“And how is the Tiger?” Mr. Heath asked, referring to Alec in what Isabella could only think of as a reverential tone. He had spared not a glance for Isabella, who assumed that she was his patient as much as Alec, and felt a small degree of affront, as she was not used to being ignored. But clearly, to Mr. Heath, it was the Tiger who mattered.
“He says he is much recovered, and won’t stay abed,” Pearl reported, leading the way to the dressing room.
Mr. Heath frowned. “So I feared.”
With that he was ushered into the dressing room. Paddy and Pearl disappeared with him, and the door was closed on Isabella’s interested eyes.
Mr. Heath remained in the dressing room for some three quarters of an hour. The only clue Isabella had to what was transpiring within was Alec’s shout of “I absolutely refuse to be blooded by this money-grubbing leech!” halfway through the proceedings. When Mr. Heath emerged at last, accompanied by Pearl, he looked flustered, and his florid face was even redder than before.
His subsequent examination of Isabella was cursory, and after he replaced the bandage covering her wound with a smaller one, he pronounced her well on the road to recovery.
“ ’Tis fortunate that the bullet only grazed you, young woman. You’ve nothing more than three inches or so of skin gouged out of your back. Had fever not set in, I daresay you would have been on your feet again within a day or two. But then, fever often accompanies these cases. I’m glad to see that my powders have brought you to the right-about.”
“I’ve been giving ’em to her just like you said,” Pearl asserted virtuously, although so far as Isabella was aware, Pearl had done no such thing.
“Good, good. Keep her in bed for the remainder of the day, and then by tomorrow she should be able to begin sitting for an hour or so in a chair. It doesn’t do to hurry these things, you know. The renewing of the body can’t be rushed. Though try telling that to him in there.” This was accompanied by a rolling of Mr. Heath’s eyes in the direction of the dressing room. Pearl responded with a sympathetic murmur, and ushered Mr. Heath to the door.
“Remember, tell no one,” Pearl said to Mr. Heath at the door. She pressed a large wad of pound notes into his hand.
“As if I would betray the Tiger,” Mr. Heath responded, very much on his dignity as he pocketed the money. Pearl smiled at him, and opened the door so that he could leave. Once the door was locked again, Paddy emerged from the dressing room.
“How is he?” Pearl would have pushed by Paddy to see for herself, but Paddy stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“Grumpy as a badger. You know how he gets. We’d best let him alone for a bit.”
“Like that, is he?” Pearl made a face. “Well, I have some things I need to see to downstairs. Let me get the breakfast trays, and I’ll get out of here.”
She went into the dressing room, and emerged in a few minutes grimacing, tray piled with empty dishes.
“Told you,” Paddy said with equal parts humor and sympathy.
“Well, at least he gets over it quick,” she sighed, and came to get Isabella’s tray from where it had been removed to the bedside table. “Can I get you anything before I go downstairs?”
“If you have a brush and some pins, I would tidy my hair.”
“I can manage that, I guess.”
Pearl set down both trays and crossed to the wardrobe. Rummaging within, she came up with a silver brush and comb set, some pins and a mirror, which she dropped on Isabella’s lap.
“That do?”
“Yes. Thank you, Pearl. You’ve been more than kind, really.”
Pearl, pausing in the act of picking up the trays, looked surprised. Then she laughed. “That’s certainly the first time I’ve been called that,” she said, and grinned at Isabella. Then, her spirits apparently restored, she took herself out of the room. Paddy followed, carrying the crockery-piled trays.
As Isabella brushed out her hair, struggling with tangles she feared might be permanent, she was all too conscious that she had been left alone with Alec. Only the closed dressing room door separated them, and she half expected him to emerge at any minute. She didn’t know how she would deal with him in a temper, and the thought made her jumpy.
But he didn’t emerge, and she at last managed to get her hair tamed into a semblance of obedience. After twisting it up and securing it with pins in a soft roll at the back of her head, she studied her reflection critically.
