I Kissed a Rogue (Covent Garden Cubs) (15 page)

Brook shifted slightly, and she realized she’d been staring at his chest—his wound, she corrected—for several moments. Lila straightened quickly and moved back.

“I’ll just go to the kitchen.”

He said something in return, but she was already out the door, the cold mist cooling her heated face.

Nine

As soon as she was out the door, Brook pressed his palms to the table and took several deep breaths. He didn’t know which throbbed more—the wound or his raging erection. How was he supposed to remain unaffected when Lila undressed him? He knew she hadn’t intended to trail her fingers up his chest as she removed his shirt, but even the innocent touch had made his flesh harden with need.

He must control his reaction to her. After he’d kissed her, she’d made it quite clear she didn’t welcome his advances. Even had she welcomed them, he didn’t want her. Therein lay the solution. He needed to remind himself what a cold bitch she really was. Yes, she needed him now, but she was still spoiled and haughty as ever.

Remembering the night he’d proposed to her was certain to cool his ardor. It seemed he’d been a different man then, young and foolishly optimistic and hopelessly in love.

If nothing else, he remembered how infatuated he’d been. The week he’d decided to ask her to be his wife, he’d strolled about London with an idiotic grin on his face. He’d thought of nothing but her—imagined their children, their wedding, growing old together.

And bedding her.

Even then he wasn’t so innocent that he hadn’t thought of that aspect of marriage. He’d wanted her in his bed, though he would hardly have known what to do with her when he had her there.

He’d know what to do now. Of course, the irony was that he didn’t want her now. His body wanted her, but that was the normal reaction of any man to a woman undressing him. Brook knew what really lay beneath her lovely exterior, and he wanted nothing to do with it. He’d been a fool once. He could blame it on youth, but he wasn’t a boy now. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

When she finally returned with a bowl and a pot, he had his body under control. It wasn’t very gentlemanly, but he’d laid out the bread and cheese and eaten a fair share of it. Hunger only made the feeling of light-headedness worse. He saw her gaze flick to the food on the table, but she didn’t remark on his less-than-chivalrous act.

“Where is the well? I’ll fetch water to heat.”

He could hardly imagine her fetching water in the silky dress she wore. Wrinkled and dirty now, it was still far more appropriate for a drawing room than any sort of useful activity. Then again, he wouldn’t have believed he’d ever see her hunching before a hearth with flint and steel.

He rather liked the idea of her doing something useful for a change. At the same time, it went against everything he’d ever been taught. “I should do that.”

“You can’t,” she snapped. “Where is it?”

“To the left of the kitchen,” he answered and watched her go back into the rain and cold. Finally she returned, lugging a bucket of water. Brook wondered what her tittering friends would think of her if they could see her now. She poured water into the pot, then dragged it near the fire to warm. There was probably some sort of rack in the kitchen with hooks for that sort of thing, but he wasn’t so much an arse as to suggest she make another trek outside to search for it.

Finally, she rose and, with hands on hips, looked about the room. She seemed to spot what she wanted and headed for a small cupboard near the bed where Hunt had placed the clean linens he’d brought from London. He couldn’t help but watch her. She moved as efficiently as any housekeeper he’d ever seen, only she was far lovelier, even with soot on her chin and leaves clinging to her hem.

She opened the cupboard and withdrew a stack of linens. She cocked her head and studied the mattresses as though they were a complicated mathematical equation. Then she went to work making up the bed. It was a far cry from perfect, but it would do.

Then she went to the mantel and took down a flask Brook hadn’t noticed before.

He’d been too busy watching her.

“Hunt says we should pour this on the wound.” She set the flask and a small towel in front of him.

“That will hurt.”

“It will, won’t it?” She took the bowl, bringing it to the heated pot to collect warm water. Brook would have preferred to clean the blood with water and leave the rest alone, but he also knew the dangers of infection. Better that he suffered the sharp sting of the whisky now than die of fever in a few days.

Gritting his teeth, he pulled the cap off the flask. Brook braced one hand on the table and allowed a small measure of whisky to trickle over the wound. The burn slammed into him, crumpling his knees. He dug his fingers into the table. “God’s teeth that hurts.”

