“For presuming the worst. For lending even a moment’s credence to idle gossip.” She shifted her grip upon the poker and straightened as far as her ankle permitted. “You are no beast. You are a man who has been judged unjustly by people who ought to have known better. I regret—sincerely—that I contributed to that judgement, however briefly.”
For a moment, Christian found himself incapable of speech.
In eight-and-twenty years, no one had ever looked upon the mark—and beyond it—and offered regret for their prejudice rather than recoiling from its cause.
“Miss Hart,” he said at last, his voice low, “you must return to your chamber. Your ankle—”
“Will endure a few moments more.” Yet she swayed as she spoke, the colour draining from her cheeks despite her resolve.
He crossed the room before caution could intervene. Before she could protest, he had lifted her into his arms once more and turned toward the door.
“Your Grace!” Her hands flew to his shoulders. “This is entirely unnecessary—”
“You are on the brink of collapsing upon my study floor, Miss Hart. I have already retrieved you once from an undignified heap. I decline to make it a habit.”
She was lighter than he recalled. Warm against him despite the draught in the corridor. Her hair brushed his jaw, carryinga faint trace of lavender mingled with something subtler—something wholly her own.
“I am capable of walking,” she insisted, though her fingers tightened rather than loosened.
“You are not.” He moved down the passage, ignoring the astonished expressions of passing servants. “You have a severely sprained ankle, you have eaten nothing since yesterday, and you have navigated half the east wing armed with a fire iron. Ambulation is no longer under consideration.”
“The iron was my maid’s idea.”
“I rather doubt that.”
A sound escaped her—halfway between a laugh and a groan. “Very well. It was mine. Molly proposed a bath chair, but that seemed theatrically excessive.”
“And besieging my study with a hearth implement was measured restraint?”
“It achieved its purpose, did it not?”
He did not answer.
He shouldered open the door to the blue guest chamber and laid her upon the bed with more care than the action strictly required, withdrawing at once lest the warmth of her linger too vividly.
She looked up at him. In the morning light, her eyes were the colour of gathering storm—apt, he thought, for a woman who had arrived borne upon one.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “Again.”
“Pray, stop thanking me.” The words emerged sharper than he intended, and he tempered his tone. “I am not… accustomed to gratitude, Miss Hart. I find I have no notion what to do with it.”
“Accept it.” She eased herself back against the pillows, suppressing a wince as her ankle shifted. “It is not a complicated exchange. One person expresses thanks; the other acknowledges it; and the world continues.”
“I see. And is that our present design? To continue as though this were an ordinary morning?”
“Unless Your Grace proposes an alternative.” That faint smile touched her mouth again. “I am informed the roads remain impassable. Which renders me your guest—welcome or otherwise. We may as well endeavour to conduct ourselves with civility.”
Civility. He could manage Civility. Civility was orderly. Contained. Safe.
“Very well.” He inclined his head. “Mrs Blackley will send a tray. You will eat, you will rest, and you will keep all weight from that ankle until Mr Marsh has examined it. Does that satisfy your definition of civility?”
“Tyranny, perhaps,” she returned, though her eyes glinted. “But I concede I am not advantageously placed to dispute the terms.”
“No,” Christian said evenly. “You are not.”
He turned toward the door, then halted with his hand upon the latch. He did not permit himself to look back. If he did, he would see her lying there—storm-grey eyes, copper-lit curls against linen—and he would forget every discipline he had cultivated regarding distance.
“Miss Hart.”
