Owen didn’t stop walking until he reached his room, a chamber that adjoined Anna’s. He supposed Mrs. Kirkpatrick put him here because it was the second largest room in the house, but he couldn’t help regretting the proximity to her. He could hear every sound, every thump through the walls. Every time she cried out from one of her many nightmares, he tensed.
Nor was the situation seemly. Mrs. Kirkpatrick must have decided he did not care about propriety, as he had brought the girl into his house in the first place. Or she merely thought there was no risk of anything inappropriate transpiring between him and a bedridden female. He would have agreed with the latter except that tonight she had looked beyond fetching in that absurdly prim nightgown, her big brown eyes glowing in the dark at him.
Her trust in him was utter and complete and baffling. She looked at him as though he were truly something good and heroic. Someone who could teach her to protect herself against everything evil in this world. Even as he tried to warn her that he might very well be the thing she most needed protection from.
He stared at the adjoining door as if he could see through the rich, polished wood, straining for a sound of her on the other side. He couldn’t stomach the sound of her whimpers and cries and do nothing. He had decided to just watch her for a little while, to assure himself she was well, when she had awoken so abruptly. And then he’d talked to her. He inhaled a ragged breath. That had been a mistake.
Striding to his balcony doors, he braced his hands on the iron railing of the balcony and stared out at the night. Her presence didn’t quite aid in his goal of solitude. He had thought he would return to Town and lose himself here. Wrap himself in the comfort of memories of better days.
His plan was simple, and it did not involve people. It did not involve her.
Except that he was here now and so was she. His fingers tightened on the railing as he reminded himself that the situation was temporary. Once she was on her feet, once she regained her memory, he could wash his hands of her. If she never remembered her past, then he’d grant her some funds and settle her wherever she wished to go. He had more than enough money and no one to share it with—now or ever. He would never marry. When he died, his title would pass back to some distant Scottish relation on his mother’s side. He might as well help Anna with a fresh start. Perhaps the magnanimous gesture would clear some of the stain besmirching his black soul.
He winced at that unlikelihood. No good deed would ever be enough for that. He released a soft laugh. She thought him a hero. It was laughable. He had killed so many fathers. Brothers. Sons. He sucked in a deep breath. He simply needed to make certain he didn’t act on any of the unwelcome urges he was experiencing around her. Simple indeed.
She was a female residing beneath his roof . . . her chamber adjoining his. He told himself it was nothing more than that. Proximity was the temptation . . . and the unwitting invitation he read in her eyes. He had not spent himself on a woman since returning to England. He should pop in at the brothel he and Jamie had visited before setting sail with their regiment.
Returning to his chamber, he contemplated doing just that. The hour wasn’t too late for such diversion. Shrugging off his dressing robe, he slid back into bed, uninspired to make the effort. When it came down to it, he simply didn’t want to badly enough.
That was the reason he told himself he didn’t want to go. That reason alone.
Annalise sighed as the warm water enveloped her. Her muscles immediately eased and softened. Even the itchy ache in her leg felt better. She closed her eyes in a long blink, reveling in the sensation. Up until now she’d been bathing herself from a basin with a sponge. This was heaven.
“Nice?” Mrs. Kirkpatrick asked, her face intent as she sprinkled salts into the steaming water.
Annalise nodded, trying not to feel uncomfortable naked and exposed beneath her gaze. “Heavenly.”
“Just one more week.” The barest hint of a smile graced the housekeeper’s lips. “Then you’ll be on your feet.”
“I cannot wait.” Sitting up higher in the tub, she lightly stroked her leg in the water, hoping the bone there was healing as it should so that she could attempt to walk next week. Please, God, let me still walk. Her hands stilled over the thigh, hoping, praying with a fervency that burned through her soul that it would be no worse than before. That she would still be able to walk.
Tears burned her eyes as self-pity threatened to overwhelm her. No. She would not weep. Not when she didn’t even know how bad it was. Besides, she wasn’t that girl anymore—weak and given to self-pity. No matter how damaged her leg, she would learn to function.
“I’ll be back shortly.” Mrs. Kirkpatrick arranged the towel alongside the soaps, salts, and bell sitting on the small table she had dragged beside the copper tub.
Annalise looked up from her leg. “Thank you.”
“Just ring the bell if you need assistance or when you’re ready to get out.” She nodded to the bell on the table and then departed, her gray, starched skirts scratching on the air as she left. The door thudded after her.
Alone now, she stared down at her body, much slimmer than it had been before she went over the side of her honeymoon barge. The weeklong fever had robbed her of some weight. Even after she woke, her appetite did not quite return in full. She could detect her hip bones now. Her waist appeared smaller, dipping before swelling out into her hips. She splayed a hand over her belly, noting how it didn’t quite push against her palm any longer.
