Page 15 of Courting Trouble
His arm cradled her against his side, the other reaching toward her face as he looked down at her with those extraordinary eyes. He’d taken off his gloves, she noted, as his fingers lifted toward her cheek. He hesitated before he touched her, as if waiting for permission.
Nora’s lashes swept down, causing more tears to fall as she turned her face into his awaiting palm.
He thumbed away the drops with skin so rough it abraded hers, but still she buried her cheek deeper against his hand, seeking the warmth and strength she found there, tempered by utter gentility and something else she couldn’t begin to define.
For the first time in her short life, Nora felt as if the pressure of the entire sky wasn’t doing its utmost to crush her into the ground. This boy had strength enough in his shoulders to bear the burden that washerfor a moment.
And he seemed willing enough.
She couldn’t say how long they stayed like that before something restless stirred inside of her. Something that wanted more of him. Of this.
“Titus?” she whispered.
“Yes, Miss Goode?”
“Will you call me Nora? My friends all call me Nora.”
He paused. “If I took such liberties, I’d lose my position here.”
It was odd, him saying that, when they found themselves in such an intimate posture. But, of course. How stupid of her to forget. She wasn’t the only one constrained by her station. “I only meant when we’re alone.”
His breath hitched then, as if something agitated him. “We…should not be alone.”
Wanting to soothe him in kind, Nora placed her hand over the one he held to her cheek, the softness of her gloved fingertips snagging over his coarse knuckles.
Beneath her, his shoulder lifted and fell with quickening breaths, and the warmth of his exhales brushed her skin, lightly scented of dessert flavored by port.
The staff wasn’t supposed to nip at the food, but she’d always supposed they did, and she was glad he’d had a taste.
He deserved every pleasure.
Suddenly she wanted to know more about him. “How did you know about the Marquess of Blandbury?”
“Doctor Alcott,” he said simply.
“You must see him often if you know such intimate things about his patients and swap books from his library.”
He shifted a little, as if talking about himself made him uncomfortable. “I work for him four evenings a week and every other Saturday.”
“On top of your duties here?”
He nodded.
What a keen mind he must have. She rather appreciated that. “I think it’s lovely of you to lend them to Felicity.” A smile worked its way through her prior distress, at the thought of her sister’s eyes, made unnaturally large by her spectacles, as she stared adoringly up at Titus. “I think she rather fancies you.”
He made a sound in his chest that landed somewhere between amusement and embarrassment, but he made no reply.
She laced her fingers in between his as if she needed to hold onto something in order to make her next confession. “Sometimes I have vague wisps of dreams, or maybe memories, of those days I spent with the fever.”
He tensed, and she had the impression that if her hand hadn’t held his to her cheek, he would have retracted it.
“I think you were feeding me, singing me lullabies…” Unsure of what was prompting her to behave this way, she turned her face against his skin until her lips grazed the meat of his palm. “Bathing me.”
He drew away then, his breath sawing in and out of him with true effort as he turned his back to her. “Don’t remember,” he rasped.
She couldn’t tell if he meanthedidn’t remember, or if he was orderinghernot to recall. But shedid.Bits and pieces. She wondered sometimes, how much of it had been real. If he’d taken cooling sponges to her bare skin. If he’d lowered her naked body into baths and then tenderly arranged soft nightgowns over her.
She couldn’t help but allow her thoughts to linger on the intimacy of that.