She was even paler than usual, which made the scattering of freckles across her nose seem more noticeable. She was thinner too, which made her mouth look wider than ever and put shadows beneath her cheekbones and collarbone. But the lavender eiderdown encircling her neck did wonderful things for her eyes. Always before they had been just a plain, gentle blue. Somehow, though, they seemed to have picked up the bed jacket’s color, and the soft blue sparkled with lavender lights. Her hair looked better too, probably because it had not yet had time to straggle. But it seemed softer and fuller around her face, framing it with light brown waves.…
The dressing room door opened without warning. Isabella looked up to find Alec standing there frowning at her. Hastily she put down the mirror, embarrassed to be caught staring so raptly at her reflection. Bright color flooded her cheeks at the idea that he might think her vain.
“Where’s Pearl?” he demanded without preamble, his brows coming together over his nose as his eyes moved over her.
“She went downstairs.”
He was shirtless, his broad shoulders filling the opening, the white bandage around his chest the only thing that kept him from being completely naked above the waist. As always, he seemed totally unconcerned about his lack of proper clothing. Isabella only wished that she could be as blasé as he was about his immodest display. Her color deepened as she averted her eyes from his chest.
“She did, eh?” His eyes raked over her again, then he turned to go back into the dressing room. It was then that Isabella noticed a new bandage wrapped around his elbow.
“What happened to your arm?” she asked before she thought.
He glared at her over his shoulder. “Pearl and Paddy between them managed to talk me into letting that damned sawbones bleed me. Now I feel as weak as a puling infant.”
“Maybe you should stay in bed,” Isabella offered, trying not to smile as the reason for his grumpiness became clear.
“To hell with that,” he growled, and went back inside the dressing room, shutting the door behind him with an audible bang.
Left to herself again, Isabella put the toilet articles aside and reached for the book on the bedside table. She had done no more than look at the title when the dressing room door banged open again. Alec stalked into the room, still clad only in his breeches, and stopped at the foot of her bed to glare at her. Isabella looked up at him with a question in her eyes, at a loss to think of how she might have offended him.
“Is ought the matter?”
“The knot in this damned bandage is coming untied. Does it come off, if I know Paddy and Pearl, they will have the bloody sawbones to me again. ’Tis just like Pearl not to be around when I need her, while the rest of the time she sticks to me like day-old porridge.”
“Would you like me to retie it for you?” It was all she could do not to smile at the note of aggrieved complaint in his voice, but she feared that an inauspicious smile might provoke him to an explosion of wrath.
“You?” He looked down at her in disbelief.
“I assure you I can tie a knot,” Isabella answered, her chin lifting haughtily.
“Getting on your high horse, are you, Countess? I warn you I’m in no mood to put up with fancy airs from a wet-behind-the-ears miss.”
“I’ll try not to subject you to any,” Isabella said sweetly, when what she really wanted to do was chuck her book at him. “Do you want me to retie it, or not?”
Thus adjured, he came around and seated himself on the edge of the bed, his back to her. Isabella looked at that strong back with its satiny
bronze skin, and felt her skin heat. He was within touch of her hand.… She would have to touch him, were she to retie his bandage. And, as he had said, the knot was on the verge of working itself loose.
“Are you going to tie it or not?” he demanded impatiently, frowning over his shoulder at her.
Isabella drew on all the calm, good sense she’d ever had in her life to reply in a cool voice, “Certainly I am, if you will but hold still.”
He held still. She reached out and unraveled the failing knot, careful not to allow her fingers to touch him. But she was so close that she could see the smooth texture of his skin where it stretched over the indentation of his spine. Further up, his shoulders at close quarters were so wide and heavy with muscle that they took her breath.
As she fumbled with the knot, her fingers grown suddenly clumsy, she felt in truth the wet-behind-the-ears miss he had called her. No matter that she was a countess and he a commoner, or that he was surely no more than ten years her senior, if that. He was so much her superior in worldly experience that, compared to him, she was a mere babe. He sat calmly waiting for her to tie the knot of his bandage, no more affected by her nearness than he would have been by that of Mr. Heath. While she—she could scarcely draw breath, because when she did she inhaled the musky scent of him. She felt as though her bones would melt as the heat of his body enveloped her in waves.
