Passion Favors the Bold Page 18

  “See anything you like?” Hugo asked.

  She reddened. “That is the most obnoxious question possible, so I cannot possibly answer ‘yes.’ Besides which, you are completely trespassing against the professional environment in which I’m conducting—”

  “That’s a lot of words to say ‘Hugo, you caught me staring.’”

  She could have clouted him, mainly because he was correct. He was also smiling—a quick, tentative flash of humor that vanished too quickly.

  “All right, so you caught me staring. Should I apologize or tip you a saucy wink?”

  “Let us say I was not offended.”

  He copied her words, the wicked man. It was not a strong statement of besottedness, alas. But it was better than no statement at all.

  Next to be removed was the neckcloth. Hugo coaxed at the knot with the fingers of his left hand, wincing as he raised the right to assist.

  “Let me help,” Georgette said. “And don’t say anything stubborn like, ‘no, I don’t need your help,’ because you do.”

  “How often I have wanted to say the same thing to you. But you always become enraged when I so much as hint at the matter.”

  “Such hyperbole. You sound as if you’re full of spirits already.” Though she managed to keep her voice steady, a tremble began to resonate through her body. She was undressing Hugo. Her hands shook, her lips felt dry.

  Desire was most distressing—but pleasantly so.

  With his neckcloth off and laid atop the waistcoat, she was able to unfasten his shirt at the neck. She could see the dark hairs of his chest now, not merely imagine them. She wanted to touch them, to learn their texture. To feel the warmth of his skin and his steadily beating heart.

  “You are shivering,” he said.

  “I am cold,” she excused, drawing nearer. He smelled good, like spice and soap.

  “So you always say.”

  Well, what else was she to say? It was the only response that preserved her dignity. She couldn’t always be flinging herself into his arms, hoping he responded.

  Up and off came the shirt. Yes, she saw something she liked. She saw Hugo, half bare, his chest and abdomen planes of muscle and bone. On his right side, the ridge of muscle from shoulder to neck—the trapezius, she would remember as long as she lived—was covered with a bandage tied off beneath his arm.

  She liked the sight of him, yes, but the bandage made unease swim through her. “I hate that you were wounded.”

  “Georgette, I’m fine. Or I will be eventually.”

  She was no nurse; she could not keep her eyes dry at this evidence of his injury. “I wish it had not happened.”

  “I do not. If someone shot at us again, I would take the bullet for you. Every time.”

  She swallowed, but could not speak.

  “I’m fine,” he repeated, “because you are not injured. Now. Let’s get the medical part over with, shall we?”

  With hesitant movements, she undid the bandage. The wound was both better and worse than she had expected. She remembered it dimly from the day before, the dread that came coupled with Hugo’s unconsciousness. What had happened to the bullet she had dug out? It must still be in the bag of medical supplies. Ugh.

  Absent the blood and fear of the previous day, the wound appeared tidy. The worse bit was that it was there at all.

  Hugo tilted his head, trying to glimpse it. “Can’t see it. I should have brought a glass. But the bandage doesn’t look bad. Within a week I might have full use of my arm again without pain.”

  “Does everything take a week to heal? Toes? Gunshot wounds?”

  “This one will, I think. The shot came from a small gun like a pistol, and from far away. If it had been closer, or the gun larger, the bullet would have passed through me. It could easily have broken some of my bones or hit a major blood vessel.” Again, he craned his neck to one side. “If one must be shot, this is the way to do it.”

  Georgette retrieved the bottle of whisky. “If you keep talking about this, I shall cry, and then I’ll be humiliated.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to be as strong as you are,” she blurted.

  He looked at her with deep eyes. “Dear one, dear one.” His voice was quiet as he gathered her into his arms. “There are so many ways to be strong. Honesty is one of them. Courage. Threats.” He stroked her back. “Boldness. Intuition and determination. We’d never have got here without you.”

  “Since you were shot, I cannot think that a good thing.”

  “Then I must convince you otherwise.”

