Yours Until Dawn (8 page)

But tonight he heard nothing.

“Miss Wickersham,” he said firmly, poking his long feet out from under the blankets, “I do believe my toes are taking a chill.”

He wiggled those toes, but got no response.

“Miss Wickersham?”

A gentle snore was his only reply.

Gabriel tossed back the bedclothes. Playing the invalid day and night was growing wearying in the extreme. He couldn’t believe how intractable his nurse was turning out to be. The stubborn creature should have tendered her resignation days ago. Despite her gracious responses to his demands, her brittle restraint was showing signs of cracking.

Only tonight, after he had requested that she plump up his pillows for the third time in an hour, he had felt her hovering over him, pillow in hand, and had known he was one querulous demand away from being smothered to death.

He felt his way along the papered panels until he reached the sitting room that adjoined his bedchamber. The siren melody of the snores lured him to the wing chair that crouched in front of the hearth. Judging from the chill in the air, Miss Wickersham hadn’t bothered to lay a fire for her own comfort.

Plagued by a stab of remorse, Gabriel knelt beside the chair. Surely only utter exhaustion could have driven his indefatigable nurse to this! He knew he should shake her awake, should insist that she get up immediately and close the window or fetch him a warm brick wrapped in wool to warm his toes. But instead he found himself reaching toward her, touching his fingers to the flyaway wisps of hair that crowned her brow. They were softer than he expected, gliding like gossamer between his fingertips.

The snoring ceased. She shifted in the chair. Gabriel held his breath, but her breathing quickly resettled into a deep and even rhythm.

His hand grazed the icy metal of her steel spectacles. Despite Beckwith’s claims, they seemed to be hanging askew on a nose far too small to bear such a weight. Gabriel gently drew them off and laid them aside, assuring himself he was only seeing to her comfort. But with her face bared to his touch, she presented a temptation too great to resist.

She had only herself to blame, he told himself firmly. If she hadn’t coaxed Beckwith into playing that wicked trick on him, his curiosity about her appearance might have been satisfied.

Gabriel ran his fingertips over her cheek, startled by the downy softness of her skin. She must be far younger than her flinty voice had led him to believe.

Instead of satisfying his curiosity, his discovery only deepened it. Why would a genteel young woman choose such a thankless vocation? Had she been the victim of a father with a gambling habit or a faithless lover who had ruined her, then left her to fend for herself? If they couldn’t find posts as governesses or seam-stresses, such women too often ended up on the streets with no goods to sell but themselves.

His cautious exploration proved that there was nothing long or horselike about her face. Delicate bones shaped it into a perfect heart, broad at the cheek, but tapering to a rather pointed chin that betrayed no sign of a mole, hairy or otherwise. Gabriel’s thumb strayed away from his other fingers only to encounter a more enticing softness.

As he ran the pad of his thumb over her plump lips, Miss Wickersham nestled her cheek into his palm, a husky little moan of contentment escaping her lips.

Gabriel froze, paralyzed by the hot surge of blood to his groin. He had boasted that his circulation was just fine, but until that moment, he hadn’t realized just how very fine it was. It had been so long since he’d felt a woman’s skin warm beneath his touch, felt the caress of her breath as her lips parted in invitation. Even before Trafalgar, he’d spent nearly a year at sea with only a packet of worn letters and his dreams for the future to warm him. He’d forgotten just how powerful that first sweet kick of desire could be. And how dangerous.

He yanked his hand back, thoroughly disgusted with himself. It was one thing to torment his nurse while she was awake, quite another to fondle her while she slept. He reached for her again, this time determined to shake her awake and send her to her own bedchamber before his wits could completely desert him.

She stirred and the delicate snores resumed. Gabriel sighed.

Muttering several colorful oaths beneath his breath, he fumbled his way back into the adjoining room and snatched up a quilt. He returned to the sitting room and awkwardly tucked the quilt around her before stumbling back to his own cold, empty bed.

