Lucifer’s bollocks. Cole gritted his teeth against a frustrated sound as he realized he’d have to slide his arm farther beneath her to disentangle himself.
His heart still hadn’t normalized from the bolt of terror he’d sustained when he’d seen Lady Broadmore. He’d truly thought … well, it didn’t bear consideration now. Now that he knew Lady Anstruther was alive, he needed to escape her. For both of their sakes.
He arranged a pillow underneath her head and lowered to his knees, allowing the chaise to support all her weight as he burrowed his arm under her shoulder until the offending hand was accessible. Leaning over her, he gingerly worked on freeing the errant strands without breaking or ripping them on his prosthetic.
Though her hair was thick and lush, it felt as fine as goose down. This would have aided his efforts if the press of her against him didn’t somehow affect his dexterity.
He checked their surroundings surreptitiously, acknowledging the scandalous intimacy of their postures. Though only their torsos were touching, it would look to anyone who should chance upon them as if he might have her locked in an impassioned embrace.
And who could blame him, he thought as he gazed down at her.
At her proximity, his flesh had become suffused with a heat that traveled all the way to his cock, filling it with warm need. The memory of last night was too fresh, the taste of her had yet to fade. The primal hunger still growled within him. His heartbeat toppled over itself as his gaze locked onto her pale, perfect lips.
They’d been a lush pink before she’d fainted.
Christ preserve him, he was a rank pervert for lusting after an unconscious woman covered in soil and crushed poppies. And when a dead woman lay on the other side of that wall.
He attacked the tangles caught in his joints with renewed vigor, taking the utmost care to be gentle in his haste.
Her scent invaded his lungs. Lavender and lilacs. Bitter and sweet. The combination intoxicated him as it mingled with the particular scent of her flesh. Warmer than a flower, muskier than the earth.
Her shallow yet even breaths feathered over his cheek in damp little puffs, and Cole battled a slew of disquieting and humiliating urges. Ones that somehow reached beyond the primitive.
As a virile man, he should want nothing more than to ravish her. To hone in on the press of her soft breasts to his chest and to fantasize about all the indignities a mouth so lush could perform upon his person.
And he did. Sweet Christ, he did.
But he also was strangely aware that if he turned his neck just so, his rough cheek would press against her astoundingly smooth one. Her neck, just below him, was the perfect size and placement to rest his weary chin. Her hair was a sheet of smooth silk the color of the sunlight behind the pall of coal smoke on a still London day. Though caught in the cogs of his metal prosthetic, it sifted through his fingers as fluid as water.
Her color returned in slow increments, roses dusting her prominent cheekbones.
Lord but she was lovely. He’d never truly stopped to study her before, especially not up so close. Never had he seen such flawless skin. Not even upon the pallid women who’d rather die than allow a glimmer of sunlight to pierce their parasols.
She was covered in the sun, burnished that unfashionable shade of honey, and dusted with a sparse array of freckles. Why was porcelain skin so admired, anyway? Who had gazed upon a sun-kissed beauty with such vivacious hues and wished her to be one of the colorless waifs so ubiquitous in England?
An imbecile, he decided.
You did, his inner voice reminded him.
Ginny had been white as the driven snow, and it had suited her. He’d pined for her pale delicacy and the contrast of her dark, unruly locks.
But the woman beneath him was a different shade. Her shape, her scent, even her manner was quite singular, and the sun worshipped her for it.
How queer that he should like to do the same. That he should want to peel the garments from her if only to ascertain just how much of her was burnished dusky and how much remained pale.
He thought about kissing all the places the sun had touched.
And then the places left untouched.
She did not remain placid in his arms for long. Her lids twitched and trembled, her fingers curled against his vest a heart-stopping moment before her multifaceted irises were uncovered, and she regarded him with an unfocused gaze.
Cole froze like a thief caught in torchlight.
Then she whispered the absolute last thing he expected.
“Hello.”
“You fainted,” he blurted rather witlessly, then cringed.
“Don’t be silly,” she gently admonished with a tongue that sounded heavy. “I don’t faint.”
“You did today,” he gently explained. “Now be still, my prosthetic is tangled in your hair. I’m almost free.”
“You’re tangled in my…” A wrinkle appeared between her brows and she was silent for a protracted moment.
“I carried you here when you fainted,” he repeated.
She put a hand to her forehead. “I fainted?”
“That’s what I said.” Had she sustained a head wound?
“I fainted … because … someone wants to hurt me,” she whispered. “Maybe even … murder me.”
“That isn’t going to happen.” The words left him with more vehemence than even he realized he felt. But as she blinked up at him in uncertain assessment, he realized he was in earnest. This woman was not the Machiavellian opportunist he’d initially judged her to be. And even if she were, no one deserved what had befallen Lady Broadmore.
She winced as he accidentally tugged at a lock of her hair in his struggles.
“Forgive me,” he muttered, feeling both awkward and churlish.
“Of course I forgive you,” she replied, and he had the absurd notion she meant she’d forgiven him for more than just the damage he’d inflicted to her scalp just now.
Turning to look, she reached up and covered his fingers with hers. “Let me,” she gently admonished, and proceeded to untangle her own hair in three deft movements.
