Page 43 of Persuasions of an Earl's Daughter

“But you consider yourself reckless do you not? Or was chasing after horse thieves an extremely sensible thing to do?”

She dabbed away the grime from the side of his face to reveal a cut tucked under his hair, which at least explained why it bled so badly. He sucked in a breath as she dabbed it.

“We are not discussing my recklessness here, but yours.”

“You cannot say you are not similar, Lil. You leap into situations and hope for the best.”

“If I do not, no one else will.”

“Precisely.”

She met his gaze. A sense of meeting a fellow soul, of looking at someone who understood her better than anyone on the earth including her twin sister, burst through her. Here was a man who rarely thought before acting. Who had done all the things she so longed to do. Who had adventured and travelled and acted without consequence by virtue of his sex.

And here was a man who understood precisely why she wanted to.

It both terrified and excited her.

∞∞∞

He hurt. His cheek throbbed and sitting against the chair reminded August how hard he’d been flung against the cart. It would be easier to figure out which bits of him weren’t caked in mud.

But nothing hurt more than having Lilly touch him so tenderly. Here was a woman so strong—physically and mentally—it took being half-drowned and injured for her to rely on him. Yet she touched him with a tenderness he’d never felt in his life. Not from his parents and never from the opposite sex.

Never from the opposite sex.

Hell, he had barely been near a woman long enough to experience the gentle way in which she might stroke her fingers through his hair or touch his jaw to angle it this way and that. He ground his teeth together as she dabbed the cloth to what had to be a graze under his hair.

When she met his gaze, the agony increased tenfold. A spark of something speared through him as though he was meeting the gaze of someone who had once shattered his heart years ago.

He didn’t even know what that sensation was. He’d never allowed his heart to be open enough to allow it to be shattered. Yet as they talked, he swore he felt it inching open and he was powerless to shut himself off. Lilly kept inching inside him, impressing him with her courage and now her kindness.

“Of course, I have not adventured as you have,” she offered softly, drawing the cloth down the side of his face then dipping it back into the warm water and wringing it out.

He absently watched the water dripping into the bowl. It was easier than eyeing the dark spiral dancing over her neck or her lips pursing as she tended to him. Easier than trying to explain why he’d travelled as far as he could after the death of his father.

“I’ve never even left the country,” she admitted. “Unless one counts the Isle of Wight,” she added with a light laugh.

He glanced at her. “I’m surprised.” Even the most sheltered of wealthy young ladies had at least spent a summer in Italy by Lilly’s age.

“My father loathes boats. He used to be a ship hand and was treated poorly indeed. He prefers to stay land-bound now. And my mother travelled with her parents in her younger years and finds it too exhausting now.”

He heard the resignation in her tone. Here was a woman who deserved more than a life of sitting around embroidering or playing the piano or dancing in ballrooms. He understood her too well now. Understood why she leapt onto horses and rode bareback and scarcely stopped to think whether something was a good idea or not. It was the same reason he’d fled the country, because sitting and pondering and fulfilling a role he should never have been given left him feeling itchy and desperate to do something different.

“You envy them both,” he stated.

“I should not. I have been given everything a lady should need or desire and my father suffered most horribly when he sailed.”

“Wishing to see the world is no great sin, Lil. You should not feel guilty for such a need.”

“Yet you returned home.” She took his right hand and tenderly turned it over to wipe the worst of the grime from it.

His knuckles were swollen underneath the dirt, and she made a little sympathetic noise in the back of her throat.

“Leaving this country enabled me to come back. Without my adventures, I should never have felt comfortable living in England.”

August watched her as she dabbed each red knuckle, her lashes low, her brow slightly puckered. He uttered truths he never thought to give voice to yet all he could think of was how damned kissable she was.

“You must have hit him hard.”

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