“You’re kind.” She turned to look straight ahead, and he wished he could read her expression. “Chief Inspector Morley will be here tomorrow. He sent a note saying he had news about my case…” She drifted off as he lifted her hair off of her neck and settled it down her back in a curtain of ebony silk. “Perhaps it’s good news, and I’ll no longer be your problem.”
Was that what she was? A problem? A conundrum?
Something he had to figure out before he could sleep.
They stood like that for a moment, and Titus inhaled mightily, pulling the familiar scent into his lungs. She still used rose water, and smelled of a late-summer garden.
He became a hollow creature, only separated from the object of his yearning by the space of a breath.
And the chasm of a decade.
It was a heady torment. One he should want to be rid of.
And yet, the dragon within sought to roast Morley, as well, if he came to take her away.
He fought his curiosity as he secured her arm in the sling, enjoying the feel of her delicate limb as he arranged it against her chest before draping her cream dressing gown over her.
“Did Woodhaven…did he ever do something like that to you?” He shouldn’t have asked that. He couldn’t know the answer.
Because he couldn’t kill the man twice.
Invisible Wounds
Titus had found no evidence of broken bones whilst treating Nora, and he’d looked for it. But there were other bruises, the ones in her expression.
“I don’t want to speak of William,” she said, pulling away.
Of course, she didn’t want to discuss it, especially not with him. He should wish her good night, then. Should let her go.
“I’ll see you back to your room.” It was as if his mouth and brain were currently disconnected. They would be locked in the lift together. And then they’d come to his bedroom…
Christ, he’d never be able to spend another night there without thinking of her. No matter how often he washed the linens, he’d want to roll in them like a mad hound, searching for her scent.
He knew the impulse made him pathetic. He didn’t bloody care.
Usually, he’d allow a lady to be first through a door, but he checked the deserted halls of his surgery before summoning her to follow him once he gleaned that the coast was clear.
They walked in silence down the hall, past the rows of rooms wherein sleeping patients recovered from any myriad of operations from appendectomies to—God forbid—amputations.
Her slippers made no sound on the bare floors he’d ordered scrubbed twice daily. In the cream lace of her high-necked dressing gown, with her wealth of hair half unbound down her back, she resembled a ghost in the wan gaslight. A mere shade of who she’d once been.
She haunted his dreams often enough. His fantasies.
He doubted he’d be able to walk the halls of his own surgery without seeing the specter of her as she was just now. Pale and lovely. Sad yet serene.
She’d always moved with such innate grace, next to her he felt like a plodding draft horse. His heavy footsteps echoed along the empty hall as he took up entirely too much of it.
When they reached Mrs. St. John’s room, she hesitated at the closed door. After looking in through the window upon the sleeping woman with naked anxiety, Nora turned to him, her expression troubled.
“Doctor Conleith…” she hesitated.
He should take back what he’d said before. Should insist she call him Titus. Everyone else in her family did.
But his name from her mouth… his breath became unsteady at the very thought.
It would be another thread of his own self-control, unraveled by her.
She shifted restlessly. “I feel compelled to thank you for—”
“You have,” he interrupted brusquely. “Repeatedly.”
“Not really,” she contended, her gaze fixing on the bare forearms he’d crossed over his chest. “I know I’ve added my sentiments to my family’s effusive gratitude. But in the weeks I’ve been here, I’ve not had the opportunity to express just how much I—”
“There’s no need.” For some reason, her gratitude rankled him. It was the last thing he wanted from her. They had any number of endless words to say to each other, and on the list he’d crafted in his mind, thank you didn’t even make the first page. “Bullets are something of a specialty of mine, or were…” He drifted away, both verbally and physically as he turned toward the lift at the end of the hall.