Chapter Four
Diana tossed her basket on the ground and dove into the plants with angry gusto. She popped leaves off, tearing them far more violently than she would normally do. But she couldn’t help it. That man was a stubborn ass. Pompous and brazen and…and rude.
Despite all that, she was drawn to him. Intensely. Last night she’d wanted to kiss him. This morning she hadn’t been able to look away when he stood up, all male power and naked desire. This was a weakness in her, one she had succumbed to once before with dire consequences.
Consequences that had sent her to the country. Ones that had kept her alone. She had rejected all the advances of bumbling country fools who came sniffing around her.
But the Duke of Willowby was no bumbling country fool.
“Idiot,” she admonished herself as she returned her attention to tearing leaves from plants.
“Me, you, or that poor plant you’re destroying?”
She froze at the drawled question. Damn the man—could he not leave her in peace? It seemed not. Slowly she turned and caught her breath. There he stood, leaning heavily on the back of a bench in the middle of her garden. He had dressed himself. Poorly, of course. Perhaps because he was accustomed to the help of his valet. Perhaps because his injuries made it difficult.
The result of his being a bit undone was anything but to make him less attractive. He was roguish with his shirt half-untucked, his hair tangled around his face and his cheeks peppered with the dark beginnings of a beard. He looked like a pirate, not a duke. A pirate prince out for whatever treasure he could steal.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her tone sharper than she wished it to be. God’s teeth, but this man brought out the worst in her.
He met her gaze and gave a half grin. “I’m doing whatever I please. Isn’t that what you accused me of earlier?”
She dropped a tangle of herbs into the basket and folded her arms. “No, it was not. I said you are accustomed to everyone doing as you say. Though I assume it follows that you also do whatever you please without a thought to others.”
“Oof,” he said with a shake of his head. “I am truly a bastard, it seems. And you want to help me?”
He was smiling. Teasing her. And she caught her breath. When he smiled he was even more handsome than when he brooded, damn him. And his words, playful or not, hit her in the gut. Although she had been dragged into this by Stalwood, the fact was that she did want to help this man.
She drew in a long breath to calm her racing heart. “I was…sharp with you,” she said. “Perhaps that was unfair.”
He laughed once again. “On the contrary, I think it was entirely fair. I deserved it.”
She wrinkled her brow, for now she was uncertain of him again. Was he playing so that she would lower her guard? He was a spy, after all, trained to manipulate. “You are entirely frustrating.”
His grin broadened and the expression took years off his face. It brightened everything about him and made her wonder what kind of man he’d been before his injuries. Before the War Department. Just…before.
“Thank you,” he said.
“It wasn’t meant as a compliment,” she said, but she found herself laughing despite it.
He let out his breath and leaned heavier on the bench. “In truth, I do owe you an apology,” he said, now serious. “I have not been easy since my arrival, I know that. I just don’t like to be…weak.”
She could see how hard that confession was for him. She understood it. Even after being inactive for months, no one could deny that the man standing before her had enormous strength. She could only imagine how easy everything physical had always been for him. Men were taught that was their greatest asset. Losing it had to crush some important part of him.
She moved forward and held out her hands. “Sit, won’t you?” she asked, motioning to the bench where he was leaning.
He nodded and let her help him into place. She bent, grabbed her basket and set it in his lap with a smile. “Hold this. At least you will be useful.”
He laughed, but she heard the strain in his voice as he said, “Useful was never something I had to work for in the past.”
She turned away, knowing that these admissions could not be easy. It was best to receive them with quiet, not to make too big a fuss.
“You are not weak, you know,” she said as she crouched and examined a few flower buds on the plant before her. “You are injured. I swear, you men.”
“Men?” he repeated as she set a few buds into the basket beside the other herbs she had selected before he came out. “Is this a problem with my entire sex, then?”
“Indeed, it is,” she retorted. “You tend, as a whole, to equate not being able to do something with weakness. It does you no good.”
“You’re so certain?”
She glared at him. “Setting aside their ability, think of those other men who tried to help you since your injuries. I would assume you argued and demanded and forced even before you came to be under my care.”
His sheepish expression told her everything before he said, “Well, er, yes, I suppose I did.”
She shrugged. “And that is part of why you’re not further along in your recovery. You cannot accept help because help is weakness. But you keep yourself injured and ‘weak’, as you put it, by not allowing someone else in to come to your aid.”
“I thought the problem was untalented surgeons,” he drawled.
“Stubborn patients are also an issue,” she retorted with a smile.
He held her gaze and her heart fluttered a bit. This connection she felt whenever he looked at her like that was disconcerting to say the least. As a result, she forced herself to look away, but the burning of her cheeks had to be as obvious to him as it was to her.