“It does look painful,” Lila said in that ennui-filled voice. If she found all this so tedious, he would be happy to make it more interesting. She just needed to step a little closer so he could wrap his fingers around her skinny neck.

“You’d better douse it again,” she said.

He glared at her from between slitted eyes.

“You don’t want it to become infected.”

“Stubble it.”

Her brows rose in surprise. He doubted anyone had said that to her before. She’d hear a lot more than that if she insisted on being
helpful
. Before he could think too much, he doused the wound again, this time biting back what threatened to be a rather womanish scream. In his experience, it was always the shallow cuts that hurt like the devil.

He slammed the flask on the table and gripped it with both hands, head down and breathing fast. From the corner of his gray vision, he saw her lift the flask and cap it, then reach for the rag and water.

“Do sit down before you fall.”

He sat, feeling the chair creak under his weight. When he opened his eyes again, Lila knelt beside him. She dipped the towel in the water and dragged it lightly over the blood on his side. She avoided the wound, cleaning above and below it. When the water had turned red, she threw it out and fetched more. Then she proceeded to wipe the rest of the blood away.

Her touch was light but confident. She had not lied when she’d said she’d done this before. The question was why she had tended her mother when a servant or a nurse could have done it. Perhaps she’d loved her mother. Surely even a cold-hearted woman like Lila had to love someone.

“I need to…” When she trailed off, he glanced down. Her fingers hesitated at his waistband. Some of the blood had seeped into the top of the breeches and onto his hip.

“Go ahead.”

She hesitated, seeming unsure what to do. Finally, she pushed the material down, exposing his waist. Apparently, that didn’t uncover all of the blood because she tugged the breeches farther down until his hip bone was bared.

“Would it be easier if I took them off?”

“No!”

He’d only been half-joking, but her horrified tone made him smile even amidst the pain. Now he wanted to discard the breeches just to shock her.

Carefully, she wiped the rest of the blood away. The sting in his side subsided enough that he could focus on her kneeling in front of him. He must be a cruel, vindictive man because he rather liked seeing her kneeling before him.

“If we rip your shirt into strips, we can use it as bandages. I don’t think you’ll be able to wear it again at any rate.”

“Fine.” He reached for it.

“You do have another?”

He barely stifled a smile. Perhaps his bare chest affected her more than he’d realized. “If Hunt has done his job, I do.”

He ripped the clean portions of the shirt into several shorter strips and one longer strip to tie about his middle and keep the others in place. She watched him, biting her lip. When he finished, she shook her head and quickly looked away, a flush rising on her cheeks. He would have paid ten pounds to know what she’d been thinking at that moment.

Was it possible the high and mighty Lady Lillian-Anne, daughter of the Duke of Lennox, was attracted to lowly Brook Derring? Not
Lord
Derring, mind you. Only Sir Derring.

How mortifying.

“I hate to say this,” she began, not sounding at all like she hated to say whatever it was she would, “but I think you must treat the wound one more time.”

“It’s clean. Just bandage it.” He held the strips of what had been his linen shirt out to her.

“Excuse me, but I have a better viewpoint than you. It needs one more cleaning.”

He glanced down, but damn if she wasn’t right. He couldn’t see the wound clearly because of where it lay on his flank. His gaze met hers. “You only want to torture me.”

She smiled sweetly. “Why would I want to do that? You saved my life.”

“Because you hate all of this, and though you realize it’s not reasonable, you still blame me for it.”

She cocked her head, considering. He noted that though they’d been traveling all night and some of the day, and she’d been doing manual labor around the cottage, her hair was still perfectly coiffed. Except for the smudge of soot on her chin, her face was still perfectly lovely. Her dress had seen better days, but considering his own clothes were in shreds, hers had held up nicely.

“I suppose there’s some truth in that. But I resent the implication that I’m the sort of person who enjoys hurting others.”

“So you aren’t looking forward to applying that whisky to my wound?”

“Oh, I am. Apparently, my kindness does not extend to you.”