To his astonishment, she sat up when he did, following his movements, keeping them close. Somehow, she retained a hold on his prosthetic, and her gentle grasp held him more captive than any chain or manacle ever had.
Silently she plucked at a few solitary strands of her hair that had broken off and remained entwined in the intricate metalwork, and allowed them to drift to the carpet beneath them.
Cole remained motionless as his senses abruptly sharpened, his body tensed as everything became louder, clearer, as though he’d awoken from some bewildering dream, or surfaced from beneath the water. The tick of the ornate clock on the mantel raced his pounding heart. The soft butter and sage hues of the solarium somehow became more vivid. The sunlight shafting in through the open windows broke upon her with a brilliance he’d never before seen.
And when she spoke, her voice was like a melancholy concerto, filtering through him as only music was capable. The vibrations plucking at his very soul.
“It pains me that we humans can be so terribly inhumane to one another.” Her fingers wandered from his cold, metallic hand to the round fitting. Sliding beneath his cuffs, they didn’t stop until she met his flesh. “What horrors we can wreak on someone who is more or less exactly like ourselves. The lies we conjure to justify the infliction of such deeds.” Her damp eyes met his, swimming with a potent emotion that made him catch his breath over an answering burn in his own throat. “It hurts my heart,” she whispered, and blinked out a tear that swiftly fell from her chin.
Gentle thunder growled in the distance, warning that their sunshine was not to last.
Cole’s heart reverberated in time to the gathering storm. Were her tears for Lady Broadmore? Or for the mangled wrist she held in her hand. “Are you not afraid of me?” Cole breathed. “Of this?” He glanced down to where she touched him, the sensation more intimate than if she’d reached into his trousers.
She shook her head, her fingers threading through the fine hairs on his arm, drifting upward. “There was a time that I was afraid of the whole world,” she said. “But not you.”
“Maybe you should be,” he warned. If she knew what he was thinking right now. If she realized how close he was to ripping her night robe off her … Despite the mess in the backyard, or the open doors, or the inherent wrongness of it all.
He wanted his mouth on hers again. He wanted her beneath him, just as she’d been, her sweet breath on his damp flesh as he took her.
How the devil did this fucking happen?
“All right,” she relented. “Perhaps I fear you a little.” Her lashes shielded her expressive eyes from him. “Most especially after last night. But I also…” She didn’t seem to be capable of finishing her sentence as she stared at the metal hand in her lap.
“Do not pity me.” A cold warning crept into his voice.
“You’re in no danger of that,” she said flippantly. “I know how strong and capable you are. Since your … ordeal, you’ve climbed mountains and forged through oceans. You’re more formidable and fearsome than you’ve ever been.” She made an amused sound. “I don’t pity you, Your Grace, only the people who have to spend a great deal of time in your churlish company.”
He deserved that. Cole frowned until he noted the glimmer of mischief in her eye and the slight quirk of her lip. She was teasing him.
“I’m glad you can smile today,” he said, and meant it.
Instantly, her smile died as she glanced at the window, reminded of the horror being investigated in her own garden. “I just can’t understand how a man can be so cruel to a woman, how he can take something more helpless than he and destroy her with such violence.”
“That is because you do not understand what it is to be a man.”
“Apparently,” she said bitterly. “I mean, yes, we women are generally smaller and softer than you, but why does that make us less than human in your eyes? Or less capable?”
“It doesn’t.” Did she mean, him, personally? Or all of mankind? Cole wasn’t certain he was ready to defend those of his sex to her.
“But it does,” she insisted. “If I were a man, would you so strongly object to my charitable undertakings?”
“Yes, I would. But we’ve already established that I am an unmitigated bastard. That has nothing to do with your sex,” he reasoned.
She balled her hand into a little fist, her expression turning fierce. “You haven’t any idea the strength it takes to be a woman. In my experience, it is men who are the weaker sex. Either too undisciplined to control their baser, primal instincts or, conversely, they are too fragile to endure the discomfort of honesty or integrity. Yet women endure and survive by whatever means we are able. And still we are either property or playthings. We have as much use in the eyes of the law as a cow or a fertile plot of land. It is not wrong to mistreat us. To objectify us. To shame and demand things of us and bend us to your will. That is your right as a man and our duty as a woman. Is it any wonder the world is in chaos?” A verdant fire snapped in her eyes, and Cole recognized a great deal of fear behind the anger. He pondered a moment, his entire being focused on the warmth of her hand as she clutched at him, seemingly unaware that she did so. What a little activist she was. So fierce.
“You know what I think?” he finally said. “Men are terrified that were they to hand over power to women, they’d be humiliated at what a better job you’d do of everything. If you look at it, some of the most peaceful, prosperous times in our empire’s history have been when a great woman occupied the throne. Elizabeth, for example, and our own Victoria, of course. Not many men have ruled so wisely.”
The reluctant smile she gave him melted some of the ice bricked in his chest. “You continually surprise me, Your Grace.”
“I propose that, under the circumstances, we can dispense with all that,” he murmured. “In private you can call me Collin if you wish.”
