“I don’t understand why you haven’t more swelling here.” She feathered his hair away from the scalp wound. “Head wounds are notoriously difficult, but you seem to be coming along wonderfully.”

“So we can dispense with this nonsense?” He reluctantly sat back and waved his hand at her linen and tincture.

“Another two days, I think.” She put the cap back on the bottle. “Why is it so difficult for you to submit to basic care, my lord? Do you relish being stiff and scarred?”

“I do not particularly care what the appearance of my back is, Mrs. Seaton. Ever since my brother took several years to die of consumption, I have had an abiding disgust of all things medical.”

“I’m sorry.” She looked instantly appalled. “I had no idea, my lord.”

“Most people don’t,” Westhaven said. “If you’ve never seen anyone go that way, you don’t fully comprehend the horror of it. And all the while, there were medical vultures circling, bleeding, poking at him, prescribing useless nostrums. He tolerated it, because it created a fiction of hope that comforted my parents even as it tortured him.”

He fell silent then stood and went to the railing to stare out at the lush evening sunlight falling over his back gardens.

“And then late this winter, my stubborn father had to go riding to hounds in a weeklong downpour, only to come home with a raging lung fever. The leeches went at him, his personal physicians doing nothing more than drinking his brandy and letting his blood. When he was too weak to argue with me, those idiots were thrown out, but they came damned close to costing me my father.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, turning to stand beside him, laying a hand on his back. He heard her sharp intake of breath as she realized her error—his shirt was still off. He didn’t move off, though, but waited to see how she’d manage. Her hand was comforting, and without him willing it, his own slid along her waist and drew her against his side.

She remained facing the gardens, her expression impassive, her breath moving in a measured rhythm, her hand resting on his back as if it had arrived there despite her complete indifference to him as a person. Slowly, he relaxed, sensing her innate decency had, for just a few moments, trumped her notions of propriety, class distinction, and personal rectitude.

She offered comfort, he decided. Just comfort, for him, upon his recounting some very dark moments and his frustration and helplessness in those moments.

But what about for her?

He turned her to face him, brought her slowly against his body, and rested his cheek against her temple.

Just that, but it changed the tenor of the moment from gestures of comfort to the embrace of a man and a woman. His arms draped over her shoulders while hers looped at his naked waist, even as he told himself to end this folly immediately, or she’d have grounds for believing he trifled with the help after all.

She didn’t end it. She stood in the loose circle of his arms, letting him positively wallow in the clean summery scent of her, the soft curves fitting him in all the right places. He urged her with patient strokes of his hands on her back to rest more fully against him, to give him her weight. He wasn’t even aroused, he realized, he was just… consoled.

When he finally did step back, he placed a single finger softly against her lips to stop her from the admonitory and apologetic stammers no doubt damming up behind her conscience.

“None of that.” He shook his head, his expression solemn. “This wasn’t on my list either, Anna Seaton.”

She didn’t tarry to find out if he would say more, but shook her head in dismay, no curtsy, no resounding whack to his cheek, no offer of resignation. She left him, heir to the dukedom, standing half dressed, bruised, and alone on his private balcony.

“His lordship begs the favor of yer comp’ny, mum,” John Footman informed the housekeeper. Except, Anna knew, the man’s name really was John, and his father and grandfather before him had also both, for a time, been footmen in the ducal household.