He stared her down calmly. “You are giving yourself away once more, my dear.”
“Perhaps Wilton had some assistance in locking herself in my chamber.”
“Indeed.”Troublewas far too tame a word to describe her. “But that does not explain your presence here. Why would my staff allow you to tend me on your own?”
She flushed, removing herself from his bed with stiff grace, spending an inordinate amount of time fussing with her skirts before deigning to offer a response. “You are not the easiest patient, Your Grace. You gave poor Wilton such a fright with your caterwauling, and the incident involving the broth meant the domestics were only too happy to allow me to take on the onerous burden of looking after you.”
He vaguely recalled hollering and throwing a bowl of broth against the wall when he had been gripped in the throes of the fever. He had been certain someone was poisoning him. It was simply the suspicious nature of his mind, coupled with the illness. No poisoning caused the symptoms he had suffered, and he knew that now with a clear, lucid mind. He had simply taken ill, much as the knowledge aggrieved him. He preferred to think of himself as invincible, but the world occasionally liked to remind him of just how wrong he was.
“Christ,” he muttered. “I did not frighten you?”
“You seemed calmest in my presence,” she said.
This time, her nostrils did not flare. Not even a tiny twitch.
Damn it.
She was telling the truth.
More fragments returned to him. Her husky voice, lilting and soothing. She had spoken to him in the language of her homeland. Had soothed him, comforted him. When he had been cold, she had layered him in blankets and wrapped her warmth around him. When he had been hot, she had traced cool cloths over his heated skin, bathing him.
Why would a Fenian rebel tend to her captor with such tender dedication?
It made no more sense than the leader of the Special League assigned with eradicating Fenians marrying one and finding himself falling under her spell.
Against his will.
Very much against his will.
Not that it mattered. Either way, the burgeoning emotions he felt for her, swelling like the rising tide in his heart, were a betrayal of his duty, his family, and his men. Bridget O’Malley was not meant to be his wife. And neither was he meant to want her to remain that way.
“Thank you for your diligence,” he forced himself to say, discomfort making his tone abrupt. Leo prided himself on the inability to feel a goddamn thing. But whether it was the sickness or his own bloody weakness, his cold, dead insides had been hit by a spring thaw. “You need not have done what you did.”
“I know.” Her gaze did not stray from his. “I wanted to do it. I have a great deal of experience tending to invalids. Consider yourself fortunate I did not bind your wrists while you slept as you did to me. Or leave you beneath the dubious care of Annie.”
He deserved those barbs. “You know as well as I that you could not be trusted.”
Abruptly, she turned in a swirl of skirts, moving to a table across the chamber. “What of now?” she asked, her back to him.
If only he knew the answer to that question. “Logic tells me no.”
Bridget faced him and closed the distance between them, seating herself once more on his bed. She offered him water, and he had not realized how parched he had been until that very moment. “What does the rest of you say?”
His cock said it didn’t give a damn whether or not he could trust her.
And his heart…his heart said yes she could be trusted. Yes he could trust her. He already had.
But he admitted none of that aloud. Instead, he accepted the water from her and gulped it down in large, greedy swallows. It occurred to him that with her back to him, her body obscuring his view of what she had been about, she could have adulterated his water somehow. The truth was, however, she could have done anything she wished to him while he had been ill, and yet, she had not. Instead, she had taken care of him until she was so exhausted she laid down at his side and fell asleep.
No woman had ever shown him such care, aside from Lily.
“Enough,” she cautioned sternly, plucking the cup from his weakened grasp. “If you drink too much at once, you shall be ill, and I’ll not be mopping up your mess.”
His stomach clenched as if on cue, then offered up a loud, angry growl. “I think I require sustenance, if you would be so kind.”
“I will see that some broth is sent up.”
“Broth can go to the devil.” He gave her his most ferocious frown. “I require something fortifying. Beef. Chicken. Ham. Even some bloody boiled potatoes would suffice.”
