“Hasn’t killed me.”
“That doesn’t sound promising.” She slipped her hand from under his and felt down the front of his bare calf. At first, her touch sent arousing sensations straight to his groin. The sharp pain that followed sobered him. “What happened to your shoes?”
A warm, wet cloth met the bottom of his foot.
Whatever she was doing sent a hot poker to the internal mechanics of his lower leg, firing up through the middle of him.
“Couldn’t say,” he ground through his teeth.
“You’re swollen and bruised worse than before.” Her voice cut off with a soft gasp.
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” Marcus sipped more whiskey and handed it back. “Drink. You’ll be fine too.”
“Nothing is fine.” Her voice was near, and then it wasn’t. It took too much effort to keep his eyes open.
Next he knew, fingers dug into his swollen flesh between his lower leg and foot.
Marcus opened his eyes and wished he hadn’t. Dr. Nealy crouched at his feet, examining him. “I’m afraid you’ll need the fracture box again.”
If he had the energy, he’d roll his eyes at the obviousness of Nealy’s diagnosis. “They didn’t want me walking out of there.”
“Yet you did.” His tone was sharp.
All along, he knew Dr. Nealy couldn’t be trusted by the way Caldwell cooed about him like a prized pet. This was Henrietta’s one mistake. Coming here tonight. He could forgive her misguided ideas about marrying him, but bringing him and Asher here straight from prison? There had to have been a better option. Like the old lady who lived in the woods and made love potions out of pond scum. He and Asher might have been safer with her.
Instead, Marcus said, “When a woman like Henrietta comes for you . . .” But he couldn’t go on. This wasn’t about love, but common sense. Good thing too, because she wasn’t interested in love, and not from an illiterate man like himself.
“Yes, well, I wouldn’t have helped you and your friend if it weren’t for Mrs. Caldwell’s friendship with Sarah. So, I suppose we are even.”
Marcus narrowed his eyes at the doctor, trying to discern his meaning. At the least, he could add oath-breaker to his list of complaints against the physician the next time Henrietta considered the fraud. “Thank you?”
“We’re to be married, you know.”
He didn’t understand. The pain and whiskey flourished bright and drowsing. Henrietta and Dr. Nealy? But she rescued him.
“Congratulations!” Henrietta cheered from across the room.
Marcus rubbed his brow, words slowly clicking into place. Dr. Nealy and Sarah? A slow smile tugged at his lips as Dr. Nealy aggressively wrapped a binding around his ankle.
“You shall need the fracture box, at least until the swelling reduces,” Nealy said, tying off the ends.
“It’s at my house.” Henrietta crossed the room. And then he felt the warmth of her body by his side.
“You heard the man, Hetty Betty.” The whiskey was fully spinning its magic. “Take me home.”
Henrietta took hold of his arms to help him rise and gave him a tug to his feet. “You are no gentleman, Mr. Hardwicke.”
“Yes. I know. I’m a feature.” She raised a brow at him, trying to smother a laugh. “Your best feature.”
“Fixture,” she corrected. “Good night, Doctor. Thank you for everything.”
Asher was already in the carriage with a basket of medicines, Sissy by his side.
They arrived at Henrietta’s house shortly before midnight. It was dark, but that didn’t mean Shrupp wouldn’t be returning soon from whichever part of the province he was terrorizing.
“Is it safe for us to be here?” he asked.
“Shrupp’s gone for a week.” Henrietta stood with her hands on her hips, studying him and Asher, slumped together on the settee. Asher looked cadaverous, having been sick for too long without proper care. Marcus didn’t want to know how he looked.
Her lips pressed into a thin line, tight with worry. “Ash, you’ll sleep in my daughter’s room. Marcus, you’ll take my bed.”
Nodding, Asher coughed his approval.
“And where shall you sleep?” Marcus asked.
“The attic.”
Oh. That wouldn’t do. “I’ll sleep in the attic, you’ll sleep in Willow’s room. Ash shall take your bed.”
