Page 5 of Mending the Baron's Sins
“Oh dear,” he muttered. “Where did you come from, temptation?”
There had been a time when Horace would have been out of his chamber already, intent on talking to the woman. Charm had come easy to him at one point in his life. Exactly how many women had he seduced into his bed in his younger years? Many, each one knowing what it was–pure seduction and excitement, no hearts, but only bodies and thrills to share. Some of those nights taunted him now with longing, for he knew he did not have the strength for such things now.
Yet something stirred in his gut as he looked at the stranger. She turned her head and laughed warmly at something that Esther had said. The full lips parting captured him, and a wild idea entered his head.
He saw himself kissing those lips amongst the bare and autumnal grounds. He saw the two of them together pressed up against one of the trees, copper leaves falling around them as he pulled at her skirt, trying to reach for the place he knew would bring her the most pleasure. He could practically hear the breathy moaning in his ear, the cry of pleasure, as his hand slid home.
She turned to look up at him and not in his imagination, but in reality, her head lifting toward his window. Abruptly, Horace grabbed the curtain and pulled it shut fast across the glass, blocking out the gray light of the day.
“That’s not me anymore,” he muttered gruffly, shutting down temptation before it could begin.
***
“Enter,” Horace called as he pulled his shirt over his chest. He’d long ago dismissed his valet from helping to dress him. Though some days he barely had the strength to dress himself, he was determined to do it.
At least it is one thing in my life I can control.
“My Lord, I come with my new assistant. Oh.” There was a gasp of surprise from Mr. Byrne.
Horace turned from his place beside his open chest of drawers, wearing only his trousers and his shirt. It was an odd thing to gasp at. Mr. Byrne was his surgeon and physician. It was hardly the first time Mr. Byrne had seen him in a state of undress.
Then Horace’s eyes fell on the assistant at his side.
That is no man.
The woman he had spied in the garden the day before was staring at him, quite agog with parted lips, and a leather doctor’s satchel in her arms. Her eyes darted down him, to the unlaced neck of his shirt, and the evident glimpse of his bare chest beneath.
“My apologies, my lord,” Mr. Byrne said hurriedly, stepping into the room and lowering his own bag to the table as if he was in a great rush. “I did not realize you would still be dressing. Orla?” He looked at the young woman who had now snapped her gaze up.
She looked.
That tight feeling very low down in Horace’s abdomen had begun to stir again.
You fool. Stop it.
“I’m here, Uncle.” She turned her eyes demurely away and moved to his side.
“Wait, assistant?” Horace held up a hand, staring at the woman wide eyed. “Byrne, you did not say the assistant you were bringing to help you was a woman?”
“Did I not?” Mr. Byrne looked between the pair of them, his cheeks turning pink with embarrassment. Then he shrugged. “She is excellent, my lord. I have never met another like her with her acumen when it comes to the way a body works.”
Horace moved away. He grasped a waistcoat and pulled it sharply over his shoulders, hastening with a cravat too. The sudden movement made him dizzy, and he latched a hand onto the top of the bureau, breathing deeply, before moving again.
Hearing that the young woman was good with the way a body worked was hardly helping his wild imaginings of her.
They are not decent.
“Perhaps the baron thinks a physician needs something other than a brain to be able to work in this field.” The woman’s words made him freeze.
Wit too, eh?
He turned slowly on the spot to face her. There was challenge in those large eyes, eyes that he now saw were a rich shade of brown, the color of cocoa powder.
“Orla,” Mr. Byrne hissed quietly.
“An unusual name,” Horace observed, the words slipping from his lips before he could stop them. She turned her head to the leather satchel and pulled some things out. As with the day before, just one loose lock of long hair had escaped her updo and teased the curve of her neck. He imagined trailing his fingers through that lock, pushing it aside, and placing his lips to the bare skin.
Stop it, you fool.
