Page 15 of The Love Remedy (The Damsels of Discovery #1)

15

“Miss Juliet told me what happened,” Thorne said once Lucy invited him into the apartment.

Lucy smothered a yawn and nodded, staring hopefully at the bag. Had he chosen haste over concern and gone to the corner shop? They could be relied upon to mix oodles of lard in their crust.

“Is that for me?” she asked.

Thorne grinned.

What a gift, that smile. For a man whose talent was to keep any sign of emotion from his face, this was an offering as valuable as a hot, greasy pasty.

“Sadie told me about your favorite pie shop,” he said.

“Bless that child.” Lucy inhaled the blissful scent of roast meat and spices. “Did she tell you of my love for lard?”

Rather than answering, Thorne walked past Lucy and into her kitchen. Curious, Lucy followed.

“You’ve never been inside the kitchen of a pie shop, have you?” he asked, opening cupboard doors, and taking out a plate and glass.

“No, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to know what makes these pies so—ahhhh.” Lucy moaned with excitement as Thorne tore open the bag to reveal three plump, golden pasties. They might have been the prettiest she’d ever seen.

“Then you are unaware of where they get the fat they use to cook with?”

Lucy took the glass and filled it from a carafe of water, then grabbed the plate from his hands and set it on the kitchen table.

“Do you want to know why I prefer to remain ignorant about the process of pasty making?” she asked as she picked up the pie.

It was a shame about the stitching of the scar on Thorne’s face. While she bit into the tongue-tingling combination of fat, flour, salt, and meat, Lucy imagined what he would look like without the scar.

Handsome, obviously. Even with the scar and slightly bent nose, Thorne was arresting and regal. Without it...

Lucy cast her eyes down to the table and studied her pasty.

Whatever was she thinking, outright ogling a man’s face? What would he think of her?

“Why?” Thorne asked.

Lucy glanced at him and stopped chewing, raising her brows in question.

“Why do you prefer to remain ignorant?”

“Because if I learn the real story, it may put me off pasties forever,” she said, wiping her lips with her napkin.

Thorne’s eyes followed the movement and remained on her lips when she put the napkin down. Now that she’d eaten something, Lucy’s mood lightened. Watching Thorne, she licked her lips.

Ah. His face didn’t move, but he’d leaned forward—a fraction of an inch, to be certain, but enough to betray his interest. He had a presence so strong that if Lucy raised her fingers to his skin, she was certain she would feel him before she touched him. An aura of determination and intelligence. Closing her eyes, Lucy took a deep breath through her nose.

Tweed and paper. Ink and tea.

Sitting back in her chair, Lucy took the napkin and dried her fingers. Thorne watched this intently and set his elbow on the table, chin in hand.

Interesting.

“You see, if you put me off my pasties, then I won’t be so grateful to you for bringing them in the first place.”

His nostrils flared, and a furl of excitement woke between Lucy’s thighs. The fear and pain from today’s events drained from her body, only to be replaced with a heated anticipation. From the moment she opened the door to him, Lucy had been envisioning Thorne in her bed. The ghost of the climax he’d brought last night now set her to squirming in her seat, relishing the insistent drumming of the nerves at the center of her.

Let go, Lucy.

Let go of the fear from today, the pain of not knowing, the uncertainty that painted every corner of her life. Let go and feel good. That was what Lucy needed.

“And when I am grateful...” Lucy left him to imagine what might complete that sentence.

A spiral of lightness rose along her spine as Thorne leaned back and one corner of his mouth lifted in a sly smile.

“I would like to be the object of your gratitude.”

Lucy did not let go of the sense of joy that buoyed her up and out of her chair, now leavened with the headier sense of being desired. More than anything in the world, Lucy wanted this man to see her—all of her.

She bent toward him, her voice trembling despite her eagerness.

“I was sleeping earlier, and it has left me with the need for a sponge bath. Juliet is not here. Do you think you can help me with my corset ties?”

A beat passed, but Lucy did not have any second guesses, because Thorne’s cheeks were ruddy with lust and his fist closed onto nothing but air.

She beckoned him with a crooked finger and led the way from the kitchen to her bedroom. Slightly embarrassed at the sight of her unmade bed, she bent to straighten the cover, when Thorne ran a hand down her spine and over the rise of her bottom.

Lucy straightened and threw a saucy smile over her shoulder to him.

“I do worry that you will get your waistcoat wet,” she said with patently false sympathy, turning around. “Shall I help you remove it?”