  He was very warm, and his arms about her were strong, and his hand on her back was gentle. And was he aroused? They were body to body, her hips pressing to him, and against her abdomen she felt the growing swell in his breeches.

  He cursed, releasing her and stepping back. “Sorry.”

  “No. Wait.” He had said honesty was a way to be strong? Well, then. “I want to know something. When you kissed me, while we were at the beach—did you want to, or were you just being kind after I had kissed you first?”

  As long as Georgette did not ask, she could hope for the former. She had never meant to let herself tumble for a scholar, but Hugo had a way of being . . . more. More than she had expected, and leading her to be more than she had thought she could be. A friend; a nurse; a traveler. A woman desired?

  As long as she didn’t ask, she didn’t know. It was better to know.

  “I have told you and told you,” Hugo said, “that I am not especially kind.”

  His jaw was set, his booted feet planted firmly on the floor. He looked like a man braced against a strong wind—or a man whose body and mind were at war.

  “Pour the whisky on me,” he grumbled. “It’ll knock some sense into my head.”

  “Why sense?” she asked.

  His expression was stormy. “Because even though you said you didn’t want my help, you’ve had it during this journey. And I don’t want to take advantage of the situation. Especially since I swore I’d see you safely to your brother.”

  She had to laugh. “So you think I’m hungering for you out of gratitude? Because you hired that coachman in Doncaster and paid his fare?”

  “Well . . . gratitude doesn’t hurt.” The tense line of his shoulders relaxed a little. “Except that in this case, it might. And I don’t want it to. You to. To be hurt.”

  “Lord. Hugo. Starling. If you are not especially kind—though I think you are—I am not particularly grateful. I’ve done what I wanted.” She took a deep breath of the cool, wine-scented air. “And I want to do more.”

  “God help me.” His left hand clenched into a fist. “I can’t stay with you, you know. I have to go back to London. I have a hospital to build.”

  “Your stubbornness will be the death of us both,” she said. “I’m not asking you to stay in Northumberland. I don’t know how long I’ll stay myself. I’m not thinking about a month from today, or even what happens when we leave this cellar.”

  “A rare gift, not to be tormented by so many plans.”

  “Perhaps it is.” She stretched out a hand, as she’d wished to, and laid it on his chest. His heartbeat thundered under her fingertips; his skin was warm. Drawing her fingertips down his chest, his abdomen, she teased at the dark hairs that trailed toward his breeches in an intriguing line.

  He jerked away, then took up the bottle of whisky and splashed it on his own wound with a hiss. Then he slammed the bottle down onto the barrel again. “There. That’s done. Now I’m all yours.”

  If only. If she thought a month ahead, she would wish it to be the past week, again and again. “Likewise,” she said. Stepping close to him, she put her tongue to his collarbone. At the right, it was whisky-scented and hot to the taste. She trailed light kisses, the tip of her tongue, from one side of his collarbone to the other. He groaned, clutching at her shoulders.

  “I’ve an idea.” He twirled her about, then pushed her backward to bump against the wall of shelves.
He caught up her hands. “Hold tight.”

  Mystified, she grasped the vertical post holding up a set of shelves.

  He cursed again, and it sounded like praise. “May I . . .” His hand reached forward. She nodded, wanting nothing more than to have his touch. Liking that he wanted to touch her.

  At first, his hands were determined but gentle as they traced her curves. He wanted to touch her, and he wanted her to like it. When had she ever been touched in this way? Had anyone else ever been so sweet? Not the boys she had kissed, who wanted what they could get of her. Often, when a woman was touched, it was rough, as though she were an object to be shoved out of one’s path—or it was tentative, as if she were fragile, hardly human.

  Hugo touched her now with a reverence that seemed leashed wildness. Wide-splayed fingers, stiff with the effort of restraint, cradled her outthrust breasts. Pleasure was a spike, driving her toward him weak-kneed. His troubled right arm, low at his side, found the curve of her hip and pulled her closer. Again, he was stiff against her. Clutching the vertical bar, she rubbed against him wherever she could. Her hip into his palm. Her thighs wide, her core pliant and damp. She twisted against him, craving more and more of his touch, until the shelves behind her rattled.

