Page 22

Last he glimpsed himself in the mirror, the left side of his forehead had a swollen gash and a blossoming blueish green tinge. More to the point, every time he sat upright and removed the pressure from his latest head wound a-la-Harrison, the bleeding recommenced.

Harrison had suggested sending for a doctor to staunch the blood flow. Said he’d seen a wound of this sort before—caused it no doubt—and in his opinion Caden needed stitches.

Caden roared at him to remove himself from his chamber, and Harrison complied in swift order. Had he ever been more frustrated in his life?

What of Anna? Where was she at this moment? Probably sipping champagne, grateful for the chance to enjoy a respite from his constant attentions.

He closed his eyes, re-positioned the dripping ice pack, and forced himself to lie still. In another few minutes, the bleeding would stop. Then he could decide if he wanted to bother joining the party.

Maybe this was for the best. Maybe Harrison had actually done him a favor. The whole notion of speaking to Anna about Hardasher now seemed foolish and desperate. As for his plan to wow her with his devastating good looks? Pathetic, not to mention impossible now .

A rapid tapping sounded at his antechamber door. A chamber maid with a fresh towel and more ice, perhaps? Surprising. When he’d bellowed at Harrison earlier, he’d frightened-away the maid and footman who’d come to help as well.

He opened his mouth to tell whomever it was to go away, then closed it when he heard the interior door open and shut. He knew better than to abuse the help simply because he had the misfortune to travel with Randall’s accident-prone brother.

Soft footfalls padded over the thick carpet. Skirts swished. A hint of something elegant and delectable teased his nostrils. His stomach tightened into a hot fist before his mind fully registered who had entered the room.

Anna, here? Why, precisely? Pride or curiosity or anger, he couldn’t say which, bade him not move a muscle.

Her footfalls ceased halfway to the bed. A long minute passed. Caden’s heart thudded so hard against his ribs, he wondered she didn’t notice and outright accuse him of lying in wait.

After several interminable seconds, she resumed moving, her stride brisk and determined.

She reached his bedside. He knew because her signature scent, tuberose, cedar, and everything feminine, danced in and out of the air he breathed, making his mouth water.

He inhaled, long and deep. He had to. No woman had ever smelled so tantalizingly good. His entire body screamed for him to reach for her, drag her into him, and kiss her senseless. His lower region stirred to life as if he had.

At least his blood flow had found an alternate direction.

She cleared her throat, then spoke in a soft voice. “Caden? I don’t wish to startle you. It’s Anna.”

He nearly cracked a grin. As if she needed to give him her name .

She cupped his cheek on the non-injured side of his face with gloveless, cool silken fingers. “Cade, it’s Glory.”

His insides fisted at the sweet surrender. She’d used not only his Christian name, but her own.

He eased his lids open—keeping them closed at this point bordered on the ridiculous—and lost himself in the amber depths of her almond shaped eyes.

The tenderness he read there hit him like a punch to the gut. A painful ache radiated up his chest, lodging in his throat where it burned like hot coal. Why did it hurt, looking at her?

On second thought . He slammed his eyelids shut.

What in hell was happening to him? He could hardly think above the cacophony of emotions she aroused in him. Yearning and lust, resentment and confusion. Maybe he should have let Harrison send for the doctor.

“I’m not dying. It’s just another annoying head injury, courtesy of that bumbler I once called friend. You needn’t have troubled yourself to come by. I’ll be right as rain any time now.”

She drew back, pulling her blissfully cool touch with her.

He couldn’t blame her. He sounded like a petulant child, once again illustrating Zeke’s assessment of his character.

Her lack of a reply had him slitting his good eye open to study her.

The softness in her expression had vanished, leaving a shuttered look in its stead. And something else. Embarrassment? It was almost as if she couldn’t look at him.

He probably looked like a monster—except the ice pack covered his bruise. He was bare chested. Could that be the issue?

“Mr. Randall detailed how you got knocked flat by his armoire. He explained you bled quite a lot. That’s often the case with head wounds. ”

Though her face was angled in his direction, her focus seemed to center on the headboard above his head.

How in hell was she still so modest around the opposite sex? Never mind. Her business, not his.

“Is that right?” he asked, drolly.

