The Perils of Pleasure (9 page)

Her eyelashes were like little fans of mink, but he wasn’t about to say it.

He knew ridiculous pleasure when it became very clear Madeleine Greenway was struck dumb.

Then again, so was he, for that matter. Some com
bustible combination of fatigue and fury and pent-up charm had propelled the speech like a geyser out of him. It had been calculated to churn the typical female mind into butter. God only knew what it would do to Mrs. Greenway’s mind, as she was far from the typical female.

A moment passed during which he savored his tri
umph, and during which Miss Greenway’s soft bottom lip dropped just the barest hint.

He refused to release her from his gaze.

“Well, Mr. Eversea.” When her voice emerged faint but steady, he knew both reluctant admiration and regret. “What a good deal of effort you put into your speech. You should thank me for inspiring it. Your abil
ity to charm might atrophy from disuse otherwise.”

“You interpreted all of that as charm? That bodes well.”

Another flare of surprised humor in those soft dark eyes, another faint smile. He hadn’t invented those little stars; a soft little light did shine in those depths when she smiled. It was a precarious moment, and might be very short-lived, but Madeleine Greenway was dis
armed. And in Colin Eversea’s experience, the next step after disarmament was usually conquest. It was some
thing he knew as well as he knew how to load a musket, bluff a hand of cards, dodge his creditors. But for now he simply wanted the upper hand he typically had with any woman, because it would help restore a sense of rightness to his world.

“Come, tell me who you
really
are, Mrs. Greenway,” he coaxed softly into that softening breech.

She blinked, then straightened her spine, subtly, un
mistakably, imposing distance.

“I am whoever I need to be, Mr. Eversea. And you are not the first man to find the very fact of this intrigu
ing, nor will you be the last. Or the most interesting, I might add.”

It was a goad, and probably meant to either persuade him to become more docile or to challenge him to con
tinue trying to be interesting. He wagered, optimisti
cally, on the latter.

“Atrophy,” he said after a moment. “Such an impres
sive word for a mercenary.”

She paused. “It means fl accid.”

And, oh, look at that: she could arch a single brow, too.

The door jiggled a bit then, and they both gave a start.

Grateful for the excuse to look away from Colin Eversea, grateful for the opportunity to herd her wits back into formation, Madeleine strode over and slid the broom out of its hooks. The door creaked open a few inches and a large hairy hand clutching a tin poked in and waved about. Madeleine plucked the tin out of the hand, the fingers waggled an acknowledgment and van
ished again through the crack, and she closed the door and slid the broom back into place.

Someone whose handwriting had never evolved care
less or defining characteristics, someone who seldom had cause to write, in other words, had labeled the tin:
saint-john’s-wort.
Croker’s wife, most likely. They were a nefarious pair, and might very well be serving meat pies made out of cats (that rumor never
would
die), yet there was something comfortingly homely about the tin of Saint-John’s-wort salve. Madeleine imagined there was one in nearly every building in England, from Whitehall to Newgate.

She turned around to face Colin, who was watching her.

“We need to see to your ankles, Mr. Eversea. Be
cause I won’t have your gait slowing us down.”

Colin Eversea’s eyes went wide; his body went utterly
still. And at first it was gratifying to startle him, to throw him off balance the way he’d thrown her off balance, to make a point: I’m observant, too, Mr. Eversea. And then some emotion twitched across his face—shock? shame?—before he went carefully expressionless.

He stood for a moment like that, very still, his eyes looking inward. And then without saying a word, he sat down hard on the chair and abruptly began working off one long boot.

Futilely, as it turned out. Nearly a minute went by, but the boot and man remained inseparable. Colin Ever-sea cast one enigmatic glance up at Madeleine then, and continued to tug.

Which is when some reflex born of impatience and old memories made Madeleine drop to her knees, put her hands on either side of his boot and give a tug.

Whereupon they both froze for a moment.

And then Madeleine slowly tipped her head back and met a pair of glinting green eyes with a challengingly raised brow, but she said nothing.

And then slowly, slowly, Colin Eversea straight
ened his leg for her. Madeleine almost smiled then; he called to mind nothing so much as someone extending a hand for a suspicious, irritable dog to sniff. She tugged hard—she knew the fit of Hobby boots and how to get one off—and it soon came away into her hands. She set it aside. Colin presented the other boot by extending his other long leg. In silence, they repeated the process, Madeleine expertly tugging until the boot released its hold.

And once the boots were off, she lined them up to admire a mission accomplished: two boots side by side, erect and elegant as a pair of footmen.

Madeleine did glance up at Colin Eversea then. His
eyes were fixed on a great black pot hanging on the wall across from him; his jaw was set, and a surprising faint fl ush sat high on his cheekbones. She didn’t think exer
tion had caused it. Was it shame that he should need assistance, or that she should recognize, witness, his vulnerability? He was doubtless a proud man. Perhaps he was struggling with the reminder that he’d actually been shackled.

Colin Eversea’s insouciance in prison had been leg
endary; if one believed the broadsheets, he fl ung bon mots the way a benevolent king flung coins to peasants. And the English did love a criminal with panache.

For the first time, Madeleine began to wonder what the panache had cost him.

I know it’s not a lark
, he’d said.

She waited, not wanting to prompt him. Colin in
haled, then sighed out a breath and swiftly, the motion almost defiant, rolled his trouser legs up, first one, then the other, to each knee. He paused then, resting his hands flat on his thighs, as if gathering his nerve.

And then he drew in another long breath and bent to ease the stockings, first one, then the other, slowly, carefully, down.

