“Don’t be,” he said in apparent surprise. “I’m not. In any case, I didn’t miss it precisely. I chose not to go. Foster’s still alive. What shall I do? I’ve never cooked anything in my life, but I can probably finish scrubbing the table if you like.”
In spite of all the feelings battering at her, she smiled. “I doubt you’ve scrubbed anything either.”
He leaned one shoulder against the larder door and folded his arms. “I can learn from watching you.”
Her face burned. Was he flirting? Over scrubbing a table?
“If you wish to help, you could look in on my father,” she said shortly, then regretted her tone almost immediately.
But he only smiled and pushed away from the door. His arm brushed against hers as he sauntered past her out of the kitchen, and she caught her breath.
What is the matter with me?
His absence was a relief, giving her space and time to pull herself together. And yet, ridiculously, she missed him. She finished cleaning the table with unnecessary speed and aggression before sorting through the new foodstuffs in the larder.
He had brought fresh supplies of tea. She had been reusing the leaves for a week. With pleasure she threw out the old leaves she’d hoarded and warmed the pot with the water beginning to boil on the fire.
“His Majesty requests a cup of tea,” Lord Durward said, strolling back into the kitchen. “I told him to get up and come down for it.”
“He must be as weak as a kitten,” Carina said reproachfully. “He was ill enough last night for us to call in the doctor.”
“He won’t remember that if you coddle him.”
She scowled, pouring the boiling water over the precious new tea leaves. “Are you so strict with your own self-discipline?”
“Of course not.”
She cast him a significant glance, then reached above her head for the frying pan hanging on the hook. It meant she had to stand on tiptoe, and she did so with the efficiency of practise. Nevertheless, he was there at once, his hand closing around hers on the pan handle before she slid it free. He stood so close to her back that she could feel his body heat, the brush of his chest against her hair. She could not breathe.
Slowly, she dropped her heels back to the floor and turned. She expected him to step back, from the courtesy he had always shown her. Instead, he met her gaze with intensity and a terrible thrill swept downward through her stomach. She could drown in those warm, profound eyes and die happy, and she didn’t even know why, except that they seemed peculiarly beautiful, at once sensitive and reckless and appreciative...of what?
His breath caught and he stepped back, offering her the frying pan with the flicker of a half-rueful smile. Even that caused a further flight in her stomach, like butterflies soaring.
She tore her gaze free with a mutter of thanks and moved away. She set about assembling the ham and the eggs she meant to fry for breakfast, then defiantly poured a cup of tea for her father and left the kitchen.
Durward said nothing.
“Sorry to trouble you, my dear,” Papa said weakly when she entered the room. “I can barely move. The boy—Durward—said I was ill. What is he doing here?”
“He found you on the beach about to be swept out to sea and brought you home. He fetched the doctor and sat with you through the night. You were quite ill.”
“So I was,” he said in a self-congratulatory sort of way.
She scowled, placing his tea on the old bedside table. “You brought it on yourself, Papa. What were you even doing on the beach away out there at that time of night?”
“Just walking,” he said vaguely.
“Just lying in the water,” she snapped. “And drinking. No more, Papa.”
“No more,” he said meekly, when she had expected a fight.
With the wind snatched from her sails, she closed her mouth and turned away. “Breakfast should be ready in a quarter of an hour. Come down if the tea revives you enough.”
With fresh hope for her father rising, she returned to the kitchen to find Lord Durward making a decent job of slicing the fresh loaf he had brought in.
“Why, you are quite skilled in domestic matters,” she said with light mockery.
He brandished the knife. “You should see me with a duck. Command me—what should I do next?”
