Untamed by Anna Cowan Page B

any more.’
    ‘Are you sure? Because there are worse things a boy can be deprived of than light. I always thought my father an affectionate man when he made his feelings that tangible.’
    ‘You were right,’ she said, ‘I’m not unkind enough to enjoy this.’ She concentrated on the solid, right-here thunk of her shoes as she kicked them off into the corner. This was a man who had seduced a woman under her husband’s roof, and remained as untouched as the dead. She could not compete with him. It made her cold to think what it would take to beat him.
    And now was the moment to join him in her bed. She wrapped herself in her shawl and hopped on to the very edge of the bed, on top of the covers.
    He sighed. ‘I told you, you have nothing to fear from me. Come, you needn’t martyr yourself.’
    ‘I’ll sleep on the floor if you don’t shut up.’
    She lay on her side in silk and wool, as though turning her back on him would make sleep any more likely.
    ‘Good night,’ he said.
    She gritted her teeth and did not reply.
    Darlington had his eyes so almost closed that the grey glass of the window shivered and shuttered between his lids. She had left the bed, never having really entered it, about ten minutes earlier. He had been relieved that she kept her distance and he did not have to risk her toes getting caught up with his in the night. It was worse without her here.
    His hand was still closed about empty space, where he’d reached out on waking.
    The door opened.
    ‘Get up,’ she said, and placed a basin of water on the dresser. She pulled a razor from the pocket of her smock and stropped it against her thigh. For an irrational moment he thought she was going to kill him.
    ‘You look less like a woman this morning,’ she told him, not quite looking at him, and he wondered if she’d done all her looking earlier when he’d been drifting uneasily in and out of sleep.
    ‘I used to shave Father all the time – you needn’t worry I’ll cut you. But it has to be now. Here, sit on the stool and put this napkin under your chin. I’m already late helping Liza with breakfast, and she uses too much wood when I’m not there to watch her make the fire.’
    She took a second cloth from her shoulder and wet it in the basin. His feet cringed away from the cold floor, but she showed no sign of pain as her fingers worked in the scalding water. It was the first time he’d seen her bare hands in daylight. Even he, seeing her in her ill-fitting gown in Marmotte’s ballroom, could not have guessed at these base hands. And he had put himself wholly within them, though she refused to understand it yet.
    Her sleeves were pushed up, and he could see the whole system of her muscles working under her skin as she wrung out the rag.
    She wrapped it around his face.
    ‘I’m not going to slit your throat,’ she said, and the touch of the cloth was succinct, impersonal. ‘You can breathe again at your leisure, Your Grace.’
    ‘Your accent is more pronounced here,’ he said, forcing himself to look up at least. Not at her face. At the startling brown skin that moved over her collarbones – one more visible than the other, as the neck of her shirt sheered off to one side.
    She grunted in answer, more answer than his inanity was worth.
    She looked different, too. The shirt she wore under her dress was sizes too large and a nothing kind of a colour that might once have been white. The dress itself was worn and faded, and she wore a plain smock over it. He would have mistaken her for a maid, had he met her like this. Except that she curtseyed with such bad grace.
    ‘Don’t speak,’ she murmured, touching the blade to his cheek.
    He had been about to smile, not speak, but he couldn’t say so because she pressed closer to him as she focused on the rasp of the blade. Like the maid she put her whole body into his space, without thought.
    She had less finesse than Grey, but she was confident with the razor, pressing the back of it