Ravishing in Red (4 page)

The door opened then. A maid carried in a basin and a bucket of water. She laid some clean cloths on the bed. “A gentleman below asked that I bring this shirt too,” she said, setting it aside. She gave Audrianna a good stare, then hurried out.

Lord Sebastian put the bucket near the fire. He sat on the bed, slid off his waistcoat, then stripped off his tattered shirt. He winced when the fabric rubbed over the wound.

Audrianna blinked hard, stunned anew. This man had gone beyond dishabille. He sat there, preoccupied with that wound, undressed, half-naked if one wanted to be honest. He did not seem to think it at all odd that she was sitting right here with him.

She had never seen a man without his shirt on. She tried to feign a worldly indifference, but she could not help noting that if a woman had to see a half-naked man for the first time in her life, Lord Sebastian was not a bad beginning. A boy no longer, he still possessed the taut leanness of youth, and almost no softness interfered with the way his muscles defined his torso.

“I will need that chair now, Miss Kelmsleigh. If you do not mind.”

She jumped off the chair. He grabbed its back, swung it into place in front of the fire, and straddled it. Using the warm water and some soap, he began to cleanse the gash on his upper arm.

She assumed it pained him but he displayed no reaction. Perhaps he was not as oblivious of her presence as it appeared.

“I will go below while you—”

“I gave my word that you would not leave this chamber. Besides, nothing but scorn or worse waits for you down there. You will remain here until the magistrate comes, and we will decide what to say to him.”

She edged closer. His cleansing had missed a good deal of the back of his arm. “Allow me to help you, then. Give me the cloth.”

He handed it over. She dabbed away the black dust. She could see the gash better now. It was not deep but a bad burn surrounded it by three inches. She doubted a surgeon could have done more than clean it like this.

“Did you get a good look at him?” he asked. “The Domino?”

“Is that who you think it was?”

“I am sure of it. He must have overheard me ask for directions to this chamber and thought Kelmsleigh was here. Did you see his face? Would you recognize him?”

She turned her sight inward. She tried to slow down the explosion of action. She had caught a glimpse of the intruder’s face beneath his broad-brimmed hat when the firelight washed it as he moved toward them. She remembered his shock, first at seeing she was even there, blocked by Lord Sebastian’s body, then when he saw the pistol in Lord Sebastian’s hand.

“Yes, I believe I could recognize him. Do you think he is still here?”

“He just shot a man. He will be long gone from this inn by now. It is good that one of us got a look at him, however. It might be useful later.”

He sounded determined and angry. She doubted his continued interest in the Domino would benefit her own cause.

He brooded while she dabbed and cleaned. He turned his attention from the fire to her with a dark scowl. “You should not have come here. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that no one else cares about the truth, so I had better take up the cause myself.”

“You created an unneeded complication and distraction.”

“I do not believe that a man of your consequence is a slave to distraction. Nor do I have illusions that I am the sort of woman to make a man forget himself. However, I remind you that any distraction that resulted in this wound was of your own making.”

His eyes blazed at her accusation, but the flames lowered fast enough. His face remained set in a stern expression but he did not blame her outright again.

Audrianna’s own blood was up now too. The recent events and conversations begged for explanations.

“You referred to a bigger scheme, Lord Sebastian. What did you mean by that?”

“I do not believe that your father was guilty of negligence. I do not believe that the bad gunpowder that left those soldiers defenseless was an accident.”

His response appalled her. He implied that her father had deliberately sent bad powder to the front! “How dare you! Is it not enough that he was unjustly disgraced to the point of despair? To now accuse him of—”

“He was the last check on quality in a long line of checks. The distribution could not occur without his signature. Whether he was guilty of carelessness or conspiracy, attention settled on him for a reason, Miss Kelmsleigh. I am sorry, but that is the truth of it.”