Asher lifted a finger. The corner of his mouth twitched. “I’ll take the attic. Marcus, the daughter’s room. Mrs. Caldwell shall sleep in her own bed. Where is your daughter?”
Henrietta stilled. “She passed five years ago.” He waited for the catch of grief in her voice, ready to offer comfort or deflect the line of inquiry, but tonight, it didn’t come.
~ ~ ~
The rain stopped overnight. Henrietta hadn’t realized how noisy the roof was in a rainstorm until she’d slept in Marcus’s cot in the attic. The cot smelled like him and made her want him with a restlessness that swept away any lingering sleep. What might it be like to wake up beside him? She was sure it would be nothing akin to waking beside Sam.
For someone who never wanted love again, to avoid the hurt love brought by loss, what was she doing longing for Marcus? If she refused love, was she prepared to say goodbye to him once he was well enough to leave? She could always trip him and break his ankle again, putting off the inevitable.
“Errrgh!” She tossed the blanket aside.
A thunk hit the floor. “Woof!” Sissy jumped from her space on the floor beside the bed, her rock restored to the clutch of her teeth.
“Exactly my sentiments, dear girl.” Henrietta scratched Sissy on the head and put on her quilted jumps in the relative darkness of the room, then went below stairs to the kitchen to let Sissy out.
She started the process of boiling water for baths and cooking breakfast. Dr. Nealy left a variety of medicines for Asher. She lined them up for review against his list of instructions. With no other immediate tasks, she went to check on him.
After knocking and listening at Willow’s door, she let herself in. A moment’s memory swept through her, and she saw Willow lying limp in her bed. Her heart spasmed. No, she told herself. Look again.
Asher was not lying down but sitting up and twice as large as Willow ever was. His eyes were closed. Beside him, the blacksmith’s puzzle Willow never grew old enough to play with lay solved as separate links in the folds of the blanket. On his other side, the book of King Arthur’s tales rested against his thigh.
“Asher,” she whispered.
His eyelids fluttered. She set down the bowl of water she carried and the basket of medicines hanging over her arm and brought the chair by the window beside the bed.
“Aren’t you an angel?” he croaked, working hard to clear his throat. Heat no longer burned his skin. His fever had lifted.
“You are looking surprisingly well, given a few hours from that wretched place.”
“You should see me at my prime.” His glassy eyes brightened seconds before coughing. After a moment, he settled. “I’ve been called dashing.”
“I’m sure you have.” It was easy to imagine that once he was well, he’d be prodigiously handsome. His ferocious scar bisecting his face balanced his sweetly charming personality. “In the meantime, I’ve brought water, soap, and a towel. Would you prefer a bath? I am heating water for Marcus. I know he’ll want one. I can burn your clothes and have someone go to your home to fetch clean ones.” She didn’t think her strongest lye would make them salvageable. A thought occurred to her. “Do you need me to send word to someone you’re here? Someone must be worried over you? A sweetheart? Mother?”
Asher grinned, transforming him with a healthy glow. “No sweetheart. If my mother saw me like this, she’d worry. The last thing you want is my mother worrying. Ha
ve you ever met a Jewish mother?”
Henrietta laughed. “I’m actually friends with several.”
Asher coughed again, his skin turning a faint blue.
“You know,” she said when Asher sat back. “My late husband was about your size. I have clothes you can wear stored in a chest.”
“That would be most kind.”
She pressed a hand to his arm and stood. “I’ll see what I can find.”
Henrietta left him and took an exceptionally long time to cross the hall and knock on her bedroom door. Thoughts of her dead husband’s clothes faded. There was a man, very much alive, sleeping in her bed.
It took her three times to work up the confidence to knock.
“Aye?” Marcus’s voice came muffled through the door.