Thorne rubbed his thumb over her lips, then leaned in and kissed her, licked her lips, and straightened. It weakened Lucy’s knees, the way he set his mouth to her skin as though he’d eat her, as though he were starving.

“If you please,” he said, his crisp diction betrayed by the gravel in his voice.

Lucy glanced at the oil lamp on the side table and the closed curtains.

“It is seven o’clock. Your sister is not expected home until ten, and Sadie went to bed early.”

“How did you know what I was thinking?” Lucy asked, gently separating the lapels of his outer coat and pulling it down his arms.

Thorne shrugged and held his arms out to his sides so that she might take off his waistcoat. The forest-green silk was expertly tailored for all that it lacked embellishment.

When Lucy untied his cravat, Thorne put his hand over hers.

“No. I will do this part.”

He stared at Lucy’s face with hungry eyes while he untied the strip of linen, ran it through his fingers, and then reached over and draped the cloth over her headboard.

She’d no idea why he had done this, but excitement swelled nevertheless, spurred by the heat in his gaze and the tension in his jaw. Lucy quite forgot she was supposed to be undressing him as Thorne pulled his shirttails from his trousers and then reached back and pulled his shirt over his head.

“Oh,” she said. Or sighed. Or made some sort of incoherent sound of pleasure. The tiniest shadow of a smile curved beneath Thorne’s lower lip, and he pulled off his undershirt as well. Because he somehow had the power to weaken Lucy’s muscles simply by scowling, it came as no surprise to her when the steps she took toward him wobbled.

Thorne’s body told a history. That he’d been raised with plenty to eat was apparent in his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and the strength and grace in his carriage. He stood tall and chiseled like the nude athletes etched on Grecian vases one saw in the British Museum.

As Thorne undid the tapes of his trousers, Lucy put her hand on his chest. Beneath his skin a powerful heartbeat thumped against her fingertips, and she petted the soft hair that ran from between his nipples down in a V to where his waistband started.

He wasn’t perfect.

There was a bump beneath his left clavicle from a poorly healed break. A crescent moon–shaped scar ran, puckered and red, beneath his right nipple. Lucy did not look away from these clues, even as he pushed off his shoes and let his trousers hang down around his waist, exposing the cream-colored linen of his smallclothes.

Running her hand across his chest, Lucy stared up into his gaze.

“Why?” She whispered the question, not wanting to distract him from the important task of disrobing, but needing to know, nonetheless. Why go from being the son of a baron to a man who took money for pain?

He pushed his trousers down and they fell to the floor. They tangled their fingers trying to untie the tapes to his smallclothes at the same time, but Thorne took her hand and held it aloft in his closed fist and managed the tapes one-handed.

His smallclothes fell away from his lean hips, and Lucy bit down on her bottom lip. Sex with Duncan had been furtive and sometimes uncomfortable. She had never seen him fully naked, most times making love up against a wall or over a crate.

Not in her wildest imaginings had Duncan ever resembled this. Lucy sank to her knees and took Thorne’s cock in hand. It was thick and hot, the foreskin softer than velvet. When she pulled it down and the head emerged, swollen and purple, she had to clench her thighs. The scent of earth and salt and something altogether heady filled her nose, and without being completely certain of what was correct, Lucy sucked the tip of his cock into her mouth.

“Ahhhh, Jesus, Lucy,” Thorne groaned.

The vibrations from his exclamation rumbled down her spine, and Lucy knew she was doing something right. Remembering a naughty song from a night at the pub, Lucy gathered him deeper into her mouth, gently sucked, and then pulled up.

“Ahhhh,” Thorne repeated, his fingers now running down her scalp to where pins kept her hair in a topknot, knocking the tiny pieces of tin to the floor.

Lucy continued to taste him, wishing she had waited for his answer.

“Please,” he said softly. Lucy released his cock from her mouth with a soft, wet sound and looked up at him.

“Please,” he said. “Can I see you?”

She knew what he meant.

He meant see her . The whole her. The worries and the fears and the never-ending sympathy and love and willingness to sacrifice anything and everything for the people she loved.

Thorne wanted to see Lucy, naked.

Sex did not equate with love.

She fixed this thought in her mind as she rose from the floor and turned around, arms above her head, presenting him with the laces of her dress.

No reason Lucy could not enjoy it. If she remained sensib— oohhh , what in the world? As he pulled apart the laces to her corset, Thorne traced the line of Lucy’s spine with his tongue. Every part of her skin tightened in pleasure. With a twist and a tug, he managed to divest Lucy of her clothing in a third of the time it had taken her to remove his.

