Astrid felt his despair as keenly as a blade to her skin, could not stop herself from reaching down to stroke his burning brow.
His hand flashed out with the speed of wind, ripping a cry from her throat. Hard fingers locked around her wrist, the pressure excruciating. With a tug, he brought her tumbling over his chest.
With a cry, she pushed against the feather mattress on either side of him, arching her back, staring down into eyes that glowed through the room’s gloom, lucid and awake, a pale blue, frosty as ice-covered water. Clearly, he had escaped whatever nightmare had held him in its grip.
Inhaling through her nose, she grasped for the composure that always carried her through. Of course she had never found herself in a situation like this before. Since Bertram, she had been careful to keep men at arm’s length. Her life was difficult enough without adding a man into the fray.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded in that velvet voice, the deep, guttural incantation unidentifiable to her ears.
His gaze skipped beyond her, assessing their surroundings. “Where am I?”
“You don’t remember?” Astrid asked, her voice a breathless croak. “Earlier today? The highwaymen on the road?”
“Highwaymen?” he echoed, scowling, dark brows drawing tightly over his eyes.
She studied him carefully. Sweat beaded his upper lip, and his eyes seemed to look through her.
Grimly, she acknowledged that he was in the grip of fever.
Adopting the voice she heard Jane use when talking to Olivia, she said gently, “You’re ill.
Release me, so I can tend to you.”
His brow furrowed as if trying to decipher her words.
“Release me,” she repeated, “and I can help you.”
His fingers came up to her arms, flexing into her flesh, and for a moment she thought he would hold her all night.
“Please,” she added, her voice a ragged whisper. His hands loosened, dropping to the bed.
Clambering off him, she relit the lamp on the small dresser and slid her boots from underneath the chair. Sitting, she slipped them back on her chilled feet.
With one last glance at the man lying on the bed, head moving listlessly on the pillow, she slipped from the room in search of Molly.
The inn was quiet as she made her way down the worn wood steps. In the taproom, a few men lingered over tankards, huddled in their cloaks and tartans, tossing her speculative looks as her gaze searched the room.
Failing to spot Molly, she moved on until she discovered a set of stairs leading down into the kitchen. She descended the steps to a toasty room that smelled of grease, yeast, and sweat.
Two maids slept on pallets near the fire, shadows dancing over their still forms, the outline of their bodies like shadowed hills in a distant horizon.
“Molly,” she whispered, recognizing the dark braid over one of the women’s wool blankets.
Creeping closer, she shook the servant awake. Molly sat up with a startled snort.
“I need your help.”
The groggy-eyed maid nodded and slipped on the shoes waiting for her beside the hearth.
Following Astrid back up the steps, she grumbled over the loss of her warm pallet as they made their way to the second floor.
Once in the room, Molly leaned over the man, pressing both hands to his face. He opened his eyes and looked up at her with a wild unseeing gaze.
“I know, love,” she cooed in her thick burr. Glancing to Astrid, she said, “He’s feverish.”
“Should we send for the physician again?”
“If you want to waste good coin for him to tell you what I already know.”
“What do we do, then?”
“We need to bring down his fever,” Molly replied, undoing the buttons at her cuffs and pushing her sleeves up to reveal brawny forearms. “And clean the wound,” she said as she peeled back the bandage to inspect his injury. Whatever she saw had her shaking her head. “I’ll fetch some water. You’ll need to help me bathe him.”
Astrid stared after Molly long after she left the room. Undressing him had been bad enough.
Now she must bathe him?
She approached the bed. Biting her bottom lip, she stared down at him—at the bronzed muscles waiting for her ministrations. Her palms tingled and her fingers twitched at her sides.
Familiar self-loathing rose up to choke her. She was a married woman. One of the few things left to her was the fact that she had remained faithful to her vows. She had not caved to any of the propositions put to her these many years, even when it had been clear that to do so—to say yes—
could help restore her funds and save her from the sneers of the ton‘s dames when she passed by them in a gown four seasons old. The tremor of anticipation now coursing through her was just another strike to her self-respect. She was above base desire for a man not her husband.
“Here we are,” Molly announced, arriving back in the room, several linens tucked beneath one arm and a basin of fresh water in her hands. Setting the basin on the side table, she dipped one of the cloths within. Wringing it dry, she laid it on one side of his wide chest.
“Straight from the well,” she murmured in a soothing voice. “There you are, lad. Nice and cold for you. Doesn’t that feel better?”
Nodding, she instructed Astrid, “Pull the blanket off him.”
The command gave her a jolt, but she obeyed, baring the man before them and schooling her expression into the neutral mask that had become second nature.
Molly soaked another cloth for his chest.
Astrid followed suit, gasping as her hands met the cold water. She pressed the wet linen to his face, wiping the beads of sweat away.
He moaned and turned his face into the linen.
Her belly tightened at the sound, low and primal. The image of his big body, hot and naked—like now—tangling with hers amid the sheets flashed through her mind.
