yes, of course,” Baron Harlowe answered rather absently, then perked up. “Well, let’s get you two inside and thaw you out, eh?” He shivered to make his point.
“Matil…da!” the man shouted the instant they entered the double doors. “Our Michael’s home! Hurry down!” He turned to his son. “She’s primping. You know your mother!” He winked at Alex and confided in a stage whisper. “Ladies have to look their best, eh?”
One of the footmen wheeled him from the chilly entrance hall into a good-size library. Books covered the walls on three sides, all the way from the waist-high wainscoting to the carved molding that graced the ceiling. Large, high-backed, overstuffed chairs sat in a grouping facing a huge fireplace with an elegant oak mantelpiece. A roaring fire burned in the grate, shedding its warmth like a blessing on all who entered.
He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of burning wood, lemon oil and leather. When he opened them again, his chair had been rolled near the hearth. The footman had parked it there before departing.
In the chair closest to the blaze and right next to his own sat the most beautiful woman Alex had ever seen in his life. He felt as though something—the unexpected heat from the fire or perhaps the very sight of her—had sucked the breath right out of his lungs.
Michael was speaking, but his words might as well have been Greek. The winter sun shone through the window behind the lass, gilding the fine golden curls wound up with bright red ribbons. He could swear angels played harps to augment the vision.
Her sky-blue eyes met his gaze directly. However, belatedly, Alex noted something less than angelic in their depths. Scorn, was it?
Oh, well, that was to be expected. He wouldn’t be garnering any expressions of interest as long as he sat in the blasted Bath chair. It bothered him more than he wished to admit. Women usually displayed some wee spark of curiosity, at the very least, if only due to his great size. A prurient interest, to be certain, but he was not averse to it all the same. He had grown spoiled to being noticed in such a way, he reckoned. Of course, this one was a lady and such thoughts were usually bred right out of her kind.
He watched Michael lean down to kiss the beauty on her rose-tinted cheek and take her hand. She looked up from beneath her long lashes, offered a smile and a soft, “Welcome home at last.”
“Thank you, Amalie.” He turned to Alex. “This is Captain Napier who saved my life. He’s consented to a visit with us. Could I impose on you to entertain him for a few moments? I would like to speak with Father alone and regain his good graces.”
“As you should,” she said, sounding less than enthusiastic about it.
Together he and the lady watched the door close, sealing them inside the library alone. Alex braced his elbows on the chair arms and clasped his fingers together. “Your brother is a fine young man,” he offered in an attempt at conversation.
“He’s a fine young idiot and nearly broke my father’s heart,” she replied succinctly, thumbing rapidly through the book in her lap. “If he had died, I would never have forgiven him. I suppose I must thank you for preventing that.”
Alex cleared his throat, uncertain what to say next. She had a sharp tongue, this one. “Then I suppose I must say that you’re welcome.”
She flicked one hand toward the wheels of his chair. “How long are you condemned to that?”
He concealed his surprise. The minx was straightforward if nothing else. “Until I find crutches to fit me.”
“And how long on the crutches?” she asked brusquely.
Damn the woman. People rarely asked such a thing of a person in his fix. But he answered her rudeness honestly. “Until I can walk without them.”
She blew out an impatient breath. “You know very well what I mean. What do the doctors say?”
“That I’ll never walk,” he admitted. “But they’re wrong.”
Her sudden smile was wry and humorless. “They say I will. And they’re also wrong.”
His gaze flew to her legs which were well concealed, of course, by the soft red wool of her skirts. The toes of her small matching leather slippers peeked out from beneath the hem. Side by side, her feet perched motionless on a green velvet pillow with gold tassels.
“Riding accident,” she explained with a sigh.
His heart sank inside his chest. “I’m so sorry,” he said sincerely.
She nodded and gave a small shrug. “Well, what happened to you?”
“Bullet caught me just above the knee at Salamanca back in July. They set the bone, but the muscles were damaged. Infection set in. Almost lost the whole thing ten days after they set it, but your brother persuaded the surgeon to take time to treat it instead of lopping it off. Bribed him, too, I believe, though he won’t admit to that.”
She inclined her pretty head and pursed her lips as if studying him for a while. “Do you know why he brought you here?”
Alex shrugged. “He has some strange notion he owes me. I think it bothers him, so I thought I would humor him for a few weeks.”
She closed her eyes, sighed and shook her head. “No, no, no, that’s not it.”
“What other reason could he have?”
“He brought you for me,” she said wearily, then quickly added, “but he won’t admit to that, either, so you needn’t bother to protest to him.”
Alex smiled at her outrageous assumption. “And why would any man in his right mind even think to protest?”
She didn’t seem at all offended by his sarcasm. “I can see that you don’t believe me,” she said, a hint of dry humor in her voice. “But I know my meddling little brother better than he knows himself. I recognized that look in his eyes when he left us in here alone.”
“You have a delightfully warped imagination,” he told her politely.
She wriggled uncomfortably, then settled herself. “Well, I suppose you would doubt he’s capable of such a thing. However, I must confide to you that Michael spent the better part of his school years dragging home friends and attempting to match me up.”
Alex frowned down at her legs. “How long ago did this happen to you? He never mentioned it to me.”
She brushed her hands over her skirts, then clamped her fingers around her book as if to still them. “A scant two months before Michael left us. That would make it eight months, two weeks and four days ago, but who’s counting?”
“You are, obviously. So this matchmaking of his is not a result of…” Meaningfully, he glanced at her legs again.
She scoffed. “No. You have the dubious distinction of being the first nonambulatory candidate he has presented. I will concede he has always attempted to choose carefully.”
“So, should we tie the knot and roll through life together in our Bath chairs?”
Her eyes flew wide.
“A
