“I’m glad it’s no worse,” she said. “I couldn’t see everything that happened clearly, but I think it might have been disastrous.”
“It wasn’t.”
Grace took hold of his hand and raised it, bidding him hold the pad and one end of a rolled of bandage in place. Once he did so, she began wrapping a long strip of cloth around his torso. Once. Twice. Three times. Her fingertips brushed beneath his arm, across his back, and he couldn’t help imagining them doing so under very different circumstances. Circumstances he had no business envisioning.
“Cassandra seemed…not quite herself,” Grace said, so close to him that her breath warmed his shoulder.
“She has been under a great deal of strain.”
Grace was gliding those fingers against the sensitive skin under his arm again. He flinched away.
Her gaze leapt to his. “I’m sorry. Did that hurt you?”
“No.”
It was a lie. She was killing him with her tenderness, the concern in her eyes, the satiny pink of her lips mere inches from his own, awakening feelings he hadn’t ever experienced before.
No one had ever lookedat Grace the way Lucien Harcourt did now. He was staring down at her with those ice-blue eyes as if he could see to the very core of her, all of the guilty secrets she kept locked inside. Anger and grief at her mother for dying, hurt and the sense that Papa had betrayed her with Helen, that urge she sometimes got to charge out the front door of The Willows and keep running…
God knew, she saw truths in Lucien’s eyes that left her shaken as well, his defenses torn away in the aftermath of hissister’s attack. Lucien Harcourt, stripped bare in more ways than just the magnificent breadth of his hair-roughened chest.
As she pinned the ends of the bandage and tucked the ends in snugly, she looked up at him and forced a smile. “That should hold. I had Susan fetch one of Will’s shirts for you. I’m not sure you’ll be able to button it all the way.”
“It will do. Thank you.”
“If you wish, you can rest in one of the guest rooms, or I can have Susan summon the coach to take you home.”
“No. I will return to the picnic.”
“To make certain Cassandra knows you are all right,” she said softly.
He stared down into her face, his gaze a tangible force, as if he were a predator caught in a snare, while someone tended him. He cocked his head just a trifle to one side as if her understanding confused him.
She stilled, his intense gaze pulling her in.
“What is it about you?” he murmured. “Your kindness, humor? The way you deal with the world…capable, unflinching? It’s like I can’t help myself.” He framed her face with his hands, his fingertips masterful, and Grace felt warmth spread from the skin he touched to her breasts, her belly. He focused on her—not her whole face—but one feature at a time, the freckles on her cheekbone, the vulnerable curve where her earlobe brushed her jawline, the swell of her bottom lip, as if he were choosing the sweetest berry to taste. She pressed her thighs together, feeling her secret places soften.
He smelled of the herbs in the salve, the soap she’d used to cleanse him, and something uniquely his own. And she wanted to discover all of the secrets of that sensual mouth.
“No,” he whispered against her hair. “It’s not that I can’t help myself. I just don’t want to stop.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, until he lowered his mouth to the hollow behind her ear, tracing a warm path down to the cove where her collarbone arched. Fire trailed in his wake as he tasted her. The tip of his tongue found her pulsebeat. Then his lips were on hers, exploring with a skill that made her knees melt. She flattened her hand on his bare chest for balance, felt the edge of his bandage and pulled away from him, clutching her hand against her breasts.
“Your wound,” she stammered. “I shouldn’t have…”
“You didn’t. I did.” Those piercing blue eyes regarded her as if she was a puzzle he was attempting to solve. “It seems every time I see you, I take the most appalling liberties. I’d ask your pardon, but I’m not sorry.”
She swallowed hard. “Neither am I.”
He drew away from her, solemn. “And that is why we had best return to the tent.” He offered her his arm, and she laid her hand gently upon it as the two of them headed down the hallway. Partway through the corridor, he paused, staring intently at the objectionable wallpaper. “That peacockissporting a mustache,” he exclaimed.
“I’m afraid it’s the latest fashion for wallpaper hereabouts,” Grace said.
“I thought I was hallucinating, perhaps going into shock.” The ghost of a smile touched his lips, then he squared his shoulders and stepped out into the sunshine.
The rest of the company was beneath one of the awnings, the adults speaking a little too heartily to cover up their distress as they picked at the repast Grace had planned. Cassandra sat beside her maid in a breach of etiquette, the Italian woman peering out with her lone, fierce eye like a raven guarding treasure.
Grace saw Cassandra’s gaze fix on Lucien, the strange vacancy of earlier gone, replaced by wells of pain and confusion.What was wrong between brother and sister? Between the Harcourt children and their father? She remembered her own father’s warning about the family’s havey-cavey doings. The countess vanishing for decades, then reappearing. The daughters swept away from England. Rumors swirled as to the reasons for their banishment, and where the countess had been.
