Page 106 of The Matrimonial Advertisement

Helena inhaled a steadying breath. She wasn’t going to fall apart. She refused to be that person anymore. “Indeed, Mrs. Jarrow. Will you bring hot water and linens to my bedroom? And a bottle of brandy, as well.”

“Right away, ma’am.”

Justin scowled down at her. At least, it looked like a scowl. It was hard to tell through all of the blood and swelling. “I thought you’d be asleep by now.”

“While you were out in the dark somewhere risking your life?” She took hold of his arm and directed him to the stairs. “If that’s what you thought, sir, then you don’t know me at all.”

Mr. Finchley backed toward the door. “As my presence is no longer required…”

“Wait,” Helena commanded. “We may yet need you to summon a doctor.”

“No we won’t.” Justin paused at the foot of the stairs to look back at Mr. Finchley. “Go home, Tom. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Mr. Finchley flashed him a grin. “It’s already tomorrow,” he replied before taking his leave.

Mr. Jarrow shut and bolted the door after him. “Will you be needing anything else, my lady?”

“No, thank you, Mr. Jarrow. That will be all.”

Mr. Jarrow sketched a tired bow and departed the hall.

And then Helena and Justin were alone.

She looked up at his battered face. “Why did you do it?”

“He deserved it.”

“But look at you,” she said softly. “Your poor face. He can’t have been worth it.”

Justin gazed steadily back at her. “No. But you are.”

Helena dipped another linen in the basin of bloody water and brought it to Justin’s face. She’d rinsed away most of the dried blood from his face and hands, revealing a haphazard collection of jagged cuts and scrapes, none of which appeared to be life threatening.

Justin held himself immobile as she tended him, enduring her attentions in stoic silence. He was seated on the edge of her bed with his booted feet on the floor. She stood between his legs, reaching up to dab at a wound on his temple. She felt his eyes on her as she worked.

“Did you think that’s what I wanted? To have you engage in fisticuffs with that great lummox?” She smoothed back a wayward lock of hair from his forehead in order to clean the wound beneath. “I would never have asked you to fight him on my behalf. Never.”

Justin allowed her to rail at him, unchecked. He offered not a word of explanation.

“How do you think I felt this evening? Never knowing from one minute to the next if you were safe or if you’d been murdered and thrown in the Thames?” She dropped the linen into the blood-tinged water in the basin and reached to unfasten the buttons at the collar of his shirt.

He caught at her hand. “What are you doing?”

“You must take this off,” she said.

“I have no injuries under my shirt.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. Unless you’d prefer I summon a doctor?”

He set his jaw. And then he released her hand, allowing her to unfasten his collar. When she’d finished, he quickly stripped his shirt off over his head.

Her gaze dropped down. There were abrasions on his chest and what looked to be bruises blooming along his ribs, but that wasn’t what made her heart stutter and her mouth go dry. No. It was the sight of him, so shockingly, gloriously masculine.

She’d never seen a gentleman’s naked chest before, except in books with pictures from classical antiquity. She remembered one such book with a plate depicting a statue of Prometheus chained to a rock. The Greek Titan had been partially unclothed, the lean muscles of his arms and chest well defined. Justin’s bare arms and torso were shaped along the same lines as that statue. Indeed, the hard planes and grooves of his muscles might have been chiseled from stone.

But unlike the marble Prometheus, Justin’s chest was lightly covered in a mat of black hair which tapered down in a narrow line, disappearing beneath his woolen trousers.

It was also covered with scars.