  Rattled again. Rattled so alarmingly that she released the bar, turning.

  “We’d best move, or I am going to break this . . .” She peered at the handwritten label below the shelf. “Brandy from 1795. Good God, it is older than me. I am sure Sir Frederic paid a fortune for it.”

  “Come sit, then, upon the famous Madeira.” He took her hand, swung her in a neat semicircle toward the line of great barrels against the opposite wall, and helped her hop onto one of the largest. The barrel was old, with a lid of new wood atop it. It was as high as her waist, like all of them, but wider around than it was tall. Half a ton of fine wine, and she was sitting atop it, drunk without tasting a drop.

  “This is entirely improper,” Hugo said. “I acknowledge that. I have to acknowledge that.”

  “I acknowledge it too, but I don’t care.” She leaned back against the stone wall. “What has propriety done for us?”

  “A good question. Thank you for asking it.” He crouched before her. “Shall we explore what impropriety has done for us? Will you lift your skirt?”

  Biting her lip, she pulled the pale blue fabric up to the tops of her boots.

  “More.”

  Her shins, so he could see her stockings.

  “More.”

  The skirt rose to her knees.

  His hands covered her knees, tracing their bones and bends. He lowered his head, whispering against her stocking. “More.”

  A throb of desire arced through her. Her sex clenched, damp. With trembling fingers, she rucked up her skirts more, until the garters of her stockings were revealed.

  Hugo inhaled, sharp and shuddery. With his left hand, he followed the line of her garter. His fingers walked the ribbons, slipped beneath to touch the skin of her thigh.

  “More,” she said.

  Slowly, he lifted his head. “You will be the death of us both.” A smile, feral and enticing, crossed his features. “The little death.”

  And he spoke no more, for his mouth was on her thighs, on the curls of hair between. She gasped at the shock of it, gentle as the brush of a feather, intense as a storm. Her thighs tensed, knees falling apart—wide, then wider, as his lips and tongue found her most intimate places.

  Together, they quested for her pleasure, her hands in his hair, his mouth pulling and licking at her sex. He was unmaking her, shaking her apart, and when she thought he had drawn her as far as she could be drawn, he pulled her to a higher, tighter pitch of pleasure. She was gasping his name, grasping his hair, heedless of everything in the world except the feel of his tongue. Then paused for a second, just enough to slide his left hand between her legs—and one strong finger slid into her at the same time he licked her heart of pleasure.

  She fell apart at once, quaking under his touch, loving his touch, sighing his name.

  When he rested his head on her thigh, breathing hard through his own desire, she opened her passion-drugged eyes to look at what they’d made of themselves.

  Lord Hugo Starling, half bare and scented of whisky, had touched her as no one had touched her before.

  Lord Hugo Starling, his muscle raw from being pierced by a bullet, had protected her from being shot.

  Lord Hugo Starling, his words fighting her with each mile of travel, had never hesitated to bear her company.

  She had not experienced so much of love that she would shy away from it, even in these small forms. Small enough, maybe, that to him they seemed only right, or sweet, or pleasant for an afternoon.

  She had experienced enough of love to know that it was following her on quiet feet, ready to pounce. To capture her for him, and never to let her go.

  Oh, she had been wrong: this afternoon, these illicit kisses and touches amidst a fortune in wine, would not be enough. The pleasure of a moment only made her want more.

  Foolish fairy-tale reader that she was, she feared she would be satisfied with nothing less than ever, ever after.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Georgette never did search the wine cellar for gold sovereigns that day. And the following day, Hawes refused her the key, claiming that the oldest ports had become too agitated in the presence of an unfamiliar visitor. As if the bottles were people!

  Although the way she’d twisted against the shelves, she’d probably stirred up more than a bit of sediment.

