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‘One of the postillions is all right, he only had a tap on the head. He’s looking after the other one in the carriage. The brigands have gone.’
‘I am not surprised.’ His eyes were closed again.
‘I only shot one of them,’ Cassandra protested. ‘I think the others were taken by surprise because they didn’t know there was anyone else in the carriage.’
Nicholas shifted his position and grimaced. ‘I thought I’d broken my collarbone, but I don’t think I have.’ He opened and closed his hand, wincing.
Cassandra probed gingerly. ‘No, I don’t think you have either, but it is bound to be very badly bruised. Can you get up? We need to get all of you to a doctor, I have no idea if there is any head damage. And besides, what will we do if they come back?’
Unsteadily, leaning on her shoulder, Nicholas made his way back to the coach. The stabbed postillion was slumped silently in one corner, the other stood holding his head and moaning.
‘There’s money in it for you if you can drive us on to Nice,’ she said firmly to the man with the headache. ‘You have done well, the Earl will not fail to reward you generously.’
It was almost dusk by the time they entered Nice at a decorous trot. Cassandra was too preoccupied with her patients to heed the famous groves of oranges and lemons or admire the white bastides, their doors and windows smothered in brilliant blooms.
To her relief, Nice was every bit as civilized and fashionable as the other coastal towns were not. The hotelier summoned a doctor with dispatch and made them comfortable in his best suite, while the wounded postillion was carried off to the servants’ quarters to have his wound dressed by the barber surgeon.
‘Monsieur le docteur will be here soon,’ the hotelier announced. ‘It would be best if you get your master undressed and into bed while you wait. I will send up wine and hot water.’
‘Undressed…er, I…’
‘You are his valet, are you not?’ The man shrugged his shoulders at the stupidity of the English. ‘You have not had a blow to the head also? You understand what I am saying?’
‘Perfectly,’ Cassandra replied haughtily. ‘I will look after Monsieur le Comte. You may leave.’
Nicholas was slumped back against the pillows, his face faintly green in the subdued light. Cassandra bit her lip, undecided how best to get him undressed. She told herself that she was being unnecessarily modest and, in an emergency such as this, propriety could not count, especially with a man suffering from concussion. Even Godmama would tell her not to be such a little ninny.
She pulled off his shoes and stockings, then his neck cloth. He did not stir. Emboldened, she unbuttoned his shirt, pulled it loose from the waistband of his breeches and tried to ease it free from behind his body. After a few minutes struggling to no avail, she sat on the edge of the bed and pulled him forward to rest against her breast while she slid the shirt free over his head.
She should have let Nicholas back down onto the pillows, but instead, Cassandra found herself holding him, his naked back warm and smooth under her fingers, his heart beating rhythmically against her chest. She had never realised that a man’s skin could be this smooth, that the play of strong muscles would be so alluring to the fingertips.
Her hesitant, gentle touch seemed to rouse him and he stirred, murmuring incoherently. His lips moved against her throat and Cassandra stiffened with shock at the intimacy and pleasure of the sensation. How long they would have stayed like that had not the doctor’s knock at the door intervened, she did not know.
Doctor le Blanc greeted Cassandra in excellent English, clucked with disapproval to find Nicholas still half-dressed and had him out of his breeches, into a nightshirt and between the sheets in a trice.
She was relieved to see how competent and efficient the doctor seemed. He kept up a constant flow of inconsequential but reassuring chatter while he probed and checked Nicholas from top to toe.
‘Very good, my lord, very good,’ he said as Nicholas stirred and opened his eyes. ‘No breaks, I am happy to say, although that is a most serious contusion on your shoulder. It will be painful for some time as it is so near the bone, but nothing a fit young man like yourself cannot endure. And you are concussed, so it is important to rest as much as possible in subdued light. Drink plenty of good water and no strong drink.
‘You have found a most excellent hotel, which is fortunate when you consider the number of your countrymen resident already in our lovely town.’
‘Does that account for your excellent English, monsieur?’ Nicholas asked as the doctor pulled his nightshirt back over his shoulder. It sounded as though his teeth were clenched.
‘But certainement, milord. Many of my patients are of the English nobility, here for the excellence of the climate and the efficacy of our sea bathing. I would recommend a course of immersions for your wound.’
Cassandra had retreated to the window when the doctor arrived, glad of the opportunity to regain her equilibrium. She rubbed her fingertips together, still feeling Nicholas’s body so warm and strong and yet, for once, so vulnerable.
It had seemed such a good idea to reassume her former rôle, but however much she might play the boy, she could no longer deceive herself that her feelings for Nicholas were anything but those of a woman for a man.
‘Cass? That is your name, is it not?’ The doctor was at her elbow and had obviously been talking to her for some time. ‘I have sent a message to the apothecary to prepare a salve. It must be applied three times a day and rubbed in well. The day after tomorrow, milord must go down to la plage and immerse himself in the sea for ten minutes. It does not matter if he cannot swim.’
‘He swims very well,’ Cassandra replied absently.
‘So much the better. Gentle exercise will help. Au’voir, milord, send for me if you have the slightest discomfort.’ He bowed himself out of the chamber as Nicholas shifted uncomfortably against the piled bolsters.
‘Slightest discomfort? French understatement, no doubt.’ He looked across at and held out a hand to her. ‘Cassie, come over here. You saved my life, you know.’
Cassandra walked to him as though he pulled a string and took his warm, strong hand in hers.
