The sight of that one, singular woman throwing a knife had been the most erotic thing Alex had ever seen.
He almost could not speak a word of sense for five minutes after. He’d let his sister prattle on about preparing dinner and killing a man, neither of which she had any experience with, until he had regained his breath and some modicum of self-control.
The girl had been like a doe in flight as soon as she’d laid eyes on him—frozen before she ran from the hunter. He had been careful to modify his tone, to treat her as he might his sister, but still she would not look at him. He could not help but touch her.
Now, alone in his room, the most improper place to care for her—wounded slightly or not—he stripped off his black leather gloves. He spoke of the weather, of the ices at Gunter’s, of the ball at Almack’s the night before, all banal, urbane, pointless conversation. Which wasn’t actually a conversation but a monologue, since Miss Middlebrook did not speak a word.
He knew better than to take her into his bedroom proper, for then his angel would no doubt fly back to heaven at once, never to be seen again. He brought her to his sitting room and fetched wash water for her wound himself.
She was still waiting for him when he came back. He had not been gone long, but part of him had been certain that she would disappear as soon as he was out of sight. Part of him almost hoped she would, because the tightness in his trousers was becoming uncomfortable from being near her for too long. Of course, it was a sweet discomfort, one he savored as he looked at her.
The slanting rays of the afternoon sun warmed her yellow hair. It was piled on top of her head as it had been the night before, only now she wore no flowers in it. Her girlish, light blue walking gown did nothing to camouflage the glinting intelligence in her green eyes. He wondered why she had bought such a simple dress, or if perhaps she had made it herself.
The thought of her tiny hands manipulating a needle and thread was almost his undoing. He had to breathe deep before he stepped into the room and let his presence be known. His angel sat and waited for him, as calm as a bishop.
“Thank you for indulging me, Miss Middlebrook. I would be deeply horrified if you left my house wounded, with no one to care for you.”
“This is the duchess’s house,” his angel said. She smiled as she looked up at him with a sideways glance that on any other woman would have seemed coy. On her pure face, it only looked like harmless teasing. Still, that look made him want to touch her lips with his. “And my mother might look after me,” she said.
“She might,” Alex conceded, keeping his tone light. “Still, I would rather see you put to rights before you go.”
“I will not keep my family here for dinner, in spite of your sister’s generous offer. I think your brother has very likely had all of the Middlebrook family that he can stand.”
Alex laughed. “My mother has forced him to sit with much tougher ladies than your mother and sweet sister. Put your mind at ease. I would be obliged if you would stay and eat with us. The duchess’s cook keeps feeding us as if we are a standing army, and it would do us good if you took a bit of the pressure off Robert and me. We are always troubled to send so much food back to the kitchen untouched.”
“Mary Elizabeth doesn’t help with eating it?”
Alex laughed again, beginning slowly to unbind the makeshift bandage at her wrist. “She eats more than the two of us put together.”
Miss Middlebrook did not laugh as he had intended, for though a small table stood between them where she sat in one armchair and he in another, his fingers were on her wrist as he opened the bandage for inspection. He was sorry that his touch left her silent, but he could not help her without touching her. He kept his focus on her arm, and did not look at her face, in case he embarrassed her further.
It was a shallow cut but long, reaching from the base of her wrist halfway up to her elbow. Even as he unbound the cloth, a bit of blood began to seep out again. He clucked his tongue as his old nurse had done every time he or Robbie came home with a scrape.
“That could turn nasty,” he said. “I’m glad you’re letting me have a look at it.”
Miss Middlebrook spoke then, and her voice was soft. “Thank you for helping me. I did not think it would still be bleeding.”
He cleared his throat. She suddenly seemed a good deal nearer than she had only a moment before. The skin of her arm was hot beneath his fingers—not feverish, but warm. He wanted to place his lips against the inside of her wrist. Instead, he washed away the blood with the soapy, clean rag he had brought from his dressing room.
“It is good that it bleeds a little,” he heard himself say. He felt as light-headed as a green boy who had just kissed his first girl. He ordered himself to stay alert, and to hold to his word not to malign her, even with his thoughts. “A little blood keeps the wound clean.” He opened the crock of honey at his elbow.
She jumped under his hands as he applied the first of it to her open wound.
“This will help the bleeding stop, and will help the cut heal.”
“I’ve never heard that,” she said, eyeing the crock suspiciously.
He almost laughed out loud at the wary look on her sweet face. He wanted to kiss it away.
He kept his voice light, though his tongue was growing thick with longing in his mouth. Her breasts rose and fell with her breath. He could see nothing else but the sweet mounds that called to him to cup them in his palms.
