She laughed. “I wouldn’t be welcome, I’m sure. As we’ve established, I don’t know enough about gossip to hold my own.” There was a pause before she said, “Which returns us to, why do you return to Lyne Castle?”
Levity disappeared from the room with her question, and for a long moment he did not answer, not wishing to lose the moment. It was gone nonetheless. “My father is dying.”
She stopped moving in the bath. Silence stretched around them, heavy and deafening. “Oh,” she said again. “I am sorry.”
He straightened at the honesty in the words. “I’m not.”
Why was it so easy to tell her the truth?
She was silent for long minutes, the water quiet around her. “You’re not?”
“No. My father is a bastard.”
“And you return home anyway?”
He considered the words and the question in them, and then thought of his father, the man who had ruined his future all those years ago. Who had taken the one thing King had wanted and destroyed it. Who had made King’s entire life about reciprocating—destroying the only thing the duke had wanted.
Later, he would not understand why he told her. “He summoned me. And I have something to tell him.”
More silence. And finally a soft “I am through.”
Thank God.
He did not turn as she lifted herself up in the tub, not even as he heard the water slosh around her when she returned to the bath with a little squeak. Not when it happened a second time. He amassed tremendous amounts of credit for his gentlemanly decorum.
Instead, he asked, “Is there a problem?”
“No,” she said, and the sound repeated itself.
He risked a look over his shoulder.
Mistake.
He could see only her head over the lip of the deep copper tub, but if her cheeks were any indication, she was clean and pink and perfect.
“Don’t look!” she cried.
“What is the problem?”
“I . . .” She hesitated. “I can’t get out.”
What did that mean? “Why not?”
“It’s too slippery,” she said, the words despondent. “And my shoulder—I can’t put pressure on my arm.”
Of course. Surely he was being punished by the universe.
He turned, already shucking his coat.
“Don’t turn around!” she cried, sinking below the lip of the tub.
He ignored the words and walked toward her, frustration manifesting itself as irritation as he rolled up his shirtsleeves. “I assure you, my lady, I don’t wish to help any more than you wish to be helped.”
It was true, if slightly disingenuous.
She peeked over the rim of the bathtub. “Well. You needn’t be rude.”
Another man might have felt a pang of remorse at the fact she took the words as an insult and not as self-preservation.
Though her hands were placed in critical positions to hide her most inappropriate parts, it did not have the intended effect. Indeed, it drew his attention to the long, errant strand of her hair that curved, dark and tempting, down her shoulder to tease at the water, and made him desire, quite thoroughly, to move it. And replace it with his lips.
This was madness.
King kept his gaze on her face—he had to, in order to retain his sanity. “I’m going to lift you out.”
Her eyes went wide. “But I am—”
“I am quite aware of your situation, my lady.” Perhaps if he used the honorific, he wouldn’t be so inclined to join her in the damn tub.
“Close your eyes,” she said.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to drop you on your head. If you want eyes closed, I suggest you close yours.”
Before she could argue, he leaned down and lifted her, water pouring off her, soaking his shirtfront and trousers on its way to the puddle on the floor of the room.
She squeaked as he raised her, and she did close her eyes, her hands moving to clutch his shoulders and steady her imbalance. It was a natural reaction to being hauled about, King had no doubt, but it was a mistake, nevertheless, as with her hands at his shoulders, the rest of her lacked cover.
The soft, pink rest of her.
He wasn’t looking at her face anymore.
She opened her eyes and noticed, her already pink skin turning close to crimson. “Put me down!” He did, as though she were aflame, and she immediately wrapped herself in a towel. “You said you wouldn’t look!”
“No,” King said, “I said I didn’t wish to look.”
She stalked away from him, putting herself on the other side of the bed. Clearly unthinkingly, as the memory of her flushed skin in combination with a bed did not exactly dissuade him from his thoughts.
Not that he would act on them.
He did not want Lady Sophie Talbot, dammit.
Well, he wanted her. But he did not want to want her.
“That’s a semantic argument.”
Had he spoken aloud? No. She meant the looking.
“Madam,” he said in his most serious tone. “No man in his right mind would honor that promise.”
She pulled the towel more tightly around herself. “A gentleman would.”
He laughed, frustration making the sound hoarse. “I assure you, he wouldn’t. Not even the most pious of priests.”
Her lips flattened into a thin line. “You are wet. I suggest you find yourself some dry clothes.”
He’d been dismissed. By a haughty miss in nothing but a strip of linen.
A lesser man would take his leave. And Lord knew King should. He should give her time to dress and climb beneath the covers. Allow her a few moments to enjoy her cleanliness. Fetch her food. Get decent.
A gentleman would.
But King was no gentleman. As if it weren’t bad enough that he’d had to suffer the temptation of the sounds of her bath, he then had to hold her, quite nude, and pretend to be unmoved by the experience when he was, in fact, very moved, as his soaking trousers did little to conceal.
He hadn’t asked for this.
For her.
She riled him. And now, even as he knew he shouldn’t, he wanted to rile her in return.
“Dry clothes it is,” he said, enjoying the way she nodded, victory in her blue eyes right up until he untucked his shirt and pulled it over his head, and victory dissolved into shock.
“What are you doing?” she fairly shrieked.
“Donning dry clothes.”
“It might work better if you did so in your own chamber!”
He pointed to the small trunk at the wall. “This is my chamber.”
Her eyes went wide. “You have been sharing my room?”
“More than that,” he goaded her. “There’s only one bed.”
She scowled at him. “You didn’t.”
“I didn’t,” he conceded. “The stench, remember?” It was a lie. He’d been too worried that she might not wake to even consider sleeping. But she need not know that.
She was too irritating for him to tell her. Instead, he reached for the fall of his trousers, enjoying the way her gaze followed his hands. “A lady wouldn’t look, Sophie.” She immediately snapped her attention to his face, her cheeks blazing crimson. If he weren’t so damn frustrated with her, he’d be positively gleeful. “I believe it’s time for you to turn around.”