Blood, she saw blood on his arm, the whole sleeve was doused in red; fear lurched up her throat. “Dorian! What happened!”
He ignored her and headed to another room—one she realized was his bedchamber. He was still stumbling and Ellie feared that he was drunk and injured, the worst possible combination under creation.
She swallowed and with her heart in her throat, she stepped inside to see him stripping his shirt away, but the buttons slipped from his left hand, and he was muttering curses under his breath.
Ellie acted before she could think and slapped his hand away to undo the buttons herself. The acrid, coppery scent of blood curdled her nose, and she studiously ignored the full sleeve of blood.
She briefly met his eyes before she peeled the lapels away; the moonlight glimmered over his virile proportions. His wide shoulders and bulging arms were sculpted sinew, and his chestwas made up of delineated blocks of the flint, with a light covering of dark hair that narrowed into a trail over his lean, ridged belly.
He flopped to the edge of his bed and twisted his arm, “If you want to be useful, go into my washing room, wet a rag, and bring it to me. Then, take a glass of brandy from that cupboard there, the bandages from that chest and hand them to me too.”
Wordlessly, she did as he asked, wetted the rag, handed it to him, found the brandy, then rummaged in the chest for the bandages. “What happened?”
“Nothing of your concern,” he grunted while inspecting his arm.
A horrendous gash was slashed across his arm but it did not look punctured. The wound did not look neat enough to have come from a blade either, so she hazarded a guess. “Were you… were you shot?”
“Yes,” Dorian replied before pulling the oiled cloth from the brandy bottle. Unceremoniously, he dumped half the bottle over the gash and ground his jaw.
Ellie flinched.
For a wound so fresh, that had to hurt like the devil’s fork had been jammed into him. When he let out a long breath and began to pat the wound dry, it still pebbled with blood, and shiftingher eyes away, Ellie busied herself with undoing the roll of clean linen strips.
She didn’t want to think why he had piles of them in the trunk.
Looking up, she saw Dorian take a healthy swig of the liquor, the smooth bob of his Adam’s apple, and her chest fluttered. The polarizing feeling she’d felt at dinner seemed to double in strength.
She should not feel attracted to this man—he was an unrepentant troglodyte who only wanted her to further his needs. She shouldn’t care enough to help him either, but Ellie found that she could not—would not—turn away when he needed help.
It was so strong, so intense, so enigmatic—hewas enigmatic. Beyond anything she’d come across in novels— and she had done a lot of reading.
“You will need a salve to stave off infection,” she began.
His eyes flickered up to her before returning to the wound. “There is one in the trunk.”
Retrieving the tub, she pried it open for him to scoop some out and slather it over his skin, then wrap the bandage with finesse that perturbed Ellie. No one should be so adept at bandaging wounds.
“I can feel you judging me,” he murmured while inspecting his work.
“You have been wounded many times before, haven’t you?” she said.
“More than you can imagine,” Dorian replied, before taking another mouthful of brandy.
She sunk to the nearest chair and let out a long breath. “I cannot find it in me to imagine you as a boy in the stews.”
“Well, I was,” he replied, leaning back and propping the bottle on his thigh. “You would think scrabbling for bread and water in the slums was any different from the lords of London. They are no different from the cutthroats in the stews I grew up with. These fine lords and ladies were just as savage, thirsting for blood at every turn.”
Her brows dropped. “The ladies can be savage, especially when it comes to finding husbands. They will throw you under the carriage and drive over you twice if they can see a way to take a lord away from you, and many will. I cannot say so about the lords.”
Shadows danced over his face while he gave a smoky laugh. “If you were able to set foot in White’s, you would change your mind in minutes.”
“But you are a Duke,” she shook her head. “How—how did you end up in the stews?”
In the flickering dimness, wildfire glimmered in his eyes and waves of tension rolled off his powerful frame. “That is none of your concern.”
Her fists balled at his unbelievable arrogance. “What is wrong with you giving a little? You seem to know more about me than I would like, but you must cut me off at every turn. I am trying to help you—you conceitedcoxcomb!”
His raucous laugh was not a reaction she had expected. “You really cannot curse, can you? That was almost poignant.”