Careful not to bend her leg, Annalise dipped her head back into the warm water. Reaching for the soap, she made quick work washing the long strands into a deep lather until her scalp tingled. With a sigh, she arched her neck and rinsed the hair clean.
Leaning back in the tub, she used the sponge to wash her body, scrubbing her skin until it glistened pink. Finished, she wrung out the sponge and leaned back to relax in the tub again. Naturally, her thoughts drifted to him.
He’d stayed away since his late night visit to her chamber. The nightmares hadn’t stopped. They still haunted her, but he did not show again when she woke with a cry on her lips. That bothered her most of all. The possibility that he had ceased to care.
She heard the occasional sound coming from his room, so she knew he hadn’t taken up residence elsewhere. He simply chose to ignore her. As he had since the beginning. As though she was something contagious, a disease he must keep his distance from.
Initially, the realization hurt. She wondered if she had done or said something, but then she dismissed that notion. He’d rescued her, offered to help her, brought her here to his home and then proceeded to ignore her. Her thoughts of him grew less charitable with each passing day. Wretch.
If she didn’t need him so much, if she had anywhere to go, she’d leave. And perhaps that was what he wanted. He’d certainly tried to scare her off . . . warning her that he was a killer. As if that would deter her. She needed a man like him, and she knew him to be honorable—even if he seemed to think otherwise.
She eyed the table beside her where the bell sat. The water was losing its heat. She supposed she should ring for Mrs. Kirkpatrick. She extended her arm, stretching as far she could and bumping the jar of salts, knocking it over against the bell. The bell toppled off the table with a clang, rolling a bit before stopping. Well out of her reach.
Her arm dropped over the tub’s edge as she eyed the distant bell with malice. “Splendid.” Now she would have to wait until the housekeeper remembered her.
Falling back in the tub, she relaxed in the water that was growing chillier by the moment. Minutes ticked by. Thinking the housekeeper might be nearby, she called out, “Hello! Mrs. Kirkpatrick! Hello?”
No response met her cry. She waited, hoping to hear the woman’s firm tread. Nothing. After a few more moments she called out for her again.
Suddenly the door to the adjoining room swung open.
She gasped softly. He was dressed for the day in trousers and a jacket, his cravat askew as if tossed by the wind. Even his tanned cheeks looked wind-blown. Or perhaps his color was high from simply opening the door and finding her naked in the tub. Although she doubted it. He was not the sort of man to react with embarrassment when coming face-to-face with a naked woman.
Her skin tingled and her belly fluttered as she considered precisely what sort of man he was and what he might typically do when confronted with a naked female.
He didn’t move from where he stood, and she knew he could likely see no more than her bare shoulders from his vantage . . . perhaps the top swells of her breasts. She also knew she should be mortified. The old Annalise would duck beneath the waterline as much as she could. She’d probably even demand that he leave the chamber in loud, screeching tones.
But not now. This Annalise—Anna—held herself still even as the heat crawled up her neck to her cheeks.
Most of her waking moments had been spent thinking about him. His hands, so strong and masculine. The handsome face, chiseled and tan from the sun. The dark blue eyes that stared at her with intensity. Even when she could read nothing of his thoughts, the eyes were always looking, probing, evaluating her in a way that made her feel noticed. Seen. Perhaps for the first time in her life. She wasn’t poor crippled Annalise when he looked at her.
Across the room his eyes looked dark as a night ocean, black and fathomless deep. Her chest almost ached looking at him, so darkly handsome. Nothing like Bloodsworth’s elegant beauty. She had thought the duke an angel the first time she spotted him. Considering the man she thought to be an angel tried to murder her, perhaps she would be safer with a man who looked more like he resided in Hades.
“Are you . . . hurt?” His deep voice echoed throughout the cavernous room.
“I’m fine. I was reaching for the bell.”
His gaze flickered to the fallen bell and then shot back to her in an instant, almost like he couldn’t look away.
“I’ll fetch her for you.” He started to turn.
“No.” Her quick response tumbled from her lips before she could consider. “You can likely assist me with much more ease than Mrs. Kirkpatrick. She has been complaining of her back lately.” A slight exaggeration perhaps. The woman had mentioned it only once when Annalise caught sight of her rubbing the base of her spine.
He hesitated.
She pulled the towel from the table and draped it over her, not caring that doing so brought the fabric into the water with her. Soaking wet, it afforded some shield to her body. It clung like a second skin to her curves, covering her breasts and stopping at her knees.
“If you please, could you lift me out to the bed?”