  Jenks stood firm in his resolve to keep Georgette and Hugo within doors, so in the days that followed, she searched for gold sovereigns in the public rooms of Raeburn Hall. It was a fruitless search, undertaken with more determination than hope of success. Sometimes Hugo searched with her; sometimes he saw to patients who burst through the doors of the Hall in pain or with an illness.

  In whatever way they spent the day, they seemed always to be under the watchful eyes of servants, or of Jenks, or even of Sir Frederic. It was enough to make Georgette wish she had never returned the wine cellar key to Hawes. With the excuse of Hugo’s snoring—or was it Georgette’s?—they kept to their separate chambers for a propriety no one much cared for anymore. At Hugo’s side during the day but hardly able to touch him, she wondered what she had done to deserve such torment.

  Well, no, she didn’t wonder. She could think of more than a few examples.

  Georgette peered in when patients came to consult Hugo, but he rarely needed her help. Even so, she always chatted with Matthew Lowe when he came from his parents’ house to report on his father’s healing. Since Hugo—whose own wound was healing nicely—was barred by Jenks from calling on the blacksmith, and the blacksmith could not walk to him, Matthew traipsed between the foundry and the Hall each day to provide the latest news on his father’s health.

  On the afternoon of a sunny, beautiful Friday that would have been much better spent outdoors, Matthew ventured as usual into the grand parlor of the Hall. “Pa and me, we both wonder if mebbies the sewing . . . um, the sutures”—the youth corrected himself—“could come out now.”

  “It’s the thirteenth?” Hugo counted on his fingers. “No, I only put them in six days ago. Best not to take them out yet. Could he manage his way here tomorrow? I told Sir Frederic I’d spend the afternoon seeing patients, as I did last Saturday. I could check his sutures then.”

  “Can’t you come see him, like?” Matthew twisted his cap in his hands, mouth screwed up in thought.

  “If you’d like to have words with Jenks about that, please do,” Hugo said. “I have tried to convince him his safety measures are excessive, but he won’t be swayed.”

  Georgette raised her eyes to heaven. “How true that is. Jenks said he couldn’t have anyone interfering with his investigation, and he swore he would shoot Mr. Crowe again if either of us ventured out of the Hall.”

  “No,” said Hugo in response to the boy’s silent confusion. �
��It does not make any sense. But there you have it.”

  “I’ll see how Pa does, then,” Matthew said doubtfully. “I’ll try to get him here t’morrow. Mebbies we could work out some crutches.”

  “If you can’t, then come yourself to tell me how he goes on,” Hugo said.

  Matthew agreed, ready to depart. “Wait!” Georgette said. She had to do something so she didn’t feel utterly useless. “Take some more honey with you. Here, I’ll ring for it right now.”

  “Canny idea, that.” Matthew settled his cap at a precise angle. “What the dogs didn’t eat, the babbies did. Haven’t put any on the sutures for a day or two.”

  With ajar of honey in hand, he bowed his way out.

  Hugo seated himself in one of the wing chairs by the fire. “Please sit, Georgette, so I’m not being rude.”

  “Oh, anything to avoid rudeness.” She dropped into the twin of his chair, facing him. “Enjoy the seat while you have it. These will be moved out tomorrow, replaced with those horrid hard chairs from the attics.”

  He stretched out his legs. “So it is planned.”

  “You love plans.”

  A thin smile bent his lips. “I do, yes. But what good does it do these people to make me a part of one here? Is it not better they should see the apothecary in Bamburgh, since he’ll always be there?”

  The thought of departing was troubling him? She guessed so, from the crease in his brow. Good; let him worry over the idea. Let him consider making a home somewhere besides London. Somewhere he wouldn’t have to be alone with only his hospital plans for company.

  “What an illogical question,” she said.

  “Is it really illogical?” Hugo looked so taken aback that she wanted to climb into his lap.

  But there was a footman messing about at the sideboard across the parlor, and she had to behave. For the moment. “Of course it’s illogical. Better they should see the apothecary than no one at all. While they can see you, though, better they should see you.”

  “How clearly you put the matter.”

  “Did I? Good. I am translating ‘stop dithering’ into your preferred vocabulary.”