“Och,” the maid tsked, spreading a dry linen towel over his h*ps and groin area. “Even cold, he’s impressive to behold.” She winked at Astrid. “No diminishing this man, that’s for certain.”
With a disdainful sniff, Astrid continued her ministrations, moving on to his neck, reminding herself that she was no green girl fresh out of the schoolroom but a married woman. She should not be affected by the mere sight of a man’s body.
The maid chuckled. “You’re an icy one. Likely not had a proper bedding.”
“I’m a married woman.”
“What’s that to do with it? If you ever had a man plow you good and well, you wouldn’t look at this one with such cool eyes,” Molly chuckled roughly, adding, “Let’s roll him over now.”
They rolled him onto his side, paying special heed to his injured head.
Her chest grew heavy and tight. Molly’s coarse words played over in her head. Likely not had a proper bedding. Astrid supposed she hadn’t. Or else she had forgotten. But then she suspected that was the sort of thing one never forgot.
Molly slapped another damp linen over his impossibly broad back, the skin smooth and flawless save one crescent-shaped birthmark. Suddenly, Molly paused with a stillness that Astrid found uncustomary in the woman, even in their short acquaintance.
“What is it?” Astrid queried, looking back and forth between Molly and his n**ed back.
Molly traced the small birthmark that rested high on his shoulder, an odd expression on her face.
“N-nothing,” the maid murmured, her gaze dipping to study the man’s profile with an intensity that made the hairs on the back of Astrid’s neck prickle.
She, too, studied his face as if she should see something there. Something beyond the handsome man that made her feel things she had no business feeling.
“Nothing at all,” the maid repeated and fell into a silence that lasted for the remainder of the night. They placed cloth after cooling cloth over his big body, cleaning his wound several times and reapplying the salve Dr. Ferguson had left.
When dawn broke, its misty light peeking through the mullioned window, she felt certain she knew his body, every ridge and hollow, every scar, every muscle and sinew, better than her own.
Even his smell—wind and man—seemed imprinted in her nose.
Astrid glanced to the silent maid as she gathered the heap of damp linens, piling them on a tray before moving to the door.
“I’ll send breakfast up shortly. See that you eat. Doesn’t look like there’s much to you beside bones, and he’ll be in need of your care.” Her gaze fell on the man and that strange, intense look came into her eyes again. “We can’t have anything happen to him.”
Then she left the room. Astrid stared after her, wondering at that parting remark. It sounded almost like Molly had a personal interest in his survival.
Bone-tired, Astrid shook her head and dragged the chair from the window to the bed. After tending to him through the long hours of the night, it seemed natural to stay close, to feast her eyes on him, to perhaps even hold his hand while he slept…
She snorted lightly and pushed that mad impulse from her head. Foolish sentiment. And so unlike her.
He seemed less restless. Almost as if he truly slept. Leaning over the bedside table, she blew out the lamp, allowing the dim gray of dawn to light the room.
Settling back in the stiff wooden chair, she laced her fingers over her stomach. Eyes achy and heavy from lack of sleep, she cocked her head, studying the steady rise and fall of his chest through slit eyes, wondering what had motivated him to stop and help her today. To put himself at risk for strangers.
Her father would not have done so, would have considered it beneath him to assist a pair of unknown women. He had not even helped Astrid’s mother when she sent word, pleading for his help to come home after she had run away with her lover.
Bertram would certainly not have stopped to lend aid to them either. Not at risk to himself.
Sighing, she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
Tried to forget.
Only the years had taught her she could never forget. The past could never be outrun.
Chapter 5
She woke with her cheek cushioned against a silky hardness that was at once strange and comforting. Opening her eyes, she stared into a pair of startling blue ones.
“Morning, sweetheart,” he drawled, his deep voice rumbling beneath her cheek. Warm fingers brushed tendrils of hair from her face. “Usually I know the names of the women who use my chest for a pillow.”
Astrid surged up from his chest. Glancing around, she found herself still sitting in the chair.
Apparently she had succumbed to exhaustion and fallen forward, using his chest as the pillow.
Straightening her stiff spine, she tucked stray tendrils of hair behind her ears. “G-good morning.
How are you feeling?”
A smile tugged at his mouth. “Like a stampede ran over me.”
Before she could think better of it, she reached out and felt his brow with her fingers, her familiarity with his body temporarily blinding her to the fact that the virile man she had admired and touched so intimately was now awake and no longer unaware of her attentions.
And he was aware. His pale blue gaze fixed on her with an intensity that made her snatch back her hand.
He stopped her, catching her wrist and pressing her hand back against his face.
“You stayed with me?” he asked, clearly having no difficulty remembering the events of yesterday now. He glanced about the room. “You brought me here?”
“Of course. I couldn’t have left you bleeding to death on the roadside, could I?”
“Oh, you could have,” he countered, silver lights glinting in the pale blue of his eyes. “Others would.
“Well, _I _ couldn’t have.”
“Well, then you’re very kind.”
Kind? She winced. No one had ever described her as kind before. With good reason.
“No,” she replied, her voice more of a reprimand than she intended. “I am not.”