He started to shake his head, only to wince. ‘I hurt everywhere, but my head worst of all. It feels as if somebody’s tried to slice the top off it.’
‘They pretty much did. Let me fetch you that laudanum.’
‘No. Not yet. It makes me sleepy. And I want...’ He squeezed her fingers, absurdly grateful to discover that she hadn’t pulled her hand away from his.
‘Talk to me? Just for a while.’
‘Very well,’ she said, squeezing his hand back. And then cleared her throat. ‘This may seem a funny question for me to ask. But, do you know your name?’
Only too well. And yet... ‘Why do you ask?’
‘The surgeon seemed to think you may have trouble remembering things.’
Perhaps there was a God, after all. He hated feeling this weak, but he’d never got anywhere near Lady Sarah when he’d been fit and active. Now here he was, holding hands with her, in a bedroom of all places.
The thing was, if he admitted he knew who he was, then he’d also have to admit that he knew she shouldn’t be in this bedroom.
Not that she was doing anything wrong. No—it was one thing her flouting convention to nurse a wounded man. Quite another for that wounded man to permit her to do it, if he knew that just being seen talking with him, in a public street, would have been enough to stain her lily-white reputation. He’d be up on a charge. Cashiered out of the regiment. Or maybe just shot. Because Colonel Randall had made it plain that none of his officers was fit to kiss the hem of her gown.
He wasn’t. But before she returned to the safety of her oh-so-respectable family, he promised himself, he’d do more than kiss the hem of her gown. He’d taste those fastidious lips of hers.
‘Perhaps,’ he purred, ‘I would prefer to forget some things.’
‘Does that mean you don’t know who you are?’ She looked appalled.
His conscience, an attribute he’d never thought he possessed, gave him an uncomfortable nudge in the ribs. It wasn’t fair to repay Lady Sarah’s kindness by putting on an act that worried her.
Though it wasn’t as if he’d set his sights on seducing her. He never bothered seducing women, even the ones that very plainly weren’t virgins. He just bedded them if they were willing, walked away from them if they were not.
She most definitely would not be willing. But he couldn’t walk away from her. He couldn’t walk anywhere. In fact, even if he’d woken up to find himself in the bed of a rapacious widow, he wouldn’t be able to rise to the occasion.
Lady Sarah was safer than she knew.
He gave her a rueful sort of smile, hoping it made him look confused, as well as utterly innocent.
‘For today, do I have to be anyone in particular? Couldn’t you just call me...’ His smile turned a touch mischievo
us. ‘Just call me Sir.’
Just as he’d hoped, Sarah’s concerned expression relaxed into something approaching amusement.
‘Well, at least you remember you are an officer in the army.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘And I suspect I enjoy giving orders.’
She pulled a face. ‘So I suppose you’d like me to jump to attention and salute you, too, wouldn’t you?’
‘No,’ he said, with complete honesty. The last thing he wanted was to have any woman behave in such a subservient manner. He liked his women to be with him because it was what they wanted. He liked them enthusiastic, and inventive, and...
His mouth went dry. Good lord, but it was dangerous, picturing this girl being enthusiastic and inventive.
‘What I’d really like,’ he said, lowering his eyelids into a practised smoulder, since, he reasoned, there wasn’t any harm in testing the waters, ‘is for you to kiss me. As my nurse, don’t you think it is your duty to kiss me better?’
Her face flushed as her lips pursed up in disapproval.
‘That does not form part of my duties.’
‘Well, perhaps you’d like to do it for pleasure, then?’