When Roselyn returned to her cottage, she stood above Thornton and looked down on him. He was deep in an exhausted sleep, with shadows darkening his eyes.
She dreaded bathing him again. It would be better to do as much of it as she could while he was asleep.
Spreading towels about him to catch the soapy water, she began to wash him. But removing his breeches this time was more embarrassing and intimate. She knew who he was now, what he could have been to her—husband. He was different from Philip, darker and larger, and part of her wanted to stare.
Instead she concentrated on removing his splint and washing his legs, pretending she didn’t feel overly warm and flustered. It was only as she moved up his body that she realized the effect her ministrations were having on him. He was becoming…aroused.
Her face shot with heat, and she didn’t know what to do, where to turn. She wasn’t through bathing him, yet she couldn’t keep looking at—it. She dropped the wet cloth over his groin, then gasped as he awakened with a start and came up on one elbow.
“What the—” Thornton began, then gaped at his barely concealed nudity.
“I needed to…bathe you,” she began, faltering with an embarrassment she wasn’t used to. “I thought it would be better if you were asleep.”
He pulled a towel over his hips. “Aren’t you a little young to bathe strange men? Surely your husband couldn’t approve.”
“My husband is dead. You’ve been wearing his garments.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said in a gruff voice.
There was something absurd about a naked, aroused man expressing his sympathies.
An awkward silence hovered between them, and she should have looked away—but couldn’t. They seemed caught, their gazes bound together, their bodies too close.
Thornton finally cleared his throat, and his eyes dropped down her body before he looked away. “Let me finish this bath, if you don’t mind.”
“You’re still weak—”
“Then let me take care of…certain areas.”
Roselyn waited outside in the darkness, her back against the cottage, hugging herself against the night wind. The stars overhead seemed distant, cold, and she had the strangest feeling of exposure. She closed her eyes and tried to pretend that she didn’t feel watched.
When Thornton called for her, she stepped inside and closed the door quickly. He had a towel wrapped tightly about his hips.
After wringing out the cloth in the soapy water, she washed carefully about his bandages, holding his long arms while she soaped them. When she finally looked up into his face, she realized with a start that he was again watching her.
He gave her a crooked grin. “I don’t suppose you’ll allow me to return the favor someday.”
A slow heat burned her face. How dare he tease her after he had rejected her? But he didn’t remember her—and she had rejected him in the end.
She managed to look coolly into his face while she worked soap into his short beard. “Shall I shave this for you?”
His smile fled, and his eyes narrowed, leaving her with a strange chill.
“Why would you ask such a thing?” he said in a low voice. “Do not most men of your acquaintance wear beards?”
She had seen him without one two years before, and merely made the error of thinking he still wore it that way. Why did he take offense?
“I did not know if you wore a beard. I was merely granting you the courtesy of asking.”
She didn’t break his gaze until he finally smiled and shook his head.
“Forgive me. I am not used to being so coddled by a woman.”
“Have you no wife, Mr. Thornton?”
“No. The uncertainty of war delayed any thought of marriage.”
She longed to see some signs of guilt in his face, but he showed nothing. She placed towels about his head and proceeded to wash his hair, trying to quell her unease at this strange intimacy.