“I traveled the world, you know,” he said. “In service to my king, I learned new languages, saw things I couldn’t even imagine. I pretended to be what I was not. It was all a grand adventure. A pleasure as much as a duty.”
“It must be hard to lose that,” she whispered.
He was quiet a moment, and then he said, “You told me there would be pain if I do as you say.”
She swallowed hard and forced herself to meet his eyes. “Yes.”
His lips pressed harder together. “But will I heal? Will I ever be anything like the man I was before?”
She caught her breath, moved once more by the hint of pleading in his voice. The desperation that drove his worse behaviors was clearer to her now. Everything he was had been tied up in what he could do. How he could protect. Where he could go without difficulty.
Losing all that had changed him.
She understood that.
“I will never lie to you, Lucas,” she said, leaning in to touch his chin, turning it so that he met her eyes and could see the truth of her. “And I will not promise you what I cannot deliver. I don’t know if I can bring back that man you once were. But if you let me look at you, help you, I promise you I will do everything in my power to try.”
His eyes narrowed, like he was reading her, hesitating to trust her, but at last he nodded slowly. “Very well. I will give you your month.”
Relief flowed through her, stronger than she’d thought it would, considering she hadn’t wanted to do any of this in the first place. His refusal would have made her life easier. His acceptance made her happy, though.
“Good,” she said.
He held up her basket. “Now, will you tell me what these herbs do?”
She smiled as the tension between them bled away a fraction. “Well, some are to ease pain. Others are to help with healing. This one makes chicken taste better.”
He tilted his head back and laughed. “Best not to get them confused then.”
“Never,” she said, and took the basket, sliding it over her forearm. “Why don’t we go upstairs and we can begin, this time in earnest? I want to look at your injuries more closely. Only then can we truly know what to do next.”
If he wanted to hesitate or argue or refuse, he did not do it. He merely drew in a long breath, then got to his feet and took her offered arm as they slowly made their way back to the house and to the tortures she knew would come.
Lucas drew in a deep breath and tried to calm himself. When this woman touched him, it was mesmerizing. He’d never experienced anything like it with any lover he’d taken over the years. Being near her was like sunshine waking him in the morning or the warmth of alcohol buzzing through his system and addling his brain.
And yet, as she opened the door to the house, his anxiety about what would happen next rose in his chest. He’d been trained to handle pain, of course. A spy needed to be able to bear torture.
But the past six months had pushed him to his limits. He did not relish the idea of doing it all again, and especially not in front of this woman who seemed to be able to see into a man’s soul, whether he used his training against her or not.
She tightened her arm around his waist as they began to climb the stairs together. “I will get you a cane,” she mused, almost more to herself than to him. He stiffened, and she glanced over at him with a knowing look. “Let me guess—you shunned the idea of a cane because it made you weak?”
He pursed his lips at the censure that marked her tone. “When you say it like that, it sounds foolish,” he drawled, hoping to cut the tension with a bit of self-deprecation.
She paused at the top of the stairs, her breath labored as she panted, “It is foolish. Great God, would you not feel better if you could wrangle yourself up the stairs or through a room without needing someone to support your weight?”
“I…suppose,” he admitted slowly. “Does it trouble you?”
She cast him a side glance and began to maneuver him toward the bedroom. “Does what trouble me?”
“Always being right,” he finished. “Does it keep you up at night?”
There was a second’s pause, and then she laughed. The sound was like music and he drank it in while she helped him into the chamber and toward the bed. As he collapsed back onto the mattress, she buckled over him and landed across his chest. Pain shot through him, as it always did. But it was tempered by something else.
Something he hadn’t felt in a very long time. Pleasure. Her body against his was a pleasure, and he found he didn’t want to let that go quite yet. Her laughter faded and she stared down at him, watching silently as he lifted his arms to fold them around her. To hold her like he’d done the night he comforted her.
Only he hadn’t comfort on his mind in this moment. No, he wanted something else from her and he was not going to be denied. He glided his fingers into her hair, cupping her skull to lower her mouth to his. She didn’t resist—she only let out a tiny sigh, and then her lips were pressing against his.
It was like someone had relit the world after months of darkness. Electric desire flashed through his rusty body and he dug his fingers into her skin to draw her even closer. She obliged, opening her mouth to him and darting her tongue to meet his with hesitation that faded as he sucked her deeper.
For a moment, everything else in the world disappeared. He forgot his physical pain, he forgot his frustration and his guilt, he forgot the life he’d lost and the one he hadn’t saved. He forgot everything and drowned in how sweet she tasted and how erotically she moved against him as her breasts flattened to his chest and she lifted against him with a deep moan in her throat.