He hesitated for a moment.
She arched a brow. “If you are not up to it, perhaps you could call the groom . . .”
His features tightened, lips compressing. She resisted a smile as he moved across the room with hard strides, his boots thudding on the wood with precision.
He stopped beside the tub, and she felt his gaze everywhere. She glanced down at herself. The towel wasn’t only a second skin, but it was practically translucent. The dark outline of her nipples was clearly visible, not to mention the shadow of hair at the juncture of her thighs.
Her hand swished lightly in the water beside her hip. A distant part of herself, that echo of the girl she once was, reeled with the shock of what was happening—what she was inviting to happen. She knew. She wasn’t some dim girl who could not appreciate her actions or what they might lead to. She understood, and she welcomed it. What was she saving herself for? Certainly not a murderous husband. The reminder of him served to sting. That she could have been so trustworthy, so naive, made her angry.
Maybe she wanted this. Wanted him just because this was so apart from Richard and who she used to be. Owen was a world away from that.
Leaning down, he slid his arms beneath her in the water and lifted her high against his chest. Water rushed back down into the tub in a heavy downpour.
She looped an arm around his neck. Her other hand held the wet fabric of the towel to her chest. The clammy material sticking to her flesh wasn’t the most comfortable sensation, but she ignored it, concentrating on him instead. Not a difficult task.
This close, she could see the darker line of blue, almost black, rimming his irises. “Sorry. I’m getting you wet.”
Water pattered to the floor, puddling around them. He glanced to the screen. Obviously dismissing that as a possibility, he carried her to the bed and set her down on the edge.
She gingerly slid back so her leg was stretched out. “I’m soaking the bed.” She plucked at the edges of the towel plastered to her.
He moved to the chaise and snatched the pashmina blanket. Returning, he extended it to her. “I’ll take the towel. You can pat yourself dry with this.”
Holding out the blanket for her to take when she was ready, he turned sideways, affording her some privacy, and she should have been relieved for that. Appreciative even. But she was beyond placing any value on her modesty or virtue around him. She didn’t want him to turn away from her. She stared hard at his too beautiful profile, the slash of his eyebrows, several shades darker than his golden blond hair, the sharp cut of his square jaw.
Then the thought came that maybe he had no wish to see her naked. Maybe that was why he had been avoiding her. Perhaps she repulsed him—just as she had repulsed Richard. The possibility slid through her sourly, settling sickly into the pit of her stomach.
She desperately didn’t want to think that. And yet if that was the truth, the new Annalise wouldn’t run from it. Emboldened with that thought burning through her, she peeled back the towel from her body and let it hit the floor with a loud smack.
Air swept over her, chilling her flesh. Her nipples rose and hardened. She gazed at his profile, willing for him to look at her with something that was revulsion or even apathy. A deep hunger grew to a simmer in her blood as she willed him to look. For emotion to crack his implacable features. For him to react to her nakedness. To her. For him to feel the same attraction she felt for him.
Several more moments passed, stretching interminably until he glanced down at her, undoubtedly expecting her to be covered up by now, the pashmina blanket up to her chin. Anything except to be lying exposed on the bed like some kind of offering.
Her gaze locked with his. Her arms held her up from the waist, palms positioned flat down on the bed just behind her. She had no idea if it was a flattering pose. She didn’t risk a look at herself—only him. He filled her vision, her world in that moment.
“Cover yourself.”
The words could have stung if there wasn’t a tremor in his voice. A slight wavering that belied the rejection.
She smiled slowly, hoping her action—or inaction—would be words enough.
He extended the blanket another half inch closer. She flicked it a glance, dismissing it, and looked back at him.
She didn’t read revulsion in his gaze. There wasn’t that flash of disgust she caught sight of on Bloodsworth’s face that last night. Of course, there wasn’t anything in Owen’s deep blue eyes. Just the usual fathomless dark. And yet his features looked strained, his jaw locked tight. A muscle feathered beneath the flesh of his cheek—a telltale sign that he wasn’t unaffected. Instinct told her this was a good thing.
“Anna?” His voice was all exasperation. The blanket bobbed in his hand. “What are you doing?”
This time she spoke, her annoyance surfacing. “I would think that was obvious.” She moistened her lips, letting her tongue trail her bottom lip just as she had seen other women do. The girls she apprenticed with had done that on more than one occasion when they wanted to entice a man. Certain male customers with plump pockets frequented the shop. They stopped in to purchase some frippery for their wives or sisters. Many a time she had found Agathe or Sally in the back, in the storeroom or in a closet, skirts hiked indecently while a man fondled their thighs.