“It wouldn’t.” He stood, grasped the table. “Very well. On my count. One—”

The whisky trickled over the wound, bringing fire with it. “Hell’s fire, woman! You were supposed to wait until three.”

She calmly capped the flask. “Better to do it quickly.”

His vision wavered with the waves of red-hot pain. He was dimly aware that she threw the dirty water out and washed her hands in the clean. He sat back down again, the scent of sweet flowers surrounding him as she bandaged him a bit tighter than he would have liked.

Bloody hell, but he would pay her back for this. In spades.

She moved away, and he was thankful for the momentary reprieve. And then she pressed the bottle of wine to his lips and ordered him to drink.

It was good wine, a full red wine that had been aged for several years. He drank a hearty measure and then allowed her to help him to his feet and lead him to the bed.

Under other circumstances, he would have been quite pleased to have an attractive woman take him to her bed. At the moment, all he wanted was sleep. She helped him onto the sheets that smelled sweet and freshly laundered, and covered him with a thick blanket.

Brook thought about telling her thank you. Instead, he closed his eyes and fell into blackness.

He dreamed. It seemed he spent hours in dreams where he chased Beezle, but the arch rogue continued to slip from his fingers. Brook navigated the warrens of Seven Dials almost as well as Gideon—or whatever the hell his name was now. He turned blind corners, entered dark cellars, stumbled through fetid, rat-infested alleys. But Beezle remained always out of reach.

And then he staggered out of the darkness and into the glittering lights of a ball. He wasn’t dressed for it in his boots and trousers. He couldn’t possibly dance in boots. Had Beezle led him here?

The guests circled the dance floor, where an
L
had been chalked, surrounded by curling vines, wrapping around sword hilts where lions balanced.

The symbols of the Duke of Lennox. He knew this ball. It was the Lennox Ball, the night he’d proposed to Lila.

The dance began, and she was one of the first on the floor, led by some foreign prince or other. Brook knew how this night would turn out, but he couldn’t seem to stop his younger self from admiring her. She was impossibly beautiful under the glitter of a thousand candles reflected off the crystal chandeliers. Her white silk gown shimmered with silver embellishments, and silver ribbon threaded through her thick, dark hair. Her pale skin was creamy in the lights, her full lips red.

She was the picture of a perfect lady, except for those lips. They were too sensual. She had either been told this or was aware of it because she quite often kept them pressed together. At the moment, she’d forgotten. His gaze strayed to her figure. The cut of the dress was extremely proper and modest. The daughter of the Duke of Lennox would not dare to possess a body either too thin or too full. She was perfectly proportioned, her movements in the voluminous skirts hinting at just a bit of curve to her hips.

How he’d wanted her.

He forced the dream away from that ball, that night, and then he was in his flat, lying on the bed with the brown velvet coverlet.

“Derring. Sir Brook.”

He opened his eyes, and Lila stood before him, her hair down about her waist, wearing only a thin chemise. He reached out, caught the ribbon of the chemise and tugged. The bodice opened, revealing the swells of her breasts, but when it should have fallen off her shoulders, it remained firmly in place, denying him the sight of her body.

He would never have her. Even when she was lawfully his to take, she would always remain out of reach.

“Brook.”

Her voice again. Taunting him. Ever out of reach. Ever prim and aloof.

“Brook, wake up. Someone is here.”

He opened his eyes, and he wasn’t in the bed in his flat but in the cold cottage. The light streaming through the cracks in the boards covering the windows told him it was mid-morning. Lila stood before him. Her hair was down, but she wore a thick cotton wrapper over what appeared to be an extremely virginal night rail.

He frowned at the ugly white nightgown.

“Brook.” This time she touched his forearm, and he knew he wasn’t dreaming. Her hand felt cold and small, not at all like he would have imagined it in a dream. “I heard a horse and cart. I haven’t opened the door to see who it is, but someone is outside.”

He sat with no small amount of effort. Every muscle in his back and legs hurt, and his side sent throbbing waves of heat through him. But he winced and bore it until both feet touched the floor.