Another dainty throat clearing sounded. “I’d like to examine your injury myself, if I may?”

“I don’t require a nurse.”

More, he did not need her pity. He had his pride. He turned his head away from her in dismissal.

The mattress dipped slightly. Had she actually edged a hip onto his bedside? Damn her eyes.

He fisted his hands to keep from reaching for her.

“Caden, please.” Her imploring tone tore at his defenses.

He turned to face her, his insides clenching at the sight of her pleading expression. “Very well. Have your way with me.” His mouth curved in a deliberately sardonic smile.

She pressed her lips together but didn’t voice a rebuttal. She reached for the ice pack and gently peeled it back. She studied him, both brows arching.

“That horrible, is it? Has the bleeding stopped, at least? I haven’t dared take the pressure off to sit upright since the initial gusher that destroyed my cravat and shirtsleeves.”

He watched her gaze track down to his Adam’s apple, then move lower. Staring, she licked her lips.

Just like that, he went ramrod hard.

Inwardly cursing, he propped up one knee and rested an elbow on it to hide his inconvenient arousal as best he could, then cleared his throat. Loudly.

Her eyes shifted upward, a satisfying flush staining her cheeks .

“What do you think?” His husky voice revealed too much of what he felt, at least to his ears.

Her lovely, tilted eyes went wide and her rosy lips formed a perfect O before she squeaked, “What do I think?”

By God, she could not fake this level of innocence. Mr. Jones must’ve been a dead bore in the bedroom. An oddly cheering thought, that.

“About my wound. Shall I heal, or am I to be branded for life?”

“Oh. Right.” She hinged forward to study his brow anew, all business save the twin splotches of red on her cheeks.

Frowning in concentration, she leaned closer.

His gaze locked on her lips. Hunger hollowed out his insides, urged him to do something stupid like rise up, mere inches, to claim her mouth with his.

No matter that a few short hours ago, kissing her had rocked him to his core.

No matter that he knew she deserved better than being treated like a party favor by the likes of him.

No matter. He wanted to kiss her more than he wanted to breathe.

“A slight edema has formed, but the bleeding’s stopped. Any larger of a slice and you’d have required stitches. You may bare a scar. A bit of salve would help.” She traced the area above his brow with her fingertip.

He felt the caress all the way to his groin. He swallowed hard, words failing him.

She met his eyes, sending him a resigned grin. “No doubt a scar will only serve to make your perfect face even more dashing.”

“Perfect, eh?” He arched his injured brow, instantly regretting it as stabbing pain had him raising a hand to the site, which he regretted more. “ Ouch .”

“Poor Caden.” She brushed his hand aside and reapplied the ice with practiced care. “Better? ”

He gave an inarticulate grunt as, inside him, a war raged. His last shred of good sense shouted at him to send her away before he did something stupid. He reminded himself she would rather live her life as a servant than consider an offer of help from him.

Arguably worse, when the blinding intensity of his response to simply kissing her sent him running, she had no trouble informing him she could take him or leave him, would leave him without a backwards glance at her first opportunity, even knowing their paths might never cross again.

Never again . The mere thought gutted him like he was fifteen all over again.

All the more reason to send her away.

His gaze fixed on her lips as he worked up the nerve to do what he must. “Anna?”

“Yes?” Her breathless answer threw fuel onto the fire burning within him.

I need to kiss you, his insides screamed. He swallowed the truth. He would stick to his guns. Do what he knew was right—for both of them.

He couldn’t pry his focus off her mouth, but he forced out the words. “You’d better go. You’ll miss dinner.”

She somehow managed to stiffen in offense while still leaning forward to hold the ice in place. “I see. What about you?”

He gave a one-shoulder shrug.

“I could fetch you a plate, and the salve I mentioned.”

He opened his mouth to reject her offer then choked on his reply as the tip of her pink tongue darted out to lick her goddess-inspired lips.

“Very well—if you join me.” He was an idiot. He could live with that.

***

“Might I have a moment of your time, Lady Wentworth?”

Lady Evelyn Wentworth turned to study young Harrison, her distant relative by marriage.

A dark haired, gangly man of medium height. Affable by anyone’s standards. But…there was something in his eyes. A sharpness lurked there, visible if one happened to pay close enough attention.