She wanted to hit him for the insult. She dabbed more firmly while angry tears blurred her sight. “That is not the truth. You are mistaken. My father was not guilty of anything at all.”

Suddenly his hand closed over hers, stilling it against the arm that she cleaned. His hold suggested that she had been hurting him more than she realized and he now merely stopped her. However, his firm grasp of her hand, and her close approximation to the face still stoical in its countenance, produced an unexpected flow of intimacy.

Her dismay at his insinuations about her father mixed with a new astonishment. She realized that his continued hold of her hand was intended to comfort her distress.

No one had done that before. Not since the scandal first broke. Not Mama, who was so distraught, first with worry and then with grief. Ce rtainly not Roger. Not even her cousin Daphne, who had treated the whole episode as a book whose cover would be better closed forever.

Now this man who had all but handed her father the rope to hang himself made this small attempt to soothe her. She should shake off his touch and ignore the effort. She should tell him she wanted no comfort from him of all people.

Instead she could not move for several moments. She closed her eyes and accepted the humanity of his concern as it flowed into her like warm water. She let it touch her heart and calm her agitation. She ignored the peculiarity of the source of the comfort because she so desperately needed its balm.

He lifted her hand and pried the bloody rag from her fingers. He grabbed a clean cloth. “Help me to bind this, please, so I can dress for our guest.”

Hands shaking, she tied the cloth around his arm while he held it in place.

Then he stood. Suddenly his naked chest was right in front of her nose. A stark consciousness of that chest, with the texture of its skin and the way the firelight carved its strength with deep shadows, dazed her for a slow moment.

She forced her gaze up and caught him watching the way she looked at his body. She felt herself blush hotly. She moved away and turned her back on him so he would not view her embarrassment.

There had been nothing critical in the way he gazed down at her. Nothing insinuating or leering. His expression had been far more shocking than that.

She had seen his own fascination, and a silent acknowledgment of some shared secret. Confidence too, as if he knew he was worth looking at, but also curiosity, as if he found her interest less predictable than past women’s.

She heard him dressing, then the chair being moved again.

“Miss Kelmsleigh.”

She forced herself to turn and face him. He appeared all proper now. Not only a shirt and waistcoat covered him, but also the dark gray riding coat that he had removed on first entering. His cravat had been retied quite well considering the pain it must have caused to move his arm.

“Miss Kelmsleigh, I am sorry that your father is dead. I am sorry for your grief and I am sorry that my pursuit of the truth hurt your family. However, sometime tonight or tomorrow morning the county justice of the peace will be posing some awkward questions. I must ask you to trust me and allow me to answer him for both of us.”

His reference to her father’s death enflamed the anger that had sent her on this miserable journey. She was grateful for that moment of comfort, but it really changed nothing.

“You hounded my father to his grave, Lord Sebastian. You and the other members of Parliament who kept talking about that gunpowder. You would not accept any explanations, and insisted that the Board of Ordnance find a scapegoat for you to pillory in public. I think that I would be stupid to trust you.”

“Your view is understandable. However, I am the only protection that you will have in this. My word as a gentleman, my brother’s title, and my position in the government might spare you.”

“Spare me? Scandal will find me no matter who you are if word gets out that we were alone here. Your station will only make me more notorious.”

“That kind of scandal is the least of what you face. In fact, it would be best if the magistrate accepts this as a lovers’ quarrel. Because when he learns that you are Horatio Kelmsleigh’s daughter, he is going to think that you arranged to meet me here, so that you could kill me to avenge your father.”

She wanted to laugh at his dramatic prediction. Only in a flash she saw the sordid scene from the innkeeper’s eyes again. Lord Sebastian was correct. Her identity would put a different and far worse interpretation on the night’s events.

The thought left her nauseous. She should never have left the safe obscurity that she had found in Daphne’s house. She should never have rebelled against the unjust turn that life had taken, or been so stupid as to think she could alter the course of fate.

