She couldn’t see him, but she could feel him pause. “Has anyone ever told you you can be a bit stubborn?”
“All the time. It’s my only flaw.”
She heard his smile in the tenor of his breath. “The only one, eh?”
135
“The only one worth commenting upon.”
She opened her eyes. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’ve quite forgotten what it was.”
She opened her mouth to repeat it, then realized he was teasing her, so she scowled instead.
“Close your eye again,” he said. “I’m not yet finished.” When she obeyed his command, he added, “Good enoughmeant I never had to fight if I didn’t want to.”
“But you weren’t the champion,” she surmised.
“You can open your eye now.”
She did, then blinked when she realized how close he still was.
He stepped back. “I wasn’t the champion.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t care about it enough.”
“How does it look?” she asked.
“Your eye?”
She nodded.
“I don’t think there is anything to be done to stop the bruising.”
“I didn’t think I hit my eye,” she said, letting out a frustrated sigh. “When I fell. I thought I hit my cheek.”
“You don’t have to hit your eye to bruise there. I can see from your face that you landed right here”—he touched her cheekbone, right where she’d hit, but he was so gentle that she felt no pain—“and that’s close enough for the bleeding to spread to the eye area.”
She groaned. “I’m going to look a fright for weeks.”
“It might not take weeks.”
“I have brothers,” she said, giving him a look that said she knew what she was talking about. “I’ve seen blackened eyes. Benedict had one that didn’t completely fade away for two months.”
“What happened to him?” Phillip asked.
“My other brother,” she said wryly.
“Say no more,” he said. “I had a brother of my own.”
“Beastly creatures,” she muttered, “the lot of them.” But there was love in her voice as she said it.
“Yours probably won’t take that long,” he said, helping her to stand so that she could make her way to the washbasin.
“But it might.”
