David Lord of Honor (The Lonely Lords) (13 page)

“How do you know all this?” she asked, for not every physician concerned himself with matters of midwifery.

He recommenced scrubbing his hands, turning the remaining water pink and soiling the last clean cloth. “Once, long ago, in a land far away, I thought I might have had it in me to become a healer. I was wrong.”

And yet, Portia might live. “So what do we do now?”

“We keep her comfortable and watch for infection. She should eat as much organ meat or beef as we can get into her, and drink beef tea to help her replace the fluids she’s lost. White willow-bark tea and feverfew if she spikes a fever, and various other infusions for pain and inflammation.”

His gaze as he regarded the still figure in the bed was far more that of an aggrieved friend than a treating physician. “In any case, she will be a long time getting back on her feet, and her previous profession may no longer be available to her.”

Because she’d be too damaged, which meant she’d also never have children. Any woman would feel that as a loss, and not a small loss.

Letty smoothed a hand over Portia’s brow, which was not—yet—fevered. “I could shoot Ridgely.” Shoot him in an unmentionable location.

“My poor Letty. You’ve been dealing with this for four days, and you are exhausted. Portia won’t be stirring for a while. How long has it been since you’ve had something to eat?”

Portia might not
ever
stir. “Mrs. Newcombe tried to get me to eat something yesterday, I think—maybe the day before.” Tried. Probably mentioned in passing that food might be a good idea.

“Mrs. Newcombe needs to be taken firmly in hand,” Fairly said, draping the damp, streaked towel over the back of a chair. “She should have kept up with the wash, at least.”

Letty moved around the room, collecting soiled towels and sheets. “Don’t fuss. It’s too late for that, and I’m too tired to defend anybody.”

Also, too heartsick.

***

“I’ll watch over her,” Desdemona said, “and plan a bad end for Lord Ridgely while I do.”

David might have smiled, but the woman was not joking. He pushed to his feet, every joint and muscle protesting movement away from the chair by the hearth. “If Portia stirs, get some willow-bark tea into her. It’s bitter, nasty stuff, but it can help with fever and inflammation.”

Des took a seat near Portia’s head and smoothed her friend’s hair back. “We should cut her hair.”

Portia was vain about her long, dark hair, and with good reason. “Cutting her hair won’t help, despite what the herb woman told you growing up. Your prayers just might. Call me if she worsens.” David never importuned or took liberties with the women who worked for him, but before he left Desdemona to take up the sickroom vigil, he kissed her forehead. “We’ll all be praying for her.”

“God does not listen to the prayers of such as I, your lordship, else I would not have ended up where I did.”

David was too tired to debate theological conclusions, particularly when they were supported by both logic and grief. He closed the door to the sickroom, realizing the hour had grown late while he had tended his patient, but at least Letty’s house was no longer frigid.

Thinking that Letty would want to know how Portia fared, David tapped on her door. He pushed the door ajar and slipped into her room when he heard no response.

“Merciful saints.” He hadn’t meant to say the words aloud, but he’d caught Letty at her evening ablutions.

“My lord.”

By the rosy light of the fire, she did not blush. She reached for her dressing gown and slipped into it, but not hurriedly—perhaps she was too exhausted to hurry, for David did not think she was capable of coyness.

“I’m sorry. I did knock.”

He was
not
sorry. He was a man, also a former physician. He appreciated the wonder that was the human body, and he appreciated the specific wonder that was Letty Banks too. In the few instants it took Letty to gather her wits and cover her nudity, he studied feminine proportions designed to hold a man’s interest—she was slender through her pale belly, but curved through the hips. Her breasts were generous, the breasts of a woman, not a girl, full and slightly heavy.

David noted details—a dark thatch of curls, an asymmetry of the knees, ribs still a bit too much in evidence—and he absorbed the whole of her. As a younger man, he would have treasured the womanliness of her unclothed frame, but in those few instants, he lingered on the imperfections, the details that made her different from what he’d expected, and different from—and more precious than—any other woman.

She tied the belt snugly around her waist, but the gesture was too little too late. David had seen the lovely abundance of her breasts, seen how the pale column of her neck turned to join her shoulders, noted the flare of her hips and the flat plane of her belly. By the light of a generous and well-stoked fire, he’d seen
her
.

Her unexpected nudity hit him low and hard, a blow to his self-restraint all the more stunning for being unforeseen.

“I did not hear you. I was preoccupied,” Letty said. “How is Portia?”

Letty’s feet were bare. David wanted to slip out of his boots and give her his wool stockings, or scoop her up and tuck her into the bed.

“Portia is faring better than she should. Desdemona kicked me out of the sickroom and told me get some rest. If you don’t put on some slippers soon, you will come down with lung fever yourself, Letty Banks.”

She sat on the bed, his words having no more impact than the wind moaning outside the windows. “I cannot recall being this tired ever, but if you think I’ll allow you to navigate the streets alone at this hour, sir, you are sadly in want of sense. You might as well sleep here.”

Her hair hung over one shoulder in a thick, glossy braid. David had seen Letty’s hair done up in a braid before, but he was seized with a desire to see it freed of all constraints.

And she was nattering on about… “
Sleep
here?
”

“The bed is large enough. The fire in the front parlor is not lit, and the sofa is the only other possible place to put you. I trust you’ve shared a bed at some point in the past?”

Not for years, if passing afternoon recreation was discounted. “Of course I have. May I make use of the wash water?” Because, apparently, he was going to subject himself to the sublime torture of sharing a bed with Letty Banks. He was tired enough, and the weather more than nasty enough, that the alternatives bore not even a moment’s consideration.

Dispirited enough, too.

