“Your lordship?” Anna waited for his permission to step from his bedroom, feeling absurd for doing it and abruptly self-conscious.

“Mrs. Seaton,” he drawled, glancing up at her. “You’ve come to poke at my injured self. Does nothing deter you from the conscientious prosecution of your duties?”

“Craven evasion,” she replied, stepping out onto the balcony. “As when my patient disappears at first light, not to be seen until tea time, and then only in the company of his protective little brother.”

“Val is protective of me?” Westhaven scowled as he eased forward to the end of the chaise, then dragged his shirt over his head and turned his back to her. “I suppose he is at that, though he knows I’d bite his head off were he to imply I need protection. Jesus Christ, that still stings.”

“We all need protection from time to time,” she said, dabbing gently at his back with arnica. “Your bruises are truly magnificent, my lord. They will heal more quickly if you don’t duck out of a morning—and skip your breakfast.”

“It’s too hot to ride later in the day, at least at the pace I prefer.” He winced again as she went at the second large laceration.

“You shouldn’t be out riding hell-bent, your lordship. Your injuries do not need the abuse, and I can see where you’ve pulled this cut open along this edge.” She drew a chiding finger along the bottom seam of a laceration. “What if you were unseated, and no one else about in the dawn’s early light?”

“So you would come along to protect me?” he challenged lazily. She began to redress his back.

“Somebody should,” she muttered, focused on the purple, green, and mottled brown skin surrounding the two mean gashes on his back.

The earl frowned in thought. “In truth, I am in need of somebody to protect. I fired my mistress today.”

“My lord!” She was abruptly scowling at him nineteen to the dozen, as much disapproval as she dared show, short of jeopardizing her position outright.

“There is always gossip,” he quoted her sardonically, “below stairs.”

She pursed her lips. “Gossip and blatant disclosure are not the same thing. Though in this heat, why anyone would…”

She broke off, mortified at what had been about to come out of her mouth.

“Oh, none of that, Mrs. Seaton.” The earl’s smile became devilish. “In this heat?”

“Never mind, my lord.” She wetted her cloth with arnica again and gently tucked his head against her waist. “This one is looking surprisingly tidy. Hold still.”

“I have a thick skull,” he said from her waist. And now that she was done with his back, came the part he always tolerated almost docilely. She sifted her fingers carefully through his hair and braced him this way, his crown snug against her body, the better to tend his scalp.

And if his hair was the silkiest thing she’d ever had the pleasure to drift her fingers over, well, that was hardly the earl’s fault, was it?

He should have brought himself off when he didn’t complete matters at Elise’s. Why else would he be baiting his housekeeper, a virtuous and supremely competent woman? She was done with her arnica and back to exploring the area around the scalp wound with careful fingers.