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He held the pencil between his thumb and the two middle fingers of his right hand, the hand itself held in an awkward hook. Just looking at him, Helen’s hand ached in sympathy, but he continued to make small, precise movements. He’d obviously been using his hand thus for many years. She thought about what it must’ve been like, returning maimed from the Colonies and having to relearn how to draw. How to write. Had he been humiliated at having to practice a craft every schoolboy had mastered? Had he been frustrated?
Well, of course he’d been frustrated. Her mouth curved in a tiny smile. She knew something about Sir Alistair now. He would’ve broken pencils, torn up paper, been angered beyond bearing, and somehow he would’ve stubbornly kept at it until he could once again reproduce the fine drawings she’d seen in his book. He must’ve done so because she saw the result in front of her now—a scholar working on his manuscript.
She started forward, but as she did so, he exclaimed and dropped the pencil.
“What is it?” she asked.
His head jerked up and he glowered at her. “Nothing, Mrs. Halifax. You may leave the tea on that table.”
She set her tray down on the table indicated but ignored his demand to leave. Instead she hurried over to him. “What’s wrong?”
He was rubbing his right palm with his other hand and muttering about females who wouldn’t listen.
She sighed and took his right hand gently in hers, surprising him enough that he abruptly fell silent. His forefinger was a reddened stump under an inch long. His little finger had been amputated at the first knuckle. The remaining fingers were long with slightly broader tips, the nails well shaped. They were beautiful fingers on what had once been a handsome hand. She felt a streak of sorrow pierce her middle. How had something so beautiful come to be mutilated?
She swallowed down the lump in her throat and said huskily, “I don’t see an injury.”
He glanced sharply at her, and her eyes widened as she realized her faux pas. “A recent injury, I mean.”
He shook his head. “It’s merely a muscle cramp.”
He tried to withdraw his hand from hers, but she hung on. “I’ll see if Mrs. McCleod can warm a salve for you later. Tell me exactly where the cramp is.”
She held his hand between both of hers and massaged his broad palm with her thumbs, pressing firmly. His hand was warm, the skin smooth. He had calluses at the base of his fingers as if from some type of physical work.
“There’s no need—”
She looked up, suddenly angry. “Why isn’t there need? You’re in pain and I can help you. It seems to me that there’s every need.”
He looked at her, his eye cynical. “Why would you care?”
Did he think she’d back away at his harsh words? Run with girlish tears on her face? She wasn’t a girl—hadn’t been one since the age of seventeen.
She leaned into his face, still holding his hand. “What kind of woman do you think I am? Do you think I let just any man kiss me?”
His eye narrowed. “I think you’re a nice woman. A kind woman.”
The patronizing answer nearly drove her to violence. “A nice woman? Because I kissed you? Because I let you touch me? Are you mad? No woman is that nice and certainly not I.”
He simply looked at her. “Then why?”
“Because.” She took his face in her palms, the left side of his face bumpy and ragged under her hand, the right side smooth and warm. “I do care. And so do you.”
And she set her lips against his. Deliberately. Softly. Putting all her longing, all her loneliness into the gesture. She started the kiss lightly, but he tilted his head beneath hers, angling and opening his mouth, and somehow she found herself on his lap with his tongue in her mouth.
Not that she protested. She’d been waiting for this for days now, and the reality set her limbs to trembling. She’d been a mistress, a bought woman, for all of her adult life, but this was something beyond her experience. A sharing, an exploring. She was an equal in this place with this man, and somehow the knowledge that she was as accountable as he, as involved as he, made her all the more aroused. Her fingers actually shook against the wool fabric of his coat as he explored her mouth with his tongue. Sweetly, darkly, erotically. Until she feared that she might meet her culmination simply from his lips.
She drew her head back, gasping. “I—”
“Don’t stop me,” he murmured. His hands were on the laces of her bodice, rapidly pulling them free. “Let me see you. Let me touch you.”
She nodded and watched him. Stopping was the very last thing on her mind. His face was intent, his one eye entirely focused on the task of opening her bodice. She could feel a blush start at her throat. It’d been years since Lister had bedded her, and even then she didn’t remember this intensity, this single-minded purpose. What if she disappointed him? What if she was unable to please him?
Her bodice parted, and he drew it off her, laying it absently on the table along with her fichu. His gaze never left her bosom. He began working on her stays.
She cleared her throat. “Can I—”
“Let me.” His eye flicked up to hers. “Do you mind?”
