His hand paused momentarily in the hollow of her belly. He spoke his thought aloud. “You’re beautiful, even a doctor would have to recognize that, but your father would think that Lady Alicia has been starving you. You must force yourself to eat more, Hetty. We’ve but a day to fatten you up. By God, your flesh is white and soft, and I’m sorry. This is not well done of me. I’m your doctor again, bloodless, with no thought beyond that the wound is closing well. Millie will remove the stitches after you’re home again.”
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.