Tetchy and irritated, her tongue swiped across suddenly dry lips, readying her mouth to speak words she wouldn’t dream of speaking under normal circumstances. “Perhaps it’s you who has taken the wrong turn.”
She’d never spoken such saucy, antagonistic words to a man in all her life.
But this man—well, he deserved them.
A slow smile widened his firm mouth. “Shall we wait and find out who’s right?”
She didn’t like the sound of that. The sound of his certainty that he was dead right.
Lawks.
But wasn’t he a handsome one with his tousled golden hair only a few shades lighter than the hair on his chest—oh, that she knew such a thing about him—the chiseled bones of his face, and eyes the light, hazy blue of a morning sky just before it went deep with the onset of day.
“About yesterday,” he began, serious.
He would try to apologize, she understood that, but she was having trouble focusing on the words spilling from his mouth through the cotton—and possibly mud—clogging her ears. His bare chest was stealing clear thought from her brain.
She had no ideawhothis man was, but she knewwhathe was: a man who used his hands. A laborer of sorts. Those muscles hadn’t come from nowhere. They came from work.
Yet, otherwise, this man didn’t have the mien or speech of a laborer. Perhaps he was an estate manager.
Her body heated another few degrees beyond what even this hot, humid bathing room could incite. And now he’d stopped talking and was looking at her with his brow lifted, as if he expected a response.
“Um,” she began and swallowed. “I need you to cover yourself.”
His eyebrows drew together as he looked down at his torso. A slight frown formed about his mouth as if he’d only now realized half of him was quitebare. It was…
Funny.
Of a sudden, a laugh bubbled up and escaped her. She simply couldn’t help herself.
His gaze met hers, and he looked as if he was about to join her when he stopped and cocked his head.
“What—” she began.
He held up a finger, staying the rest of the question in her mouth.
The smile froze on her face. Then her ears picked it up. A sound… a sound that started faraway and was growing nearer with each fluttery beat of her heart. The sound of talking.
Ofmentalking.
“I think we have our answer,” he said.
Indeed, they did. She was in the gentleman’s bathing room.
Of a sudden, he grabbed the folded towel at his side and shook it open. Before she could question what in the blazes he was about, he’d flung it out and over her head. The world went gray.
Indignation streaked through her. “Who do you think you are? You simply cannot—”
“Shh,” sounded low in her ear.
The next moment, the men’s voices began echoing off the bathing room’s tiles and water. Nell’s heart raced in her throat, and the blood pounded through her veins. What new mess had she gotten herself into?
“Gentlemen,” said her captor.
Or was he her savior?
The men must’ve nodded their greetings for the conversation between them didn’t miss a beat. Something about the Reform Act that had recently passed Parliament. Nell only knew it because one of her best clients, Lady Mariana Asquith, was quite incensed about the bar to women voting, as it explicitly defined a voter as a man.
