Chapter 5
Large hands settled gently on her shoulders, and she looked into his eyes so very dark, and so very close to her own.
“You’re a sensible woman, Lady Loughton. You can’t stay in these wet clothes. There are only Farley and the grooms to help you. And me. You know me.”
“Ah, yes.” She gritted her teeth. He didn’t look as if he were ready to pounce. Perhaps he wouldn’t need to. Perhaps this wasn’t fear making it hard to breathe but anticipation. Perhaps she would know him much better very soon.
She squeezed her eyes closed. “I know you, indeed. Get on with it, please.”
His large hands slid her redingote off, and the long fingers worked the hooks of her dress, moving down her back more quickly than ever her maid could do.
Lindhorst had experience at this sort of thing.
If rumors were true, he’d undressed countless opera dancers, actresses, and the widows of some of his fellow peers.
The gown slid to the floor, and he held her hand, helping her step out of it. Her stays came next, and she was left shivering in a wet shift.
Before she could tell him to get out, he’d yanked the shift over her head and settled a dry, warmed garment in its place.
Heart pounding, she clutched at the garment. The crisp linen, the long sleeves… it was a shirt, a man’s shirt that fell to below her knees, with an open, flapping neck that peeled back to reveal her small decolletage.
Dear Lord, she’d been naked. He’d seen her naked. Bare-arsed the boys would giggle. It was mortifying.
Would he crow about it in the clubs?
A man’s heavy velvet robe engulfed her. She pulled the lapels tightly and caught her breath. A mistake… Lindhorst’s scent filled her, addling her as much as the nearness of his fingers and hands disrobing her.
“There now.”
His voice sounded as shaky as her own quaking heart. This was madness.
* * *
Lindhorst turned away and went to the table, giving the lady a moment of… not privacy. He supposed he’d thoroughly disrupted any chance of that.
He, however, needed to still his own racing heart. Neda Lovelace was no lady bird, no opera singer, no member of the demimonde, though he’d more or less treated her as one of those tonight—without actually touching more than her hand.
Though he’d certainly been tempted. She was a lady, a beautiful one who didn’t realize how attractive she still was. Seeing her naked…
He ought to be ashamed of himself, but he found he wasn’t. She was, at last, out of those wet frozen garments, and—he lifted the dish covers to find heaps of carved ham, pickled vegetables, sliced bread—she would soon be well-fed.
He glanced back and found her staring into the fire, clutching the robe as if she wanted to disappear into it.
The heel of one sodden boot peeked out—those would have to come off—and the coil of hair on the back of her head had slid drunkenly sideways, pins hanging loose from tendrils of lovely golden hair.
On impulse, he went to her and began pulling out pins.
She put up a hand, pointedly halting an inch from his own. “Do stop,” she said frostily. “You are not my lady’s maid. I can manage my hair on my own.”
“Nevertheless,” he said, and carried on until her hair fell loose and messy well past her shoulders.
“Somewhere around here is a brush,” he said, “but I think we ought to eat first. I fear it’s a cold collation that Farley has brought us, or if not, it will be soon.
Please take a seat, and I’ll make you a plate. ”
The robe tightened around her as she hunched closer to the fire.
“And because you are a sensible lady who I’ll warrant has had nothing to eat all day, I presume you will eat at least a little.”
If for no other reason than to fight off my advances. He swallowed a chuckle. Best not say those words. She wasn’t in the mood for teasing. Plus, he wasn’t sure he could honestly frame it as teasing.
Farley had brought wine as well as steaming water. He set himself to fixing her tea, heaping sugar into it before bringing it to her.
She eyed it askance.
“No spirits in this one. Just sugar. You must drink it before it cools.”
Pursing her lips, she accepted it and sniffed, while he moved a small table between the chairs. “Please, do sit, while I fetch you a plate.”
She refused to converse, but seated herself and sipped at her cup, eyeing the ham and bread on the plate he brought her.
When he dropped to his knees and reached for her booted foot, her hand paused over the plate.
“What—”
“I fear these are ruined,” he said, struggling to keep his tone business-like. “And they must come off, along with the wet stockings.” He’d found a pair of clean stockings along with the dry shirt, too large for her, but at least her feet would be warm.
A glance showed that her face was unreadable, but when he’d removed the sodden footwear and reached for her garter, she swatted his hand away.
“Please,” she said. “Go and eat.”
