Page 53 of Any Duke in a Storm

“But I want to know about the fight,” she whined.

“Saint needs his privacy.” Lisbeth caught Raphael’s jaw tightening at the name, and it hurt her too, but she had to do what was necessary to put distance between them. She shepherded the girl outside and hesitated at the door, acid pooling in her chest when one of the women teasingly offered to wash his back after the bath was filled. Her fingers pulled convulsively at the seam on her skirts.

“Lisbeth.” His voice was low, commanding, and made parts of her warm.

She turned. “Yes?”

“Stay,” he said.

“It appears that you have more than enough willing volunteers.”

He glanced at the women with his playful lopsided smirk and made them give a collective sigh. Lisbeth suppressed her own sigh with a silent snarl. No need to inflate his ego even further. But it was true that that stupid smile of his was maddeningly effective at demolishing one’s good sense. “Thank you, kind friends, but we can manage from here.”

We?Lisbeth gulped.

“Are you certain?” the brunette cooed and dragged a fingertip over his arm. “I make a good nurse and I don’t mind sharing.”

Gray eyes met Lisbeth’s where she stood. “Alas, I don’t share.”

The possessive note in his tone shouldn’t have felt as good as it did.

Pouting with disappointment, the women trailed out, darting looks in her direction and muttering petty insults. If they really knew who she was, they would not be so quick to get in her face. Lisbeth bristled at the nerve, especially when the brunette in question slowed with a sneer. Unable to help herself, she let a little of Bonnie Bess show through her eyes and in the feral grin that twisted her lips, and the other woman flinched before hurrying after the others.

Raphael chuckled. “Easy, Viking. No need to terrify the poor chit.”

They observed each other in tenuous silence, before he hobbled to the bathing room. He stopped at the doorway, peering over his shoulder. “You can’t have it both ways. Either you come help me or I get one of the other women to do it. Your choice.”

She went mutinous at that. “You could get one of the men to assist you.”

“And you think the outcome will be any different?” he said. “Given your own preferences, you should be the last to assume that I won’t enjoy it.”

“God, you are insufferable.” Lisbeth glared at him and gestured for him to go into the bathing room with a growl. “One of these days, your enormous ego will be the death of you.”

“Everything about me is proportional,” he said with a slight flex of his hips.

Her gaze went automatically to his groin as the cheeky rotter had intended, though she had to admit, the light bickering was vastly preferable to the fraught tension from earlier. “Good God, you’re at death’s doorstep and you can’t help yourself, can you? Is everything a sexual spectacle with you?”

He smirked. “I’m a red-blooded man about to get naked with a beautiful woman ready to do my bidding.”

Lisbeth’s cheeks warmed. What was it with him and praise, along with her absurd desire to receive it? With an aggravated sigh, she closed the door and walked towardhim. The closer she got, the less air she took in. His hair was greasy and his skin sallow, and still, her pulse leaped like a silly puppy with a bone. “Come on, Casanova. Even with your considerable flirtation skills, no one fancies a malodorous man.”

She had done her best to sponge bathe him, and while Boisie had helped tend to his basic needs, she knew how hard it was to feel clean without a proper bath. Life on the sea required adjustments, including being able to wash with minimal supplies and cold rainwater, not to mention handling her courses. On a ship with so many women, that was a trial in itself, though they managed. Lisbeth enjoyed being clean. A leisurely bath was the first thing she treated herself to whenever she put into port.

Raphael was able to shuck out of his smallclothes without her assistance, and Lisbeth averted her gaze. It was one thing to bathe an oblivious patient and another to do it while he was awake with all that manly virility on display. Raphael winced as he put one leg over the side.

“Easy, let me do the work,” she said. “You don’t want to injure yourself further.”

She offered her arm and took some of his weight while he eased himself over. Raphael sank down into the warm water with a grunt. Only after he was fully submerged did she look, though the water hid nothing. The strong lines of his body and the glint of both his piercings drew the eye, and she couldn’t help staring.

With a silent curse, Lisbeth schooled herself and moved behind him with a pitcher to wet his hair. Sittingon a nearby stool, she reached for the jar of soap. When she lathered his locks and dug her fingers into his scalp, his deep groan was enough to make her shiver in response. “That feels good.”

“Your hair is so thick,” she murmured. “The color is so dark it absorbs the light.”

“I’ve been told I get that from my mother,” he told her. “That, my nose, and my complexion. She died in childbirth so I never knew her.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Merci,” he murmured. “My eyes I get from my father, however, and his chin.”

---