All my love,
Simon
—A confiscated letter written in the French prison at Mont Saint Michel by Simon Clark, Earl of Astley. It was destroyed by a guard on Christmas day, but not before it was read by a little boy who planned to care for the earl until his dying day.
“Fuuuuuck.”
He knew it would hurt. In fact, he’d whole heartedly embraced the thought of the pain his recovery would entail while he’d been rotting away in that hell called France. But would the pain ever stop? His cast was off, his leg looked like hell, hurt even worse, and for the first time in months he’d seen his entire body. He grimaced at the ghastly image staring back at him in the mirror.
Turning toward the tub, his crutch caught on the rug and he cursed once more. “‘Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity,’ you will make it to that bath if it’s the last thing you do.”
He’d dismissed the servants as soon as his bath was full, not wanting to make an ass out of himself. He’d done enough of that already. He reached the copper tub and dropped his crutch. He sat on the edge to catch his breath and ran his fingers in the steaming hot water. It was as if he’d raced his horse up and down the Strand all morning long, and yet all he’d done was undress and travel twenty feet from the bed to his bathing room.
He sighed and prepared himself for the next feat—getting into the blasted tub. He leaned across the expanse and braced himself on the opposite side as he swung his bad leg over the edge first. He lifted his second leg just as the door to his chambers opened.
“Astley, I received word from Sir Will?—”
He would never know if she completed her sentence withWilliamson.He was too busy attempting to cover himself from her view. As his luck would have it, because, really did anyone else have his luck, he fell into the damned tub headfirst and struck his head on the opposite side. If things couldn’t get worse, he somehow ended up with his arse sticking up in the air and his head under water. Struggling and splashing and making a bumbling fool of himself, he attempted to right himself. For anavid swimmer, he was doing a piss-poor job of saving himself from a bloody tub.
Delicate hands wrapped around his arm and pulled him up, his arse and cock going under the water where they belonged, even if his other hand was the only thing he had to spare her modesty. He sputtered water as she slapped him on the back multiple times to clear his lungs.
“Bloody hell, Caillen I’m not drowning,” he croaked.
“You could have fooled me. What were you doing?”
“I was attempting to cover myself.”
“I’ve seen it all before, Astley.”
“Well, I wasn’t doing it for my fucking modesty, I was doing it for yours.” He pushed what little hair he had off his forehead and Caillen gasped. Unable to hide his utter mortification at being less than a man, he snapped. “What?”
“Your temple. You’ve got a goose egg forming.”
“It’s nothing.” At least it had been nothing until she pointed it out. Now it hurt like hell.
“That’s not nothing? You could die!”
He took a calming breath before he said, “I’m not going to die.”
“The farmer next to us in Scotland died the day after his cow kicked him on that very same spot.”
Simon rubbed his head. It wasn’t enough that he had a nasty bump right at the edge of his eyebrow, now he had to hear about the local farmer? “You saw him get kicked?”
“No.”
“You saw him die?”
“Of course not. He died in his sleep.”
Simon closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Then how do you know it was the same spot or that the kick was even the cause of his death?”
“Oh, well that’s what his wife told the coal monger, who told our housekeeper, who told our nanny, and Ailsa and I overhead the story as we were doing our scales on the pianoforte.”
He looked at her, unable to even think of a response.
“What?” She asked as she rubbed his temple in the gentlest of touches. Despite her obvious concern and his desperate attempt not to think of her touch as anything but a nurse caring for her patient, his filthy mind found her touch erotic, and she wasn’t the slightest bit aware of the effect she was having upon him. Maybe that’s what made it so tempting as he watched her perfectly formed lips part as she inspected his injury. Scoundrel that he was, he couldn’t help but notice how her efforts to pull him up in the tub had saturated the front of her gown, making it mold to her breasts and showcase her dusty rose areolas and pert nipples. He moaned and closed his eyes.
“Does that hurt?”