Tugging at the ends of the knot to make sure it was tight, her knuckles brushed his skin. Immediately she jerked her hands away.
“All finished?” He slewed around to look at her, apparently not the least aware of her discomposure. Those golden eyes met hers. Helplessly, horribly, she felt herself turning a fiery shade of red.
His eyebrows snapped together, and he got off the bed. “Why do you blush every time I set eyes on you? You’re not shy, I’d swear.”
Terrified that he was about to ferret out the shameful effect he had on her, she snapped up her chin and looked him full in the eyes. “Perhaps ’tis just that I am unused to gentlemen who take such pleasure in flaunting their … persons … before a lady. Indeed, I have rarely seen you fully clothed, and I admit that I find such immodesty discomposing.”
His eyes widened on her face as the sense of that sank in, and his lips compressed. “Since you are a married woman, Countess, I wouldn’t have thought that you would find the sight of a man without his shirt so ‘discomposing.’ As you do, I’ll do my best not to offend you until you can find some other, more gentlemanly fellow to shelter you from your murderous relatives.”
As he finished biting off the last words, he turned on his heel, stalked into the dressing room, and slammed the door in earnest. Isabella was left to her book, which she determinedly picked up and opened. A considerable time passed before she realized that, of what she read, she had not comprehended a single word.
XV
By the afternoon of the next day, Isabella was as heartily sick of her forced confinement with “the handsomest man she had ever seen in her life” as Alec obviously was of being cooped up with her. Unable to leave the confines of the bedchamber or dressing room while Paddy and his cohorts scoured London for news of who it was who was out to kill him, and feeling more fit with every passing hour, Alec was as grouchy as a large bear in a small cage. He growled at everyone, and scowled at Isabella, for whom he obviously felt particular ire, every time he emerged from the dressing room.
Isabella, for her part, regretted their quarrel, and would have apologized had he given her the least opportunity. But he did not. His fit of the sullens did not go unremarked by Paddy or Pearl, but as they knew nothing of what had passed between Alec and herself, they attributed his ill temper entirely to the sawbones’s visit, and vowed they would not summon Mr. Heath again unless Alec lay dying.
As a result of Alec’s surliness, and her own guilt over adding to it, Isabella was as jumpy as a cat on hot bricks. Whenever Alec emerged from the dressing room—which he did frequently, pacing about the bedchamber and cursing his confinement—Isabella would either watch him with wide, wary eyes or, if he scowled at her, studiously avoid looking at him. Either way, it seemed her actions maddened him.
He seemed to be waiting for her to remark on the fact that, since their quarrel, he wore a decently buttoned-up shirt and breeches whenever he entered her chamber. From the looks he shot her, Isabella thought he was daring her to comment. Prudently she refrained.
When he stalked into her chamber for the fourth time in an hour, she, who had been trying to read a book for that same hour, flashed him a displeased look and sighed loudly.
He caught her eyes for the first time that day. Isabella, thoroughly annoyed herself by that time, refused to back down. For a long moment neither gave an inch. Then an unwilling smile tugged at the corner of Alec’s mouth. Isabella, determined not to be coaxed from the ill temper he had at last reduced her to, lifted her eyebrows at him with all the haughty disdain she could summon.
His smile widened. She gritted her teeth, and sniffed audibly. He laughed out loud. His amusement, Isabella knew, was at her expense. Her temper, usually so serene, heated still further.
“And how, pray, have I displeased you now, Countess? Behold me fully dressed, even to my boots.”
“I am glad you find me amusing, Mr. Tyron. ’Tis worth it if it will serve to sweeten your temper. For my part, I am trying to read, and will continue to do so if you will make yourself less of a nuisance.”
“You can call me Alec, you know. In fact, I wish you would, for I have every intention of calling you Isabella—at least when you Ye behaving yourself. When you’re not, I shall have to call you Countess.”
