My Fair Lily(112)

She let out a choking laugh. “I’d hit you if you weren’t already bruised over your entire body. None of your business. Why aren’t you married?”

“Bachelorhood suits me fine.”

“Good, because I have no intention of marrying you.”

“I don’t recall asking you.”

“You raised it. What made you think of marriage?” Suddenly, she gasped. “It’s that Chipping Way bachelor curse. No, no, no. It can’t be true!” She sounded pained. And scared.

Not as scared as he suddenly was. What if the curse did prove true? “I don’t believe in it either.”

“But you ran down my street. And now you’re worried that you inadvertently fell into the Chipping Way trap.” She sounded horrified. “For pity’s sake, why did you do it? There are a thousand streets in London. You could have chosen any of them. Why mine?”

“It wasn’t intentional. I was running for my life, and you should have been back in Coniston. Don’t tell me you’re the superstitious sort. You can’t believe in that silly curse. Your sisters would have met and married their husbands no matter what. They fell in love. I’m not loveable. I’m a dissolute who intends to stay that way.”

She paused to study him, her expression a little too thoughtful for his liking. “Why did you just say that?”

“Say what? That your sisters would have met and married—”

“No, about your not being loveable.”

He laughed and shook his head. “No one on this earth cares about me. No one ever did. Not even me.”

***

Dillie came around the bed to face Ian, wanting to be angry with him and at the same time wanting to throw her arms around him to assure him that someone cared. Someone must have loved Ian at some point in his life. His parents. His siblings. A sweetheart?

She felt a pang in her heart. It wasn’t jealousy. She’d have to care for Ian in that way to feel such a thing. She didn’t care for him and never would. Absolutely not. “I’ll fetch your clothes.” It was of no moment that looking at his broad, lightly tanned chest and the soft gold hairs that lined its rippling planes was making her lightheaded. She glanced away from his dangerously gleaming gray-green eyes.

Ian knew how to make women swoon.

Fortunately, she never swooned. She was too practical for such nonsense.

Nor did his muscled arms make her body tingle. She was merely responding to the ugly red gashes crisscrossed on them.

He wasn’t in the least attractive. Not after three days of sweating out a high fever. Besides his ragged growth of beard, he had a large cowlick sticking up from his matted honey-gold hair. It didn’t matter that some of those gold curls had looped about his neck and ears in a manner that made her fingers itch to brush them back. The cowlick made him look ridiculous.

Ridiculously handsome.

No! She refused to find him attractive. Absolutely not. Not in the least. Yet, the casual way he dismissed his wounds tugged at her heart. He was used to pain, used to hiding deep, ugly scars. The horrible sort, the unseen ones capable of destroying one’s spirit.

Who had done such a thing to Ian? The elephant gun was still loaded. She wanted to hunt down those wicked people and shoot them with both barrels.




END