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CHAPTER TWO

He will recover .

Lavinia repeated the phrase to herself as she rolled over in her bed, punched the pillow twice, then settled her head on it.

The doctor who’d been summoned after Dominic’s fall had told her as much, though the man’s visible irritation made the words more menacing than reassuring. Although the hour had crept past midnight, she couldn’t sleep with her worry.

She wrinkled her nose as she tossed the doctor’s assessment around in her mind.

He will recover —his injuries were not fatal, as anyone with a modicum of medical knowledge could immediately ascertain—but was he in pain now?

He’d required the aid of two of his friends to carry him to his bedchamber on the floor above hers, his moans of pain carrying down the hallway.

She’d followed with her heart in her throat, restraining herself from leaping at him to assess his injuries, to bring him relief from his discomfort, although she lacked the formal training to provide it.

Rolling over again, she released a groan into the bedclothes. Through her worry, a question gnawed at her insides, one more aggravating than the unknown state of Dominic’s health.

Had Dominic been chasing her into the garden?

She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her bare feet brushing the thick carpet.

Unanswered questions had driven Lavinia’s interest in science from the time she was a girl and had pressed her to chase her dream of becoming a physician.

Curiosity had yet to fail her, and she wasn’t about to start now.

After grabbing her medical bag—stocked with the basic tools and tinctures she’d need for her practicum in Paris—she buttoned her dressing gown over her nightdress and slipped out of her room.

The corridors were deserted, unsurprising, as a guest tumbling head-first into a rose bush tends to end a party early.

She padded down the hallway and up the stairs to the bachelors’ rooms, counting until she found Dominic’s door, where hours before she’d watched as the doctor performed his assessment before shutting her out.

Her hand stilled as her fingers wrapped around the handle.

What a scandal it would cause if she were to be found outside a man’s room—particularly a man known as a scoundrel—in her dressing gown!

A part of her shrugged off the concern; she’d heard far too many lamentations from her mother and other society matrons about how her intellect and professional aspirations would deter any potential suitor.

But she wasn’t a trollop, nor could she let her good name become besmirched, lest it impact her future practice as a physician.

She withdrew her hand and had turned away when she heard a heavy thud, followed by a distinct moan of pain, and she froze, a vice constructing her lungs. Consequences be damned, Dominic was on the other side of the door, suffering, and she wouldn’t allow that for a moment longer.

She was moving before she could consciously order her body to do so, charging into his room and snapping the door shut behind her, and her head spun. Her medical bag fell with a clatter with what she saw in the light of the gas lamp on his nightstand.

Dominic lay prone on the floor beside his bed. He lifted his head, a lock of golden hair falling over his brows, his lips parting when he saw her. The muscles of his bare back shifted and flexed as he fought to raise himself onto his elbows. “Lavinia,” he whispered, breathless and wondrous.

This is what he’d look like.

This image replaced the one she’d imagined for months as she lay alone in bed, cobbled together from imagination and knowledge of anatomy texts, with her fingers in the wet space between her thighs as she stroked herself to completion.

Dominic removing her clothing, piece by piece.

Dominic dragging his mouth over her neck, her breasts.

Dominic cupping her mound, filling her, moving with her until they were both mindless with pleasure.

“Lavinia?” he repeated, and heat scalded up to her hairline as she shook her head to throw off her salacious thoughts. Ah, so he wasn’t completely undressed but still wore trousers, though his chest and feet were bare. She could pretend she didn’t find this disappointing.

She forced herself to walk with the poise of an accomplished physician seeing a patient—all while in her nightdress, mind you—and knelt by his shoulders. “What happened?”

“I—um, I needed to relieve myself. All was well until I was coming back and put too much weight on this—” He gestured towards his extended leg, one ankle bound in thick gauze.

“Let me help you onto the bed,” she said, getting to her feet.

“Lavinia, you can’t do that.”

She bristled. He’d never been one to underestimate her before, when so many others had. “I’m plenty strong enough.”

He sighed, his eyelids falling closed. “I’m not.”

Something in the way he said this gave her pause, how the two syllables were strained, as though they contained far more than a simple declaration of weakness.

No, she was being silly and reading too much into the situation.

She’d spent two years searching for symptoms and building a case for his infatuation with her: the brightness in his eyes when he saw her, his hand tightening on her back as they danced, the tension in his jaw when he hesitated before bidding her farewell at the end of a waltz.

But he was infuriatingly immune to her charms.

Like a lovelorn ninny, she’d wasted hours wishing for a second dance, hoping for him to appear in the doorway of her parlor during calling hours, scouring the gossip pages for mentions of his latest escapades while praying she found nothing linking him to a far more beautiful woman.

Wanting more from Dominic Bailey than he’d ever give her.

Lavinia was nothing if not practical, and wanting Dominic was a fool’s errand, one she’d be forced to abandon when she left for Paris, and not a moment too soon.

“Sit up against the bed,” she said, stripping the longing from her voice and replacing it with a clinical calm. “I’ll help you the rest of the way.”

With an aggrieved sigh, he shifted, rolling sideways and pushing himself upright. And, oh.

Oh .

Her anatomical expertise did nothing to protect her from the sheer erotic display of his movements.

The swell and shift of the trapezius and latissimus dorsi as he rolled, the flex of the deltoids, triceps, and biceps as he held himself steady, the corrugation of his pectorals and abdominals, covered in a dusting of golden hair?—

She broke her gaze away as a horrid sound—something between a moan and gurgle—emerged from her throat, and she stared at the ceiling while feigning a cough, her cheeks burning.

