“I’m not that kind of nurse. I no longer do chamber pots or bedpans.”
He grimaced. “My wife, then. You are my wife.”
She fought the growing heat in her palm, the wish to step closer to him and discover if that one kiss had been an entire aberration. “In name only for the now.”
His thumb stroked the vulnerable flesh over the underside of her wrist. “Are you frightened?”
Ah, now. Why did he have to go and ask that? Because she was. She was bleedin’ terrified at this feeling he’d awoken inside her, but there was no way under the stars she’d let him know that. She sniffed. “Of course not. I’ve seen my share of men’s bodies. They’re just so hideous, I do my best to avoid them.”
He smiled, a lopsided, uneven grin, made even more lopsided by his slightly uneven breathing. He let go her hand and took a slow step toward the bath. “A most educated and jaded woman.”
“Exactly.” She shrugged. “They’re all the same,” she said grandly. Sure, she could pull this off. She could bluster her way through this, and he would never be the wiser that she was in wonder at his body, the little she’d seen of it and the way it moved underneath his garments.
That strange smile still remained fixed upon his rugged features as he grabbed hold of his nightshirt and whisked it over his head.
“For if you’ve seen one, you’ve—” Glory be to God and all the angels. She was going to go to the hell she no longer believed in. Her hands clenched into fists lest she reach out to touch him, to discover that he indeed was real and not some overwrought figment of her imagination. His silver-blond hair swept over his broad, muscled shoulders, dancing over pectorals she’d only ever seen the like in the British Museum.
Perfection.
She’d been certain she preferred the whipcord strength of a tall, lithe man and not the broad Herculean body before her, but she’d been so wrong. His muscles were packed one atop the other, hard, straining against burnished skin, rippling down his abdomen to a waist so defined at his hips she could have cut herself on the bands of flesh that directed the eye down . . .
She couldn’t help it. Her mouth opened involuntarily to exude a small sigh of awe. His thick . . . penis? She couldn’t call it that. Somehow that anatomical word seemed too sterile for this wickedly virile man. The word “cock,” a word she had for so long hated, suddenly blazed through her mind. Yes. It was the only word to describe it. His cock was thick; if she wrapped her fingers about it, her thumb and middle finger likely wouldn’t meet.
Oh yes. Cock. Something proud, strong.
“You’re overheated, my dear?”
She snapped her attention back up to his face. Her cheeks indeed were smoldering, and her gown suddenly seemed altogether too tight, her high neck cutting into her sensitive skin. “’Tis the steam from the bath.”
“Of course.” He proceeded to turn and give her a good view of a hard ass and a back so wide and so strong she could have laid all her worldly cares upon it and it wouldn’t have cracked. Or was that it? His back was so strong that so many people had laid their cares upon him until one day he could bear it no more. A tragic Greek hero cast from grace.
As soon as he bent ever so slightly, a groan mumbled from his lips and he began to tilt. A great oak felling. Her heart slammed in her chest as she realized he was collapsing. She darted forward and grabbed him. Her arms circled around his waist, her hands grabbing, her legs bending and straining to take his weight.
Her face pressed against his long hair, and heat radiated off his skin, blasting her with his discomfort.
“Powers,” she said sharply at his silence, praying to God he hadn’t passed out. If he truly gave way, she wouldn’t be able to hold him.
“Mm.”
“I need you to brace your hands on the tub.”
“Don’t be so . . . bossy.”
“God, save me from men.”
“Keep that tongue and He shall.”
“I thought you quite liked my tongue.”
He let out a ragged guffaw, and then his hands slowly inched out and grabbed hold of the porcelain rim.
Bent over, her leaning behind him, she held with all her might, her feet splaying lest he go face forward into the bath and conk his head like the great mule of a man he was.
Panting slightly, he glanced back over his shoulder. “This . . . is a most unique experience.”
She stared at him, not understanding, and then he wiggled his arse a little against her groin. She gasped, half of a mind to let him fly and accept the consequences. “You’d be thinking of sex even with your limbs blown off, wouldn’t you?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I wouldn’t be thinking about it.”
She paused. “Oh, no?”
He shook his head slowly. “No. I’d find a way to be doing it. With you.”
“Faith. And you’ve the devil’s own soul.”
“But you haven’t let me go.”
“Pardon?”
“If you’re so enraged, why are you still holding on?”
“Because I don’t wish you any more brain damaged than you clearly are.”
“Very kind.”
Thank the angels he couldn’t see her face. Her cheeks had to be the color of her hair, and frankly, if she were to strip off her gown, she wouldn’t be surprised if her entire body was one lick of shock and color. But if she stripped off her gown, they’d be naked body to naked body, and she could climb in that bath with him and wash the fever from his skin and satisfy her growing curiosity about this strange man. She lowered her forehead to his back for one moment, closed her eyes, and wished the world was very different.
“Have you got a good grip?”
“Mm.”
“Right. I’m letting go.”
“Must you?”
“Don’t be daft.”
