LITMIR.BIZ

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as hard and strong as she knew he was, his muscles the obvious mark of a man who lived—and would die—physically.

      Yet there was still an inborn elegance to him that showed even now, a certain grace that would always separate him from common sailors or dockworkers. In the time he’d been gone, he’d stopped at a barber, for the dark beard that had softened the line of his jaw was gone, and he looked years younger without it. The ribbon that had held his queue had been pulled off with the shirt, and his dark blond hair was as bright as the slanting sunlight that filled the room, bright as a halo for the fallen angel he must be, and, with a little catch in her breathing, she decided that she’d never seen a more beautiful man.

      Michel smiled, shameless before Jerusa’s scrutiny. Although her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were watching him with an eager interest that would have doubtless earned a reprimand from her mother, yet her innocent appreciation pleased him more than he’d ever expected. The worldly women in his past had purred over him like cats with fresh cream, as much, he’d guessed, because it was their trade as from any genuine admiration, and he’d always cynically dismissed their praise. But he didn’t doubt that Jerusa’s unpracticed response was real and true, a rare compliment for any man, and especially for him.

      “Enjoying the view?” he asked lightly, his smile widening to a grin when he saw how her cheeks flushed even darker. But still, he noted, she didn’t look away.

      “For-forgive me,” she stammered. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

      He shrugged as he balled up the shirt and tossed it with the rest of his clothes. He shook his hair back from his face, and for once his smile reached and warmed the blue of his eyes. “Look your fill, ma belle, if it pleases you. Lord knows, I’ve done the same to you.”

      She didn’t answer, acute embarrassment warring with her desire to do exactly as he said. In all her dalliances with Tom, he’d never gone beyond unbuttoning his waistcoat, but she’d seen her brothers without their shirts scores of times, and in the summer the sailors on her father’s ships had often stripped to the waist to work, but never once had she felt the way she did now. It was more of the sensual spell only Michel seemed to cast over her, the same spell that bewildered as much as it beguiled her.

      But when she saw his hands move to the fall of his breeches, reaching for the first button, her conscience abruptly jolted her back to the reality of her situation. She was sitting in a tub full of tepid water with nothing to clothe her but fading soapsuds, before a man who was going to be in much the same state in a very few moments if she didn’t speak up now.

      “Michel, don’t!” she ordered, struggling to sound firm. It had been bad enough to travel alone with him across the countryside, but somehow it seemed infinitely worse—and more frightening—to be with him like this in a room upstairs in a public house. “Turn around and let me dress first, and then you may wash.”

      “I told you before I wasn’t stopping you, sweet Jerusa.” He slipped the first button free, considering how much further he’d go to tease her. “I’m still not.”

      “But, Michel—”

      “But, Jerusa.” He liked to hear her say his name, especially now that she did it so automatically.

      “Michel, no!” she cried, finally panicking. He’d robbed her of so much already, and she had so little left to take. “Please don’t do this to me!”

      He frowned, stopped by the edge of fear in her voice. He hadn’t heard that from her since the first night, and it stunned him. Only seconds before she’d been spitting fire, taunting and daring him as much as he was her. But then to have her beg like this—Lord, he’d never heard that from her before, and it made him feel low and mean.

      “Whatever you please, mademoiselle,” he said softly, and as he turned his back to her, he caught the grateful relief in her eyes, which seemed somehow worse than the fear. He didn’t want to hurt her; he’d never wanted that. But mordieu, what had she done to him?

      He listened to her scramble from the tub with a great slosh of water, and he tried not to imagine how she must look with that water streaming from her lovely body only a few feet behind him. He swore beneath his breath, struggling to will his body into polite, disinterested submission. Why couldn’t the favorite daughter of Gabriel Sparhawk have been walleyed, squat and pudding faced?

      “It’s your turn to wash now, if you still wish it,” she murmured self-consciously when she was done. “I’ll sit near the window while you do.”

      Yet when he turned to face her, he had to swallow back the groan that rose in his throat. She had wrapped the sheet around her body, tucking the ends beneath her arms and above her breasts so that she was covered from there to the floor. But if she believed she was now decent, she was woefully mistaken. The worn, thin linen clung to every damp curve of her body, accentuating the ripe flare of her hips and waist and the shapely length of her legs more than if she’d remained naked. And her breasts—mordieu, the water must be cooler than he realized to leave her full flesh so round and taut.

      She lifted her arms to squeeze the water from her dark hair, and her breasts rose higher, the water falling across them making the sheet so transparent that the rosy circles of her puckered nipples were clearly visible. With tiny diamonds of water tangled in her lashes, she smiled shyly with the most ill-founded trust he could imagine.

      Sacristi, did she have any notion of what she was doing to him? All she’d have to do was look at the front of his breeches to learn. Before she did, he stalked to the bed and tore open the package he’d left there with his saddlebag.

      “Here,” he said gruffly, forgetting all the genteel phrases he’d rehearsed in the dressmaker’s shop. “This will suit you better than an old sheet.”

      He shook out the green calimanco gown he’d bought for her and flung it across the bed. A new pair of lisle stockings tumbled out onto the floor, along with a new shift and petticoat and a green silk ribbon for her hair.

      She looked down at them, clearly confused. “But Mrs. Cartwright said she’d bring my other clothes directly, once they were clean.”

      “To hell with the other clothes,” he said sharply. “For now I want you to wear these.”

      Swiftly her gaze rose from the clothes to him, her eyes turned wary at his tone.

      He sighed with exasperation at his own want of manners. “Sacristi, non, that’s not what I meant,” he said, raking his fingers back through his loose hair. “What I did mean, Jerusa, is that I thought you’d prefer these. If you wish to wear them, that is.”

      Still she said nothing, and his exasperation with himself grew. The gown and other fripperies were more fashionable—and more expensive—than the things he’d given her before, but what he hoped she’d notice was that he’d chosen it all with her in mind, from the green that nearly matched her eyes to the tight-laced bodice that might actually fit her slender waist.

      Given her: that was the difference. This was a gift, he realized uneasily, meant for her alone, and the first he’d ever given any woman, save his mother. He didn’t know why he’d done it or why it mattered so much that she notice.

      But matter it did, far more than it should. A fool’s empty hope, he told himself fiercely, the gestures of a besotted simpleton who—

      “Thank you, Michel,” she said, her sudden smile outshining the sun and melting away all his doubts. “How ever did you guess that I favor such a particular tint of green?”

      She bent gracefully to gather up the gown, and as she did, the wet sheet slipped even lower across her breasts. Hastily he looked away, but not before the heady image seared itself forever into his memory. He jerked the curtains to the bed across one side, the horn rings scraping against the metal rod.

      “You can dress there,” he said, not trusting himself to look back at her, “and I’ll wash on the other side of the curtain. Agreed?”

      “Agreed to

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