She stared at him, trying to communicate with her heavy-lidded eyes: Trying to seduce you. Only it occurred to her that she wasn’t doing it very well if he was prodding her to cover up.
He stepped forward, draping the blanket over her, the backs of his fingers brushing her bare shoulders. Heat sparked on her skin at the contact, and from the way he quickly pulled back, she knew he must have felt it, too.
“I don’t think this is a very good idea.”
She leaned forward and seized his hand, her fingers circling around his wrist and holding fast, desperate to keep some form of physical contact between them. “And why not?”
His gaze drifted to her hand, lingering there for a moment before looking back to her face. “For one thing, you cannot even stand.”
“I’ll be on my feet next week. Besides . . . I don’t need to stand.”
He shook his head, his dark gold hair tossing in a way that forced the longing inside her to grow to an actual physical ache. “I’m not in the habit of taking advantage of injured young women in my care.”
“Then a week from now you’ll have no qualms?” She cocked her head, enjoying herself a tad too much. “Your honor could be appeased then?”
“I did not say that. Have you also forgotten you have not fully recovered your memory? How do you know you’re even unattached? What if you are married?”
The question hit its mark. She schooled her features to reveal nothing of the sting his words caused.
“I’m not,” she quickly replied, the lie tripping easily off her tongue. She hardly felt like a wife. Especially not the wife of a man who threw her away. A shudder rippled over her at the idea of being married to him. That she belonged to him. It might be a matter of legal record, but she was not his wife. She was not married to that monster.
“Or perhaps your heart is attached—”
“It’s not,” she countered, that not a lie at all.
“How do you know?”
“Because I would feel it here.” She placed a hand over her heart. “I would know.”
He snorted. An indulgent smile played on his lips. “You’re a romantic.”
“We are consenting adults. What’s wrong if we—” She considered her words. “—amused ourselves?”
He released a breath, his expression sobering once again. “You don’t know what you want.”
“I do.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re confused.”
She sighed. “Don’t patronize me. I did not get pulled from that river yesterday. My faculties are fully intact and functioning. I may have lost my memory but not my intelligence.”
“Then I trust that a good night’s rest will restore your good sense.”
Her cheeks burned. “So if I wasn’t injured . . . if you knew my name to be Miss Anna Smith, then you would have no qualms?” Whether he desired her shouldn’t matter so much. But it did. It would mean that he wanted her. That she didn’t repulse him. And after Bloodsworth that mattered more than ever. To be wanted, desired.
He opened his mouth, but words seemed to elude him.
With a grunt, she released his hand and started to pull herself back on the bed away from him, disgusted with him. With herself. What about her failed to entice a man? “If you could, please send Mrs. Kirkpatrick along. She can help—”
With a growl, he grasped her shoulder, stopping her from further retreat. His knee came down on the bed beside her. The mattress dipped, and she slid a bit closer whether she willed to or not.
He stabbed a finger at himself, directly in the center of his chest. “Don’t look at me as though I’m something beneath your shoe because I insist on doing the right thing and not using you as you’re begging me to.” His gaze raked her, scathing and thorough as though she were still naked and not covered with the blanket he thrust upon her.
“I’m not asking to be used!”
“Oh, come now. You’re not asking for anything honorable from me.” He thrust his face closer, his body radiating anger.
She pushed at his chest with the base of one palm, her other hand clinging to the blanket at her throat. “I never heard of a man taking such offense over a little flirting. Go. Away.” She bit off each word, her face flushing hotly with shame.
“Oh. You are accustomed to flirting in this manner, then? Has that memory returned to you?”
His eyes glimmered with accusation, and she knew then, without a doubt, that he doubted her story. He doubted her, and yet he allowed her to remain with him. Was he toying with her?
“You’re hateful,” she fairly growled. “I cannot even fathom why I entertained the notion of you . . . of me . . . oh!”
“Nor I.”
She inhaled a deep breath through her nose
Indeed. What had she been thinking? She certainly shouldn’t crave his touch. Or kiss. Or anything else. That had been a colossal miscalculation on her part. He clearly preferred not to sully himself.
Suddenly, irrationally, she wanted to scratch at his face looming so closely over her, all stark, handsome lines and tempting shadows. She shoved at his chest yet again. “Remove yourself.”
His jaw hardened and he closed his hand over hers. She could feel the thud of his heart against her palm.
“You are hardly in a position to issue commands.”
And the truth of that statement only angered her further. To be vulnerable, weak . . . it was everything she had vowed to never be again. And yet here she was again. She curled her fingers into a tight fist and dug her nails into her tender flesh.
