Page 32 of Lady Petra and the Wolf

Chapter Twelve

Wolf could count on one hand the number of times he had been embarrassed in his lifetime. He, who had engaged in the most vigorous bedsport with the various widows of the ton, had little capacity for humiliation at his own nakedness. And yet, as he lay on a table, sans clothing, while the woman he loved beyond reason, who would never love him back, applied whiskey to his arse, his skin flushed wildly in arousal, humiliation, and awareness.

While he had set out to learn more about her perspective, he had not imagined he would end up in such a state. Wolf had long entertained fantasies of the lady stripping his clothing from his body, but he had been conscious in these imaginings and they often came after she had forgiven him. In his dreams, she was not seated behind him threading a needle that she was planning to insert—

“Can I have some of that whiskey?” he bit out.

There was a pause, then the sound of several glass objects clanked behind him.

“I need you to sit up on your elbows.” Petra returned with the whiskey and two tin cups.

“Are you joining me, my lady?” Wolf asked as he raised himself to his elbows.

“Would you, er, like me to cover you while we…?” Petra flushed, not for the first time that evening. Though he nurtured a desperate hope that the bloom upon her cheeks served as an indicator of any lingering regard, Wolf chided himself that the flush was merely a consequence of the startling impropriety of their situation and his general nakedness.

“It’s fine,” he sighed. She was going to see it all anyway. Again, he had wished for far different circumstances. And yet his bad luck had brought him to her, so perhaps it was good fortune disguised as bad. He was going to choose to see it that way, he thought, as he watched Petra pour two whiskeys, one significantly larger than the other.

“More for you, I need to keep my wits about me to sew you up,” she murmured as she handed him the tin cup.

“To your handiwork,” he raised the cup and drank it in one gulp. Petra, for her part, only betrayed her intolerance for whiskey with a small cough.

Before she began, he had to ask. “Lady Petra,” he began.

“Yes?” she answered too quickly. Whether it was because she was embarrassed or because she wished to evade the subject he was about to address, he did not know.

“I know this afternoon has been chock full of the strangest series of events imaginable, but where in the blazes are we?”

“Ah…that is the question, isn’t it?” Petra collected the tin cups and disappeared from his line of sight.

“I know I am evading.” Her sigh was audible behind him. “But it is a long story. I would not have told you before, but you were honest with me about why you were here…Wolf.” Despite the chill all over his body, something warmed inside him at her words. It wasn’t Jules or Julian, but he recognized the olive branch before him.

“Do you mind if I start on your wound? I would be more inclined to tell you if I have something to do with my hands.”

Swallowing his pride again, Wolf lowered himself down so that he could rest his head on the padded table, resigned to this humiliating yet oddly intimate exercise in restraint. It only made him appreciate the lady more, as she was being kind to him despite what he had done to her.

“This is going to sting for a moment.” Behind him, Wolf heard the tipping of a bottle, then felt a sharp burn against his wound. Although he wished to remain strong in front of the lady, he must have made an audible hiss.

“Sorry.” Petra’s voice was soothing as she dabbed at the wound. “I had to clean your wound and staunch some of the blood. This next part might not hurt as much, but it will be…uncomfortable.”

“I think ‘uncomfortable’ has already been reached today. I cannot be more uncomfortable than I have already been, so go on.”

The next thing he knew, there was an odd tugging at the site of his wound. Pushing away the thought of what Petra must see right now, and of how her featherlight touch stirred a pulsing within him that traveled up his inner thigh, straight to his groin…he returned to their previous topic.

“My lady,” he grunted, attempting to ignore the odd sensation of her stitching his backside.

“My lord.” Her voice came from behind him.

“You were going to explain where we are.”

“Yes.” Petra paused in her ministrations and Wolf already missed the contact, uncomfortable though it be. “To understand this place, it goes back several years. Well before my come out.”

Wolf gestured, unsure of whether she could see him or not. “I have all the time in the world for a yarn, as you can see.”

“Quite,” Petra hummed to herself, and he felt that odd tug at his wound again. “As I told you before, my mother died when I was a girl and my father soon remarried. My father’s second wife was not much more than a girl herself, and though he tried, my father never got his heir and his spare from her. Sadly, she died in the process. He seemed to give up after that. Within a year or so, I started to notice a great turnover in the maids at Kemberley House, though never if we went to the family seat, only in town. I knew all the maids because, I suppose I was rather lonely and they were kind to me.”

Wolf wished he could turn around and take her in his arms at such a statement, then remembering his bleeding backside and his nakedness, thought better of this idea.

“It wasn’t until my governess, Miss Winston, left under cover of night that I realized that something untoward was going on, but I was not sure what it was.” In the quiet of the room, he could hear her breath quicken. “But it wasn’t until it happened to me that I knew what it was.” She paused in her speech and the sewing stopped momentarily. “Have you ever read the novelist Elizabeth Sheppard?”