She had touched his throat before. She had kissed him there.
But she had never seen him unclothed.
Well, not since she’d spied on him and Dash swimming on the beach a very long time ago…
She drew a slow breath and reminded herself to be careful.
One button. Then the next. His breathing altered just enough for her to notice, and because she noticed everything about him, her own breath fluttered in answer.
The shirt parted beneath her fingers, revealing a narrow line of chest, then more. Warm skin. A smattering of dark hair. The strong column of his throat. The hollow just beneath it, where his pulse beat steadily, stubbornly, beautifully alive.
Her hands were not as steady as she would have liked.
When she finished the buttons, Gideon shifted forward. Together, awkwardly, they worked the shirt free from the waistband of his trousers. Her knuckles brushed the taut plane of his stomach.
“Lift your arm,” she said.
But there was roughness in her voice now.
She helped draw the linen upward. For one absurd moment, the shirt caught at his shoulder, and Gideon gave a soft curse while Beatrice found herself almost laughing from nerves.
Nerves and something else.
Then it came free.
Gideon sat before her, bare to the waist, lamplight moving over the broad shape of his shoulders, the defined strength of his chest, the dark hair narrowing over his stomach. He was not ornamental. Not some marble statue designed for polite admiration. This was Gideon. Warm. Real.
Alive.
The word lodged somewhere beneath her ribs.
Tonight, she had come far too close to learning what the world would feel like without him in it.
Beatrice pressed the cloth to his wound.
His breath hissed between his teeth.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” His voice was low. “Do what you must.”
She dipped the cloth into the water again and wrung it out.
For a moment, she could not quite bring herself to touch him.
Because all she could see was Hatherleigh in that hideous boar mask, the pistol aimed at Gideon’s chest.
She saw Gideon moving forward instead of away. Saw Hatherleigh’s finger tighten. Heard the crack of the shot all over again.
This wound could have been so much worse.
A few inches. One slight shift of Hatherleigh’s hand, and Gideon might not have been sitting before her.
Alive.
Beatrice forced herself to focus on the cloth. Only when her hands had steadied did she press it to his skin again.
“Why,” she asked, “was Lord Hatherleigh attempting to kill you?”