“Are you alright?” he asked, somewhat breathless. “There’s water on my nightstand, if you need it.”

Her mouth and throat were suddenly dry, and the intimacy of seeing his bedroom, sharing his water , seemed somehow more intense than watching the muscles of his chest and back dance for her. “I’m fine,” she managed, averting her gaze to the nightstand to avoid looking at said dancing muscles, and?—

Oh, hell . She dared to look at him. “You wear spectacles?”

His brows furrowed. “Yes, when I read. Why?”

Because she wished she’d known he wore bloody spectacles, as they would have played a starring role in her nocturnal fantasies. Because the idea of him in his bed, wearing those spectacles with those perfect muscles, had made her nipples pull tight and sent heat pooling in her core.

She crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “No matter. Can you push yourself to standing?”

He winced. “I can try.” Curling his good leg under himself, Dominic drove his foot into the carpet, keeping his injured ankle stretched in front of him. He was nearly even with the edge of the mattress when he began to waver, looking as though he might topple over.

Lavinia rushed forward without thinking and leaned to put her shoulder beneath his arm, bringing her chest—and her infernal traitorous nipples—perilously close to his bare chest.

Her lungs had forgotten their function in facilitating gas exchange, and her words escaped on a wheeze. “Stand up. Steady, now.” Whether she was reminding him or herself, she wasn’t sure, but he nodded, and together they stood.

Her hand remained between his levator scapulae, her thumb on his vertebra.

His hand settled in the small of her back, wide and warm and remarkably grounding. “Lavinia…”

Her name was a growl, and when her gaze snapped to his, the darkening pupils were consuming the golden facets of his irises. He glanced towards her mouth, and her heart thundered as she pressed her toes into the carpet, tipped her chin up, and?—

Lavinia released him, and he fell into a seated position on the mattress. “Right, into the bed with you,” she croaked, humiliation crawling up her spine as she rushed to gather unused pillows.

Good lord, she had nearly kissed him! She clutched the pillows to her chest, forcing herself to avert her attention from where Dominic sprawled atop the bedclothes, surely unaware of how close he’d been to falling victim to her affections.

Her silly crush was embarrassing enough, but to act upon it would be unforgivable.

Once she was certain her nefarious nipples weren’t about to betray her, she placed the pillows by his feet and, ignoring the unreasonable expanse of muscles across his chest, met his gaze. “May I check your ankle for swelling?”

His face fell—had he expected something else from her?—before nodding, and she lifted his foot onto the pillows.

How can this man’s feet be beautiful? Long toes, a light dusting of hair over his calf and?—

She blinked away her lust and examined the wrapping and, much to her disappointment, found it more than adequate.

What had she expected? She’d envisioned herself rushing to Dominic’s aid, healing him when the real doctor could not.

Dominic would fall in love with her profound competence as a physician and, consequently, fall in love with her .

What romantic nonsense. She was no longer a debutante seeking marriage, let alone love. She was an adult woman who had chosen an atypical path, one that set her apart as an anomaly.

Men like Dominic did not fall for anomalies.

She swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat.

“Everything seems to be in order—” The leg of his trouser had shifted up his calf, revealing an angry red slash.

With meticulous movements, she pushed the fabric higher.

Blood had dried around the edges, but the center of the wound was still seeping. “Did the doctor see this?”

Dominic sat up, braced on his hands. “No. The thorns scratched my legs and back to hell. It hurts a bit, though, now that you mention it.”

“A bit?” She rolled the fabric back and leaned closer. It was too early for infection to have set in, but she’d need to sanitize the wound. She’d read cases of wounds far milder than this leading to sepsis and even death.

She hurried to the door and retrieved her discarded medical bag, sifting through its contents after laying it on his nightstand.

“What are you doing?” he asked, no small bit of temerity in his tone.

She poured a tincture of carbolic acid on a sterilized length of gauze. “The wound must be cleaned to prevent infection,” she said, then winced. “This might sting.”

His jaw tensed. “I can handle it.”

Lavinia released her breath through pursed lips. She may not be able to admit to herself how much she would miss Dominic when she was in Paris, how she wished he’d see her as more than a source of medical trivia, but this, healing him, she could manage. “Take a deep breath?—”

She’d barely laid the gauze on his skin when he hissed a low oath, and she cupped his calf with her free hand to hold it in place. “Christ, Lavinia,” he grumbled through clenched teeth. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Most physicians can’t make a living killing their patients,” she said, temporarily distracted by the flex of muscle beneath her palm. “Are there more scratches like this?”

He hesitated.

She raised a brow. “If you’re thinking of lying to me to avoid pain, I can assure you sepsis and gangrene are far more unpleasant than carbolic acid solution.”

A reluctant smile pulled at his lips, and the same sparkling happiness that filled her when they danced skittered through her veins. “You know me well. Yes, there are more on my back.”

His back.

Of course.

She blinked, nodded, and sniffed. All respectable, physician-like responses, she was certain. “Will you sit forward, then?”

“Of course,” he said, unleashing a display of rippling external obliques beneath a trail of hair leading down?—

“Lavinia? Is something wrong?”

“Of course not!” she cried, then shook her head. “I’m fine.”

She would not allow her attraction to him to undermine her professionalism, particularly when her presence had no effect on him.

She could ignore his crooked smile, how his eyes sparkled when he laughed, how he made her feel intelligent and beautiful.

Healing was what she did best, and tonight she’d share her gift with him.

And, God help her, she would ignore his muscles.