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She smoothed his brow with her thumb and kissed him. “The water in the basin’s like to be cold, but—”
She made to rise but he snatched her back by the arm. “Oh, no you don’t.” He tried to run his hand through her hair as he had done before, but found it tangled. “Let me.”
He stood from the bed, finding himself a touch lightheaded. He looked at the bedchamber door, aware of how quickly he lifted his weight from the mattress. It was the first time he had thought of bolts since barging through her window like a vagabond.
He heard her shifting in the bed, felt her gaze tracking him as he slid the bolt closed with millimeter movements. The water in the basin was cool, but not cold. Fortunately, they were both rumpled and heat-numb.
“What?” He sent a glance over his shoulder as he squeezed water from the sponge. She was watching him, the sheet still spooled around her feet, her bare form and her smile singing for him.
“Can a lady not admire her lover’s back?” She was stretching her limbs when he returned to the bedside, and she let him run the damp sponge between her legs. “I didn’t get to admire it properly during the act.”
He pulled a face. “Hm. I’m not sure there’s a position to remedy that. Perhaps a mirror, arranged for your viewing pleasure.”
She matched his grin as he returned to the basin and wiped his own body clean. When he started toward the bed, she stretched out her arms in invitation.
“Ah, not yet,” he said. “Can you sit up for me?”
A black brow raised at him, but she complied. He had tucked his right hand, which held her silver-backed brush, behind his back, and brought it around now.
“Rafe!” she whispered. “You cannot be serious. I’ll brush my own hair later—”
He consumed the end of her sentence with a kiss. “Come, sweetheart,” he said, his face a centimeter away. “Don’t deny me the pleasure.”
“You,” she said, looking at him through her lashes, “are a very bad man.”
He sat on the bed beside her, one bent leg cradling her back. He gathered a section of her hair and eased the brush through the ends, working his way a little higher with each stroke. “A very bad man, who is most singularly fascinated by you and your hair.”
She rolled her eyes even as she smiled.
They didn’t speak for several minutes. The sound of the brush’s bristles trailing through her hair, picking on the occasional snag, filled the space between them. He watched her shoulders relax, noticed the slowing rise and fall of her chest.
“Are you sore?” he finally asked.
“Not very.” She sniffed. “Are you going to share the news with me?”
It was a question, but it fell flat in the air.
The brush stuck on a tangle. “Sorry.” He steadied the crown of her head with his hand, easing the tines through the knotted place until it dissipated. “I have to leave, Sophie.”
She gave no outward reaction. Her gaze stared blankly ahead. He studied her profile, noted a faint pinch at the corner of her lips.
“My father received a letter. From the institution in Hampshire. He knows she’s not there.”
Bitter emptiness began its return, nipping at the corners of his spirit with insistent little bites. It made him righteously, perhaps undeservedly, irate. That he could be sitting here, with her, still in the greatest state of intimacy by all appearances, and feel truth already coming home to roost. He wasn’t ready.
He was not fucking ready.
“Does he suspect you?” Another question bearing an ambiguous tone. A cool, collected, Sophie-style inquiry.
God above. He didn’t want her upset; just the opposite: he wanted to be assured of her tenacity, that she could rebound swiftly from this news, the resilient creature that she was. But something about the utter lack of expressed feeling set his teeth on edge, as if her schooled tongue might be a dam holding back a tempest of emotion.
He had made his way round her whole head now, her hair brushed smooth and slightly frizzed, lying bountiful against the curve of her back. He continued dragging the bristles over her scalp, down to her ends, pretending the act hadn’t turned useless and hoping it wouldn’t become unwelcome.
“No, he doesn’t,” he said. “But he’s …” He considered his words. It seemed a vile desecration of this bed and their shared act to utter a word that even rhymed with Penney just now. Besides, that would give her cause for worry. “He’s like to go to Hampshire and rain hellfire on everyone at that institution who has kept this secret—whether they knew what they were about or not. I cannot let him do it.”
Her head had once swayed easily with the direction of his brush’s pull. Now it sat stiff and tall atop her shoulders. “And I cannot convince you otherwise?”
“No. If he discovers he’s paid into their hands for years to no effect— And besides, it will bring far too much attention to Mother’s name. If words breaks in London, the whole city might be scrutinizing red-haired ladies in search of her. No. I must stop him.”