He should have gone to Madame Claremont’s. No doubt of it.
“Well, now you’ve heard of it. You can spread the good word among the English that honey cures all ills. Well, most of them.” He kept his movements brisk and his tone businesslike as he bound her wrist again and set his tools aside.
“You seem very prepared for mishaps in this household.”
He smiled at the note of teasing in her voice, and looked into her eyes only to find her staring back at him, a little of his own hunger on her young face. She could not be a day older than eighteen, as innocent as a newborn lamb, and just as vulnerable. He remembered his oath to her, and his own honor. Still, he had never wanted to touch a woman so much in his life.
Her plump lips seemed to beckon him as she licked them once, though he knew it was his own lust that called to him and not the girl at all. She had no idea what she was feeling or why. She need not know until her wedding night.
Mary Elizabeth had told him of Catherine’s plight. Miss Middlebrook had no father or brother left in the world to defend her. He was not a marrying man, and would not be for many years to come, but in that moment, he knew that he would look after her as if she were his own until she was safely wed.
He was happy to hear his own voice steady in his ears when he finally remembered to speak. His tone was light as he rose to his feet, offering her his arm.
“We must be prepared for anything. Mary Elizabeth has been known to cut herself simply slicing a loaf of bread at table.”
Catherine Middlebrook laughed, and it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard. He was growing fanciful in his infatuation with this girl, but there was something about her, something so unconscious and unspoiled, that made him want to wake her from her slumber of innocence. But he was no cad. When she laid her hand gently on his arm, feather light, he simply led her out of his sitting room and down the front staircase to meet her mother.
* * *
“Your mother and sister just left.”
Mary Elizabeth stood at the foot of the grand staircase, declaring to all and sundry who might be listening that Catherine had been effectively abandoned to her own devices among the Waterses, whom she had only known for one day. Had she not been a lady, Catherine might have cursed out loud. As it was, she pressed her lips together to suppress a sailor’s oath, and tried valiantly to swallow her ire.
She could feel Mr. Waters’s eyes on her, as she always could. It did not make her nervous now, only aware of a strange, new heat running beneath her skin. She could not blame it entirely on him. It was something odd, and it came from her.
Upstairs, alone with him as she should never be alone with any man save her husband one day, she had watched his lips as he talked. She had listened to the deep and even sound of his breathing when he was not talking. She had felt the steady heat of his hands on her wrist. And the strange heat had begun beneath her skin.
The same strange heat was with her still. It was not a blush. She was used to those. It was something that seemed to walk with her like an old friend, though she had never experienced it before. It seemed to pool just beneath her stomach, making it uncomfortable to sit or to stand. There was a delicious heat that seemed to course through her blood, making her weak.
And now, as she was trying to keep breathing steadily and figure out what was wrong with her without making a cake of herself, her mother had abandoned her as if leaving her among family in Devon.
Catherine would not ever understand what that woman was thinking.
“If I may impose on your butler, might a hackney cab be called?” Catherine asked.
“As if we’d let you out loose among the English,” Mary Elizabeth scoffed. “You’d get your throat cut.”
“I’ll see you home, Miss Middlebrook,” Mr. Waters said before Mary Elizabeth could wax poetic on the perfidies of their neighbors.
“I could not trouble you.” Catherine forced herself to meet his eyes. Their fathomless brown was calm, unreadable.
“No trouble at all. Mary Elizabeth, bring your best hooded cloak.”
“Whatever for? It is balmy out there. It’s spring, Alex.”
“Bring your cloak so Miss Middlebrook can wear it. It would not do for us to be seen driving in company alone.”
Catherine thought to suggest that they bring a maid along, as any decent English household would without question. She knew that she should correct them, and let them know that whatever a girl might do north of the border, in London, she must be chaperoned at all times. But as she stared up into the handsome face of Mr. Waters, she held her tongue. To take such a foolish risk with her reputation was madness, but as she stood close beside him in the Duchess of Northumberland’s entrance hall, she found that she did not care.
The stately butler spoke then from his perch by the front door. “The duchess’s carriage awaits you, sir.”
They all waited a moment as a footman brought a deep woolen cloak from who knew where. Catherine stood still while Mr. Waters draped it over her shoulders. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth as he raised the hood to cover her hair and obscure her face.
He smiled down at her, and it seemed as if she caught a breath of heat on his gaze, as she had the night before. “Beautiful. We’ll go then.”
She did not notice if Robert Waters or his sister thought her odd, or a strumpet, to go off with their brother alone. She murmured her good-byes and let Alexander usher her out the door and down the duchess’s town house stairs to the carriage waiting below.