Now.”
For about two seconds, he considered obeying, then he merely watched her march across the room to another door, relieved to see at least she had the decency to blush. Most of the women he knew lacked that charming ability, or lost it, at any rate, by the time he was through with them.
She disappeared into the next compartment carrying a candlestick. He leaned forward in curiosity, peeking in. Aha, her dressing room. There were gowns on pegs, rows of the shoes the chit never could keep on her feet.
When she came back into the sitting room, she had some hand towels draped over her arm, a sewing basket in one hand, and a bottle in the other of what appeared to be whiskey. She set everything on the floor near his chair, then dragged the ottoman over and sat down on it across from him.
“Is there a problem, Santiago?” she asked, folding her graceful hands in her lap.
He stared at her.
“This will not do. You still have on all your clothes.”
Isn’t that my line? he thought, regarding her suspiciously.
Lifting both brows, she gave him a bland smile of waning patience. “Why do you prefer to suffer?”
“Because then I always know what to expect,” he replied with his most arrogant smirk.
She ignored it. “Why won’t you let me help you?”
He eyed the sewing basket, then glanced at her. “With all due respect, Your Highness, I’d rather not serve as the royal pincushion.”
“I know what to do,” she said. “I help at the pensioners’ hospital once a week.”
Dubiously, he arched one brow. He knew the saintly queen commanded her daughter to spend at least one day a week living for aught other than herself and her pleasures, but surely these visits to the pension house only involved giving out radiant smiles and bestowing a few words of meaningless cheer to the wretched.
“If I need stitches,” he told her, his heart pounding suddenly, “I’ll do it myself.”
“You said the cut runs over your shoulder to your back. Use your head. How do you intend to reach a wound that’s on your back?”
“I’ll see the surgeon.”
She gave a smile of sugared treachery and reached up to tap his chin fondly with one fingertip. “Don’t tell lies, Santiago. I know you won’t see him. Don’t you trust me?”
Was she deliberately being obtuse or tormenting him just for fun? he wondered, inching back in his chair away from her. Maybe an aged pensioner of seventy could endure the touch of those silken hands without ravishing her, but he wasn’t half that old yet.
She shrugged to herself, then went on about her business, rising to go pour water into the unused teapot, then putting it over the low fire to boil. Returning to him, she knelt down on the floor and opened the sewing basket.
“Will white suffice for your stitches, Colonel, or would you prefer something more dashing?” she asked, trailing one graceful fingertip over the various hanks of thread. “Scarlet? Gold filigree, perhaps?”
“I really haven’t time to play doctor with you.”
“Don’t make me pull rank on you,” she advised him, the sewing needle between her lips as she pulled out a neat loop of white thread and unwound some of it. “If you refuse, I shall have to make it an order. Strip, sir.”
He didn’t move. He couldn’t, suddenly. His heart was pounding and he couldn’t find his voice.
Done threading the needle, she set it carefully aside. She laid both hands on her thighs, gazing up at him.
He stared down at her, feeling increasingly cornered, unable even to spit out the words to explain his protest. What was he to say, Don’t touch me ? He wasn’t that skilled a liar. Truly, over the past few years there had been moments, desperate moments near the edge of his solitary endurance, when he wanted this girl so much he quite despised her. He could not be fire for her, so he had chosen to be ice.
Now she was gazing at him as only she ever did, as if she saw things in him no one else could see, those