Lucy turned around and tilted her head for a kiss when the thoughts started to pour into her head.

Where was Sadie now? What if she woke? Would she come looking for her father?

Thorne walked Lucy backward toward the bed, his knees prodding her thighs, his cock bobbing against her belly.

What if Juliet came home early?

Where was David?

Had Lucy remembered to fill the orders?

“Lucy,” Thorne said. “I need to ask a serious question.”

His tone jolted Lucy right out of her head. While the desire still hovered over her skin, a shiver of disappointment moved down her spine.

“Can you tell me to stop?” he asked.

Still standing at the side of her bed, Thorne’s hands running up and down her arms, Lucy took a moment to consider his question.

“You want us to stop?”

“No,” he whispered. Thorne put his hands on her shoulders, the ruddy skin of his fingers dark against the creamy white of her skin. He turned her around so that her back was to him, her knees to the mattress, and Lucy shuddered with pleasure as the length of his cock pressed between the cheeks of her bottom.

“I want to know that you feel safe enough to tell me to stop if I’m doing something you don’t like,” Thorne explained.

His hands dropped from her shoulders and smoothed down the slope of her breasts, then he cupped them in his palms and pinched her nipples.

“Oh, yes,” she assured him. “I will tell you to stop, and I will also tell you when not to stop.”

He laughed a dark brush of sensation onto the nape of her neck, then stepped away from her for a moment.

“Don’t move.” His order buzzed between her thighs even as Lucy frowned at the cold air on her back. In an instant, he was behind her again, scooping her hair back from her shoulders.

“I don’t want you wandering away from me again before I can make you come,” Thorne said. “So, I’m going to tie you up.”

Lucy’s head cocked as she tried to imagine what he meant. The breath left her lungs with a gasp when he reached around from behind and tied a strip of silk over her eyes.

“You have to do what I say, Lucy.” A heady combination of apprehension and lust made her tremble. “Listen carefully.”

Questions roiled in her head, but Lucy couldn’t say them aloud, so distracted was she by the way Thorne’s demands buzzed across her skin. Despite her confusion, she did not hesitate to follow Thorne’s orders, leaning forward and feeling the mattress beneath her hands, then crawling onto the bed and bringing her hands together in front of her.

Thorne slipped his cravat loosely around one of her wrists and brought her arm up toward the bedpost.

“What...” Lucy crossed her legs, suddenly shy about the moisture that trickled down her thighs.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, pausing in the act of tying her other hand now to the opposite bedpost.

Lucy waited a moment to absorb the sensation of being tied down.

“No,” she said in wonder. “No, I...” She pulled at the restraints. Thorne had tied her wrists tight enough so there was tension, but not too tight that she couldn’t slip the bonds if she needed to.

“But anyone could be watching, and I wouldn’t know,” Lucy said. The vulnerability of her position struck her forcefully, and for the first time, she shivered from the cold.

“No.”

Thorne lowered himself down onto her. Lucy drew in the scent of tea and paper while his body warmed hers. He rested on his elbows, his torso brushing hers, his muscular thighs parting hers so that his cock pulsed against her quim.

“No one will see you except for me. I will keep you safe,” Thorne said.

Her mouth opened and a sigh escaped.

“Do you trust me?” He nuzzled her temple.

Lucy pulled again against the ties and opened her legs wider to accommodate his hips.

“You will remain here the entire time. Stay with me and take the pleasure I want so badly to give you.”

Every random thought that tried to enter her head was met with the resistance of his mouth on her breasts and the soft grip of the ties on Lucy’s wrists.

Every thought except one.

“I don’t have any...”

Thorne pushed himself off her, the mattress sinking as he sat on the side of Lucy’s bed. The scrape of a tin being opened set her heart to pounding.

“I took the liberty of bringing a tin of condoms with me tonight,” Thorne said.

She couldn’t see him, couldn’t see anything except the black of her blindfold. The mattress creaked as he came back to the bed, coming between her thighs. She pictured him sitting between her legs as she lay there, bared to him. The rustle of the condom skated across her belly, and she tried to close her legs.

“No.”

Lucy froze.

“I want to see you,” he said. His hands settled on her knees, then smoothed down to the center of her.

“Trust me,” he said.

Broken and imperfectly healed, his voice rumbled down her bones and along her muscles. An image of stones, heavy and immutable, settled in Lucy’s head as Thorne parted her with his thumbs and lowered his head to the rise of her soft belly.

