Mad for Love (5 page)

She was all gracious condescension. “Please.”

“Lovely. Don’t mind if I do.” He rested one long booted leg on the window ledge. “And I must say, ye’ve been an absolute sport.”

And then he winked at her.

“Sport?” The cheek of the man. “Get out,” she ordered.
 

He swung his leg over the sill, his imminent departure assured.

Relief sagged through Mignon with such swiftness that she not only let down her guard, but dropped it entirely, like a fireplace coal. She intended to raise the halberd, and prop it against the wall. Instead, the heavy weapon slipped from her numb fingers, and the tall blade tottered over, like a tree slowly falling in a forest.
 

And headed directly for the back of her gentleman thief’s sandy, English head.

Chapter Five

Rory went down so hard, the wind was knocked clean out of him. His ears rang and his lungs burned with the need to breathe, but all other sensation was soon drowned out by the searing ache that swamped him like a bucket of scalding water—a great big wallop of heat and misery emanating from the back of his head.

He instinctively grabbed his skull, as if he would contain the pain. But it was impossible—he was quite literally stupefied.

Eight feet away, Miss Blois looked just as dazed. She stood with her hand over her mouth, looking just as astonished, but utterly horrified at what she had done.

Rory pushed himself upright against the short wall under the window, and tried to take stock. Blood was seeping out of his head and soaking his collar. “Well,” he said to no one in particular. “Turns out ye were willing to strike me after all.”
 

Not only willing, but capable. He never would have thought.

Neither, it seemed, did she. “I did not mean to,” she protested with a voice as sweet and innocent as a Christmas pudding, as if she had never had any thought in the world of cracking his skull.

“And yet ye did.” Rory gingerly felt for the cut on his scalp, and came away with a hand stained red with blood.

Which was not at all a good idea, because at the sight of so much blood, the edges of his vision crowded in, and the world narrowed itself down to the small piece of parquet upon which he sat, stunned and dizzy, and perhaps even dying, judging from the amount of warm stickiness that poured down his neck.
 

But if he had to go, he supposed he didn’t mind being done in by the elfin Miss Blois, because the truth was he had been half-way to heaven the moment he had laid eyes upon her, looming up at him in her night gown, like the ghost of bed partners past.
 

Or more hopefully, like the ghost of bed partners yet to come.

Either way, he felt decidedly weak at the knees.

Strangely enough, it was tiny Miss Blois who brought him back, patting his cheek, and fanning him in the face with the helpfully transparent skirts of her linen sleeping gown, all modesty forgotten in the crisis.
 

“
Assez de
bêtises,” she said in her native tongue, thinking he wouldn’t understand that her tart instruction to end his foolishness was belied by her worried tone. “You cannot be allowed this unbecoming faint,” she said in ever-so-slightly-accented English. “You’re a burglar—show some fortitude.”

“I’ve got plenty of fortitude,” he muttered. “I’m the one who’s bleeding.”

“Yes, I am sorry. I did not mean at all to hit you. I was trying to put the halberd away.”

“Slipshod weapons work, Miss Blois. Ye’d never make it in the army.”

“Of a surety, Monsieur Thief.” She plied the inside of his wrist to feel his pulse, all helpful, competent nurse—another thing he would not have thought her. “I would not know about such things, not being a gentleman—even a gentleman thief.”

“I really don’t know about such things, either.” He was rambling in his near delirium. “They don’t let thieves into the army—gentleman or not.”

She almost smiled before she stood, and reached for his arm. “
Allors
, we must have you up before you bleed onto the carpets.”

“Yer pardon, Miss Blois.” He let her assist him off the floor.
 

Up close, she was even smaller, and more adorably attractive, fussing at him in such a bossy, concerned way. And if she would let him lean on her, he was sure he could find a way to see down the front of her marvelously translucent gown. “I’m afraid I’m going to need something to staunch the flow. Head wounds bleed terribly, don’t ye know.”

“I do not know.” She was all practical necessity. “Can you stand alone? There are some bandages in the kitchens, in
Madame
’s pantry. Here, let me assist you.”
 

Even though she probably weighed less than a hundredweight, and wouldn’t even come up to his collarbone, she slipped her arms around his waist, and heaved him up, like a stevedore shouldering a bale. She had altogether too much strength and self-possession for a wisp of a lass in a night gown.
 

He had best be on his guard. “Ye won’t whack me again, will ye?”

She proved immune to his charm. “Of a certainty, I might. So mind yourself.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He slung his arm across her shoulder, and leaned gently onto her delicate strength. Which also let him sample the soft slide of skin along the back of her neck. If she made a fuss at such a liberty, he could cry delirium. Because he was feeling delightfully lightheaded.

But she didn’t protest. Not too much, anyway—she took the wrist he slung across her shoulder in a gingerly sort of way, until he could take a hand rail to steady himself on the kitchen stair.

“Sit there.” When they reached the kitchen, she pointed to a chair at the head of a short deal table. “And take that beautiful coat off before it is ruined utterly. I hope you have a good laundress who knows how to deal with such bloodstains. Cold water, you must tell her. And a solution of hydrogen water.”

Rory’s guard finally came slamming down like a rusty portcullis—it was a rare lass who had a working knowledge of chemistry. Perhaps Miss Mignon Blois was not as fey and innocent as she looked. “I’ll tell her.”

Miss Blois very quickly proceeded to the business at hand, laying out bandages from some sort of medical cabinet, and proceeding to open bottles of noxious smelling medicines.

