She twisted her hand from under his and leaned back on her knees. She didn’t want him touching her. That was where the problem had started. Except of course that wasn’t true. The problem started the moment she’d met his eyes across that crowded ballroom.
God rot him for being as addictive as opium. She could still taste his kisses, and Wild Antonia wanted more. She ignored Wild Antonia and injected a practical note into her voice. “I’ve done all I can. You need a physician and perhaps a stitch or two. You should put ice on that swelling.”
He smiled at her as if she were the birthday present he’d begged for all year. “You’re a remarkable woman, Antonia.”
Clearly, if he was well enough to flirt, he’d survive without her attentions. She dipped the cloth into the bowl and lifted it out sopping. She started to scrub at the blood on the rug. Fortunately it was nothing like the lake she’d imagined in the first, horrible moments after hitting him.
She felt him watching but refused to look up. He’d uncovered too many secrets tonight. She needed to restore the distance between them. Difficult when her lips tingled from his kisses and her heart pounded with a stormy mixture of fear and desire.
“Will you help me up?”
She didn’t look at him. “Will you go home?”
He laughed, and despite everything, her resistance melted at that soft, deep sound. “You’re not exactly the kindest of nurses, are you?”
With an irritated gesture, she plopped the cloth into the dirty water. She rose to carry the bowl toward the washstand. “You shouldn’t be here. You should never have been here.”
He still smiled. His ruined beauty made the smile more precious. When he attended society events, he was almost too perfectly turned out. The disheveled, bruised man lounging at her fireside set her heart cartwheeling with helpless yearning.
Helpless yearning? She needed to get rid of him before she lost her mind completely.
“Should, should, should. The woman who kissed me wasn’t such a martinet.”
“No, she was insane,” Antonia said in a discouraging voice. “And a gentleman would never refer to a lady’s lapse in judgment.”
He laughed again. “You told me I was no gentleman.”
Amazement stifled her retort. Even after tonight, she hadn’t imagined that plain Miss Smith had left an indelible mark on his attention. Yet he remembered exactly what she’d said the night they met.
“Antonia?” He extended a hand, and for once didn’t sound mocking or superior. Instead he sounded something she’d never heard before. Vulnerable. “Will you help me?”
She was a thousand times an idiot, but she responded to the sincere appeal in his beautiful black eyes. “Here.”
“Thank you.”
He gripped her hand and staggered as he stood. She realized with a lurch of sick guilt that he wasn’t as whole as he strove to appear. She rushed to put her shoulder under his arm. “Can you make it to the bed?”
“Miss Smith, I thought you’d never ask.”
“Don’t be a rattlepate,” she said without venom.
He was heavy and his height made him awkward to support, even for a tall woman like her. With shuffling and grunting and a good deal of ungentle pushing, she managed to get him to the bed.
He collapsed with a groan. Sitting on the floor, he’d seemed a little more like himself. Now he was pale and blood oozed from his temple. Reclining against the headboard with a nonchalance that didn’t conceal his pain, he looked cursedly romantic, like an injured hero from a Minerva Press novel.
“Do you have any brandy?” He sounded exhausted.
“Of course I don’t have any brandy.” Her sharpness wasn’t totally to keep him in line. Alarm streaked through her at his waning stamina. She retrieved the cloth and knelt on the mattress to wipe the fresh blood from his face.
“Pity. You look like you need it.”
She rose and poured him a glass of water. “You can’t stay.”
He accepted the glass with an unsteady hand and took a long drink. “I can’t climb down the tree. I’m dizzy on my own two feet, let alone a dozen yards up in the air.”
“You can’t go through the house. Mr. Demarest left strict orders to post a man at the door every night.”
“Well, the only other exit is up the chimney.”