Page 64 of His Mistress, His Muse, and Other Madness
She pulled a chair near the flames and sat, sending fleeting glances at him as if she were shy. Surely he had not made her that way?
He knelt before her and took her hands. “Did he hurt you?”
She chewed her bottom lip, not meeting his gaze. “No.” A huff. “A bit. Here.” She placed her fist against her heart.
And his own heart turned to ash. “What did he do?”
“Do… do you think I hurt Simon? By accepting your father’s help?”
“No.”
“He’s still poor. Has found no other patron, and—”
He wrapped his hands around the side of her face and forced her to look at him. “If any harm came to the man, he deserved it. For his treatment of you. And anything that happened to him is not your fault. My father acted on kind impulse to help you. I am glad he did.”
Her mouth dropped open.
He used his knuckles to close it. “Don’t look so shocked. For a while now I’ve given the old man credit for saving you. Because you deserve saving. Could there have been a better way to save you than to take everything away from one man and give it to you? Likely. I’m sorry his actions have hurt you.”
“No, no they haven’t.” She shook her head, looking down into her lap, her hair dripping water onto her skirts.
Would she never think anything but the best of his careless father? He sighed and stood. “Do you have a brush?”
“In my valise.”
He rummaged through it and returned to her side. When she reached for it, he swatted her hand away. “No,” he said, “Let me.” He wanted to care for her in the right way, the way she needed, in a way that wouldn’t hurt her later.
Her hand hovered in the air between them before she let it fall back to her lap. His fingers on her skull, wrapped in her hair, stroking the brush through gently, gently. With each stroke, her muscles relaxed, her shoulders drooped, and her head listed in whatever way the brush pulled it.
He started with the ends of her hair, stroking the brush through the tangles, and he worked his way up, stopping to ask now and again if he’d hurt her, if he should be softer.
He could be softer. He could be as soft as she needed him to be. Yet… touching her like this—just her hair—fanned the fire in his body higher than the flames in the grate nearby so that when his fingers finally reached her scalp, her temples, touched skin, and her head fell back into his hands as she moaned, he was hard, needy, ready to turn his soft ministrations to the rest of her body.
Head resting on the back of the chair, her heart-shaped face glowed up at him, eyes closed. His fingers explored the perimeter of that face, and she moaned again, a tiny thing that crackled like lightning across his skin and stilled his hands’ journey near her ears.
Her eyes popped open. “Apologies. For the moan.Moans. How embarrassing. But you’re rather good at this. To think, you could have been acting as my lady’s maid for the last week. A missed opportunity.”
She was teasing again. Good.
“I’d be better at undressing you than dressing you.” He leaned down, placed a soft kiss on her forehead, then one on the very tip of her nose, then a lingering one on her lips.
When he lifted, his hands crept into movement once more, massaging her neck, her shoulders, brushing against the fine gold chain always clasped around her neck.
“Your necklace,” he said. “Is there a story there?”
“My father gave it to me when my mother died. It had been hers, a gift from him on their wedding day. He always used to call me his little bird.” Her voice broke.
“You don’t have to—”
“I love this.” She patted the chain. “Worthless though it may be to some.”
“I wish your father had given you more than a necklace.” He should have provided a dowry, an inheritance. Something, anything more than what she got.
“Don’t, Theo. Don’t be cynical about this. It may be a paltry gift to you, but it holds every memory of my former life, both good and bad. My parents loved me, though they were not careful of my circumstances. But then… they did not think to die so soon. No one can predict the future.” She outlined the bird’s shape with a single finger. “It has sometimes made me sad, reminding me of what I lost—family, love, stability. But it also means hope to me. No matter how bad things are, I can soar above it.”
He started to snort again, but she stopped him by placing a hand over his where it rested on her shoulder and looking up at him. “Things can have more than one meaning, even contradictory ones.”
He didn’t wish to argue with her, so he returned to his ministrations, massaging the hairline at her temples and dragging the brush over her scalp and down, down to the ends of her hair. She closed her eyes again, leaving him to this work, to his ministrations. A soft smile curved her lips up, and it remained until her expression slipped into the looseness of contented sleep.
