It was time for answers. “Enff.” The word was thick, and her tongue wouldn’t make the shapes it needed. “Eee nwaaaf.” She ran her tongue around her mouth trying to remind it of what it was supposed to do. “Eee. Nuff.” Only one word, yet so much effort.
All three men stopped to stare at her.
Clumsily, she pushed herself into a seated position, the pins and needles in her arms making it barely possible. As she sat, a coarse blanket fell to her lap. She reached down, her fingers fumbling with the fabric. For the life of her, she couldn’t grasp it. Couldn’t even feel it. She looked down.
Her chest was bare but for her loosened stays and thin chemise. Her lungs tightened as though her lady’s maid was pulling at her laces in a fury.
What in heavens?
Panic got her fingers working. She clutched the wool and yanked it to her chin.
“W-w-what is h-happening?”
Her father’s face turned purple. Spittle burst from his mouth like little pellets. He shoved himself off the undressed stranger and bore down on her.
“You…” He jabbed his finger inches from her face. “You little whore.”
She flinched and looked around. Every movement felt sullen and slow, at complete odds with her heart, which beat overtime as if trying to spur the rest of her to flee. She tried to sift through her memories, but as soon as her brain grasped an image, it let it go.
“Step back from her.” It was a quiet warning that promised unpleasant consequences from anyone foolish enough to ignore it. And it didn’t come from Edward. The semi-naked man had made it to his feet and now, sensibly, was putting the rough-hewn table between him and everyone else.
He had her father pinned with a glare hard enough to cause actual damage. Hard enough to force the esteemed Earl of Crofton to take a few steps back from her.
She slowly exhaled.
The stranger leaned against the shack walls, and a blond lock of hair fell over his forehead. Deep blue eyes, the color of a twilight sky, stared into hers. He was not the sort of man she was acquainted with. He wasn’t pretty or refined; he was granite and rock. He looked rough—south side of Cheap Street kind of rough—an image intensified by his bloodied nose and sheer hulking size.
His chest, all brawn and sinew, bunched beneath his crossed arms, and her eyes dropped to the interlocking muscles at his waist, the dusting trail of hair that reached down past the waistband of his breeches.
Sothatwas what men looked like beneath their finery.
Despite the cold, a red heat seared across her. She tore her gaze away from his naked torso and found him staring at her, his eyebrows raised as if he knew very well where her attention had been.
Her face grew hot with embarrassment.
“W-well?” she asked, trying to brazen it out. She’d sound more impressive if her words weren’t slurred. “Who are you?”
He gave a deep, weary, frustrated sigh. “Benedict Asterly.”
“And why am I here, like…” she gestured to the blanket covering her.
“You were in a coach, freezing to death.” His voice was flat and unsympathetic.
Yes. It had been cold. The hot bricks at her feet had cooled, and the cold outside had seeped in. Despite piling on every layer she could, she’d been freezing, and it had become harder and harder to stay awake.
“And I’m undressed because…?”
“That’s a darn good question.” Edward’s bearing mirrored the stranger’s—grim, autocratic, guarded.
The stranger—Benedict—sighed, raking his hands through his hair. The muscles of his chest stretched as he did so. “You disrobed yourself.”
“I did not!” The nerve of him. “It takes my maid half an hour to get me into this dress.”
Her father rounded on her again. “And took him half a second to get you out of it.” She was well acquainted with his temper, but never had he been so furious that he’d lost his composure in public.
The stranger pushed himself from the wall. His was a different species of anger. Where her father exploded like fuel-fed fire, the stranger was controlled, lethal.
Every inch of her was startlingly aware of him, of his immense size and the surprising fluidity of his movement.
