.
A fiery blush still stung her cheeks at the image of them in bed together with her doing all sorts of wrong and inventive things to keep him there. She cursed herself for that giveaway flush of hot colour and he could hardly miss it when there was not much else to look at in this bare bedchamber. She had only just got it clean and had had a new mattress brought in when he needed it so urgently. All the extra comforts she was planning to add hadn’t seemed important. She would have another chair or two brought up so the others could sit with him and keep him amused. And she needed to consult Fliss about adding a rug and some furniture. If Lord Stratford felt more comfortable, he might be less restless and less inclined to run before he could walk
