“Your sister?” Compassion made his voice hitch. “Have you been tasked with rearing her? Suffered parental losses of your own, then?”
“Nothing of the sort. Forgive me for indicating such. ’Tis only that Harri is beyond a handful. Takes Mama and myself to keep her from scandalizing all who cross her path.”
Ah, so his widow had returned to the bosom of her family. “At least you are not alone.”
“Hardly ever. If one disregards moonlit digging.” Neither of them commented on the missing moon.
“And babe delivering,” he added.
“Ha. If you think I was alone during that wretched ordeal, you, sir, need to revisit your mathematics lessons.”
The ease with which they spoke amazed him. Ideal mistress… Some evil, distracting part of his mind taunted.
Nay, he refused to entertain the notion. For she did not seem the sort to sit around, waiting for a man to call upon her one or two hours a week.
Two hours a week?By the blazes, if she were yours, you’d see her substantially more than that.
He would.
But he couldn’t.
Not and give his estates, his family name the attention they were due. Not and give his marriage and Miss Larchmont a fair chance of not being pure misery.
Lusting after another was not the way to begin their association.
But that is how it will begin, eh?
As though the remembered burn of her tantalizing touch—her fingers within his—flamed to cinders his resolve, when he heard the shovel’s blade strike sodden, stubborn earth yet again, he wrested it from her. “Give me that.”
What a cork-brain! Offering to bloody help on such an asinine task—and in the middle of the night?
In the snow—and resulting mud. And all for a blame mouser?
And him—with one blighted hand?
And there it was, in all its ugly glory.
The core of what ailed him these last weeks: ineptitude. Regret.
Embarrassment.
“I vow,” he grunted, turning his body at an awkward angle, hoping in vain for a sturdier grip on the shovel. “If I’d known what an imbecilic task I was setting myself to”—the aborted stump of his arm slipped against the metal and he swore, viciously—“I never would have sought out the beckoning lure of your lantern.”
“Stop that.” She wrenched the handle from its loose position against his middle as he cursed the tender stump and white spots whirled in front of his dark vision.
Fire burned up his arm and into his neck and he prayed he wouldn’t lose consciousness. Faint face-first—and sore body—in the pitiful hole they had managed to spoon out.
Then he realized that the shovel was gone and she was there—cradling his broken arm—metaphorically broken, that was—within her palms, brushing her sure, soft touch over his person—in such a way he wondered if she might soothe his broken spirit as well.
“’Tis a recent loss, is it not?” She kept on touching him, for God’s sake. The gentle probe from her fingers reaching through the dark and chill and fear—that he’d never be the same, never feel like himself (or like a full, complete man) ever again—
He damn certain felt now. A host of inappropriate things.
“Now you’re going to be exasperatingly silent?” Though she sounded rather vexed by that notion, the dangerously soothing caress only stroked up his arm, to his shoulder and neck, feathered over his jaw, his lips… His bottom lip. His top. She traced them both. And by blazes if his blade didn’t stir anew.
His good—er, remaining—hand shot out to shackle her wrist. “Just what are you doing?”
The harsh, chastising growl that should have emerged sounded more like a whimper.