Their gazes held, locked. The air surrounding them crackled with tension. She couldn’t help thinking that he resembled some kind of dark angel risen to tempt her to sin. Considering she had done her damnedest to tempt him, and to no avail, she could have laughed at the comparison.
“Get off me,” she repeated, lifting her head off the bed, bringing their faces closer. She didn’t know how she dared to challenge him. Naked, leg broken, she was hardly in a position to make demands.
“Oh, now my nearness offends you?” His deep voice mocked. This close, his eyes gleamed with a light in the centers, almost like the moon off inky waters. “What a capricious nature you have.”
“You’re impossible,” she whispered.
“No more than you. Moments ago you threw yourself at me. What’s next? A marriage proposal?”
She laughed. True, genuine laughter. “Is that what you think? Marriage? To you?” She gulped a breath, stifling her laughter. “That would be akin to not being married at all. You’re never around and when you are you hardly speak. You certainly won’t touch—”
The rest of her words were cut off by his mouth. They slammed over hers roughly. She cried out, but the sound was lost, consumed in those ravaging lips. Their teeth clanged briefly in a fierce collision. It was nothing like the sweet, gentle kisses she had fantasized about with great anticipation those many weeks before her wedding.
Nor was it anything like the quick, chaste kiss Bloodsworth gave her after the completion of their vows. It was savage and relentless, punishing. She whimpered and pushed at his chest, and that must have affected him because suddenly his lips gentled on hers.
He nibbled on her bottom lip sweetly, almost apologetically. When he stroked the bruised flesh with one swipe of his tongue, everything inside her shook alert, awake and alive and hungry.
His mouth lifted off hers slowly. Feeling him slipping away and loathing the loss of his warmth, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him back down over her, mashing his lips to hers.
This time she kissed him, nibbled and sucked at his bottom lip in the same manner he just did with her. When she set her tongue to him, licking, he groaned against her. His hands fisted in the blanket covering her, tugging it lower in the process. Cool air wafted over her bare shoulder.
He was careful with his weight, straddling her, his knees on either side of her hips. Meanwhile she let her hands roam, reveling in the freedom to touch him. Her fingers drifted from his shoulders to his neck, his jaw, his face, and then back around to tangle in his hair.
“Anna,” he breathed into her mouth the moment before his tongue touched hers. A chill chased over her at the sensation. Goose bumps broke out over her skin as his tongue began a dance with her own, licking, tasting, stroking. Her belly tightened, grew heavy and aching.
The hand clutching a tight fistful of the blanket covering her loosened and smoothed out over her breast, cupping the mound through the fabric that she wished wasn’t there. She arched into that hand, crying out as those splayed fingers pressed and caressed her back.
“Miss Anna, do you need any help yet?”
Owen launched himself off her and the bed, leaving her gasping, her hands bare, empty and bereft. He took several steps until he was a good distance from her.
Annalise lifted her head to glare at the housekeeper.
Mrs. Kirkpatrick grasped the edge of the door, looking back and forth between the two of them in horror. “Forgive me, my lord, I did not realize you were here.” Her gaze lingered on Annalise. Self-conscious beneath the woman’s shocked gaze, she pulled the blanket back to her chin.
“I was just leaving.” Without another glance at her, Owen strode from the room, passing Mrs. Kirkpatrick on his way out.
“Well, then. Let’s get you dressed,” the housekeeper said as she advanced. But Annalise paid little heed as Mrs. Kirkpatrick buzzed about the room, collecting her bedclothes.
She brushed her lips, still tender and warm from his mouth. He’d proven he wasn’t immune to her. He wanted her. And in a week she would be on her feet again. Then he couldn’t hide behind his excuses of honor. She wouldn’t be bedridden. One more week and he couldn’t hide from her anymore.
It would be the longest week of her life.
Owen fled to his chamber as if the hounds of hell were after him. He realized he could have used his adjoining door, but he’d been too rattled at the time to recall that fact.
Now he paced the length of his bedchamber, staring at the adjoining door, listening to the sounds of female voices on the other side. He had no doubt Mrs. Kirkpatrick would be in there for a while helping Anna dress that tempting little body, covering her curves, the breasts with their dusky dark nipples that begged to be tasted.
Groaning, he dragged both hands through his hair. He was mad. She was an invalid suffering from memory loss. He couldn’t take advantage of her. Her willingness, the invitation in her eyes—none of it mattered. Not without knowing who she was. Not being who he was. He wasn’t that much of a scoundrel.
He might be soulless, depraved, but he liked to think there was still some code of honor within him. Some lines he would not—did not—cross.
With a growl of frustration, he stormed from his chamber and out of the house, determined to find something to occupy himself. Something to consume his thoughts and help him forget a maddening female who begged for his touch.