Samantha curled deeper into her cozy nest, trying to ignore the fact that it felt as if a dozen pesky elves were doing needlework on her right foot. She didn’t want to wake up, didn’t want to relinquish the delicious dream still clinging to the edges of her consciousness. She couldn’t remember the exact details. She only knew that in it she had felt warm and safe and loved and that letting it go would leave her with nothing but a helpless sense of longing.

Her eyes slowly fluttered open. Through the casement window, she could see the pinkish golden haze of dawn streaking the eastern horizon. She yawned and stretched her stiff muscles, trying to remember the last time she’d been allowed a full night’s sleep. As she uncurled her tingling foot from beneath her, the quilt draped over her lap slid to the floor.

Samantha blinked down at the eiderdown quilt, recognizing it as just one of the many luxuriant blankets from the earl’s bed. Perplexed, she instinctively reached up to pull off her spectacles. They were gone.

Feeling woefully exposed, she groped frantically in the chair around her, thinking they must have slipped off while she slept. But when she leaned forward, she found them folded neatly on the rug beside the chair.

Suddenly wide awake, Samantha slid them on and peered warily around the sitting room. She barely remembered collapsing in the chair last night, but tantalizing fragments of her dream were returning to her—a man’s warm fingers touching her hair, stroking her skin, caressing the softness of her lips. Closing her eyes, she touched two fingers to her lips, reliving both the exquisite sensation and the yearning his touch had evoked.

What if it hadn’t been a dream?

Samantha’s eyes flew open as she shook away the mad notion. She doubted the man sleeping in the next room was even capable of such tenderness. But that still left her with no explanation for who had covered her and removed her spectacles with such care.

Scooping up the quilt, she rose and slipped silently into the adjoining bedchamber, not sure what she hoped to find. Gabriel was sprawled on his stomach among the rumpled bedclothes, his folded arms cradling his head. The silk sheet had slipped off one thigh—a thigh rippling with muscle and dusted with the same golden hair as his chest. Samantha knew exactly how he had earned those muscles—riding, hunting, swaggering across the deck of a ship, shouting out orders to the men under his command.

She crept closer to the bed. Despite the months he’d spent cooped up in this house, the taut, smooth skin of his back hadn’t completely lost its sun-kissed glow. Lured by that spill of molten gold, Samantha stretched out her hand. Although her fingertips barely brushed his flesh, a jolt of awareness sizzled through her, heating her own skin.

Appalled by her brazenness, she snatched back her hand. She tossed the quilt carelessly over him, then went scurrying for the door. She could only imagine what Mrs. Philpot and the other servants would think if they caught her creeping out of the earl’s bedchamber at dawn, her face flushed and her eyes still heavy-lidded from sleep.

Clutching the banister, she went tiptoeing hastily down the stairs. She’d nearly reached her own landing when a merry jingling drifted down from the floor above. Samantha froze, seized by the sudden horrifying thought that Gabriel might have only been feigning sleep.

The bell sounded again, its shrill tones even more insistent.

Shoulders slumping, she slowly turned and went trudging back up the stairs.

By early afternoon, the bell’s hellish echo seemed to have taken up permanent residence in Samantha’s skull. She was on hands and knees on the floor of Gabriel’s dressing room, stretching to retrieve a silk cravat that had slithered just out of her reach, when it started jangling again. She reared up, striking her head sharply on the shelf above. The shelf tilted, raining a dozen beaver hats down on top of her.

Knocking them away, she muttered, “I can’t imagine why a man with one head would require so many hats.”

She emerged from the stifling confines of the dressing room with her sweat-dampened hair plastered to her head and a cravat gripped in each hand like a pair of venomous snakes. “Did you ring, my lord?” she growled.

Although the sunlight filtering through the window cast a Raphaelic halo around his tousled hair, Gabriel’s scarred face had settled into the saturnine lines of a despot prince accustomed to having his every whim satisfied. “I was just wondering where you’d gone off to,” he said, his accusing tone even more sulky than usual.

