Page 53 of The Society Catch
She got no further than the dressing room before being firmly tuned away by the housekeeper. ‘You cannot go in there, Miss Joanna,’ she said sounding scandalised.
‘I do not want to,’ Joanna managed to pant out. ‘I need the doctor for Colonel Gregory. How is her ladyship?’
‘As well as might be expected, considering.’
Considering what? No wonder Alex was getting so agitated. ‘May I speak to the doctor?’
Eventually that harassed gentleman put his head round the door long enough to listen to Joanna’s tale. ‘Let me know when the Colonel arrives. It will definitely need seeing to at once and nothing is moving at any speed here, that is for sure.’
Joanna retreated to hover at the head of the stairs giving orders to a distracted butler and harassing the maids who she sent scurrying for bandages, basillicum powder and extra pillows. At the sound of the arriving wagon she ran for the doctor, only to find herself put very firmly outside the door as Giles was carried in on a hurdle.
Starling appeared with a sandwich and a glass of wine which he insisted she ate. It tasted of straw, but she sensed that looking after her was all that Starling was able to do at the moment, so she ate it to please him.
Chapter Twenty Four
It seemed an age before the doctor reappeared wiping his hands on a towel. After a sharp look at her white face he took pity on her and stopped long enough for a rapid bulletin. ‘He won’t lose the leg and nothing’s broken. But the muscle is severely crushed and bruised. He’ll be in a lot of pain for some days and then will need careful exercise to get the strength back in it.’
He strode off to his other patient leaving Joanna leaning against the panelling too relieved even to move. Eventually she pulled herself together sufficiently to open the bedchamber door and look in.
Giles was alone in the room, stretched out on the big bed under a single sheet. He looked alarmingly still but as Joanna tiptoed forward he opened his eyes and smiled at her. She smiled back, opened her mouth to speak, then found her throat was too tight.
‘Stay with me?’ He turned his head on the pillow and glanced towards the armchair standing beside the empty grate. Joanna pulled it over to the bedside, but when she had it in position and looked back to the bed he was asleep again.
It was a big old leather-covered chair, deep and sagging comfortably. Joanna curled up in its depths and settled down to watch Giles. At first she was inclined to be anxious that he slept so deeply, then she recognised it for what it was, the utterly relaxed reaction of a strong, fit man whose body knew what it had to do to heal itself.
She closed her eyes, and against the lids saw again his warm, sleepy smile as she had entered the room.Stay with me. That spoke volumes for his trust in her that he should want her with him while he was vulnerable, unconscious. They had become very close over these past days and perhaps these few hoursalone with him were all that were left to her of that intimacy before the demands of marriage and Lady Suzanne and his family took him away from her.
Joanna opened her eyes again and simply sat looking at him, letting her gaze rove slowly over the long form outlined by the thin sheet, the breadth of his shoulders, bare where the linen folded down, the stubble golden on his skin, the fading scar on his forehead.
She catalogued each characteristic in her memory to last forever. The fact that his hair needed cutting and that where it was overlong at his nape it was beginning to curl. The sweep of his eyelashes, darker than his hair, ridiculously long for such a masculine man. The precise, complex, curl of his ear. The way his neck was strapped with muscle, the firm line of his jaw, determined even in sleep.
And his mouth. Expressive, flexible lips which she knew could firm into anger, part in uninhibited laughter, soften, then harden into a demanding, thrilling kiss. Her fingers curled and flexed with her longing to touch his mouth, to trace the sculpted upper line, the fuller, sensual lower swell.
Time passed and Joanna did not move as the clock in the hall below struck the hour. When it struck again Giles opened his eyes and looked directly into hers. Time stood still as grey met green gaze and locked in wordless communication in a language that she did not have the key to.
Then Giles moved slightly and caught his breath at the pain in his leg and the moment shattered.
‘Damn it,’ he muttered, raising himself on his elbows in an effort to sit up. Joanna jumped to her feet and shook the pillows behind him into a pile to support him, stepping back sharply to avoid touching him as he managed to draw himself up the bed and lay back.
‘How does it feel?’ What a stupid question.
‘Sore,’ Giles admitted in what she felt must be a massive understatement. He saw her face and grinned at her expression. ‘Truly, not that bad, I’ve had far worse and far worse conditions to recover in, let me tell you.’
Joanna, reassured, stopped hovering at the bedside and resumed her seat. ‘That wound in your side?’
‘I had forgotten you had seen that. Yes, they picked me up, tied my sash round it tightly, slung me over an army mule and carted me back to camp like a sack of potatoes. I then spent two weeks in a flea-infested barn. And no beautiful nurse, only my bâtman whose ideas of medical care were, to put it mildly, rough and ready.’
Beautiful.Joanna hugged the word to herself and asked, ‘Is there anything you need? Something to drink?’
‘Yes please,’ he ran his tongue over his lips. ‘Would you ring for a footman?’
‘I can get what you need.’
Giles cocked an eyebrow. ‘I think I would prefer a footman.’
Joanna opened her mouth to protest, then realised that there might indeed be reasons why he would prefer to be attended by a footman. ‘Oh, yes, of course. I’ll send someone up.’
Starling was pacing distractedly in the hall. Joanna felt a pang of sympathy. The poor man was probably unconsciously echoing the Earl’s own restlessness on the floor above.
