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“Thank you,” she murmured and hurried up the stairs into the house without looking back.
***
Henry couldn’t say how long the attack lasted. Only that when he finally returned to himself, he was laid out on a chaise with a blanket over his feet like someone’s invalid grandmama. The room was dark except for a blazing fire, and his heart began to pound again. As he pushed the blanket away and tried to sit up, a calm voice cut through the shadows.
“Easy, Captain,” a woman murmured as a hand pressed against his shoulder and a familiar flowery scent filled the air. “Don’t move so quickly.”
Georgiana.
The last thing he clearly remembered was the feel of her soft, voluptuous figure beneath his own and how she tugged him closer until he grew ravenous with the need to once again taste the mouth that had haunted him for years. Henry shook his head in a futile attempt to rid himself of the memory.
God, he had almostkissedher mere moments after a violent attack. She must think him an absolute beast.
But as his eyes adjusted to the room’s low light, she didn’t look disgusted. Only concerned. “I had my footman and butler bring you to my study,” she explained as she drew her hand away. “I hope that’s all right.”
Henry silently mourned the loss of her touch as he moved to a sitting position. “Yes. Thank you.”
“Does that happen to you often?”
“Does what?”
She cocked her head at his obvious evasiveness, and he let out a breath. “No,” he admitted. “Not anymore.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
She rose and walked over to a tea cart, where she poured him a cup then held up a decanter of amber liquid with a questioning look. “Only if you join me,” he said. She smiled a little as she poured a splash into his cup and one for herself.
“You don’t seem very surprised by my episode,” he said, accepting the warm beverage.
“I used to volunteer at a home for veterans,” she said as she sat down beside him.
Henry raised an eyebrow. “Did you?” This was yet another unexpected revelation from Lady Arlington.
She nodded. “Some of the men still suffered from bouts of nerves. Even years later.”
“Poor devils,” he muttered before taking a sip. Then he leaned his head back against the chaise as the whisky burned through him. In some ways his return to England had been more difficult than his imprisonment.
“Would you like to talk about it?”
Henry rarely spoke about his experience, but she might understand. He wouldn’t tell her everything, of course. There were some things he still couldn’t speak of and some things he never would, like the exact scent of that dank, musty dungeon, the thick blackness of the isolated tower he had been thrown into after his failed escape attempt, and the haunting cries of fellow prisoners, men he had never seen whose fates had been far worse than his own.
“The first time it happened I had no idea what it was,” he began. “I was staying with my sister and her husband. A pack of neighborhood boys ran past the window in the middle of Sunday dinner shouting bloody murder, and I thought I was going to expire with my face planted in a plate of pudding. Luckily my brother-in-law is an excellent doctor, and he made sure I got help. One of his mentors was a German who had been a medic during the Franco-Prussian War and went on to work with men who had similar issues after returning home. Thanks to him, I learned to recognize the signs and anticipate episodes. Things have been better since then. Mostly.”
“That’s wonderful.” Her words sent a liquid heat through him that rivaled the whisky. “I read about what happened in Turkey,” she continued. “How you helped those two students.”
The gentleness in her voice settled over his shoulders like a warm blanket, but he shook it off. Henry took another bracing sip. “Considering they both ended up dead, I’d say my efforts fell rather short.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that,” she murmured. “At least you tried. That’s more than many would do in that situation. You were all strangers in a foreign country. Most people would probably have looked the other way, rather than offer help.”
He turned toward the fire. What would she say if he told her the truth? That unlike the story she had read in the newspapers, those two young men weren’t hapless architecture students at all, but fellow spies sent on a mission Henry had refused because it was too risky. He should have known the commodore would have found another way. Then perhaps those two wildly inexperienced young men might still be alive.
“Why did you stop volunteering?” he asked instead. What Henry would have given to be attended by someone like her in those first few harrowing months.
No. Notsomeone.
She stared at the fire as flickering light played on her face. “My husband.”
Henry shoved down the jealousy rising in his throat at the despondence in her voice. He needed to be bigger than this. Better. “I don’t believe I’ve offered you my condolences yet. I am sorry for your loss.”