And then, just as swiftly as she had surrendered, she pulled away. He let her go, watching as she staggered back, turning as she lifted her hand to her lips like she could still feel him there. He knew he could feel her.
And he wanted to feel so much more.
“Going to run again, Miss Oakford?” he asked as the time stretched out between them and he felt her readying to do just that.
She spun toward him, her cheeks flushed and her pupils dilated. She stared and then shook her head. “N-no,” she stammered, her voice shaky and unfocused. “No, of course not. I’m to help you. It’s time I did just that. Will you remove your shirt?”
He nodded as he sat up and slowly began to unfasten the buttons along the front of the fabric. She watched him for a beat, then shook her head as she knelt to begin helping with his boots.
His heart all but stopped at the sight of her on her knees before him. And when she looked up, apparently utterly unaware of how fucking tempting she was, it took all his control not to drag her back up his body, flip her on her back and just have her until he couldn’t take anymore. Until she was sated and soft beneath him.
Until her voice was hoarse from crying out his name.
She tugged his boots off and set them aside. As she rose, she turned away and he watched her as she moved to where she’d left a tray earlier in the day. She picked up a few bottles, some bandages and a needle and thread, then returned.
“Here, let me,” she said softly, setting the items on the bed beside him before she moved to help him pull the shirt over his head. He grimaced as he lifted his bad arm enough for her to pull the fabric away. After she tossed it aside, she leaned in, examining the scarred flesh as she clucked her tongue. “How often did they reopen it?” she asked.
He shut his eyes and shoved aside memories of those horrible experiences. Tried to forget the pain that had brought him to unconsciousness more than once. “I lost count after eight.”
She turned her face, as if his pain affected her physically. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she traced the mark with the edge of her fingernail.
“You have to do it again, don’t you?”
She jerked her gaze up to his. “How did you know?”
“I hear it in your voice,” he said as he lowered himself back to the pillows. “And every healer does it, don’t they? You have to make your own mark on me.”
Her lips parted. “Stalwood should hire better men. I have no desire to mark you, Lucas. I do not take any pleasure in the pain that I will cause. But I hope you’ll…you’ll…”
He met her eyes at her hesitation. “What?”
“Trust me,” she said. “I realize you don’t know me. You have no reason to do so.”
“I do,” he said softly. “I do have a reason.”
“And what is that?” she asked, even as she lifted a thin scalpel from the bed and dipped it in liquid.
“You’re his daughter,” he said, gripping the sheets with both fists as she lowered the instrument to his already burning skin and made a delicate slice.
She didn’t look at him, but kept her focus on his injury. “That is a high standard to live up to,” she said softly.
He bit his lip as she probed his wound, examining the damage that made him so damned broken. Then she clucked her tongue and set the scalpel aside. She picked up her mortar and pestle and began to throw dried herbs and a different, thicker liquid into the little bowl. As she mixed it, she met his eyes.
“Almost finished and then I will never reopen it again,” she promised.
He gritted his teeth. “That’s what they all say.”
“I’m not them,” she said, holding his stare.
He almost laughed, but couldn’t quite when the pain was making his vision blur and his voice strangled. He tried to focus, tried to find levity in this moment so she wouldn’t see how desperate and vulnerable she was making him. “You’re certainly much prettier than the others.”
The world began to spin around him. He could feel his pulse in the hole in his shoulder and that throbbing made his knees shake.
“Well, I should certainly hope so,” she said, her tone still calm and soothing and he could hear the smile in it. “I’ve seen some of those louts my father trained. Prettier isn’t exactly the hardest mountain to climb.”
“Christ,” he managed as he turned his head on the pillow.
She stood and leaned over him. A lock of hair he’d loosened when he kissed her fell from her plain bun and brushed over his skin. He focused on its silkiness, the way it tickled his chest.
“This will help,” she promised, slathering the mixture she’d made over his wound.
He lurched at the cold of the medicine. The way it made his flesh tingle as it sank into the gash she’d created. But within a few seconds, he felt a blissful numbness that worked its way through the flesh.
“There now,” she whispered as she reached up and began to unfasten his trouser flap. “Better?”
He stared at her, his body torn between pleasure and pain as she touched him. He felt dizzy as he whispered, “What are you doing to me?”
She smiled. “I must remove your trousers to look at your leg, Lucas. I promise it is only for the purpose of treating you.”
He closed his eyes as she tugged the fabric away and left him naked. “You can do whatever you’d like, Diana. You must be able to see that.”
She said something, but it sounded far away. He focused on the way her fingers brushed over his leg. He had no idea how much time passed and then she was next to him, her lips brushing his temple as she whispered, “Rest now.”
He thought he should respond, but there were no words he could come up with. None that made any sense, at any rate. So he let his drooping eyes close and surrendered to the unconsciousness that his body demanded.