Alec grinned broadly as her eyes flashed at his baiting, and came to stand at the foot of the bed. His eyes gleamed at her as she lay propped on a mound of pillows. Isabella’s hand clutched at the neck of the lavender bed jacket as those eyes moved over her. Still determined not to be lured from the ill humor he had succeeded in driving her to, she found she could ignore him no longer. Lifting her eyes, she regarded him with obvious displeasure.
“And I wish you would take yourself back to your room. I am not accustomed to gentlemen making free of my bedchamber.” The look she gave him was disdainful.
His eyebrows rose, and he whistled through his teeth.
“Come now, Countess, climb off your high horse and cry friends. We’re stuck with each other for the nonce, so we might as well make the best of it.”
“That,” said Isabella through gritted teeth, “is quite impossible.”
Instead of being angered by her obdurateness, Alec seated himself on the end of the bed, grinning engagingly.
“I’m bored,” he complained. “Put that bloody book aside and talk to me. Tell me how you came to be married to that bounder St. Just, to start.”
“Pearl will be up to see you before long, I am sure. If you wish to talk, talk to her. I am trying to read. And I wish you will refrain from using bad language in my presence, and cease referring to my husband as a bounder.”
“Talking is not what Pearl and I do best together.”
“Indeed?” she replied frigidly, and reached for her book.
“What Pearl and I do best together I cannot do properly with your big ears listening in the next room,” he said wickedly, and to her fury, Isabella felt herself blush. He had meant to shock her, she knew, and she was almost as angry with herself for letting him get under her skin as she was with him for his deliberate baiting.
“Your bad taste in making such a remark is appalling,” she sniffed, her voice dripping icicles, and turned her eyes to her book again. Without warning he snatched it from her, holding it away from her when she would have grabbed it back.
“Mr. Tyron!” Out of all patience with him, she held out her hand for the book.
“Alec,” he corrected. His eyes were devils of merriment as they laughed at her. “If you want the book back, Isabella, you must say, ‘Please, Alec.’ ”
“You can … read that book yourself for
all I care,” Isabella hissed, her eyes shooting sparks of real fury because she could not think of any words bad enough to annihilate the maddening creature.
“I see I shall have to teach you to swear, Countess,” he said softly, and then when she thought her temper must explode, he meekly handed her the book. She accepted it and buried her nose in it. He stretched out comfortably along the end of the bed, propping his head on his hand, watching her read.
Of course, with him lying across the end of her bed, she could not make sense of a single word.
“Would you please go away?” she gritted at last, shooting him a look of pure loathing.
He smiled at her then, a charming lopsided smile that, against her will, threatened to melt her bones.
“Talk to me,” he wheedled. Then, when she still scowled at him, though it was an effort in the face of that engaging grin, he added softly, “Please?”
“About what?” she sighed, acknowledging defeat, and leaned her head back against the pillows as she eyed him. If truth were told, she would much rather talk to him than read. Alec was infinitely more interesting than her novel.
“Tell me how you come to be wed to St. Just,” he said again, disposing himself more comfortably. By the time he was settled he was lying flat on his back along the foot of the bed, his hands linked comfortably behind his head and his booted feet extending off the other side of the mattress. His eyes were turned in her direction, and he seemed to be studying her face. Isabella knew that she should object to his posture. But she didn’t.
An odd thrill went through her at his nearness. Such proximity to a man who was not her husband was scandalous, of course, but then the whole situation in which she had found herself since being rescued by Alec was scandalous. He’d slept in the dressing room of her chamber for a fortnight now, wandering through her room in various stages of undress, beheld her more nearly naked than anyone except her maid had seen her since she was a tiny child, and now he sprawled on the end of her bed for a cozy chat. If word of this ever got out, her reputation would be irretrievably ruined. But the mere fact that she had passed a fortnight in a bawdy house would ruin her as surely as anything else, so Isabella relaxed, and allowed herself to enjoy—though not without some guilt—the sheer pleasure of his company.
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