“I thought I was supposed to be.”
“You claim you’re not. So stop acting it.” For someone suffering from opium withdrawal, he was remarkably lucid. Perhaps it was his size. Big as an ox, his body could take so much more than the average person, but it was a matter of time. And then she’d need his man and his footmen. But she’d save him the indignity of knowing that.
“I’ve got hold.”
“Good.”
Slowly, she eased her grip and started to slip away, and her traitorous hands, didn’t they move just a bit more slowly than they ought as they slid back over his velvet skin? She’d never touched the like. Living stone, heated from within.
“Do you mind not letting go entirely?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My legs are shaking.”
She looked down. “So they are.”
“I—I—”
“Need help.” She let out a mocking gasp. “And the world is coming to end; the mighty Powers needs a bit of help.”
A low sort of growl rumbled from his chest, a sound that sent a thrill racing straight to the pit of her stomach, but one that also raised a hint of alarm. He was a man who could be pushed and pushed, except for when he was vulnerable. “I’ve got you,” she whispered gently.
• • •
The hot water bit into his skin, massaging his aching muscles, and a low moan of unbearable relief mustered past his lips. Carefully, with her arms braced under his and his hands still planted on the rim of the tub, they lowered him together into the deep, steaming water.
It was the closest thing he’d known to heaven since he’d first set eyes on his Irish harpy. He hadn’t realized just how tight each and every one of his muscles was; they’d seemed the consistency of marmalade jam. He dropped his head back and caught her staring down at his face.
It was the most interesting view—her staring down at him—one he’d become accustomed to in the asylum but had never liked. But now ther
e was such infinite care on her face that he felt his chest tightening in a most alarming manner. He jerked his gaze away, focusing on the cream-colored wall on the other side of the room.
“Just relax now.”
He was tempted to splash her with a large wave of water. Telling him to relax was like asking a rhino to march through a keyhole. His body was one great tight, angry band. And . . . and . . . the shaking was growing worse, to the point it seemed as if he’d created a wave system within the bath. “Is this . . . normal?”
She inched back away from the tub and averted her gaze. “Indeed, it is.”
Very interesting, his angel. How she was so innocent . . . and not. “Y-you said it would get worse?”
She folded her arms under her bosom, the black bombazine glistening like its own mourning stone as she slowly swayed a good few feet off the side. “So it will.”
He twisted his neck, trying for a better look at her. He didn’t know why, but just her very presence made this somehow bearable. Which made no sense at all, considering a few moments ago all he’d wanted was her departure. Unease gripped his gut. He’d never experienced anything like this and was heading out into the wilds, no compass, no map, and no provisions. “How much worse?”
“Don’t think about it.”
He splashed his hands down on the water, voicing his frustration. He was always in control of everything, and suddenly he was losing that control hour by hour, day by day. All he wanted was to get it back. “How the hell am I not to think about it?”
She began to pace, a slow, easy walk down the length of his dressing room. Once she reached the end, she turned, her skirts dancing about her. For one moment, he could have sworn she had no legs at all, that her pearl skin glowed opalescent and that her strange blue eyes burned straight through him with a heavenly power. What he wouldn’t give for her to take down her hair. To see its fire coil down her back and over her shoulders. “Let loose your hair.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Please. Let loose your hair.” At first he expected her to slam him with ridicule and her usual sense of high moral disdain. Instead her fingers tightened on her arms, the flesh going even whiter around the nail beds.
She kept her eyes locked on his face, clearly determined not to let her gaze capture too much of him. “Why?”
“Comfort.”
Her hands fluttered down to her sides as her mouth opened ever so slightly. “You’re an astonishing man.” Her fingers inched up through the air until they rested on the pins at her chignon.
His skin tightened and he waited. Waited desperately to see it uncoil.
Then she dropped her hands, her hair still in place. “I’m sorry. I cannot.”
He turned his head away. The anticipation of such a strangely not erotic thing leaching away from him. It was remarkable the way she contained herself, for all her teasing. She was a woman who didn’t know how to be free.
He sighed slowly, letting the breath ease from his chest with the tension of the day. “I understand.”
“But I’ll tell you a story.” Her voice shook slightly. “For comfort.”
“Do I look three?”
“On occasion.”
He sank down deeper into the tub, allowing the water to soak his hair, and he closed his eyes tightly. “Fine, then. A story.”
“Glad I am to oblige.”
He snorted, but it was a weak attempt at his usually emphatically derisive sound. And he waited for her rapturously beautiful voice to fill the room.
“Once in the land of Tir Na Nog—”
He snapped his eyes open. “The land of bloody what?”
“Shh. ’Tis a story.”
He sighed and forced himself to let his head relax against the porcelain tub. His hands floated in the water, and he offered himself up to her voice, which he prayed to God would indeed distract him from the sudden and uncontrollable jerking going on in his limbs. She ignored it, so it couldn’t be too bad as of yet. “Are you going to continue?”