Small kisses ending with the promise of tiny bites peppered Lucy’s skin.

“Can I move?” she asked, writhing beneath the hunger of his mouth.

“Yes. Please,” he said, then slowly ran his tongue up and down the seam of her. Lucy made a noise, embarrassed for a moment, then enervated as Thorne gently parted her and brought his mouth to her quim.

Her physical excitement ratcheted up when she imagined Thorne’s expression as he watched himself pleasure her. Tighter and tighter were the circles he made with his tongue, suckling her clitoris and pausing to praise her every so often; how soft her skin, how delicious the taste of her, how much he wanted to be in her.

The explosion came quickly, too quickly, after his praise. Her center still throbbing, Lucy raised her arms and pulled against the restraints. Without waiting for her to come down from the waves of pleasure, Thorne crawled up her body, tasting the hollows and the rises of her, whispering of how sweet and how pretty her belly and her breasts were.

She lifted her head in anticipation and, when he was close enough, bit him gently on the lips. Her arms pulled against the cravat, and she mewled in frustration when they prevented her from touching his skin, his face.

“I am here to take care of you,” Thorne crooned as his cock nudged at her quim. “All day long, you are responsible for everyone around you. Life and death and...”

With a deliberate thrust, Thorne pushed himself into Lucy. There was a dull ache that only fueled her desire as his cock breached her entrance.

“Let go,” he commanded. “Let go and let me take over.”

Lucy grew dizzy with a combination of physical desire and a sensation of falling, truly falling without worrying what awaited her next. Clenching her inner muscles, she pushed back against him. A glorious friction rose as he moved inside her, inch by inch, stretching her to accommodate him.

All the time, Lucy played with her bonds, letting them go slack and allowing herself to feel Thorne’s slow intrusion, then pulling them taut and fighting to prolong her pleasure.

When he’d pushed himself fully inside her, Thorne bent his forehead to hers. She flinched in surprise when a bead of sweat dropped from his temple to her cheek. They lay frozen for a moment, relishing the anticipation. Lucy, however, would not let this draw out any further.

Thorne had given her permission by denying her.

The ties that bound her wrists gave her a sense of calm that had been absent for so long as she carried out the never-ending duties of the apothecary. Lucy bent her knees, setting her feet on the mattress and tilting her hips so that Thorne sank even deeper within her. The discomfort of being filled so tight, the friction of the linen against her wrists, the knowledge that she could say anything, feel anything, inside this cocoon of darkness lit a spark within her. She wrapped one leg over his hips and pressed her heel into the base of Thorne’s spine.

With a swift uptake of breath, he understood her need and began to move with slow, shallow thrusts. Lucy couldn’t wrap her arms around him to urge him on, so she whispered her praise, surprising herself at the creativity and detail of her coaxing words. The inability to see Thorne’s expression allowed for honesty because she couldn’t imagine disapproval or judgment on his face.

Thorne’s enjoyment of her stuttered pleas was made obvious by the quickened pace with which he entered her, the feel of his mouth against the side of her neck moving back and forth, the occasional grunts of pleasure that vibrated in her ears.

“More,” she gasped. He laughed, low and dark, then held himself still within her.

Lucy pulled against the ties and squeezed both legs around his hips.

“More,” she begged.

When he didn’t move, Lucy set her teeth to the meat of his shoulder.

“More,” she demanded, then bit him there.

Minutes, hours, who knew how much time went by as Thorne moved his hips faster and faster. The darkness behind her eyelids lit with sparks as Lucy’s pleasure overwhelmed her connection to her limbs and to her brain.

A blessed peace blanketed her as Lucy gave up control and let Thorne decide the rhythm of his thrusts, relishing the ache at the center of her and the slow buildup of pressure between her legs and throughout her body.

“Now.” The order slipped out before Lucy could think to stop herself.

Thorne obeyed without pause, slipping his hand between them and setting his thumb on her clit just as he reentered her.

With a cry of surrender, Lucy came against him. Shuddering, she thrust herself up and reveled in the wetness of her release. Like thunder, the pounding of her heart deafened her, and she had no awareness outside of the throbbing of her womb. It felt like an eternity before the world came back to greet her.

Even as she relished the tiny waves of pleasure that followed her orgasm, Lucy became aware of the last long thrust of Thorne’s cock and the low growl of pleasure at his completion. Neither of them spoke for a moment, listening to each other breathe in stuttering gasps as though they’d run a race.

