“It looks awful.” She brushed her hand across his bruised cheek.
“I said it’s nothing.” He closed his fingers gently around her wrist and withdrew her hand from his face.
She winced.
“What’s the matter?” He unclasped his fingers. A growing purple bruise marred her skin an inch above her glove, where the fiend had grabbed her.
“Did he do that to you?”
She nodded, and a single tear slid from the corner of her eye.
Overwhelming anger threatened to choke Jack. “I should have killed him.”
“Maybe, but what would we have done with the body?” A playful smile appeared on her lips, and Jack’s anger melted.
“We could have fed him to the dogs.” Jack wiped the tear from her face with his thumb.
“I might have enjoyed that.”
“The wrath of Artemis is making more sense, isn’t it?” He shook his head. “What were you doing out here alone?”
“Out here? Do you mean in Kensington Gardens? I was walking, sitting, and enjoying the park.”
“But you shouldn’t be in the park alone at this hour. It will be dark in thirty minutes. It’s dangerous.”
“It’s only dangerous for women because a few men think it right to put their hands on any unaccompanied female. I would have been out of the park well before dark had that brute not interfered with me. Because of the likes of such men, I should live in a cage?”
“I only want you to be safe.” Jack stroked a strand of her hair. The desire to kiss her flared inside him, but it felt more wrong now than ever. She didn’t need another man trying to take advantage of her.
“You forget that I am six-and-twenty and have managed to live many years quite safely thus far. I even spent two years in London attending college.”
“I haven’t forgotten—how could I when you keep reminding me of your age?”
“It feels necessary in Mayfair because the people here seem to place unmarried women in the same category as children who need chaperoning lest they do something foolish. As if women are incapable of rational thinking. It’s intolerable, really, and it is not the type of women I am used to associating with.”
“Why do you come to Mayfair if you find it so intolerable?”
She dropped her gaze and rubbed at a spot of dirt on her glove. “I’ve been trying to cling to the little family I have left, but I see now I’ve been wasting my time. I plan on returning to Canterbury tomorrow.”
“So soon?” Jack felt the disappointment in his bones. “Without telling Henry?”
Her blue eyes met his once again. “If you can tell him for me, I’d be grateful to you. And perhaps you will invite him to accompany you when you come to Canterbury to deliver the reading you promised.”
He slipped an arm around her waist and caressed her back. “I did promise a reading, didn’t I?”
She arched her body in response to his touch. “You did.”
His gaze fell to her mouth. “And you promised to be my muse until I finished my epic.”
She tilted her head toward him. “I thought you no longer required my help.”
“I lied. I do need you.” He caressed her jaw with his free hand and kissed the corner of her mouth. “I don’t want you to go,” he whispered. He’d never needed a woman before. They’d always seemed to need him. But somehow, Ottilie made his world brighter and better. Without her, anger and vengeance swallowed him whole.
“I will agree to stay and help you on one condition.” Her voice was a throaty whisper.
“Tell me?” he breathed.
“That you finish what you started behind the cabinet.” She pulled him against her.
