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He led her to a door leading to the cottage’s sole bedroom. Her expression was alive with curiosity, but she made no comment when he removed several blankets from an armoire and handed them to her. William ruffled around, searching for something that she could possibly put on. He plucked one of his shirts and held it out to her.
“This is the only thing suitable I have for you.”
She stared at it for a long time before she reached for it. “Thank you.”
Hell. He had to ask. “Do you need my help in undressing?”
“Perhaps my boots,” she whispered.
Pippa sat on the lone chair in the room, and he removed the first riding boot with no problem. The second one was much harder. She cried out when he tried to tug it off and when he glanced up, tears glistened in her eyes. It damn well gutted him to see it.
“I will have to cut it off,” he said gruffly, reaching into his boot for a hunting knife he always traveled with to the country. William was damn careful, but he still brought her a measure of pain. It took a while to realize with every gasp of pain from her, he paused his actions to soothingly rub her shin and muttered crooning nonsense. Finally, he removed the boot, carefully set them aside and removed her stockings. The ankle was swollen and already mottled. It even appeared as if the skin had broken in a few spots.
“It does not look good,” she whispered.
“It must hurt like the devil.” William scrubbed a hand over his face and peered outside the small bedroom window at the sleeting rain outside. Pippa needed a physician. “Hurry and change from these wet clothes. When you require me, call.”
He stood and walked from the room.
“William?”
He glanced over his shoulder. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted, the color high in her cheeks. How small and vulnerable she appeared. “Yes, Pippa?”
She drew in a quick, fortifying breath. “Thank you, my lord. There is no doubt I would still be outside in the ghastly weather if you had not found me.”
He curled his fingers in a fist at his side, for he had the urge to reach out and hold her against him. “Think nothing of it. I am damn glad I saw you.”
William opened the door and escaped into the small parlor, grateful to be breathing the air that did not smell like the tempting woman he left in the bedroom. He went out into the storm and made sure that Phoenix was unsaddled and rubbed down. He then set about piling hay in the lean-to shed where Phoenix would be staying, doing his damnedest to not think about Lady Pippa and that they were likely trapped together for a few days.
It would be torture. Yet…his gut told him it would also be something wonderful.
Bloody hell.
CHAPTEREIGHT
Pippa did not know if it was just a horrible coincidence or some sort of divine fate, but she was alone with the marquess in a cottage, clearly caught in a storm no one could have predicted. He had also rescued her, for on her ride across the beautiful woodlands she had realized how remote the duke and duchess’s estate and surrounding forests were. She could have been stranded for days, and no one would have found her.
But he had. Pippa still did not know what to make of it, but she was grateful. She looked around the bedroom with which he had seemed so intimately acquainted. Did it belong to a lover?
Moving carefully, she removed the breeches, hissing low beneath her breath at the awful pain it caused in her ankle. Her riding top habit was the next to go, and she tugged on his shirt, gasping to see that the hem only stopped at her knees. Surely she could not leave this bedroom so exposed. Pippa reached for one of the blankets, dried her hair as best as possible, and then wrapped the other around her like a toga. It worked well enough to cover her from chest to toes, and she hopped and hugged the walls until she left the bedroom.
He glanced up from where he emptied hot water into a sort of copper pail/pan. “Why didn’t you call me?”
Before she could reply, she was swept up into his powerful arms and lowered to sit in a chair. “Thank you.”
He made an irritated sound beneath his breath, and she bit back her smile. William went over to the stone counter of the small kitchen, took up a sack, opened it and poured some of the contents into the water in the pail. He brought that pail over to her and stooped.
“Place your foot in.”
She wrinkled her nose and peered cautiously down into the clear water. “What is it?”
“Heated water with salt.”
Pippa dragged the blanket up, baring her shin and tentatively placed her foot in the water. She hissed at the sting and jerked her foot.
“Do not take it out. Bear with the discomfort. I know you can.”
Pippa forced herself to bear the sting. “How do you know that I can?”