“I was sunning myself on the beach at Brighton,” she replied. “I didn’t think you’d miss me.”

“Has there been any word from my father or his physicians yet?”

“Not since I checked ten minutes ago.”

His mouth tightened, silently reproaching her. They’d both been in an evil temper all day. Despite having enjoyed a full night’s sleep, Samantha was still haunted by that elusive fragment of a dream and the possibility that he might have felt her foolish caress. What if he thought her some pathetic, dried-up old maid, starving for a man’s touch?

Desperate to reestablish some semblance of propriety between them, she said stiffly, “I’ve been in your dressing room for half the day, my lord, sorting your cravats by fabric and length just as you ordered me to do. Surely there’s no task so urgent as to take precedence over that.”

“It’s very hot in here.” Gabriel pressed the back of his hand to his brow. “I think I might be taking a fever.” He tossed back the blankets, revealing a shameless length of well-muscled thigh. Samantha could only be grateful he’d donned a pair of breeches that morning—even if they did only cover him to the knee.

Without realizing it, she dabbed at her flushed throat with one of his cravats. “The day
is
unseasonably warm. Perhaps if I open the windows…”

She was halfway across the room when he snapped, “Don’t bother. You know the scent of lilac will only tickle my nose and make me sneeze.” Collapsing against the pillows, he lifted his hand in a desultory wave. “Perhaps you could just fan me for a while.”

Samantha’s jaw dropped. “Shall I pop some fresh grapes into your mouth as well?”

“If you’d like.” He reached for the bell. “Shall I ring for some?”

Samantha gritted her teeth. “Why don’t you try some nice cool water instead? You’ve a little left over from your luncheon.”

After tossing the cravats over the top of the cheval glass perched in the corner, Samantha poured a goblet of water from the pitcher resting on the pier table. The thick earthenware had been designed to keep the fresh springwater cool. As she approached the bed, she couldn’t quite shake the sensation that if Gabriel weren’t blind, he would be eyeing her as suspiciously as she was eyeing him.

“Here you go,” she said, pressing the goblet into his hand.

He refused to close his fingers around it. “Why don’t you do the honors? I do believe I’m too weary.” He sighed. “I didn’t sleep particularly well last night. I kept dreaming there was a baby bear growling in the next room. It was most distressing.”

He leaned back among the pillows, parting his lips like a fledgling awaiting a feeding from its mother. Samantha stared down at him for a long, silent moment, then upended the goblet. The chill stream of water caught Gabriel full in the face. He shot to a sitting position, sputtering and cursing.

“Damnation, woman! What are you trying to do—drown me?”

Samantha backed away from the bed, slamming the goblet back down on the edge of the table. “Drowning is too good for the likes of you. You know very well it wasn’t a baby bear sleeping in the next room last night. It was me! And how dare you take such scandalous liberties with my person!”

Gabriel blinked the water from his lashes, looking both outraged and perplexed. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

“You removed my spectacles!”

A disbelieving snort of laughter escaped him. “The way you’re taking on, you’d have thought I removed your clothing!”

Samantha clutched at the high-necked bodice of her homely bottle-green day dress. “How do I know you didn’t?”

Silence hung between them, thicker than the heated air. Then his smoky voice dipped into low and dangerous territory. “If I had removed your clothing, Miss Wickersham, I can assure you it would have been worth waking up for.” Before Samantha could decide whether that silky boast was a promise or a threat, he continued. “All I did was remove your spectacles and cover you. I was simply trying to see to your comfort.”

To her amazement, a guilty flush stained his cheekbones. She wouldn’t have thought him a man capable of blushing. Both lies and half-truths should have rolled right off a tongue as nimble as his.

He settled back among the blankets, his expression more imperious than ever. “Now, if you’re done with my impromptu bath, you might be so kind as to fetch me a towel.”