The Duke I'm Going to Marry(7)

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.





CHAPTER 2


AFTER BREAKFAST the next morning, Dillie decided to sit down and play the piano. She needed to clear her mind, and anyway, she hadn’t practiced in months. There had been too much to do to help her twin sister plan her wedding. In truth, she and their mother had done most of the planning while Lily was, as usual, absorbed in her baboon research. Then all those Farthingale relatives had descended on their townhouse from all over the British Isles to celebrate Lily’s big day and Dillie had been enlisted to help her mother entertain them all.

Dillie entered the music room, looking forward to the solitude. It was a cold, rainy day, the sort of day to sleep late or cozy up in a chair by the fire to read a good book. She’d looked in on Ian earlier. He was sleeping comfortably, his forehead cool. His valet had delivered a leather pouch full of important papers that Ian would review when he awoke. Her uncle had allowed it now that Ian was no longer delirious. However, he hadn’t allowed Ian to leave their home, for he wasn’t completely out of danger yet.

Ian’s fever had returned last night.

Fortunately, he was cool by this morning and looked stronger. Dillie could tell he was on the mend because he was frustrated, impatient, and eager to climb out of bed.

Mercy! The sight of him as he’d lunged out of bed yesterday, not a stitch of clothing on his muscled torso, still had her heart in palpitations.

With Ian’s health improving, Dillie realized she was no longer needed to tend him. Ashcroft, his valet, would now take over nursemaid duties. She was glad for the change, and glad that he would be gone by the end of the week, for the sight of London’s most eligible bachelor occupying her bed, his big, hard body taking up most of its width, had left her moon-eyed, witless, and vulnerable.

However, she would miss him.

Would he miss her? Of course not. Ian had a beautiful mistress and a circle of dissolute friends who would quickly occupy his time.

She sat on the piano bench, took a deep breath, and struck the first chord of a concerto she particularly liked. Her fingers flew over the ivory keys, for she knew the piece by heart and didn’t need to concentrate to play it perfectly. In any event, how could she concentrate with Ian upstairs? In her bed. Still naked.

She finished the concerto and began to play one of her favorite madrigals, singing along as she played the sweetly melodic, but wistful, tune about a young woman’s true love lost at war. Then she played another, and in this one the fair maiden died in her lover’s arms.

“Do you know any songs that don’t involve death?” Ian asked, limping into the music room and surprising her while she searched through her folios for some merrier tunes.

She turned to face him, relieved to see that he was clean shaven and properly dressed. Fully clothed. Incredibly handsome. He had on a white lawn shirt and dark gray breeches molded to his long, muscled legs, and he wore knee-length polished black boots. His cravat was a deep green silk that matched the forest-mist color of his eyes, and his gray silk vest brought out the silvery glint in them. No jacket, though she wasn’t surprised, for the worst of his wounds, the one at his waist, had not yet healed and the weight of the jacket would only be an irritant.

He looked almost as good as he had yesterday while naked and rising from her bed, his broad shoulders and muscled arms flexing as he strained to stand.

Stop thinking of him naked.

Of course, she couldn’t. The mere thought of Ian without a stitch of clothing turned her legs to pudding and left her heart pounding so hard its rampant beat could be heard across London. No doubt Ian heard its rapid thump, thump, thump.

She let out a light laugh, feeling a little shabby, for she had on a simple day gown of dark blue wool, albeit a fine merino wool, and her hair was simply drawn back in a dark blue velvet ribbon. “I never realized quite how morbid some of these songs are.”