Dis-ease coursed through her. “We have some time yet before the dinner gong sounds. You may escort me on a brief tour of the Fenton gallery.”

“An excellent notion. I know a short cut.” Harrison proffered his arm, and she hesitated long enough to offer up a prayer he wouldn’t manage to do her bodily harm before their conversation reached its end.

Neither spoke as they wove between clusters of guests. Eventually, they passed through two massive carved wooden doors into a long, narrow gallery. Harrison paused to close the doors behind them before once again taking her arm.

“How fare’s your father, the viscount?” Lady Wentworth asked.

“He’s well and sends his regards.” Harrison paused in front of a large, gilt-framed oil painting depicting one of Lord Fenton’s predecessors.

The man in the portrait did not resemble Fenton in the slightest. He was, in fact, far more handsome.

Harrison’s words echoed her thoughts. “It’s amazing, is it not, how people can be related by blood, and yet have few physical similarities.”

A fresh frisson of alarm skittered up her spine. Ridiculous. She had nothing to worry about from this young man. How could she? How could he know anything? Although something had precipitated his request for this little tète-a-tète.

“I disagree,” she said, deliberately contrary. “Take this…”

She drew the lorgnette dangling on a chain round her neck to her eyes to read the name plate under the frame. “Lord Gerald Fenton. One can assume he’s a direct relation to the current Baron of Femsworth. Note the all too familiar overly large forehead.”

Harrison regarded the portrait. “Mmm. I see what you mean. Look hard enough, and you’re bound to find some sort of tell.”

She sniffed, gave a none-too-subtle elbow tug, and he resumed leading her down the line of portraits.

“I’m afraid I didn’t express myself well.

Aside from whether or not relatives tend to look alike, they sometimes share similar characteristics.

One wonders if they pass down through the bloodline.

Say, a manner of carrying one’s head, or pursing one’s lips.

A narrowing of the eyes, perhaps, or a gate. ”

“Yes, yes. What of it?” she snapped. Her heartbeat raced in her chest, and a bead of perspiration dampened her upper lip.

“I find it intriguing.”

Schooling her breathing seemed nigh impossible. She jammed to a halt in front of the next portrait and stared at it unseeing as she concentrated on inhaling and exhaling slowly through her nose.

“Imagine, if you will, a grandmother and granddaughter separated for all of the child’s formative years, yet still sharing physical idiosyncrasies.”

Cold suffused her. How had he come to know her darkest, most closely guarded secret?

He went on. “Why, the two, or at least one of the two, might not even recognize the other as a relative, even in the face of those glaring idiosyncrasies. And let’s say one of the two, the grandmother?—for illustrative purposes, we may as well stay with grandmother, granddaughter paradigm.”

“By all means.”

He sent her a benign smile. “Let us say the grandmother possessed knowledge of the true nature of the relationship, and knew precisely how it came to pass the two had never made each other’s acquaintance, all hypothetically, of course—”

“Of course.”

“—one could see how a conversation about the why’s and wherefores of their separation might be difficult to broach.”

“What do you want?” she hissed.

He crossed one arm over his chest and drew his opposite hand to his chin in a contemplative posture. “Want? This is merely a hypothetical scenario.”

She opened her mouth to speak, mortified to feel her chin trembling.

He continued unabated. “Let us suppose this granddaughter happened to have got herself married to one of the dregs of society, albeit a member of the nobility. Having discovered her mistake, perhaps she set out to right her mistake, by, say, vanishing into thin air. A long-lost grandmother might choose to aid her in this endeavor.”

“One never knows.”

“Given enough resources, the young woman could hope to maintain her freedom. Unless…”

“Unless?”

“Unless she happened to attend a house party where she also happened to be recognized by someone who desired the reward for uncovering her whereabouts. ”

Her fears for herself, for being discovered, evaporated in a blink. Still, terror gripped her. Legs trembling like they’d turned to water, she placed one hand against the wall for support.

After all she’d done to assure Anna’s safety, to have it all go wrong now. All the money and status in the world didn’t contravene a husband’s bloody rights .

“What would a grandmother do in such an instance, in your opinion?”

“Why, secret her away. Immediately. Hypothetically.”