“What is that?” He didn’t want to seem fussy, but a fellow ought to be cautious about what he allowed in, or on, his body. It was a general rule he’d adopted during his school years—when all sorts of culinary indignities had been forced upon him—and strived to follow ever since.

“A styptic,” she said, as if that would answer everything. “Certain things mixed with brandy. It will stop the bleeding.”

A sound plan. Roy shucked himself out of his dark evening coat, and found the collar soaked with blood. “A field apothecary, are ye?”

Miss Blois stuck one hand on her very trim hip, and pointed with the other to the kitchen door, as if to tell him he was welcome to leave at any time—the choice was his. “Stop your complaint and lean your head over, nearer the light.” She moved a lamp closer to take a better look at the laceration on his head. “It is not so very bad.”

“No? Ye made a rather thorough job of it for an amateur.” He eyed her dark bottles. “Will it hurt?”

“Probably.” She pursed her rather wonderfully full lips, and considered him with one raised eyebrow. “For a burglar, you are not so very brave.”

“I’m a society burglar. I didn’t expect someone of yer elevated class to be so bloodthirsty as to actually wound me.”
 

“I am not in the least elevated. Nor bloodthirsty.” Yet, she took her revenge for this perceived insult by slapping the stinging styptic to his scalp.

“Och! For the love of—” he crowed. And slapped his hand down on top of hers, trapping her there. Mostly for the chance to feel the lovely, soft, smooth skin of her delicate hands—deceptively soft and sweet, even if they had proved rather deadly. But he would play-act writhing pain if it meant he could touch her again.

Damn his eyes, but she was lovelier each look he took. And she smelled divine—like a Provençal garden, all fresh sea air and bright florals.

She was having none of it. “Such drama. You carry on like the veriest baby,” she chided in her French way. “It is only the small cut to your flesh.”

“Well, it’s my flesh that is cut.” He shaded his voice with reproach.

“You must expect some occupational hazard when you are a thief,” she observed tartly. “Gentleman or not, you broke in here to steal.”

Not exactly, but it were best if she didn’t know what he had planned for that Hals. “Ye are of course in the right, while I am very firmly in the wrong. It is undoubtedly a hazard of my occupation, and must been borne with a stiff upper lip.”

“Stiff upper lip?” She stepped away to take a long look at him. And what she saw must have pleased her at least a little, because she almost smiled—a bemused pout of her plush lower lip. “You are a very English sort of burglar.”

It was everything he could do to keep himself from laughing. “Had many burglars, have ye?”

“No,” she admitted philosophically. “You are the first.”

He gifted her with his most gentlemanly, charming smile—the one that had melted hearts from Edinburgh’s Royal Mile all the way to Paris’
Montmartre
. “I’m honored.”

She remained impervious. “Do not be.” The tartness was back. “Hold still.” She ran her fingers carefully through his hair, parting it so she could sluice warm water against the wound. “It is very small—a nothing. There will be the merest scar.”
 

She pressed a clean cloth to his head. But then he felt her fingers still stroking gently through his hair, though there was no longer a reason. “It is very strange, your hair. It is the color of ripened wheat.”

While Rory had often heard himself described as strange, he could not help but be flattered. It was an un-looked for intimacy, this light touch of her fingertips against his hair. He wanted to close his eyes, and lean into her small palm and rest, if only for a moment or two before he had to return to the world outside her lovely warm kitchen.
 

She said nothing more, but made a delicious soft sound of concentration while she dressed the wound with an aromatic salve, and wrapped what felt like a mile of bandage around his head. But he didn’t mind. He took the opportunity to settle more of his weight onto the delicate strength of her torso, and inhale a lungful of her subtle scent.
 

It was a bliss stronger than brandy.

“The French would say to air this wound of yours in a day or two by taking off the bandages, but I know you English have other, equally beneficial practices. If you are concerned, perhaps you should have an apothecary check it in a day or two.”

“If I don’t know which practices are the most beneficial,” he admitted cheerfully, “it’s only because I’ve never taken a halberd to my head before.”

She drew back to survey her handiwork. “
Ça suffit
—that will do, as you English say. And now it is past time for you to go.” She pointed at the kitchen door. “I should not want any of the others to come home and find a criminal in the kitchens.”

He lavished her with his best smile. “Did ye have a better spot in mind?”

She did not appreciate his crooked sense of humor. She gave him what he could only describe as a French look—all arched eyebrows and pursed lips. “You,
Monsieur
Gentleman Thief, are altogether too cheeky.”

“Yer pardon,
Mademoiselle
.” He gave her his best continental pronunciation. “I’ll go.” He stood and carefully slid his arms into his ruined coat—his tailor was going to have a fit. But it had been worth the price. “Ye’ve been most understanding.” He bowed again more formally once he had himself to a reasonable resemblance of rights.

But bowing made his head swim, and he staggered.

“What is wrong?” She instinctively came to his aid, wrapping her arm around his waist, and propping him up against the kitchen wall.

He took advantage of the intimacy to loop one of his own arms about her neck, and lean on her, rather than the wall. “I feel weak,” he lied. “From the blood loss.”

But tiny Miss Blois was made of sturdier stuff than to meekly fall for his gammon. She made a subtly derisive tssking noise with her lips. “Come now. You hardly bled at all considering—the wound is small. It did more damage to your suit of clothes than to your hard head.”