A red thread of sorrow pulled at Lucy’s chest. She had never felt a pleasure so intense, never felt so free in her life. How sad it seemed to her, in the silence, that in order to feel good, she had to hide her view of the world around her.

With the utmost care, Thorne untied her blindfold. Despite the darkened room, there was enough light from the lamp that Lucy had to wait, blinking, while her sight adjusted. Thorne raised himself up, his massive chest moving over her as he untied her left arm. Softly, he kissed the red marks on her wrist where she’d tested the bonds, and did the same with her right arm.

Gathering both her hands in his, Thorne bowed his head over them, his lips grazing her skin as he spoke.

“Thank you for trusting me, Lucy. You are a brave and marvelous woman.”

Brave and marvelous.

Of all the words he could use to describe her, Thorne picked the very ones she would use about him as well.

—

Thorne came awake when the mattress dipped. Lucy must have gone out to the privy, for she returned with the scent of winter mixed in the skirts of her nightgown.

When was the last time he’d slept like that?

Dreamless.

Spent.

“What is the time?” Thorne asked, his embarrassment at lying there, vulnerable, making his words harsher than he’d meant them.

“It is past nine,” Lucy told him as she burrowed beneath her quilts and pushed her cold feet against his legs, laughing when he shivered.

“I have to go home to Sadie.”

Rather than taking offense that he would leave so quickly, Lucy nodded in agreement.

“Of course, you wish to return to her. Tell me first, is she enjoying Madame’s school?” Lucy asked.

“That school was such a gift,” he said. “I never would have thought to introduce her to science. I barely understood geometry, and the only time I used my physics was to calculate the angle of a punch. Not that I was ever right.”

Lucy reached over and took his hand, once again tracing the places where the bones had broken and rejoined. The elegance of her fingers and the curve of her arms prompted feelings of both lust and protectiveness. The combination felt strange, like a boiled sweet sprinkled with salt.

“Perhaps she got it from her mum?” Lucy asked.

Thorne considered this. “That might be so. Sadie’s mother was interested in people the same way that Sadie is interested in animals.”

Lucy pushed her palm against Thorne’s, and they examined the difference in size and coloring of their hands, fingers to fingers.

“Tell me if it is none of my affair, but did she die?” Lucy asked.

Thorne inhaled this scent of warm cotton sheets and bare skin and braced for the old pain, but all he felt was the ghost of an ache in his chest. He broke contact with Lucy and rolled onto his back, examining the lumpy plaster of the ceiling above him.

“She did,” he told the ceiling.

“She was the beautiful woman who made you swear off beautiful women?”

The ceiling waited for his answer.

“She was.”

Lucy shifted herself so that she sank deeper into the mattress and pulled the covers up to her chin. “Does Sadie miss her?”

Thorne turned his head and regarded her. “You miss your mother, don’t you?”

“Every minute of every day,” Lucy said. She kept her eyes on the ceiling but pulled her arms out from beneath the covers and crossed them over the quilt. “I thought I would miss my father more, since we worked together so closely.”

A lock of Lucy’s hair fell across her forehead. Tiny strands of red glinted in the dim light of the table lamp.

“It is my mother’s counsel I wish I could seek, though,” Lucy continued. “I rarely have questions when it comes to my work. I always have questions when it comes to... everything else. Matters of the heart. Matters of the spirit.”

She did not elaborate, and Thorne did not push.

“I can only imagine Genny—Geneviève’s amusement at being consulted in such matters,” Thorne said. “She tried hard never to consider any question weightier than what color feathers to wear with what color gown.”

Lucy pulled away from him, lifting herself onto her elbows, disappointment clear on her face.

“I am not...” Thorne paused, while Lucy rolled on her side, keeping herself covered beneath the quilt, staring at him with her ocean-blue eyes narrowed in concentration.

“She wasn’t silly. That’s not what I meant. She was quite intelligent and well-read considering she hadn’t much of a formal education. I think,” he said slowly, “she had been damaged in a profound way that couldn’t be seen from the outside. I think the damage was so great, she worked to be distracted so she wouldn’t have to look at her wounds, nor remember what caused them.”

Lucy’s mouth opened into an O of sympathy, but she kept silent. When he finally spoke this next realization aloud, Thorne took Lucy’s hand and once again pressed her palm against his.

“I was so young and self-centered. I never tried hard enough to find out what caused her so much pain. I simply believed that my love was enough to heal her. The more she suffered, the more I showered her with gifts and professed my love, and the more she sought further distraction.”

