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He’d tell her that he had her stays in his valise and beg her to put them back on in the morning—that was what he would do.
Though that would still leave her legs bare. From her ankles all the way up to her... Up to her... He swallowed. All the way up. Whenever he’d caught a brief glimpse of her ankles today that was all he’d been able to think of. Those bare legs. And what awaited at the top of them.
Now that she’d removed her shoes, her feet were bare, too. Whatever he did, he must not look at her toes. If thoughts of her breasts and glimpses of her ankles had managed to work him up into such a lather, then seeing her toes might well tip him over the edge. There was something incredibly improper about toes. A woman’s toes, at any rate. Probably because a man only ever saw them if he’d taken her to bed. And not always then. Some women preferred to keep their stockings on.
Just as he was thinking about the feel of a woman’s stockinged leg, rubbing up and down his bare calves, Prudence flung herself back in the hay with a little whimper. And shut her eyes.
All his good resolutions flew out of the door. He strode to her bed of hay. Ran his eyes along the whole length of her. Not stopping when he reached the hem of her gown. His heart pounding, and sweat breaking out on his forehead, he breached all the barriers he’d sworn he would stay rigidly behind. And looked at her naked toes.
‘Good God!’
Her feet—the very ones he’d been getting into such a lather about—were rubbed raw in several places. Bleeding. Oozing. He dropped to his knees. Stretched out a penitent hand.
‘Don’t touch them!’
He whipped his hand back.
‘No, no, of course I won’t. They must be agonisingly painful.’ Yet she hadn’t uttered one word of complaint. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were getting blisters, you foolish woman?’
‘Because...because...’ She covered her face with her hands and moaned. ‘I was too proud,’ she muttered from behind her fingers. ‘It was my idea to walk wherever it is we are going. When I haven’t walked further than a mile or so since I was sent to England. And I boasted about being young and healthy. And I taunted you for not thinking of it. So how could I admit I wasn’t coping?’
‘Prudence,’ he said gently, immediately forgetting his earlier vow to address her only as Miss Carstairs, and removing her hands so that he could look into her woebegone little face. ‘You would have struggled to get this far even if you’d had stockings to cushion your skin. Those shoes weren’t designed for walking across rough ground. It would have been different if you had been wearing stout boots and thick stockings, but you weren’t. You should have said something sooner. We could have...’
‘What? What could we possibly have done?’
He lowered his gaze to her poor abused feet again. And sucked in a sharp breath. ‘I don’t know, precisely. I...’ It seemed as good a time as any to explain about the stocking she’d found in his pocket. ‘If I’d had both your stockings I could have given them to you. But I didn’t. There was only the one this morning...’
She looked up at him as though she had no idea what he was talking about. He’d been trying to explain that he wasn’t the kind of man who kept women’s underthings about his person as some kind of trophy. It made him even more aware of the immense gulf separating them. Of his vast experience compared to her complete innocence.
Though not the kind of experience that would be of any use to her now. He had no experience of nursing anyone’s blisters. Of nursing anyone for any ailment. ‘They probably need ointment, or something,’ he mused.
‘Do you have any ointment?’ she asked dryly. ‘No, of course you don’t.’
‘We could at least bathe them,’ he said, suddenly struck by inspiration. ‘There was a stream in the dip between this field and the next. I noticed it before, and thought it would come in handy for drinking water. But if it is cool that might be soothing, might it not?’
‘I am not going to walk another step,’ she said in a voice that was half-sob. ‘Not even if the stream is running with ice-cold lemonade and the banks are decked with bowls of ointment and dishes of strawberries.’
He took her meaning. She was not only exhausted and in pain, but hungry, too.
‘I will go,’ he said.
‘And fetch water how?’
He put his hand to his neck. ‘My neckcloth. I can soak it in the water. Tear it in half,’ he said, ripping it from his throat. ‘Half for each foot.’
She shook her head. ‘No. If you’re going to rip your neckcloth in two, I’d much rather we used the halves to wrap round my feet tomorrow. To stop my shoes rubbing these sores even worse.’