Lord Sebastian gestured to the bed. “There is no telling when he will arrive. We will arrange it so you can take some rest in privacy, while I contemplate the best way to keep you from being transported for attempted murder.”

 

 

 

 

H
e pulled the bed’s drapes closed with his good arm. Then he lifted the hem on one side and pushed it over the bed halfway to create a narrow but serviceable tunnel of privacy for her.

“Get in, Miss Kelmsleigh, and try to sleep. I will not disturb you. You are completely safe.”

She looked long and hard at that bed. “Where will you be?”

“On the other side of that drape.”

“That would be most inappropriate.”

“I think that we are beyond pretty proprieties, don’t you?”

She grimaced in resignation. She wrapped herself in her shawl, lifted a corner of the drape, and disappeared behind it. They were in gaol for all intents and purposes, and there was no way to stand on ceremony. He could not sit out the night in that wooden chair with his bad arm, and he would probably not allow her to either, while he used the bed.

She lay down and huddled on her side and closed her eyes. Despite her exhaustion, her body felt like a taut string on a bow. She kept hearing small sounds as he moved in the chamber.

Then the mattress sagged behind her back and beyond that billowing drape. She felt his presence warm her even though not a part of them touched.

She tried to sleep. It was impossible. He was just
there
. She imagined him reaching for her and—

The notion shocked her. So did the manner in which her body flushed. She tried to turn her thoughts to other things, to Mama and Sarah, to her father. Even to Roger. None of it helped much. Instead the intimacy of this situation saturated the chamber and pressed on her.

It was worse than being in a crowded coach with strangers. Then one pretended they were not there and ignored the physical proximity that would be wrong in any other situation. And they remained strangers, even if one of them liked to talk, because the talk was about nothing important. At the end of the journey they disappeared and so did the intimacy, as if it had never happened.

Lord Sebastian would not disappear. She would have to face him in the morning and could not pretend this had not happened. He was not a stranger either, anymore, and their talk had been about very important things.

And he had kissed her.
And she had allowed it
. That was what really left her fearful and, yes, waiting. She had given him cause to think that if he reached for her, she might not mind. That was what kept deepening this awareness of his body beside hers, in that shocking, startling, never-ending
there
.

He did not sleep either. She just knew that. And so she dared not move. Not one bit, all night.

 

 

 

 

S
ebastian waited a quarter hour, sitting on the wooden chair while his arm pounded. Then he lay down fully dressed, boots and all, on the side of the bed left exposed by his artistry with the drapes. He went through great pains, literally, to avoid even touching the billow of fabric that shielded her.

Just resting his shoulder and arm helped. Or maybe the feminine presence so close by distracted him from the wound. Like most men, maybe more than most, he was prone to seductive considerations. He smiled ruefully when signs of arousal stirred in him just from hearing her faint breathing.

Bloody hell. Here he was, dressed in coats and boots, in as chaste a situation as one could create out of such a disaster, and yet his body encouraged him to speculate about the possibilities.

Worse, for all her stillness, he was sure she did not sleep either. Any woman as artless in kissing as she had demonstrated would not find repose with a man in the same room, let alone two inches away on the other side of a swath of cloth.

That same artlessness indicated, of course, that any speculations were idiocy. Not to mention he had an arm that could barely move.

He forced his mind away from that billow and the woman behind it who helped to warm this bed very nicely. He eyed the low fire beyond his boots until he extinguished the alluring warmth in his blood.

With the distraction gone, his arm started throbbing again like hell’s drum. He turned his thoughts to how quickly and thoroughly the night had turned into a catastrophe.

He admired Miss Kelmsleigh’s courage in daring to meet the Domino, but a good deal of annoyance simmered in his head as he reviewed the night’s events. If she had stayed put in London, like any other woman, he might have pulled off tonight’s plan and learned the truth about that ordnance conspiracy. It would have been nice to hand his brother some resolution about that. Now, instead, there would be hell to pay.