Henrietta entered. He lay sprawled in her bed. The thin quilt rode up his calf, revealing the hard knob of a bare knee and part of his inner thigh dusted with curls. Under the quilt, the fracture box sheltered his other leg. Marcus had his head propped on a bent arm on top of a pillow. His chest was bare. There was so much flesh and thick muscle on display, Henrietta had a sudden and terrifying realization. Marcus was naked in her bed.
Chapter 22
Henrietta’s throat went dry. She forced herself to swallow, then dared to come a little closer. “Good morning. How are you feeling?”
Marcus watched her with barely concealed sentiments that mirrored her own unchaste thoughts because his lips quirked in a cunning grin and heat descended on Henrietta’s whole being.
“I slept.” Absently, he drummed his fingers against his chest. Nestled in the curls hung a silver medallion on a leather cord. “This bed beats a cot any night of the week.”
“Yes. I am aware.” If she hadn’t been exhausted, she probably would have been up half the night, thinking about him in her bed. She didn’t miss the fact that he was partial to the left side, as she was partial to the right.
Marcus patted the mattress. There was a wealth of space. “I don’t mind sharing.” Then he seemed to think better of it after sniffing his armpit. He dropped his arms.
“I’m heating water for your bath, then stripping the sheets. I’ll burn them along with Asher’s clothes.”
She came around the side of the bed. It was a brave thing to do, coming within reach of Marcus, and yet she went with the singular purpose of opening Sam’s trunk, releasing the last remnants of his scent into the room, along with a breath of cedar. She could do this, confront Sam’s ghost, because Marcus was there.
Her dead husband had no place in her life anymore. The slamming of a door by the wind was no longer him. The creaking of the house settling at night was not his wrath. Nor was the pebbling of her skin a reaction to fear. He was dead, and with it, his cruelty.
“Hen?”
Henrietta flinched. The trunk shifted, and the lid struck her knuckles.
Not Sam. That was my own clumsiness.
She gripped her hand and bit her lip against the bright pain.
My own clumsiness.
“Hen?” he said again, softly, curiously.
She stood with her back to him, working through her thoughts. She wanted to be done with Sam, stick him in the trunk and lock him away with his things. Now she wondered if she’d ever be free of him.
The mattress crunched behind her. A strong hand came to rest on her hip, and she leaned into its warmth. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. You don’t have to be fine all the time. Come here. Let me see your hand.” His fingers wrapped around her elbow, turning her around to face him. She didn’t resist.
“I have to find something for Asher to wear. Sam—”
His eyes burned into hers, an intensity she’d never seen before. “Sam can burn in hell. You don’t have to tell me what kind of husband he was for me to see what he did to you.”
Sam had robbed her of knowing her own thoughts and her feelings. Sometimes she had to remind herself that trunk lids fell, and she got hurt, but it wasn’t a failing. Not with Marcus. Never once had he berated himself for falling off her roof. Or her, for making mistakes. His energy went into provoking her for his amusement, not shame.
“Let me see your hand.”
It hardly hurt anymore, but she gave her hand into his for the sheer, indulgent pleasure of his desire to comfort her.
He made a study of the raw, red patches on the tops of her knuckles, the thick ridge of skin at the top of her palm, the ever-present ink stains on her fingers. He placed a kiss at the center of her palm. “Here?”
Her breath caught. His gaze stayed on hers.
“No.” She turned her hand over. Their fingers played against each other like seagrass in the shallow waters of the river.
“Here?” His lips found the pink line across her knuckles and offered a light, passing kiss.
“Or here?” He drew her fingertips to his mouth.
Liquid desire marked her skin and settled deep in her marrow, melting away the last shards of ice and pain.
The space between them shrank. Her ragged breath mixed with his slow draw. Reaching out, she stroked the rough edge of his unshaven cheek. The pliable softness of his mouth. She knew what his mouth felt like on her body, how he might worship her with his lips and tongue and teeth, and she wanted all of him to make her whole from everything that had come before and ripped her apart.
But what about what came after? How long could she stay whole if she didn’t have all of him?
