“You are lucky,” he clipped, grasping her hand. “I think you shaved twenty years off my life in twenty seconds.”
“What do you think you are doing?” She tried to snatch her hand away, but he held fast, relieving her of her traveling gloves.
“Searching for rope burns.” He spread her fingers wide with rough thumbs, examining her upturned palms. “Your gloves were but scraps of nothing.”
“I am unharmed,” she protested, trying to ignore how warm his skin felt against hers, despite the rain. How small and pale her hands appeared when cupped in his rough, square paws.
How fiendishly strong his fingers were. How helpless she’d be against that strength.
She yanked on his grip with unnecessary violence, tightening her hands into fists and hiding them in her skirts. “As—as I stated before, I’ll live.”
“So it would seem.” A wet chill replaced the warmth his hands had provided, matching the frigid note in his voice.
Alexandra forced herself to look into eyes as electric blue as the lightning, a crystalline clearness almost void of color, and no less sinister for the features into which they’d been set. The scars had something to do with that, certainly.
The shortest of the wounds branched from the dark hairline at his temple and interrupted his eyebrow. Had his dark hair, slicked back by rain, not concealed the wound, she wagered she could follow it high into his scalp. The longest fissure blazed across a sharp cheekbone into a well-kept beard, appearing again as a merciless gash through his lush lips.
Lush? Great Caesar and his glory, had she struck her head?
Alexandra blinked once. And again. Unsuccessfully attempting to tear her gaze from his mouth. Lips so soft simply didn’t belong on a face so brutish as his. The incongruity both perplexed and compelled her.
“Are you able to stand?” His tone turned as wintry as the storm.
He’d caught her staring.
Alexandra snapped her eyes shut in mortification. He probably assumed she’d been gawking rather than admiring.
Not that she had been admiring.
She hadn’t—wasn’t—wouldn’t dream of—
His hands manacled her arms, but before she could draw a breath of protest they were both on their feet. He released her the moment they were upright.
Alexandra reeled, her world pitching as much from the brief physical contact as the abrupt change of posture. She reached for the post to steady herself, and instead found a disc of hot muscle stretched beneath cool, wet linen. His chest twitched beneath her palm, as if the touch had surprised him as mightily as it did her.
She snatched her hand back into the cradle of her own chest. The warmth of his flesh again lingered, she noted with no little alarm.
“F-forgive me, I’m a little unsteady.”
“Are you certain you don’t need a doctor?” He stepped forward, concern etching his scars deeper as his arms reached out to provide a buffer should she fall.
Alexandra shifted out of his reach most ungracefully. “No!” She put up a hand to stop him, fully aware how useless it was to try. No world existed in which her feeble strength could be pitted against his in her favor. “No, I—I am quite unharmed. See? No need to concern yourself further.”
Lord, she couldn’t look at him again. He was simply too big. Too—male. Despite his cultured accent, he didn’t appear at all civilized. Indeed, he could have belonged to the scores of rowdy and robust men her professors had hired to protect them in unknown countries.
Men she’d spent a decade doing her best to avoid.
A silent and solemn stare made most anyone uncomfortable enough to flee her presence. It’d worked on everyone from desert marauders to determined matrons with notions of a convenient marriage for their sons. She’d wielded it with some expertise for years now.
So, why couldn’t she make herself lift her eyes from the mist? Why did the warmth of his skin linger in such a strange fashion? Why did her lungs still refuse to fully inflate?
Perhaps she did need a doctor.
“I’m trying to decide if you’re incredibly brave or exceptionally stupid.” His imperious tone broke her stupor.
Her eyes snapped to his, her fears shoved behind indignation. “I beg your pardon?”
“What were you thinking trying to control a beast of Mercury’s proportions? You saw what he did to that idiot porter and the lad is half again your size!” His frown deepened the interruption of the scar on his lip.
“I was thinking poor Smythe might be killed if someone didn’t do something.” Remembering the boy, she turned to where a few men helped him limp away. Smythe’s thin face was one heart-squeezing grimace of pain as he cradled his arm to his chest. Half of his penciled mustache had washed off in the mud, leaving his aching youth exposed.
“Is he going to be all right?” She took an unconscious step toward the procession.
“There’s a sawbones not a stone’s throw from the railyard. He’ll set the boy’s shoulder and send him home with morphine. Do you know him?”
She shook her head, disconcerted to discover the notice she and her companion had garnered from the remaining passengers, workmen, and railway employees. “We’d only just met when he carried my bags, but what does that matter? I still didn’t want to see him hurt … or worse.”
The man gave her his back, bending to retrieve both her gloves and his. Alexandra resolutely averted her gaze from the trousers stretching across his backside. Had she ever in her life noticed such a thing? Forcing a swallow, she took the opportunity to investigate the condition of her own suit. Mud and whatever other unmentionable slicks of dark grime now soiled her smart white blouse and beige jacket beyond repair. Her skirt had fared better, but only just.
“Better him than you.”
His low words froze her hand midair, leaving her coiffure uninvestigated. “I’m sorry?”
He said nothing, extending his hand to offer the soiled corpses of her gloves. A muscle tic appeared at his hard jaw, causing his third scar, mostly concealed by the black beard, to pulse in time to his ire.
“Thank you, sir.”
Azure beams of inquisition roamed her from beneath satirical brows. “Though your actions were unduly reckless, that was well done of you. Where did you learn to handle horses?”
The admiration warming his words prickled irritating awareness across her skin. “A camel herder on the Arabian Peninsula once demonstrated to me that very trick on his own beast. I hadn’t any idea it worked on horses before today.”
He blinked several times before echoing, “A camel herder…”
She nodded, the memory animating her. “His tribe could often pack their entire household on a camel’s back. Imagine how devastating such a display of beastly temper would have been in his case.”
“Devastating.” He repeated slower this time, intently regarding her for a pregnant moment.
“Of course, his animals were much more properly trained.” She shot a pointed glance to the horse cart, where the beast, Mercury, was now blinded and hobbled between the four mares.
The man’s lips—why couldn’t she stop glancing at them?—did the opposite of what she’d expected. He wasn’t smiling. But he wasn’t not smiling, either.