The Duke’s Obsession Bundle by Grace Burrowes Read Free Book Online

dabbing gently at his back with arnica. “Yourbruises are truly magnificent, my lord. They will heal more quickly if you don’t duck out of a morning—and skip your breakfast.”
    “It’s too hot to ride later in the day, at least at the pace I prefer.” He winced again as she went at the second large laceration.
    “You shouldn’t be out riding hell-bent, your lordship. Your injuries do not need the abuse, and I can see where you’ve pulled this cut open along this edge.” She drew a chiding finger along the bottom seam of a laceration. “What if you were unseated, and no one else about in the dawn’s early light?”
    “So you would come along to protect me?” he challenged lazily. She began to redress his back.
    “Somebody should,” she muttered, focused on the purple, green, and mottled brown skin surrounding the two mean gashes on his back.
    The earl frowned in thought. “In truth, I am in need of somebody to protect. I fired my mistress today.”
    “My lord!” She was abruptly scowling at him nineteen to the dozen, as much disapproval as she dared show, short of jeopardizing her position outright.
    “There is always gossip,” he quoted her sardonically, “below stairs.”
    She pursed her lips. “Gossip and blatant disclosure are not the same thing. Though in this heat, why anyone would…”
    She broke off, mortified at what had been about to come out of her mouth.
    “Oh, none of that, Mrs. Seaton.” The earl’s smile became devilish. “In this heat?”
    “Never mind, my lord.” She wetted her clothwith arnica again and gently tucked his head against her waist. “This one is looking surprisingly tidy. Hold still.”
    “I have a thick skull,” he said from her waist. And now that she was done with his back, came the part he always tolerated almost docilely. She sifted her fingers carefully through his hair and braced him this way, his crown snug against her body, the better to tend his scalp.
    And if his hair was the silkiest thing she’d ever had the pleasure to drift her fingers over, well, that was hardly the earl’s fault, was it?

    He should have brought himself off when he didn’t complete matters at Elise’s. Why else would he be baiting his housekeeper, a virtuous and supremely competent woman? She was done with her arnica and back to exploring the area around the scalp wound with careful fingers.
    “I don’t understand why you haven’t more swelling here.” She feathered his hair away from the scalp wound. “Head wounds are notoriously difficult, but you seem to be coming along wonderfully.”
    “So we can dispense with this nonsense?” He reluctantly sat back and waved his hand at her linen and tincture.
    “Another two days, I think.” She put the cap back on the bottle. “Why is it so difficult for you to submit to basic care, my lord? Do you relish being stiff and scarred?”
    “I do not particularly care what the appearance ofmy back is, Mrs. Seaton. Ever since my brother took several years to die of consumption, I have had an abiding disgust of all things medical.”
    “I’m sorry.” She looked instantly appalled. “I had no idea, my lord.”
    “Most people don’t,” Westhaven said. “If you’ve never seen anyone go that way, you don’t fully comprehend the horror of it. And all the while, there were medical vultures circling, bleeding, poking at him, prescribing useless nostrums. He tolerated it, because it created a fiction of hope that comforted my parents even as it tortured him.”
    He fell silent then stood and went to the railing to stare out at the lush evening sunlight falling over his back gardens.
    “And then late this winter, my stubborn father had to go riding to hounds in a weeklong downpour, only to come home with a raging lung fever. The leeches went at him, his personal physicians doing nothing more than drinking his brandy and letting his blood. When he was too weak to argue with me, those idiots were thrown out, but they came damned