Green. His breath caught. Her eyes were a brilliant, unblemished green. Lighter than jade or emerald or the forest green pelisse she had been wearing the day before. A brilliant, crystal green. As beautiful as the sea sparkling beneath the sun.
“Eat,” she commanded. “He who waits for the moon to come to him wastes the night without having traveled an inch.”
Theo prided himself on not obeying any chit’s authoritative commands, no matter how poetic. But perhaps just this once…
“You, too,” he commanded as authoritatively as a half-mummified lord with a smear of ice cream on his upper lip could. “Before it melts.”
They passed the sweet, creamy dishes in surprisingly companionable silence. Just two people, unabashedly more interested in devouring a cornucopia of flavors than wasting time with conversation. She was the strangest woman he had ever met, and oddly refreshing. He was surprised how much he liked her unpredictability.
“I do not require a nurse,” he informed her after the last drop of ice cream was gone.
He expected his stern words to ruin the moment. That was why he had uttered them.
“You think you don’t,” Virginia agreed as she stacked the empty dishes back inside her basket. “You’ll see.”
He stared at her in disbelief. Had the daft woman truly just implied she knew his mind better than he did himself?
“See here,” he began.
She jerked her head in his direction at once. “You are absolutely right. I should change your bandages.”
He blinked. “I just changed my bandages.”
“And now you’ve smudges of strawberry and chocolate on them.” She rose to her feet and glanced about the room. “Where are your clean cloths?”
Theo didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Virginia was already washing her hands in the basin, which was conveniently located right next to his supply of clean bandages.
She brought them over to his chair and knelt at his feet. “I apologize in advance if this hurts you. It is important to keep wounds clean.”
“It won’t hurt.”
He clenched his teeth and braced himself for the pain, and the horror that would contort her pretty face the moment she saw the damage that lay beneath.
She cupped a soft, warm hand to the good side of his face as she slowly unwrapped the bandages from the other.
Theo’s wounds did not hurt. Not yet. But he had no doubt he would flinch the same moment she did.
The pad of her thumb brushed lightly against his good cheek as she removed the last bandage. “You look splendid.”
“You mean my wounds look splendid?” he stammered.
“I mean you.” She did not lower her palm from his cheek. “When you were bandaged, I believed you were the most handsome man I had ever seen. Now I know without a doubt.”
His chest thumped in confusion. That was an extremely flattering and extremely forward statement to make. Yet she had delivered her judgment with complete matter-of-factness, as if his beastly handsomeness despite his scars was a fact universally acknowledged and not a quirk native solely to her.
She lifted her hand from his face and folded her fingers in her lap.
He felt the loss to his bones.
“Aren’t you going to redress my wounds, Nurse?” he growled.
He did not know why he was snarling at her. He did not want her help. Theo could dress his wounds himself and most likely would have to fix whatever she did. The problem was that she had been touching him, and now she was not. It made him feel even more beastly than when covered in strips of cloth.
“You don’t need bandages,” she said. “You’ve new skin now. It ought to breathe. One must keep it clean and dry, but there is no reason to keep it hidden.”
He arched his brows. “Other than the disfigurement and raw flesh?”
“Bah.” She carried the untouched roll of bandages back to the side table. “Duke has come home with worse.”