A strange finger of sensation dragged Madeleine’s spine softly in tandem with the slow revelation of those calves, setting the fine hairs on the back of her neck on end.

Too late she realized Colin Eversea had the upper hand after all.

She stared, and heat washed the backs of her arms, her throat, her cheeks. They were just
legs
, for God’s sake. All men had them, unless war or a hunting ac
cident took one off. These particular legs featured long ankles, which merged into the bulge of hard calves,
which were covered all over with crisp copper hair. An old ragged-edged scar sat high on one shin; there was a story behind it, no doubt. Men typically came equipped with scars and stories. She frowned slightly down at those decidedly rugged-looking, very handsome calves, a silent reproof to her senses for reminding her that she was a woman, after all. Because that shortness of breath, that heat in her cheeks, wasn’t entirely about the partially bare man. Something about the awkward, homely intimacy of the circumstance, about . . .
tending
. . . to someone . . . about
knowing
he had a scar below his knee . . . came with a bittersweet twist between her ribs.

She didn’t dare look up at Colin Eversea, for she knew her fair skin told the story of her confusion. She was close enough to him to see the faint blue of a vein winding up through that forest of hair on his leg, and she focused on that instead. But then Madeleine found herself imagining its route up his calf to perhaps the inside of his thigh, which would no doubt be hard-muscled from spending half his life on horseback but perhaps silky inside, the hair worn away from riding horse—

She jerked her head down toward his ankles.

And riveted, her stomach slowly turned to ice.

Shackle-width rings of raw, hairless pink skin cir
cled each. Unattended, his ankles would be infected and oozing within days, and he would be ill indeed. Of course, Colin Eversea would have been strangled to death by rope long before his ankles made him ill, so no one would have needed to give a thought to what was going on beneath the shackles. But if he managed to survive the quest they’d embarked upon, he would likely forever bear a reminder of his days as a prisoner:
two shackle-sized bands of hairless skin. Perhaps even scars.

Madeleine pulled the top from the tin of Saint-John’s-wort. Said nothing. She kept the transaction pragmatic, to spare him any more shame, to keep her own confl ict
ing emotions at bay, but her hand trembled a little. She tightened her fingers over the lid to steady it.

“Your cravat,” she said tonelessly.

“My crav— Oh.” His tone matched hers.

He reached across the table and fished out the limp snowy square of silk from his bundle, spread it open and neatly, with his teeth and fingers, tore two strips.
War
, he’d said. So he knew a bit about the making of bandages.

He handed them down to her, like two white fl ags of surrender.

Madeleine saw dents in the salve where other fi n
gers had dipped into it. She helped herself to a generous scoop, took a deep breath, and laid her fi ngers gently against one of his raw ankles and stroked, very lightly, over the wound.

Colin Eversea remained utterly still; his taut muscle betrayed his tension. She could only just hear his breath
ing, deeper, a little unsteady. His skin was hot beneath her fingertips. It was unsettling how very . . .
alive
he felt. She’d nearly forgotten the pleasure of the textures of men: how
large
they were, in general, with those hard muscles and big strong bones beneath surprisingly soft skin, and all that crisp, abundant hair. They took up so much
space
. Particularly this one.

But here, where she laid cool salve over Colin Ever-sea’s raw skin and began to paint over the wound, there was no hair at all. Madeleine breathed in, breathed out, focused on the job at hand, and listened to Colin’s
breathing. Given that she was kneeling at his feet in a pose suggestive of another intimate attention entirely, his silence surprised her. It struck her as the sort of ob
servation he would fi nd difficult to resist.

She glanced up then, and was surprised to fi nd his eyes closed. The flush still on his cheeks. His fi ngers gripping his knees. Somehow she didn’t think it was just about pain.

It struck her hard then that it had probably been quite some time—longer than he was accustomed to, anyway—since a woman had touched or tended to him. She wondered whether he, like she, was entertain
ing vivid, awkward, conflicting thoughts. Perhaps he imagined another woman entirely was laying her hands upon him.

Or perhaps simply, like she was, accustoming him
self to the wonder of feeling skin against skin again.

Madeleine looked down swiftly again. God only knew she didn’t want to wonder about Colin Ever-sea. She seized the bandage like a lifeline, wrapped it around his ankle softly, tied off the ends securely as though applying a tourniquet to the unruly run of her own thoughts.

She swept up more salve on her fingers, turned her attention to his other ankle.

“You’ve done this before.” He sounded subdued. Quietly amused.

Madeleine looked up to find his expression open and easy, the flush gone from his cheeks. Whatever shame or anger had held him in its grip had eased from him, or somehow he’d managed to push it away.

“Something very like it, once or twice,” she admitted lightly.

“Croker called you Mrs. Greenway.”

“So he did.” She’d let irony creep back into her voice.
Don’t cross this line
, the tone said.

She hoped.

“Is there a Mr. Greenway?”

So much for hope.

She answered with silence. Interestingly, Colin Ever-sea didn’t ask the question again.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” he said suddenly. Quietly. As though he thought this was the reason she refused to speak to him.

Not again
.

“I don’t care, Mr. Eversea.” She fi nished spreading the salve, methodically, as if simply spreading it over the entire angry wound could make it vanish. It must have hurt a good deal as he walked, nearly as much as a burn. Yet he never flinched. If she hadn’t noticed his gait, he probably wouldn’t have said a thing about it until he was good and ill.

Men.

“You
truly
don’t care?” His voice had acquired a hard, inquisitorial tone. Funny, that. As though the crime was not the murder, but her not caring.