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There was a jug on the nightstand. Isobel poured what seemed to be barley water and held it to Giles’s bruised lips. He winced as it touched, but drank deeply.
‘Better. Thank you. Now go ’way.’ His eyelids drooped shut.
‘Are you warm enough?’ There was no answer. She should go now and let him sleep. There was nothing she could do and yet she could not leave him. He had fought for her honour and for his friend who could not demand satisfaction for his sister. If she had only screamed when those men broke into her room, then none of this would have happened.
‘Idiot man,’ she murmured. ‘You try to convince me that you are a rake and then you almost get yourself killed for honour.’
Giles shifted restlessly. He should not be left like this. There was a chair by the fireside, she could sit there and watch him through the night; she owed him that.
She eyed the bed. It was wide enough for her to lie beside him without disturbing him. Isobel eased on to the mattress, pulled the edge of the coverlet up and over herself. When Giles did not stir she edged closer, turned on her side so she could watch his shadowed face and let herself savour the warmth of his body.
It was very wrong to feel like this when he was injured, she knew that. It was not only wanton, it was unbefitting of a gentlewoman. She should be concerned only with nursing a sick man, not with wanting to touch every inch of him, kiss away every bruise and graze, caress him until he forgot how much he hurt.
She must not do it. But she could lie there, so close that their breath mingled, and send him strength through her presence and her thoughts. Tomorrow she must face the consequences of his defence of her, of the debt she now owed him and her own jumbled emotions, but not tonight.
‘Oh, my Gawd!’
Giles woke with a jerk from a muddled, exhausting dream into pain that caught the breath in his throat and the sound of the valet’s agitated voice. He must look bad to shake that well-trained individual.
He kept his eyes closed while he took stock. Ribs, back, a twisted shoulder, aching jaw, white-hot needles down the side of his face and a foul headache. Nothing lethal, then, only bruises, cuts and the effects of the good doctor’s enthusiastic stitchery and drugs on top of a thoroughly dirty fist fight. But he had little inclination to move, let alone open his eyes. All that would hurt even more and, damn it, he had earned the right to ignore the world for a few minutes longer.
‘My lady!’
That brought him awake with a vengeance as the bedding next to him was agitated and a figure sat upright.
‘Oh, hush, Tompkins! Do you want to rouse the entire household?’
‘No, my lady. That’s the last thing I’d be wanting,’ Tompkins said with real feeling. ‘But you can’t be in here, Lady Isobel! What would her ladyship say?’
‘I was watching over Mr Harker last night and I fell asleep,’ Isobel said with composure, sitting in the midst of the rumpled bedding in her nightgown and robe. Giles closed his eyes again. This had to be a nightmare. ‘She would say I was very remiss to lie down when I became sleepy and we don’t want to upset her, do we?’
‘No, my lady,’ said the valet weakly.
‘So you will not mention this, will you, Tompkins?’
‘No, my lady.’
Neither the valet nor the woman in bed with him—in his bed—were paying him the slightest attention. Giles gritted his teeth and pushed himself up on his elbows as the valet went to draw back the curtains. ‘What the devil are you doing here, Isobel?’
‘I wanted to make sure you were all right.’ Her voice trailed away as she stared at him in the morning light and the colour ebbed out of her cheeks, leaving her white. ‘Of all the insane things to do, to tackle five men like that!’ She sounded furious.
‘Insane? I did not have a great deal of options. I could have run away and left James, I suppose.’ Damn it, he had fought for her and she was calling him an idiot?
‘That is not what I meant.’ Isobel slid from the bed and he turned his head away and tried to push himself upright, humiliated to find himself too weak to sit up and argue with her.
‘Sir, you shouldn’t try to sit up,’ Tompkins said. By the sound of it he was trying to envelop Isobel in Giles’s robe.
‘Pillows,’ Giles snapped, mustering his strength and hauling himself up. ‘And a mirror.’
‘Now I don’t think that would be wise, sir.’
‘Your opinion is not relevant, Tompkins. A mirror. At once.’
‘Sir.’ The valet piled pillows behind him, handed him a mirror and hovered by the bedside, his face miserable.
‘Unfasten this bandage.’
‘Giles—’
