Page 39 of Almost a Bride
She silently refused to give him the satisfaction of looking away. The lantern didn’t illuminate him well, and he was only a glimmer of moving shadows as he washed himself. Very faintly, she heard him humming a tune she recognized.
With a start, she realized she didn’t want to believe the worst of him—for all his arrogance, he didn’t seem like a traitor.
Yet he would be no good to the Spanish if he weren’t convincing as an Englishman.
Covering her face with her hands, she tried to remain calm, something she’d perfected before his arrival. Now it was a struggle not to react to his words, to the growing temptation of his body.
“Roselyn?”
His whisper made her stomach clench. “Yes?”
“Can you wash my back?”
He quickly added, “I know I made a joke about it before, but honestly, I can’t reach it well.”
Spencer’s skin itched from the soap, and suds trailed down his neck from his hair, but he felt almost truly clean for the first time in months.
“Put on a towel,” she said in a low, tight voice.
He chuckled as he imagined the scowl she wore, but did as she asked.
He watched her appear out of the dark courtyard and into the lantern light, and was struck again by the simple prettiness he had never noticed in London. She still looked at the ground, but he thought she was not as unaffected as she appeared.
Turning his back to her, he braced himself against the barrel, then winced when she set to work scrubbing his back as if he were a dirty wooden floor.
“Roselyn, you’re going to knock me over.”
She eased up on him, but soon he began to think he preferred her strength. Now it was too easy to feel the cloth touch every part of his back, to imagine there was nothing between his skin and hers. The towel at his waist would be rising if he didn’t concentrate on something else.
He looked over his shoulder into her frowning face. “I don’t suppose you’d want to rinse me?”
Her eyes widened and lifted to his. Just for a moment she looked impossibly young and innocent, and he had to remind himself that she was otherwise.
“There is the bucket,” she said briskly, pointing to the ground, “and there is still fresh water in the barrel. Help yourself.”
She kept her back turned while he filled the bucket and thought of ways to make her look at him again, to remind her of what she’d given up. The first bucket of water was still hot enough to make him shudder, and the second sluiced the last of the suds from his body. He pushed the hair out of his eyes and turned to face Roselyn, who held out a towel, in command of every situation.
He reached for the towel, then deliberately lost his balance. With only the slightest squeak of surprise, she rewarded him by throwing her arms about his waist.
She made it so damned easy.
She was a small thing, he thought as he looked down at the top of her head, but she fit very comfortably in his arms, and she had strength enough to bear his weight. That put his mind in a decidedly different direction, one he was not comfortable with.
“Can I let go now?” she asked, her voice muffled against his chest.
A shudder moved through him at the touch of her lips on his bare skin. This little play he’d staged was rapidly falling apart.
Spencer leaned close enough to smell the clean scent of her hair. How often did she bathe out here at night, naked under the stars?
“Don’t step away,” he murmured, “I fear the sagging towel will drop to my feet.”
She gasped and pressed even closer to him as he fought a groan. Soon she’d know that she’d affected him, and he didn’t want to give her that kind of power.
She leaned to the side and surprised him by blowing frantically.
“What are you—” He started to chuckle when he finally understood. “Are you trying to blow the candle out? I thought nudity didn’t bother you, that you’d been—” He was about to say “married” but the word wouldn’t leave his mouth.
She gripped his arms, and he knew she was frozen, uncertain what to do next. He felt the smallest warmth move deep within his chest.
