My heart, she had called him, and the most frightening thing of all was it sounded just as it felt.
Right.
Chapter Twelve
Leo woke tolate-afternoon light filtering over his bed and the soft curves of a woman pressed against his side. Lemon and bergamot teased his senses because he had been stupid enough to see that a servant procured her favorite fragrance. Slow, even breaths interrupted the silence of the chamber, accompanied by the distant din of the street below and the rhythmic ticking of a mantle clock.
Either the illness which had gripped him had sent him to hell, where he likely so richly belonged, or the foggy memories of Bridget O’Malley at his bedside and the sweet traces of her perfume in the air meant she had been tending to him. And not only had she been tending to him, but she was still in his bed, sleeping alongside him as if it were where she belonged.
It most assuredly wasnotwhere she belonged.
But that did not mean he didn’t enjoy having her there. It also didn’t mean he did not turn his head slowly to the side, all the better to bury his nose in the silken skeins of her midnight hair.Christ, even her hair smelled delicious.
If he had been dragged behind a runaway carriage, he could not have felt in worse condition than he did now. Even so, damn it if his cock didn’t twitch to attention. He took the opportunity to study her as she slept. How innocent she seemed. As serene as an angel.
Hell.
His illness must have rotted his brain. Where was such maudlin tripe emerging from? An angel and Bridget O’Malley did not belong in the same thought. The fiery banshee was as far as one could stray from the beatific.
She had tended to him though, had she not?
As the fever claiming him had ravaged his body, his rare moments of lucidity had been marked by her presence. Her husky voice singing lilting ditties, her fine-boned hands pressing a cool cloth to his brow, her arms helping him to lift his head so he could drink water.
He recalled asking, surly as a bear, why she was in his chamber.
Her response had been simple. Baffling.Because you need me, Duke.
He had not needed her. He was a man who needed no one. He was the Duke of Bloody Carlisle. He did not even require sleep.
The daring of the woman. She wore her hair confined in a heavy coil of braids pinned to her crown, but a few tendrils had come free. One curled over her cheek, and he could not resist brushing it away. As he did, his touch grazed her face. Her skin was a smooth temptation beneath his fingertips. Suddenly, he found it impossible stop his tender exploration.
Over her cheekbone, down her nose, pausing at the perfect pout of her rosebud lips. Just the whisper of a touch, one swipe of his thumb, but it was enough to jostle her from her dreams. Thickly lashed eyes fluttered open, and he found himself ensnared in the brilliant gaze of the last woman in the world he could trust and the only woman in the world he wanted.
She smiled sleepily at him, and it struck him that it was the first genuine smile he had seen gracing her luscious lips.
“You’re awake.” Then she blinked, jolting into a seated position. “You’re awake!”
His own lips curved, but it well could have been a grimace. “Am I awake?”
Her hand went to his brow, checking to see if he was feverish. Her palm on his skin was a soothing balm and a deep ache, all at once. Suddenly, he was starving for her touch, for any point of contact between them.
“I must be dreaming,” she said, her brogue in strong evidence. “Surely this cannot be the Duke of Carlisle making a sally?”
“Yes.” He grinned more. Though his body was weak and weary, he was simultaneously imbued with the simmering rush of wakefulness, his body humming with gratitude to be free of the fever and in such proximity to her as well. “It can be and it is. I fear the illness rotted my mind.”
“You do not feel feverish,” she announced, her touch lingering as if she too was reluctant to sever the connection. The air was thick and smoldering with something. His illness and her determination to see him back to health had momentarily removed the barriers keeping them from each other.
He did not want them back, though he knew they were necessary. “I believe the fever has mercifully broken. How long was I ill?”
Gradually, the strains of reality were returning to him, intruding.
“Two days. You were very ill, Carlisle.” Her smile faded. “The entire household was quite worried for you.”
He noted she had said the household and not her. Why it irked him, he could not say. Or perhaps he could, but he wished not to. And then something else belatedly occurred to him, even more troubling. “Why are you not in your chamber? And how did you come to be in mine?”
“Wilton inadvertently locked herself inside my chamber.”
When she said it, her nostrils gave a small, adorable flare. He instantly admonished himself for such an observation. This woman was trouble. And she was lying to him. Again.