Lucy pressed back against him, palm to palm.

“Sometimes I have patients who stay sick no matter what cure I offer up,” she said softly, her eyes flickering between their hands and Thorne’s face.

Thorne’s gaze unfocused as he remembered times when Genny would dance like a dervish, spinning round for hours on end as if she could spin herself out of the trappings of her body and the noise in her head.

He sat up then, pulling the covers from his naked body, and swung his legs to the floor. The condom they’d used was wrapped in a square of linen resting on the tiny nightstand next to Lucy’s bed.

A fierce need to beg forgiveness made him dizzy. It came upon Thorne whenever he thought back to when he left England for that extended prizefighting tour of the Continent. He’d joked to Genny that she wouldn’t know he was gone because her admirers would keep her entertained. He’d promised to bring home a fortune when he returned. In truth, he left before he could do something stupid because he couldn’t live with the jealousy that ate at him day after day, because it pained him never to be enough.

The house in Bath was empty when he returned almost a year later. Rumors around town had seen her leaving with this earl or that prince, setting off to Crescent Street, to Birmingham, to Albania.

Furious, Thorne hadn’t looked for her. Fight after fight, Thorne leaned into the punches that reshaped his body and left him numb, then swung punches of his own, obliterating his intrusive thoughts with a blow to the chin, a jab to the gut.

He fought hard and dirty for another year until the bout in Chelsea when he never saw a left hook coming. Two days later, he woke up on the vermin-infested mattress in the back of a pub with a bell still ringing in his ears. When he could walk on his own without the world tilting left, he’d set out to find Genny and beg forgiveness.

By the time he found her in a tiny set of rooms in Birmingham, she was too ill to speak. A child, perhaps no older than two, played by her bedside while babbling a song of her own making.

Was it because he made a life from violence that Genny hadn’t told him she was with child? Was he so repulsive that she didn’t want her child associated with him? Had she been wanting to run the entire time they’d been together?

Those questions didn’t plague him half so much as the one Genny never answered.

Was the little girl someone else’s child? Would they come back for her?

Genny died the same day he found her, leaving Thorne and the child staring at each other, alone except for the doctor who had come too late yet still demanded to be paid.

“She never told me about Sadie,” he said to Lucy now. “It was by the grace of God that I found out where Genny was staying in the days before she died. If I hadn’t, Sadie would have been completely alone in the world.”

“I’m certain you were not the reason Genny didn’t tell you,” Lucy said softly from behind him. “Sometimes women lose their center after having a child. The blue devils will torment them until the child is more grown. Midwives will treat it with cold baths and Saint-John’s-wort. That must have been why.”

“You don’t know that,” he said, running his hands through his hair. Wasn’t he even now a selfish prick to sleep with a woman he wasn’t going to marry?

Her hands settled on his shoulders, and the scent of eucalyptus and lavender enveloped him when Lucy bent her head and rested it against his bare back.

“I know you better than you think,” she said. “I know about your soft heart from the way you touch me. I know about your bravery by the way you stand between the people you care for and the rest of the world. I know about your character by the way you have raised an incredible child.”

It would be easy to reach around and pull her against him, to believe the words she spread down his spine.

The easy way was never the right way. Thorne knew that much.

Instead of falling back into the sheets with her, Thorne gave Lucy a handful of sweet words and a kiss on the forehead. She said nothing in return, watching silently as he dressed himself.

Thorne pulled his jacket straight and regarded the wrinkled strip of linen that hung over Lucy’s headboard.

Still mute, Lucy handed him the cloth, which he rolled and tucked into a pocket. A dozen questions collided with unspoken answers in the silence of the room. Neither of them said a word for a while, their stares unbroken. Finally, Thorne reached into his pocket and pulled out the cravat, looked at it for a moment, then walked back to the bed and draped it around Lucy’s neck.

“I am so grateful that you shared tonight with me,” he said as gently as he could. With his ruined voice, the words sounded like the pestle and mortar Lucy used in her cures.

Lucy pulled the linen from her neck and wrapped it around her hands so that she was again bound, again free.

“Thank you,” she said, lifting her hands. “Thank you for this.”

Thorne nodded while he stepped backward, reaching out behind him for the doorknob, memorizing the way her eyes followed him, the slight redness spilling from the line of her lips, and the way her hair fell about her shoulders. Once satisfied that he would never forget this moment, Thorne turned around and left the room.