“The ewer on the hearth holds clean water, and tooth powder is behind the privacy screen. I can’t offer you a dressing gown, because I gave Herbert’s few effects to charity.”

She moved behind the screen, and David heard her stirring about. “You didn’t sell them?”

“That did not”—she paused… to yawn?—“seem right.”

He suspected her retreat behind the screen was to afford him privacy to use the wash water. Such consideration was oddly… touching, and if he did not take immediate advantage of it, he’d fall asleep where he stood.

“Where shall I put my clothes?” He wanted her to know his clothes were coming off. He’d been in them the livelong day, and Letty was no stranger to the unclad male body.

Letty emerged from the screen, a nightgown evident beneath her robe. “The back of the door has hooks.”

He’d known that, of course. “Letty, if I’m to wash—”

Was there any prospect more ridiculous than a grown man explaining to a madam that he was about to disrobe? Letty apparently did not think so, though her smile was sweet rather than mocking. When she ought to have climbed into the bed, she instead crossed the room to slip her arms around David’s waist and rest her forehead against his chest.

“I was so glad to see you today. I nearly cried with relief.”

His family was glad to see him. He was almost sure of it, even if they never came close to crying in relief at the sight of him. Before he could wrap his arms about her, she shuffled off to climb into the bed.

She’d turned the sheets down, but that bed would be cold.

David unbuttoned his waistcoat. “The warmer is in Portia’s room?”

In the shadows, the covers rustled. “Mmf.”

He pulled his shirt over his head, his arms protesting the movement. The rustling paused, then resumed, then stopped.

Was this how a woman felt when a man had paid her to disrobe for him? Uncertain, shy, a bit aroused, and silly?

No answering movement came from the bed. David put aside awkward questions, tugged off his boots and stockings, then undid his falls.

He’d never been particularly self-conscious about his body, never given a thought to taking off his clothes when sharing a bed with a woman, and yet, he wanted Letty’s permission before he burdened her with his nudity.

“Letty-love?”

Nothing, not even a sigh.

He shucked out of his breeches, used the wash water, and climbed into the bed next to the woman already fast asleep under the covers.

***

Letty was cheating.

Instead of saying her prayers, kneeling by the bed—the only posture from which evening prayer could be heard by the Almighty—she was saying her prayers snuggled under the warmth of her quilts.

She was cheating not only by praying under the covers, but also in the content of her prayers. Good King George did not receive mention, or his queen, or his progeny, or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Letty’s own family was relegated to a passing reference, though Portia received mention.

What Letty prayed for most was fortitude, for the prospect of David Worthington, unclad and washing off at the end of a long day, made her throat ache and her insides restless. He was beautiful, the weary grace of his bathing impossible to ignore. Firelight gilded lean flanks, muscular limbs, and a torso worthy of any hero from antiquity.

And then her prayers turned to thanksgiving, because finally, years after parting with her innocence, Letty Banks experienced what it was to want a man.

She allowed herself the space of two deep, even breaths to appreciate the object of her desire from behind nearly closed eyes, to memorize the magnificent bodily proportions and severe male angles of his face, then closed her eyes.

A cheat she might be, but not a hypocrite. Letty did not pray for forgiveness for her prurient longings; nor did she pray that she’d be delivered from them. She prayed instead that the images she’d seen of David Worthington as God made him stayed with her into her dreams.

And into her old age.

Six

David awoke to warmth and the certainty that he was not at any of his various domiciles. The scent of roses came to him next, and a vague worry—

Portia.
Though if she’d worsened in the night, Desdemona would have fetched him.

As the relief of that realization warred with the temptation to let sleep reclaim him, David’s gaze fell on a copy of
Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
on the night table, and the rest of the puzzle snapped into place.

He was sharing a bed with Letty, her knee casually pressed against his thigh. And just as he knew he’d at various times cuddled her close during the night, he also knew he ought to get out of that bed, find his clothes, and check on his patient.

“Don’t go.” Letty hadn’t moved, hadn’t given herself away by so much as a change in her breathing, but she regarded him from her pillows, her gaze solemn and alert in the gloom. “The sun’s not even up yet.”

Staying in bed with her while she slept was stupid; staying in bed with her when she was awake was… stupider. What came out of David’s mouth next was stupidest of all.

“I should tend the fire.” Because if the coals went out, somebody would have to start the thing all over, and David did not trust the lazy housekeeper to do it. Then too, cold air could dampen arousal more effectively than could stern lectures about common sense.

Letty reached past him for a glass of water, took a sip, then offered it to him. When he’d accepted her offering, she pushed his hair off his brow and settled back against the pillows, their exchange having all the familiarity of a couple long married.

“You banked the coals thoroughly before you came to bed.”

She’d been peeking the previous night, then. The knowledge cheered him. “Letty, if I stay in this bed—”

They’d make love. Share a little pleasure, scratch the itch adults of both genders enjoyed scratching. His cock could think of no better way to start the day. So why was he hesitating?

“You could have any fellow at The Pleasure House, you know. All of them. A different title for every night of the week. Why me?”

When he feared she might laugh at his question or mock the insecurity trying to mask itself as curiosity, Letty instead shifted closer, draping a leg over his hips. “You will think me ridiculous.”

He scooted to the middle of the bed, near enough to tuck her crown under his chin. “Never. Not about this.”

Letty’s nose was cold. David knew this because she buried her face against his throat, and used the leg she’d hitched around his hips to draw herself closer.

“I have never understood desire. As a girl, I understood that to leave my father’s house, I’d have to engage in certain acts with my husband, and I was curious. I understand curiosity. When I got to London, I was no longer curious, though I became resigned. I thought perhaps loneliness had something to do with it, and then too, one must eat—”