“Come.” He startled her by taking her hands in his, and leading her to the settee.
Through the barrier of her gloves, the heat of him seared her. Though she meant to protest, she found herself allowing the marquess to guide her forward. His scent, manly and spicy, reached her, and she could not help but to admire the cut of his coat and his breeches as he led her along. He placed two hands on her shoulders when they reached the settee. His fingers splayed over her collarbone. His palms grazed the tops of her breasts.
Her ability to breathe was once more in question.
“Sit,” he ordered.
She sat. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say her knees buckled. One moment, she was helplessly falling into his handsome countenance and the next, her bottom hit the cushioned bench. For a breath, they remained frozen as they were, his hands upon her, his thumbs setting her alight as they traced circles over her bare flesh.
“You cannot linger here, my lord,” she managed to summon the sensibility to say.
After all, even if her wits were addled and her body responded to him far too easily, she did have a mind that functioned quite well whenever she was not in Searle’s intoxicating presence. And this—being alone with the marquess and allowing him to touch her so intimately—was wrong. If they were discovered, the rapidly disintegrating and eternally slim chances she had of ever making a match would disappear entirely.
“I can do whatever pleases me,” he told her lowly, his gaze intense. “And right now, it pleases me to see to your wellbeing.”
“I can see to my own wellbeing,” she argued. “It is unseemly for you to be here, taking liberties with my person. I could be ruined, or you could be forced to the altar.”
His expression turned grim. “I have been forced enough in this lifetime, my lady. No one will ever force me to do anything again. I do what I wish, when I wish, and anyone who dares to oppose me can go to Hades.”
She swallowed against a fresh tide of tumult. Her heart ached for this man, so beautiful and yet so broken. The horrors of war and his imprisonment surely haunted him, much in the same fashion as her old injury. She would have the lingering pain and the limp to remind her forever. His reminders were internal, scars and wounds she could not see.
It seemed she was being given a glimpse of the real Searle. That he was not the polished, poised gentleman who had whirled her about the ballroom earlier, but instead, the man who spoke in a velvet voice wrapped in razors. A man whose eyes reflected the grim realities of what he had faced.
A man who seemed haunted.
He sank to his knees before her.
Her heart leapt into her throat. “My lord, whatever are you doing?”
“Tending you.” His hands settled upon her slippers. “With your permission, of course.”
“My injury is an old one, Searle,” she protested. Good heavens, he could not intend to lift her skirts. “There is nothing to be done for it now, though I thank you for the concern.”
“What happened?” he asked gently.
“I was sliding down the bannister at Marchmont, our country estate, and I fell to the floor below.” She paused, thinking of that long-ago day which had changed her life forever. Sometimes, in her sleep, she recalled the sensation of falling, the rush in her stomach, the fear clawing up her throat, and the brief sensation of weightlessness until the inevitable landing.
“Good God.” His rigid jaw flexed.
“I landed on my feet rather than my head.” She flashed him a smile of false brightness. “I will be forever thankful for that, even if the fall cursed me with this limp.”
“Does the musculature in the affected limb grow tight and painful, my lady?” he asked.
His question surprised her, because it seemed as if he was not only concerned for her, but as if he may possess a knowledge of the aftereffects of injuries such as the one she had suffered. Perhaps his time as a soldier had taught him.
It was a matter of course that the muscles in her lame leg grew tight and burned, because her leg pained her and she accommodated for it. Excursions such as balls were particularly trying as they required her to be upon her feet for longer periods of time. Though this evening had been different. Ordinarily, she never danced.
“Yes,” she admitted softly. “But you need not worry for me, my lord. I have a liniment I shall apply upon returning home this evening. A day of rest will help immeasurably as well.”
A day of rest or five since her invitations to balls were growing sparser by the year. She had no new engagements for days. Not even a musicale, which she always found abominably boring.
“Which part of the limb did you break?” he asked, remaining where he was, upon his knees before her.
How disconcerting it was to have this large, strong, intimidating man humbling himself, intending to offer her aid. What a perplexing man he was, intent upon dancing with her and then dancing with a string of younger, more beautiful, more eligible ladies as if he had forgotten her existence. Only to seek her out once more.
“The lower half,” she revealed, feeling awkward and breathless all at once. Anticipation and something else, something far more wicked and far more vexing, rose within her, vying for her attention. “The country physician was able to reset the bone, but I was a wayward child, and I did not allow it enough time to properly heal.”
She had been desperate to flee from her bed, her leg immobilized by linen doused in camphor spirits, egg white, and lead acetate. And she had removed herself from her bed when no one had been attending to her, hobbling about her chamber in practice for the day she would be free. But the bandages upon her leg had not been firm enough to hold the bone in place enough and make the bone heal cleanly.
