He watched her, calculating. He was naked, in a strange house, and wounded. The odds were not in his favor.
She raised one elegant eyebrow. “If you’d let go of my wrist?”
He opened his hand. “Your pardon.”
She rubbed her wrist, her eyes lowered demurely. “I saved your life earlier, and you’re quite at my mercy now”—her eyes flicked over his nude body—“yet I don’t think you truly ask my pardon.”
She raised her gaze to his, intelligent, humorous, and utterly seductive.
The danger was palpable.
Winter’s lips twitched. “Perhaps I’m just a rude fellow.”
“Rude, undoubtedly.” She flicked a finger over the small bit of material covering his pelvis, and his base flesh stirred in mindless response. “But ungrateful as well?” She shook her head sadly.
He raised his eyebrows. “I trust you do not blame me, madam, for my present state of undress. I do vow, I woke thus and know not who to blame but you.”
Her eyes widened just a fraction and she bit her lip as if to quell a tremor of laughter. “I assure you my, uh, curiosity was prompted merely by a desire to find out where you were wounded, sir.”
“Then I am honored by your curiosity.” Winter felt as if he had tumbled down a hill and landed upside down. He never bantered thus with women, and Lady Beckinhall had made it quite clear on their previous meetings—when he was merely Mr. Makepeace, the manager of the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children—that she did not hold him in high regard.
Perhaps it was the mask and the intimacy of the quiet room.
Or perhaps it was the knock on the head he’d received earlier. “Did you discover that which you sought?”
Her lips, wide and delicate, curved into a secret smile. “Oh, yes, I found all that I could wish for.”
He inhaled, his pulse too fast, his head too light, and his cock too unruly, but the door to the room opened at that moment. Instantly, Winter closed his eyes. He instinctively knew it was best that the others not know he was awake and aware. He couldn’t logically explain this impulse, but since this type of instinct had saved his life countless times in the past, he no longer bothered to question the urge.
Carefully he peered from beneath his eyelashes.
His field of vision was limited, but at least two females entered the room.
“How is he?” one of the women—a servant, judging by her accent—asked.
“He hasn’t moved,” Lady Beckinhall replied.
She didn’t mention that she’d been talking to him only seconds before, he noticed. But then he’d always known Lady Beckinhall was quick-witted.
“Shouldn’t we take off his mask?” a different, younger, female voice asked eagerly.
“Do you think that wise?” Lady Beckinhall inquired. “He might decide he must kill us if we learn his identity.”
Winter almost cocked an eyebrow at this outrageous suggestion. The younger servant girl gave a muted scream. Obviously she hadn’t noticed how very solemn Lady Beckinhall’s voice was—the lady was hiding her amusement.
The first servant sighed. “I’ll sew his leg up quick and then we’ll get him comfortable.”
Which was when Winter realized that the next several minutes of his life were to be quite unpleasant.
His entire body ached, so he hadn’t really noticed until that moment that his right thigh throbbed in particular. Apparently that was the wound Lady Beckinhall had been searching for.
He closed his eyes fully then and waited, breathing in and out slowly, letting his arms and legs lie as if weighted on the bed.
It’s the shock that makes pain hard to bear, his mentor had said long ago. Expect it, welcome it, and pain becomes simply another sensation, easy enough to brush aside.
He thought of the home and the logistics of moving eight and twenty children into a new building. Fingers touched his wound, pinching the edges together with a sharp bite of agony as fresh, warm blood trickled over his leg. Winter was aware of the pain, but he set it aside, letting it flow through him and out again as he considered each child at the home and how he or she would react to the move.
The new dormitories were spacious rooms, lit by large windows carefully barred. The sharp dig of the needle as it pierced his flesh. Most of the children would be happy with their new home. Joseph Tinbox, for instance, though already eleven years of age, would delight in running up and down the long hallways. The draw and raw tug as the thread pulled through his skin. But for a child such as Henry Putman, who had been recently left at the home and remembered the abandonment, the move might be troubling. Another stab of the needle. He would have to be especially aware of Henry Putman and others like him. Fire burning over his leg as liquid was splashed on the wound. Only Winter’s many hours of training kept him from jerking from the searing pain. He breathed in. Breathed out. Let his mind drift as the stabbing began again…
Some time later, Winter realized that the poking of the needle had stopped. He surfaced from his internal musings to the feel of a cool hand on his forehead. He knew without opening his eyes that it was Lady Beckinhall who touched him.
“He doesn’t feel feverish,” Lady Beckinhall murmured.
Her voice was low for a woman and somewhat throaty. Winter seemed to feel her breath washing over his still-nude body and ruffling his nerve endings, but that was fancy. Perhaps the knock on the head was worse than he’d thought.
“I brought some water to bathe him,” the older maidservant said.
“Thank you, Mrs. Butterman, but you’ve done enough for tonight,” Lady Beckinhall said. “I’ll see to it myself.”
“But, my lady,” the second, younger servant protested.
“Truly, you both have been the greatest help,” Lady Beckinhall said. “Please. Leave the water here and remove the rest of the things.”
There was a rustling, the sound of something metallic dropping into a tin basin, and then the door opened and shut again.
“Are you still awake?” Lady Beckinhall asked.
Winter opened his eyes to find her looking at him, a wet cloth in her hands.
His body tensed at the thought of her hands on him. “There’s no need for that.”
She pursed her lips and glanced at his leg. “The wound is still bloody. I think it best. That is”—her eyes flashed up at him in challenge—“unless you fear the pain?”
“I have no fear of pain or anything else you might inflict on me, my lady.” His whisper came out as a rasp. “Do your worst.”