That really did shock her. “I will.” She hesitated. “Turn your back.”
To her chagrin he did so, and she rolled the silk down her legs, pulling them free from the bloody patches with a hiss of pain. He turned back, and her skirts were to her knees, her feet completely bare, and she knew a proper young woman would blush and protest. She had never aspired to be a proper young woman.
“Put your feet in the water,” he ordered, and she did so, letting out a soft sigh of pleasure as the warmth enveloped them. The water smelled of lavender and chamomile and she leaned back against the chair with a blissful smile.
“Who does the physicking in this household?” he said as he scooped up the boots and tucked them under his arm, preparing to depart.
She didn’t want him to go. “No one. Well, me, I guess, when we’ve had servants and the like. Mother doesn’t like illness and injury—they make her queasy.”
“Your mother sounds useless,” he said, a trace of harshness in his voice.
“Oh, she’s quite beautiful. And very charming. Norah takes after her, but my mother is much nicer. She just doesn’t like unpleasant or demanding things taking her attention.”
“I see.” He dropped the fiendish boots by the door and came back to her. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Take care of what?”
Once more, he knelt down in front of her, and she had the temporary fantasy of a prince begging for her hand in marriage. He’d make a very handsome prince, she thought dizzily as she looked down at him.
“Give me your foot,” he said.
That was so far beyond the bounds of propriety that she hesitated, but he simply reached into the water and lifted her foot into his strong hands, drying it with one of the towels he’d brought. It felt lovely, being cradled by him, and it was all she could do to keep her expression bland when she wanted to purr. And then he brought out a tin of salve and rubbed it on her very bare foot, soothing it into the abraded skin, his fingers kneading the arch, the ball of her foot, the heel.
She couldn’t stop herself; she moaned in pleasure, and he glanced up at her from beneath his lashes, absurdly long lashes for a man, and there was the trace of a grin at his beautiful mouth. “This is completely unacceptable,” he said, “but I don’t think anyone else is going to take care of you. I suggest you don’t tell your mother.” He set her foot down on the carpet and reached for the other one.
“Or my father or my sister,” she said, squirming in delight as his hands massaged her foot. She wasn’t used to people touching her, particularly so intimately, and she could see why it was considered indecent. Anything that felt that good must be shameful indeed.
He finished and rose, and she wanted to cry out in frustration. Her whole body felt taut, aroused in some way, and she wanted...she wasn’t sure what she wanted, but it definitely had to do with his hands on her body.
But he’d picked up the basin of water and was moving away before she could stop him. And indeed, what could she say? He’d performed an act of such intimacy on her that she didn’t feel she’d ever be the same again.
“Will you do that again?” she said forlornly as he headed for the door.
He stopped and grinned, very much not like a butler. “Not likely, Miss Georgie. I’d be horsewhipped if anyone found out.”
“I won’t tell anyone, I promise,” she said earnestly. “But what if I?—”
“I’m getting rid of your boots,” he forestalled her.
“You can’t throw them out!” she cried, envisioning a lifetime of imprisonment without street shoes.
“I won’t. There are plenty of people down on the docks with smaller feet than you have. Someone will need them.”
She looked down at her own feet, now pink and healthy looking. “Mine are awfully big,” she admitted with a sigh. “Norah tells me I have the feet of a peasant.”
“You aren’t going to tell me you believe what your sister says?” he said.
He was across the room, too far away from her, the basin held in front of him, and she swallowed her sigh of pure longing. He was just so beautiful. Her mother would think so too.
With that depressing thought, she shook her head. “No. She just always knows what’s going to upset me.” She looked at him again. “Thank you, Rafferty.”
His smile was a thing of beauty, without that trace of cynicism that usually accompanied it. “My pleasure, Miss Georgie.”
And she almost thought he meant it.
Who’d have thought he’d find someone’s feet that erotic, especially a proper young woman like Georgie? He should think of her as Miss Georgiana, but right then, with a hard cock and a hunger he should be ashamed of, he could only think of her as Georgie. And she wasn’t that proper, he reminded himself. She needed to get married before her adventurous ways got her into trouble. For some reason, the thought troubled him.
He was being a fool. Marriage was the best thing for her—away from her poisonous sister and her strumpet of mother. Bertha had been surprisingly loquacious after a while, and it was clear the problems in the Manning household were legendary. They were on the brink of ruin, Sir Elston on the brink of divorce. Rafferty just needed them to hold together until he found Belding’s cache and then he could return to...return to what? He was no longer sure it was the life he wanted to lead.