“I shouldn’t—we shouldn’t—” There was no finishing her protest because he turned her hand over and kissed across the inside of her wrist.
“We definitely should.” Another kiss, this time at her inner elbow. “I definitely should, and so should you.”
She bit her lip, teetering on the edge of surrender.
Marcus tugged her lip free. “Bite mine instead.” He slipped his hand around the back of her neck and drew her closer. His eyes darkened to the deep sea as the pulse at his throat beat strong, and the cords of his neck strained to keep his head tilted back and his gaze locked on hers. His breath was an unsteady rhythm against her lips as he waited for her decision.
She wanted his kisses. She wanted to kiss him and be kissed by him. She made this decision long ago, and there was nothing she could do to deny it. Pressing her mouth to his, she gave herself over. A low groan of thankfulness traveled up Marcus’s throat.
She deepened the kiss, stealing inside his mouth to taste what he tasted when he tasted her. His arms came around her, crushing her to him, making her feel powerful because he needed a ballast in this storm she created. She took pity on him and pulled back.
Bruises marred his brow and cheek. “They hurt you.” Gently, she ran her lips over the discolorations.
“Shall you avenge me?”
She answered with a whisper against his lips. “I shall slay your enemies one by one.”
He showed his appreciation by plying her lower lip with his, working his way along her jaw to her throat. Little whimpers escaped her. Even if this was fleeting, a love meant for a singular morning, she wanted it.
Henrietta breathed him in and choked, spluttering on a squeak.
Marcus released her. “Did I hurt you?” Worry made his voice sharp.
She pressed her hands to her nose and shook her head, trying desperately not to laugh or look at him. It was a losing battle. A giggle escaped. “Sorry.”
Marcus nodded slowly, eyes crinkling in amusement and understanding. He shifted on the bed, purposely raising his arms and resting his head in the cradle of his hands, looking altogether too proud of himself. “Ahh. Your designs on me don’t extend to my well-stewed stench.”
She whirled around and bent to the trunk, quickly tossing a shirt, a set of green breeches, a matching waistcoat, and
a pair of stockings into a pile.
“That’s it? I’m irredeemable?” he said to her back.
Making her hasty retreat, she said, “You need a bath.”
His grin broadened. “I like it when you talk dirty to me.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Actually, by then, you shall be clean, Mr. Hardwicke.”
“Back to that, are we?” He sprawled shamelessly across the bed, his sensuality a bigger threat than his ripeness. “I’m starting to get ideas.”
“Such as?” She faltered in the doorway, unable to leave. She needed to know his ideas. She was fresh out of her own.
His brow arched. “Dirty ones.”
She dropped the pair of stockings. “I-I need to leave these for Asher. You need . . .” Her voice trailed off. She would not mention his bath again. Thoughts of him naked, slathered in soap, and gloriously clean gave her dirty thoughts indeed.
She grabbed the stockings and escaped to the hallway. Entering Asher’s room, she left the pile of clothes at the end of his bed. He might have been asleep, possibly awake. She wasn’t sticking around to find out.
In the kitchen, the water in the cauldron boiled. With great difficulty, she maneuvered it off the hook. By the time she hauled the tub to her room, and multiple buckets of heated water, she would need a bath herself. Staring at the cauldron, she contemplated her dilemma.
Squeaks and thuds announced Marcus’s entry into the kitchen on his chair. He’d thrown on a shirt and breeches, though his feet were still bare.
“You were about to tell me I need a bath.” His eyes were dark with a magnetic pull, drawing her in. “Is the water ready?” His gaze moved from her face to the cauldron sitting on the hearthstones. Steam rose languidly from the water.
She was as strung tight as corset strings. “Yes.”
The logs in the hearth gave off a spicy scent each time they crackled. Marcus looked around the kitchen. The edges of his lips curled knowingly. “All I need now is soap and a little help.”
A Widow's Guide to Scandal (The Sons of Neptune Book 1) Page 19