Yes, she did seem to like it here, Ben thought. Did she like him, perhaps? “I was careless with her.” He gazed at her sleeping face. He wanted to get closer but Edith worked around him. He saw that her hair still dripped over her face. He wanted to pick up a cloth and wipe the droplets from her forehead, her temples, around her eyes and over the curve of her cheek and jaw. His heart raced, yet he felt as if the world had slowed, giving him time to bask in her. He looked away. He brought her back. He didn’t regret it. Despite her claim, she couldn’t survive well on her own. What was she doing just standing there getting soaked through to the bone? Did she have no sense at all? Was there no place nearby to seek shelter? What was the shadow he’d seen? Was it her sword-wielding time traveler?
“I’ll dry her hair, Sir,” Edith told him, seemingly unaware of his warring thoughts. “And I’ll have to change her out of her clothes.”
“Oh, of course,” he said. “Just one moment.”
When Edith nodded and went off to busy herself with something else in the room, he bent close to Miss Ramsey’s ear and said in a low voice. “I’m afraid that if I let you, you will become all I care about. The one I put first before all else. The reason I live or the reason I die. I can’t allow that, Miss Ramsey. I’m drawn to a different calling, and one day, when I die on the battlefield I don’t want to leave you behind.”
He went still when her fingers reached for his temple and traced through his hair, her touch as light as butterfly wings before her arm fell limp again at her side.
“Fable?” he whispered. Had she heard what he said? He bit his lip as if to silence himself.
When she didn’t respond, he felt relieved and stepped out of the room and into the path of another storm.
“You went after her!” his sister said through clenched teeth, approaching him in the hall. “And this time you dragged Simon with you.”
Ben kept walking, paying no attention to her. When he passed her, he closed his eyes and let out the troubled sigh he’d been containing. He’d found Miss Ramsey and brought her back.
It wasn’t long before Edith called him to return. He didn’t go right away but finished his chess game with Sudbury. A game he almost lost. He had to make her less important to him. He didn’t know how she’d crept inside his defenses, but she was there, in his heart like a thorn.
When the servant came looking for him in the fencing house, where he was practicing, his defenses nearly crumbled.
“Forgive me, Your Grace, but nothing I do is warming her!” Edith lamented. “I fear she is freezing to death.”
He yanked off his mask and laid his sword aside and hurried back to the house. To her chambers. He was torn between never forgiving himself for causing this condition in her, or for caring what condition thistroublewas in. It was all she ever caused. Trouble.
She had been changed into dry, warm clothes, but Edith was correct, she was still as cold as death. After Ben had his clothes brought to him, he changed out of his fencing uniform and sat by her bed long into the night, long after he sent Edith to her own bed.
No amount of warming her bed raised her body heat. When her teeth began to chatter and she shivered in her slumber, Ben saw no other option but to get into bed with her. He remained still for a moment. What if she woke up and slapped him? He’d suffered worse wounds than a slap in the mouth by a dainty hand.
Emboldened by his desire to warm her, he slipped his arms around her and pulled her closer against him. He felt his heart thundering against both their chests as he covered her beneath the warmth of his leg.
Should he hate himself for being so bold with her? So intimate? He closed his eyes and rubbed her back. He worked his hand over her shoulder, down her arm. Was his heart so traitorous that he liked how she felt pressed close to him? She made him feel warm and oddly content. He hoped to spread his warmth to her. When he came to her hand, he held her fingers to his lips and breathed his warm breath onto them, on her wrist and pulse. He thought he felt her move. A tremor down her spine that made her shift ever so slightly between his legs.As if she were responding to his touch.
Or had he imagined it?
“Miss Ramsey?” he asked in a quiet voice.
He must have imagined it. She didn’t respond now. But she did feel warmer to the touch.
“That’s my fighter,” he said into her hair. “Rest now. I’ll keep you warm.”
He closed his eyes, fearing the trouble she brought. Every time he thought of some sort of defense against her, the feel of her in his arms overwhelmed him and he could think of nothing but how she had started off there and how much he wanted to keep her there.
Chapter Seven
Fable’s eyes fluttered open as dawn broke through the unshuttered windows of the second floor guest chambers. She was alone in the bed. Had she dreamed of him holding her, warming her, their arms and legs tangled together?
What was she doing here again? Had she really left last night, or was it all a dream? What had happened in the rain? How had she gotten back to Colchester House? She remembered the duke saying he would like nothing more than to stop concerning himself with her. Yes, she’d left. Who brought her back?
She didn’t wait long to find out when Edith entered her bedroom with a basin of fresh water. “Who brought me back?”
Edith set the basin down and looked away. “Why, it was the duke, of course.”
Why would he bring her back when he didn’t want to concern himself with her? “Where is he?”
Edith looked around. “I thought he’d be here.”
“Edith,” Fable tried to sit up but a wave of dizziness washed over her and she lay back down. “Was he here with me last night?”