He sat back on his heels. Sliding his hands up her leg to the garter—yes he’d better not, just yet.
He stood and handed her the dry stockings. “I’ll pour us some wine.”
Watching her from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a bare, still shapely leg, and quickly turned away.
By the time he’d devoured a quick sandwich and returned with two glasses, she’d finished and tucked the robe around her legs.
“Thank you,” she said solemnly accepting the wine. She frowned into the red liquid a long moment and then set aside the glass, jumped up, and paced the room.
His own glass in one hand, the other hand perched on the mantelpiece, he waited.
“I’m worried, Lindhorst,” she said, clutching her hands to her heart. “Where is my son? Traveling in this weather, with, heaven knows, perhaps very little money. He could freeze to death.”
Not a tongue-lashing for the bold undressing, then. The lady continued to surprise him.
“Or he could be curled up in someone’s barn,” he said, “cold, but sheltering with livestock.”
“You don’t understand, Lindhorst,” she said turning on him again. “How could you possibly understand? I’ve… I haven’t lost a single one of my children. Oh, we had scrapes, and broken bones, and once a whole house down with the measles and… You can’t imagine, Lindhorst.”
Hands fisted, her eyes glimmered with unshed tears. “My James. Oh… there are times when I think, we ought to have stopped after Nancy, but James is delightful when he’s not driving me mad. You can’t imagine… the thought of losing…”
Pausing, she looked at him and then turned away.
The minutes ticked by before he could finally speak. “Because a father doesn’t feel the loss as strongly as a mother?” he asked quietly.
“I… I don’t know. My father showed no emotion when my brother and sister died.” Her gaze fixed on him as if to ask, did you?
So, she’d remembered. He’d once had an heir and a spare and they’d both died within months of each other.
* * *
Her tongue hurt where’d she’d bitten off the words she wanted to hurl at him. Lord Lindhorst, known scoundrel and womanizer. He’d lost two sons, his only children. Had he felt anything? Or had he hidden a bleak grief under a proud mask?
Perhaps she’d been wrong about him.
“How did you bear it?” she asked.
He shrugged, setting the wine sloshing. “I drank and wenched heavily.”
Cocky, self-assured, undignified. And yet, she suspected there was more underneath that swaggering exterior. She waited and saw his chest move as he released a breath.
“I can’t bring them back. The schoolmate your son James left with?
That boy is my nephew and heir, Gordon Sommerton.
They’re at school together, did you know?
And they’re good chums, and no doubt Gordy is as much a nodcock as James.
But he’s a nodcock who likes his comforts, and he would have found his way to shelter, dragging James along with him.
I thought they would come here. He knows this will be his someday. ”
His nephew… his heir. He had as great a stake in the boys’ safety as she herself did. Perhaps greater. And yet…
“Your heir is out in this weather, yet you don’t appear very concerned.”
He grimaced, set aside the glass of wine, and remained silent.
“Oh. I suppose nephews and cousins are thick on the ground for you,” she said, prodding him, her own anger rising. “More heirs waiting behind Gordon. Is that why you’re not worried?”
Some men in a temper lashed out with their tongues, some, she knew from tales told by her friends and acquaintances, with their fists. She’d been fortunate that Henry had never done more than hurl words, and that rarely.
For a long moment Lindhorst stared into the fire while she waited with bated breath for his reaction.
“I am worried,” he said. “But I have faith that there is some common sense in the lad, and that he will find his way. He will be a man soon enough and if he spends one night shivering with a farmer’s cows, he might learn to anticipate consequences.
Since my brother’s death a few years ago, I’ve become as fond of Gordy as if he were my own son.
” He picked up the wineglass and handed it to her.
“Please. This will help you sleep. Please try not to fret.”
How could he be so calm? The urge to rattle him more spurred her.
“As commendable as it is that you’re fond of your heir, that you’re even arranging this estate for him, it begs the question, Lindhorst: you lost your two boys years ago; why did you and your wife not have more children? She was young enough.”
He stiffened and for a moment she thought she’d succeeded in stirring his temper. “That is a highly personal question, my lady.”
“You have abducted me and carried me off to your hunting lodge. You’ve stripped me naked. I feel entitled to pry.”
His eyes flashed with something like a warning. “And so, it follows, that if you see me naked, I may pry out your secrets?”
Heat flamed into her cheeks, and a stirring image of what he might look like under the coats and the linens sent her heart quaking.