“You were doing something foolish.”
“I’m trying to repay you!”
“For what?”
“For defending me!”
He stopped so suddenly that her stomach did a strange flip.
“I do not require repayment,” he revealed, refusing to put her down even now. “I require sense. I require you to take care of yourself. I require…” He trailed off.
“What?” she asked, her voice muffled against his back.
“I require,” he muttered, “that you not drive me to madness with your incessant need to play martyr in my garden.”
“Well,” she grumbled, “perhaps if your gardener weren’t so woefully incompetent?—”
“If you insult him again, I shall drop you into the fishpond.”
She gasped. “You wouldn’t.”
He resumed walking. “Try me.”
Several minutes later, he brought her to the kitchen. The cook had gone to the market. The scullery maid had been conveniently ordered away. And Cordelia, who was by nowthoroughly disheveled, mildly humiliated, and achingly aware of her own limbs, was perched on the edge of the marble counter like some awkward, overgrown child awaiting judgment.
Only he wasn’t judging her. He was kneeling before her with a basin of warm water, a cloth, and a frown.
“Hold still,” he murmured, dipping the cloth into the basin and wringing it out with practiced care.
She obeyed, while her feet dangled slightly above the ground. Her gloves lay discarded beside her, and her arms, bared to the elbow, looked pitifully scratched and speckled with smudges of dirt.
He took her right hand first, turning it over in his own. His fingers were warm and the touch so gentle she had to glance at him, just to be sure it was truly him tending to her like this. She couldn’t stop staring at his eyelashes. They were infuriatingly thick.
“You’ve gone very quiet,” he said suddenly, not looking up.
“I am never quiet,” she replied faintly.
“I know,” he said. “That is precisely why I find it unsettling.”
She tilted her head. “You miss the sound of my voice already?”
“I miss knowing what chaos is forming behind it,” he muttered, flicking his eyes up to hers with a flash of amber that made her breath catch.
Cordelia looked away, and for a moment, neither spoke. She watched the way his thumb held steady beneath her palm, anchoring her hand with surprising tenderness as he cleaned the shallow scratch along her forearm. A strange feeling unfurled in her chest. In fact, it was stranger than strange, like someone calling her name in a dream.
“No one’s ever done this for me,” she said before she quite meant to.
He paused. “Clean your wounds?”
“I should hope someone has,” he added quickly, a teasing edge softening his voice. “Though I suspect you’re the sort to get into regular trouble, so the odds are?—”
“No,” she interrupted him. “That’s not what I meant.”
But now, it felt too exposed and downright too silly to explain what shehadmeant, so she laughed instead. He said nothing.
Cordelia stared down at her hands. “I only meant… people didn’t usually fuss over me, not unless it was to tell me to behave or be silent, or for goodness’ sake, sit like a lady.”
Still, he said nothing. And that was somehow worse than any reply because silence left room for meaning.
