His mouth twisted, and he made a gesture toward his legs. “I’m not leaving these rooms until I am as fit as I was before I went to war.”
War.
A battle would certainly explain the injuries.
She couldn’t imagine anything noisier, riskier, further from home, more crowded, more terrifying… And he had done it anyway.
Virginia had been desperate to know what had happened but liked Mr. T too much to ask who had hurt him. It was easier to keep some things in the past where they belonged.
“I’m sorry you cannot see the aviary,” she said. “It’s the best part of Christmas.”
His brows climbed higher. “What’s so wonderful about it?”
“Everything. It started with one bird and now there are fifteen.”
“Fifteen whole birds?”
Every one of them a tiny miracle. “It proves one need not look magnificent at first glance in order to end up magnificent in the end.”
“Can fifteen birds ever be magnificent?” he asked.
“Even a single bird can be.” She tilted her head. “Have you ever held a bird in your hands?”
“I have not. Eton and Oxford have failed me.”
She made a mental note to help with that, too.
A lock of dark hair fell across the unscarred side of his face.
She tried not to notice. He was distractingly handsome. The strong jaw, she suspected he shaved himself. Well-defined muscles from riding horses into battle and rolling his chair across thick carpets. He wore no cravat and one leg of his breeches had been sliced to the knee. The state of semi-undress made him seem at once more powerful and more vulnerable.
His eyes… Virginia risked a quick look.Brown. Her favorite color. Brown as the feathers of a grouse or a woodcock. Tea, chocolate, chestnuts, fresh-baked crusty bread. Nothing brown had ever hurt her.
She glanced up at his eyes again. They were still watching her. The back of her neck heated.
“Did you love it or hate it?” she asked. “The war, I mean.”
At first, she thought he wouldn’t answer.
But then he said, “Both.”
She nodded. That was how she had felt at all of her battlegrounds. She hadn’t known other people felt the same.
“I want you to see the aviary,” she said. “It is a very peaceful place. No one ever enters.”
He shook his head. “I told you—”
“Not today,” she said. “When you can walk.”
“When I can walk,” Mr. T reminded her, “I am leaving this village.”
“After you visit the aviary,” she said firmly.
Before her patient could object, she knelt at his feet and began to remove his Hessians.
Mr. T tried to roll out of her reach.
When she grabbed for the wheel, her index finger crossed over his.
