at his skin. “You are far too good to me. I do not deserve any of the risks you have taken on my behalf, nor all the time you have spent making certain I healed properly. I owe you a great deal.”
His very life, in fact.
“You do not.” If possible, her shoulders stiffened even more as she rushed to mop up her spill, back still turned toward him.
There was an edge in her voice he could neither define nor understand.
She knocked over another item on the tray and cursed again.
“I owe you my life,” he dared to counter before hurrying to add more. “You needn’t linger here if it makes you uncomfortable, Caro. If I make you uncomfortable.”
She turned back to him in a swirl of skirts, eyes wide. “Of course you do not. Forgive me. I am being a wretch.”
He was sure she could never be one.
“You are not yourself today,” he observed. “I assumed it was because of me.”
Because he was naked in his bath, and he was saying things which he ought not.
She shook her head. “Of course not. I came to make certain you had everything you needed for your bath, and I arrived too late. I meant to come before you were in the water and…bereft of garments.”
Then her flustered state was down to his nudity. And she was attracted to him, as he was to her.
Thank all the angels and the saints and…anyone he could not recall, too.
“Fancy way of saying naked,” he observed.
Her flush returned, but her gaze never wavered from his. “Yes. It is.” She cleared her throat. “I should leave you to your bath. If you need anything, Randall will bring you some food and tea in the next hour.”
With that warning, she fled from the chamber.
He watched her go, disappointment unfurling, along with another feeling he was more than familiar with. Just as it had every day since he had opened his eyes to find himself a guest at The Sinner’s Palace with nary a hint of memory, frustration hit him with the force of a blow.
Chapter 3
“You and Jasper are keeping a secret from the rest of us.”
At the unexpected voice behind her, Caro jumped, spilling the mixture she had been creating all over her work table.
“Blast!” The oath fled her lips before she could contain it, for she had spent days attempting various combinations of ingredients, testing and trying until she achieved a mixture which pleased her.
A mixture that was now dripping to the damned floor instead of helping Gavin’s wound when she removed his stitches, as had been her intention. Worse, she had not yet written down the measurements and ingredients so that she could recreate it. She had been rushing and had not taken care to copy down her efforts.
How she regretted that carelessness now.
Caro spun around to find her sister Penelope watching her, hands on her hips.
“Pen, you gave me a fright, and now my ointment is all over the bloody ground,” Caro snapped. “Could you not have given me a warning?”
“I knocked. You were talking to yourself. Something about camphor and unguents, unless I’m mistaken.” Pen raised a brow, distinctly unapologetic. “But I have no doubt you will make another. Tell me, what is happening? You and our eldest brother have been conspiring like a pair of Seven Dials footpads, and I don’t bloody well like it.”
Caro and Pen were close in age, and they had been as inseparable as twins for much of their lives. However, in recent years, she and Pen had grown somewhat apart as her sister’s interest in the darker parts of their world distracted her. Especially her interest in one wastrel, rakehell lord. Caro did not approve of him. Pen did.
And, well, they had naturally butted heads, both being stubborn Suttons. The distance between them had grown. Caro had thrown herself into her role as the Sutton healer. So it was that she did not feel obligated to tell Pen the truth about Gavin Winter, beyond the fact that Jasper had made her vow not to tell anyone else. Besides, she feared Pen would go running to her no-account friend Lord Aidan with the tale. For if ever there had been someone one could not trust with damning information, it was he.
“Nothing is happening,” Caro deflected calmly, “except that my sister is intruding upon my work and making me spill my efforts before they can be of any use. All because she seems to think I am keeping a