“Ahem. Once in the land of Tir Na Nog, there lived a young god and a young goddess who loved each other with all the powers of the universe.”
“A fairy story then.”
She paused before correcting, “An epic story.”
“You don’t believe in love. Said as much.”
“But I do believe in stories. Now, hold your wheesht.”
My God, it was never clearer than at this moment that she was a foreigner. An un-English person. “My . . . what?”
“Shut your piehole.”
And he did, because he was too weak to formulate a suitable reply and too shocked to even attempt one. No one told him such things.
“Now, as I was saying, they loved each other with the powers of all the universe, but there was one who was jealous. A wicked old witch of a goddess. Didn’t she then come to the young goddess Etain and offer to make her the most beautiful creature in the world so that her husband might love her all the more?”
“And she agreed,” he put in. “Silly woman.”
She laughed softly. “You’ve it right so far. But to Etain’s shock, ’twas not a beautiful woman she was turned to but a butterfly.”
His eyelids twitched as he envisioned such an absurdity. No. He couldn’t let it pass. “Claptrap.”
“Hush. A butterfly so beautiful, all the colors of the world and heavens shone upon her wings, but then a wicked great storm came to Tir Na Nog and blew her away.” The sounds of Margaret’s skirts shushed against the carpet, accompanied by her soft step as she moved back and forth across the room and slowly around the tub. “Battered here and there, all over the world, she at last came to rest in the land of mortals. Beating her poor wounded wings, she flew into a castle, and what do you know, she landed in a cup of wine.”
“How fortuitous,” he drawled, secretly enjoying the story immensely, especially the way her voice came nearer and then slipped away as she moved.
“And the lady of the house,” she said with considerably more force, “drank the cup and the butterfly.”
“Oh dear.”
“And then the lady became with child.”
“Catholics will believe anything.” It was too much fun goading her. It really was. And given the way his brain was stuttering harder, he was grateful he could get words out in a sentence.
A sound of exasperation filled the room before she said, “This was written considerably before Catholics were even a twinkle in God’s eye. Have you no imagination?”
“Not really.” He clenched his hands to his thighs, pressing his fingers into the muscle. He could make himself stop shaking. He could.
“Just listen.”
In truth, he had no wish to admit that the sound of her voice was hypnotizing him away from his growing alarm. Surely, if he let go and allowed himself to simply listen and not supply his running commentary, he would lose himself in it. He would simply float away in it, no body, no mind, just freedom in sensation. He would stop this hideous lack of physical control, his stomach would ease, and the fever burning his brain would cease.
In short, he would be himself again.
His eyelids lowered, and he tried to force them open, but he couldn’t. As he listened, her voice faded off into a haze of nothingness. And he slipped into the water. Away from everything. Away from the growing recognition that he did need her. If only for now. Just for now.
Chapter 11
Margaret paced slowly as she recalled the story her own mother had told her a hundred times over. She loved the magic of it, the foolishness . . . and the hope.
Despite the fact she’d been around countless naked men, being in Powers’s presence was different. She couldn’t reduce him to just a patient, just a body in need of care, and she was on the verge of being ashamed. He needed her, and her lusting after him wouldn’t help. Not in th
e slightest.
Just moments ago, she’d had her hands on his flesh and she’d had to fight to keep her mind firmly on a correct track. He was her patient and nothing more. Well, he was her husband, but that was something else entirely at present.
She drew in a slow breath and glanced toward him.
His breathing had slowed, his lids closed.
He looked almost peaceful, but the telltale signs of perspiration dotted his brow. He was battling the loss of his drug.
His lips moved as if he was trying to speak.
“Powers?” she asked carefully.
His arm twitched. A sudden sharp movement.
Involuntary loss of muscle control.
She curled her fingers into fists, knowing it was about to become unpleasant.
The story vanished from her mind and she crossed to his bath. His eyes were open, a strange glaze to them. A glaze she’d seen often enough in other patients leaving morphine.
Suddenly, Powers’s body relaxed and he slipped beneath the water. His silver hair fanned out over the water.
Margaret’s mouth dried as she darted forward. It was too soon for this stage. She’d never thought he would slip into the half sleep this early.
“Help!” she shouted. She shoved her arms into the water, grabbing hold of Powers’s big shoulders. His head bobbed slightly. She tugged, but he was far too heavy. She struggled with all her might, digging her feet into the floor, her hands grabbing.
The footmen who’d been assigned outside the door burst in.
She didn’t look up, just kept her gaze fixed on the man half submerged. “Get him out!”
One of the footman ran forward.
Margaret quickly stepped back, knowing the young man would be far more capable in this than she.
The other footman stopped by the side of the bathtub. Together, the young men seized Powers. They grunted and strained to pull the big man up.
Finally they got Powers’s head above water.
Coughing and sputtering now, Powers blinked. “W-what?”
“You fell asleep,” she said clearly.
Sprawled in the two footmen’s arms, he looked completely vulnerable, a giant fallen. He sucked in a shuddering breath. “How?”
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