He silently stroked her back. She should stop him, but it was a feeling her bones remembered from the earliest days of her childhood, before her parents had died and her nurse had gone missing and her uncle’s distant, distracted guardianship had replaced the animal comfort of simple touch. Before she had become so thoroughly, doggedly alone.
“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to collect herself.
“Not as sorry as I am.” He ran a thumb beneath her cheek, smoothing away the last traces of her tears. She lifted her face toward the warmth of his palm, glancing up at his eyes to assess what scornful sentiment she would no doubt see in them. But there was no trace of judgment in his gaze. Just still, dark pools of quiet kindness. She closed her eyes to keep from drowning in them.
And felt his lips brush her cheek.
It happened in a heartbeat, as faint as a breath. She froze, opened her eyes. She saw heat, and shock, in his.
“Christ,” he muttered.
He immediately let go of her and moved away. She was left stunned, her body protesting the abrupt loss of his warmth. It was as distant from the sensation she had once felt in the woods alone with Tom as a feeling could be.
The Duke of Westmead cleared his throat. “It seems that I must beg your forgiveness once more, Miss Cavendish. I am unfit for company.”
She shook her head in silence. She didn’t want an apology. Her entire body vibrated with what it wanted: Do it again.
But he had jolted to his feet, and the moment was broken.
Ever-loving hell.
What had he just done?
And why?
He did not know what he wanted more: to take Miss Cavendish back in his arms and comfort her, or to go barreling through the woods in horror that this woman he had no business laying hands on was turning him into a puddle.
He settled on inspecting her offending ankle.
“It’s not broken. But you won’t be able to walk on it.”
She looked at him darkly. She was no longer crying. “I’m sorry. I was giddy with talking of plants.”
He lifted her up. “It was my fault. Here, put your arms around my neck.”
He tried not to focus on the fact that she was light and soft, but his body had missed the feeling of a woman in his arms. Being here, in these woods, he felt it keenly.
He lifted her gingerly onto his horse and settled her there with as brotherly a pat as he could muster. “There we are. Try not to fall off while I see to your mount.”
He winked.
She snorted. He collected her mare and tied it to his animal, then swung up into his saddle in front of her.
“Hold tightly to my waist and lean on me if you feel dizzy.” He waited as she adjusted herself against him, trying not to enjoy the feeling of her straddling his hips with her thighs.
When she was settled, he signaled to the horses to reverse course.
Poppy tapped his shoulder. “Your Grace. You’re going the wrong way.”
“We’re much closer to Westhaven. I’m taking you back. Your ankle needs ice, and rest.”
“My household will be alarmed if I’m not back before dark.”
He doubted it. The place had been deserted when he’d visited. If she had proper servants, they certainly had not been hovering about awaiting their mistress’s return. It occurred to him, not for the first time, how alone she was.
“We will send word from Westhaven.”
He rode slowly, conscious of Poppy’s sharp intakes of breath at every sudden movement of the horse. He was also conscious of the light pressure of her fingers on his waist. She no doubt held him that way to avoid a more direct grip and would be aghast if she knew she was teasing the sensitive flesh above his hips.
He tried to be more aghast at himself for enjoying it.
He dismounted as soon as they reached the stables and called for the nearest groom, who steadied the horses as Archer lifted Poppy down and carried her inside the kitchen yard.
The buzzing kitchen came grinding to a halt at the sight of their lord with the crumpled form of Poppy Cavendish suspended in his arms.
Mrs. Todd, the housekeeper, came hurrying toward them. “Your Grace. Miss Cavendish! What’s happened?”
“Miss Cavendish was thrown from her horse. Have ice and clean linen brought to my study and a room made up for her. And see that necessities are sent over from Bantham Park. She’ll need enough for a few days.”
“A few days?” Poppy objected.
“There’s no sense in you spending hours hauling back and forth across forest roads on a ruined ankle. I insist you stay. Lady Constance will not hear otherwise.”
Phrasing it that way added a veneer of propriety, though propriety ranked low among his concerns. He wanted her here, where he could see she was looked after. He didn’t like to think of her all alone and injured in a distant house so recently visited by death.
She glanced up at him, then down at her rapidly expanding ankle. It was already swollen majestically compared to the rest of her slim leg, puffed under her stocking like a snake that had swallowed an apple.
“Oh, very well,” she sighed, and wrapped her arm around his neck to be carried onward, suddenly as imperious as a queen. “But do get on with it.”
A fire had been left burning in the duke’s study, and Poppy tried not to shout with pain as Westmead settled her on a velvet sofa in front of it. He disappeared for a moment and returned with a stack of pillows, seemingly from his own bedchamber, which he used to create a small mountain to elevate her leg.
Satisfied, he turned to his imposing desk and poured a generous quantity of amber liquid out of a decanter and into a fat glass tumbler. He swallowed it down in a single gulp, refilled it, and handed it to her.
“Drink this. It will numb the pain.”
She took a tentative sip. Pear and smoke and vanilla, followed by a ragged burning in her throat. She sputtered as it went down.
He placed himself at the opposite end of the sofa, where he sat staring unhappily at her protuberant ankle.
“I will go find Constance to help you with your boot and stockings.”
Poppy shuddered at the thought. Constance’s hysterics at the sight of the puffed ankle would be possibly worse than the pain itself.
“Must you?” she countered. She sipped again at the brandy, which distracted from the pain in her ankle by producing a new one in her throat.
“It’s important to get the swelling down if you hope to walk in the near future.”
She knew he was only being polite by summoning his sister, but she was not one to observe the tedious proprieties of feminine comportment if it came at the expense of the use of her limb.
“It will be much faster if you do it,” she suggested, taking another fortifying sip of the brandy.
He gave her a strangled look, and suddenly she felt very bold.
“Go ahead,” she commanded. “Carefully.”
Something inside her knew that given how much she had enjoyed his embrace on the forest floor, and the feeling of his waist below her hands as they rode back to Westhaven, it was a mistake to demand that the Duke of Westmead undress her.
Even just her ankle.
Even for her health.
Nevertheless she waved him airily toward her foot.
“Right, then. Shout if I hurt you.”
“It’s not my ankle I worry for—it’s my pride,” she heard herself say. This remark was intended to be made silently, in her head, but evidently it had been allowed out of her mouth by Westmead’s brandy.