She was silent as a stone. He felt a tightening of her muscles beneath his hand, and gingerly moved to another spot. In but a few more minutes, he’d dried her with a soft linen towel and was reaching for the basilicum powder.
“This is very embarrassing,” she said after he’d covered her again. He looked up, expecting to see her face flushed, and was taken off guard to see her staring at him, wide-eyed, with a kind of stunned expression on her face. She’d felt something for him, despite the pain she must still feel in her side. She liked him touching her? Oh God, he liked it as well.
He tried to make himself feel like a bishop at a baptism as he slipped the linen beneath her waist to bind the wound loosely again. It was damned unnerving and he felt sweat break out on his forehead. He felt a clumsy oaf, thinking that he must be hurting her.
“Do you really want to marry me?” she asked, staring at him straightly.
“Yes,” he said, standing over her now. “I must as I told you. I’ve taken more advantage of your innocence than a man is allowed to take. Yes, I must hie myself to the altar with you, noble fellow that I am.”
“You haven’t asked me if I’m even interested in becoming better acquainted with you,” she said. She watched his face closely as he pulled the nightshirt back down and rose from her bedside.
“I already know you’re interested. You smile at me, you ask me to kiss you, and I fancy you like it. Now, you’ll be a bit sore for another week, but Millie will be able to see to you quite sufficiently after you’re home. Would you like to become better acquainted with me? Learn if I can mind my tongue and be gallant and flatter your very pretty eyebrows?”
“Are they really?”
“What’s really?”
“Do you really like my eyebrows?”
He rolled his eyes, strode back and forth three times beside her bed, gave her a crooked grin and took himself off.
She told herself as sleep tugged at her again, as it always seemed to do, this weariness that was so deep she didn’t even know where it came from, this weakness she hated, that he knew at least that she wasn’t like many females. She wasn’t helpless or fragile or soft, as men seemed to like women to be. She’d never be remotely helpless, regardless of what he would admire.
Enough of that. She had to think. Just because he’d turned her life upside down in four days, there was still Damien and still the man out there who’d been responsible for his death. Someone had forced Damien to leave England; and that same person, still maddeningly unknown, had sent him to his death at Waterloo. Lord Harry still had much to do.
The following morning, dressed as Lord Harry and leaning heavily upon Lord Oberlon’s arm, Lord Harry bade a silent farewell to Thurston Hall, a mansion she was quite certain she could come to admire, if the opportunity were offered to her, which it had been, but had he been truly serious?
As she expected, Sir Archibald’s carriage was standing in front of the gothic-pillared entrance, with both Millie and Pottson standing by the open door. She pulled her greatcoat more closely about her shoulders to ward off the frigid winter wind. Of course, she had to leave Thurston Hall as Lord Harry for the servants’ sake the marquess had said, and naturally she’d agree with him. She didn’t relish the prospect of changing back into women’s clothes, even with Millie’s assistance, in a cramped carriage.
She looked at his set profile. He was in close conversation with Pottson. She felt a knot of loneliness. She didn’t want to leave Thurston Hall. She didn’t want to leave him. She wasn’t going home. She was leaving it. She realized the marquess was speaking to her and turned up her pale face to meet his.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t accompany you. Millie and Pottson have my instructions. You’ll be well taken care of. I shall call upon you in a couple of days to see how you’re doing.”
“I’ve been well taken care of all my life,” she said. “When will I see you?”
“In three days. I doubt I could last longer away from you. You madden me and I want to kiss you, very badly. Oh lord, I hope that Jack the footman didn’t hear that, else I would quickly gain a reputation as a pederast. Go, Lord Harry. Take care and rest. I’ll see you soon.” He wanted to touch her face, but he knew he couldn’t. They had to maintain the charade.
He closed the door to the carriage. He turned and walked back up the steps. “Silken,” he shouted, “have the carriage ready in half an hour. We’re going back to London.”
Tired and somewhat depressed, Hetty arrived dressed modestly in a woman’s gown at the stroke of noon. Thinking that her father would demand all sorts of details of her visit to Thurston Hall, she had carefully invented several parties and outings. She was rather unnerved when her sire, after greeting her with a negligent kiss on the cheek, asked only, “I understand the marquess was in residence during your visit and that you got along very well with him.”
“He put in an occasional appearance, Father.” She picked up a roll, but still, from the corner of her eye, she saw his speculative look. She smiled to herself. If her father only knew.
After luncheon, Hetty excused herself and
