CHAPTER9
When Hart woke, it was to simultaneous aches: the wound in his side and another that was far more persistent. He was only interested in tending to one of them. Too bleeding bad he couldn’t. Bedding Emma once had been enough of a betrayal, but a second time? How could he excuse that?
He rolled to his good side on a groan, the reminder of what he had done the night before only serving to make his cockstand harder.
And promptly found himself faced with an empty bed, the rumpled counterpane and depressed pillow the only indication Lady Emma had spent the night there.
Where the hell was she?
He jolted to an upright position, the searing pain of his wound reminding him yet again that bedding Emma had not been the sole activity in which he had been engaged the day before. He grunted as the discomfort from his stitched side briefly overpowered all other sensations. His room was as empty as his bed, nary a sign of Emma to be found in the low light of the early morning.
“Damn it,” he growled, forcing himself from the bed, teeth clenched against another rush of pain.
The damned thing felt more inflamed today than it had yesterday. He glanced down at the ugly, jagged wound and puckered flesh to find it oozing more blood.
Hart stalked to the wardrobe, determined to throw on some togs and find her. Where had she gone? Blast the woman, if she was wandering about the gaming hell, causing more trouble and otherwise charming his guards, he was going to…
What was he going to do? Kiss her? That was the most appealing option. But it was also the most foolish. He withdrew his smalls and stepped into them, not bothering with stockings. His movements were stiff, and bending hurt like the devil. There was not going to be an efficient, painless means of donning his stockings so he kept his feet bare, fastening the undergarment at his waist. Trousers came next, and he scarcely had them buttoned when the door to his room opened.
There she was.
The sight of her—burnished curls falling down her back and cascading over her shoulders, another of Lily’s prim gowns adorning her luscious curves—was enough to make an unfamiliar feeling rise in his chest. She was bearing a tray, as if she were a servant wench, and it was laden with tea and honey cakes.
He stalked forward, intending to take it from her, for the blasted thing was likely far too heavy. Each step made the pain in his side more pronounced, but he ground his molars and clenched his jaw against it.
“What do you think you’re about, carrying a bleeding tray like a blasted maid?” he demanded.
The fallen expression on her face made his gut twist. His voice had perhaps possessed more sting than he intended.
He hastened to take the tray from her, forcing himself to be gentler. “You’re not meant to be bringing me my breakfast, sweetheart. I can see for myself.”
As he took the tray from her, a new slice of pain carved itself through him. He set his teeth on edge and carried the tray to the table by the hearth before turning back to her.
“I know you can, but I wished to do so,” she said, an undercurrent of hurt in her dulcet voice that plucked at his stupid heart. “You were sleeping soundly, and after what happened yesterday, you needed your rest. I did not know how to call for someone, so I found the kitchens myself. Have I angered you?”
At this juncture, he was so lost in her that Hart did not think she could anger him if she ran over him with a goddamn hackney. No need to tell her as much, however.
He moved toward her. God, she was beautiful. Her compassion astounded and humbled him. Made his self-loathing swell to new levels.
“I’m not angry,” he reassured her, feeling the beast for having suspected her of making trouble when all she had been doing was attempting to see to his comfort. “But I don’t like the notion of you running about the gaming hell, hauling my breakfast for me, when I can gladly fetch it myself.”
She moved nearer to him, and he spied the evidence of their lovemaking on the ivory column of her throat where the rough prickle of his whiskers and the suction of his mouth had left her sensitive skin reddened. He tried to tamp down a surge of possessiveness at the sight—and pride that she wore his mark, and that she was his—but he could not. His prick chose that inconvenient moment to regain precedence over the pain in his side.
“As I said, I wanted to fetch it for you.” The smile she gave him was tentative and shy. “I have no notion of the manner in which a man and woman ordinarily conduct such matters.”
Ah, yes. He had taken her maidenhead last night. And worse, he had paid for the privilege, buying her off the dais at The Garden of Flora as if she were an object rather than a flesh-and-blood woman.
“I haven’t either,” he admitted, for it was the first and would damned well be the last time he had ever deigned to bid on a woman’s virginity. “Not like this.”
“The auction at The Garden of Flora,” she said, searching his gaze, “it was your first?”
He nodded. “It was.”
“I suppose I must count myself fortunate, then, that you chose to be there on the same evening I was.”
Guilt made bile rise in his throat. This, too, he ruthlessly attempted to banish. For it had been no act of providence that he had been present at The Garden of Flora on the night in question. Nor that he had been the man to win her. Hell, he was the man responsible for her having been placed on that bleeding dais to begin with.
Everything in him wanted to tell her the truth. To confess how and why he had set the path in motion, springing the trap for her wastrel father so that he could get closer to finding out the truth of what had happened to Loge. But he was so damned close to achieving his objective. If he revealed his plans to her, he would lose her, and in so doing, he would also lose any power he had over Haldringham.
And at the moment, Hart could not afford either loss.
“You weren’t wearing your mask and you haven’t any slippers on,” he remarked casually, attempting to steer the conversation in a different direction. “Aren’t your dew beaters chilled?”
Which reminded him, the fire in the grate had dwindled to a scarcely sufficient sort of heat. The room was as cold and dead as a moll’s heart.
“Dew beaters?”
“Your feet, love.” He glanced down at hers as he said the last, which was rather a mistake because there was something about the vulnerability of her, barefoot and in his room, utterly at his mercy, that sent a renewed force of possessiveness straight through him. “You’ll catch a bleeding cold.”