“Collin?” She wrinkled her nose. “Is that what your friends call you?”
“It isn’t, actually.”
She made an expectant gesture, as though she’d already known. But how could she have done?
“Cole,” he blurted. “My friends call me Cole.”
“Cole.” Her eyes crinkled at the sides, signifying that he’d pleased her. “We’re not exactly friends, are we?”
That brought a wry smile to his face. “I’d rather we no longer be enemies.”
“I’d like that as well,” she replied, her face shining with genuine satisfaction. “And you may call me Imogen.”
He wanted to say her name. Wanted to test the intimacy on his tongue, so lush and lovely was the word. But the way she looked at him now, the light in her hazel eyes masking something dark and haunted opened a tender ache in his chest he’d not known since …
“You are so dreadfully kind,” he accused. “So good. Do you never hold a grudge? Do you not hate anyone?”
“I don’t know if I’m capable of hatred.” She glanced outside, as though testing her theory. “I firmly believe that hatred is a disease. And one does not cure a disease by propagating it, does one? I believe, I know, that kindness can be infectious too. And that is something worth diffusion. That is why I am attempting this undertaking. To show kindness to those who don’t know the meaning of the word.”
“Even now?” he marveled. “After what happened last night?”
“Especially after what happened last night,” she said gravely. “Though I do believe I’ll need to hire more protection … perhaps Mr. Argent is aware of someone.”
“I don’t know if you’re intrepidly courageous or just fantastically daft.”
“Let’s agree on the former, because then we can remain civil.” A hard glint of warning underscored the levity in her voice. “For a moment there, I thought you had remembered how.”
“Remembered?” he scoffed. “It is a vast assumption on your part that I’ve ever demonstrated civility in the first place.”
“No it isn’t,” she argued, solemnity replacing all humor. “I know that you’re capable of kindness.”
Cole didn’t have time to puzzle over the volumes of meaning in her regard.
“How fares your wrist?” She deftly changed the subject, turning his arm until it faced upward and inspecting the straps much like she’d done in the garden. “Does it still trouble you as it did last night?”
“It’ll keep.” It did bother him still, but not so much as the tender concern knitting her brow, or the probing gentleness of her touch.
Amusement dimpled her cheek, which he was glad to notice regained more color by the second. “Such a masculine response,” she murmured demurely. To illustrate her teasing, no doubt. “I believe I can procure a salve of comfrey, lavender, and a fractionated oil that will soothe the irritation. I’ll send my maid, Lillian, to deliver it when I’m able.” She glanced uncertainly out the window, then visibly set her chin and met his gaze with the steady capability and authority of a Major General, or a long-time nurse. “You should apply it at least twice daily, and most liberally at night. It would be best if you avoid wearing your ill-fitting prosthesis unless absolutely necessary until it can be adjusted to avoid exacerbation.”
Something pleasant glided through him. Something other than awareness, frustration, or even desire.
He dare not call it admiration. He dare not call it that …
“You must have been an extraordinary nurse,” he blurted. “I can see why Anstruther didn’t want to relinquish your care of him.”
His compliment seemed to startle her just as intensely as it did himself. Her eyes, turned an intriguing shade of sage by the room’s décor, became positively owlish and unblinking.
It was Cole who ultimately looked away, searching for safer ground. “I’ll admit to having had very few women in my society with any amount of employment experience,” he said conversationally. “What was it like, being a nurse?”
&nb
sp; Imogen withdrew her hand from inside his cuff, as if barely realizing the improper amount of time she’d spent with her hand against his skin. After a thoughtful silence, she answered softly, “Messy. Difficult. Sad … Infuriating and utterly fulfilling.”
“Do you miss it?” he asked, before he could think of a reason not to.
“Sometimes. Though I think I am more suited to what I am doing now,” she said carefully. “I believe I was always meant to help those in need. I want to do everything in my power to alleviate pain.”
He nodded as he silently watched her deft, elegant fingers secure his cufflink. He had to admit that, despite his protestations, there was nobility in her cause. Her intentions were ceaselessly honorable, he knew that now. Finished with his cufflink, she laid her hand over the one with which Cole braced himself on the cushion beside her knee.
“What was it like being a sp—a soldier?” she corrected herself before calling him a spy.
He searched her gaze, waiting for the familiar savage, chaotic emotions to well within him when he thought of his military career these days.
They didn’t. In fact, a strange sort of half-smile tugged at his lips. “Messy. Difficult. Sad … Infuriating and utterly fulfilling.”
She smiled without parting her lips, an expression as sad as it was genuine. “It seems that we’ve both waged our share of battles. Mine against time and disease, and yours against the enemies of the empire.”
“It’s a wonder either of us have any fight left,” he agreed.
“I only seem to in your presence.” She made a gesture of exasperated amusement. “I’m glad we’ve called a sort of ceasefire for the moment.”
“I imagine we’ve both seen enough blood to last a lifetime,” Cole murmured. He’d not meant for his statement to bring them back to the grim happenings in her garden, but it did. They both glanced toward the window, and a bleak vulnerability seized Imogen’s features with such sorrow, Cole fought the sudden and disquieting urge to pull her close.
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