and muscle beneath it.
“Quadriceps femoris seems firm,” he muttered, reaching beneath her leg. She jumped and made a little sound. “That hurt?”
“No,” she said breathlessly, then bit her lip.
“Good. Facia lata seems a bit lax to me. Flex it.”
She gasped. “Flex what?”
“Your leg!” he ordered impatiently. “Try to lift it.”
Suddenly she yelped and punched at his shoulder frantically with her fists.
“What’s this?” Michael shouted. “What are you doing?”
Alex groaned, snatched his hands away and jerked down her skirts.
“He’s a doctor!” Amalie cried. “He was only—”
“I know what he was doing!” Michael thundered. “Captain, if you were not…incapacitated, I should call you out on the instant!”
Alex grabbed the wheels of his chair and rolled himself backward, no small task given the thickness of the carpet. “Settle your feathers, Harlowe. You know I’m no threat to—” He broke off when he looked over at Michael and saw the baron standing beside him, sagging under the inert weight of a woman Alex supposed was the baroness. She had fainted dead away.
“He is a doctor!” Amalie wailed. Alex didn’t blame her at all. He felt like wailing himself.
“They’ll have to marry now,” her father declared in a woebegone tone.
“Milord…” Alex let his words trail away, knowing it was no use. No matter that he couldn’t manage a seduction right now if his life depended upon it or that the idea had not even occurred to him. He had thoroughly compromised Miss Amalie Harlowe beyond all redemption in the eyes of her parents and her brother. He’d been squarely caught with his hands up her skirts. And, since he had never confessed his former profession to Michael, any claim of purely medical interest under those ruffles would never be believed.
Even if he sent for his license to prove it, he still had no excuse. The lady had a physician already and no reason at all to be soliciting the opinion of one who had given up the practice.
He bit the bullet he knew he was expected to bite, and looked Amalie straight in the eye. “Miss Harlowe, I was just on the point of asking you. Would you kindly do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
She stared at him as if he’d grown horns. “You are mad, sir!”
Alex had to agree. “Assuredly, but I shouldn’t think that would be an impediment you would notice much around here. So, will you, then?”
She dropped her gaze to her lap, then stared pointedly at his, her thoughts so apparent and well focused on any future attempt at consummation, she might as well have spoken them aloud.
Then she raised her head, looked him straight in the eye and shrugged one dispirited shoulder. “Why not?”
Chapter Three
Amalie had cursed her foolhardiness all through dinner and well into the night. Now, this morning, she suffered from lack of sleep that could very well make today even worse.
What in the world had come over her yesterday? Usually she maintained very tight control, both of her temper and the people around her. At the moment, she felt even more helpless than she had then.
“It has surely been half an hour! Stop!” She lay on her stomach on her bed while Magda tortured her, deliberately ignoring any demand to cease. This was nothing new, however. Amalie had grown used to it and accepted it as her ongoing punishment for past sins. But she didn’t accept it silently or with good grace. Magda was used to that, too, and only dug harder into Amalie’s calf with those beefy fingers.
Yesterday, Magda had plunked her in the library after she had finished and dressed her. There was nothing to do there but spend hours on end reading books already read a dozen times each. The limit of endurance had been fully reached when Michael arrived with the Scot.
“Now I’m doomed to his company for the rest of my natural life,” she said aloud.
Magda grunted as she rolled Amalie over and began massaging the right foot. “Well, at least he will be someone different to look at, eh?”
“Um. I suppose.” And that would be a welcome change for a while, Amalie thought. “He saved Michael’s life, so they’d said, so I do owe him for that.”
“Ja. Young sir is home safe.” Magda rotated the ankle.
“There’s nothing I can do to repay him but try to be pleasant,” Amalie said, deciding she might as well try. How long that would last was anyone’s guess, but she would make the effort.
“He does not want this marriage, but he’s stuck with it now.”
“Marriage is good,” Magda commented.
“What a sad state of affairs that I welcome any change at all, good or ill, just to relieve the sameness of the days.”
“Change is good.”
Amalie ignored Magda as best she could, since she wasn’t really talking to her.
“He mentioned a son. Perhaps it would be entertaining to have a child about the place. Someone to run and fetch and to watch play, if nothing else. I’ve never really known any children other than Michael when he was small. What a little demon he was, but funny all the same.”
“You will be the mama.” She lifted the right leg, eliciting a groan.
Amalie forced the pain from her mind though her words still emerged in small puffs. “It not as if…I shall become a real mother…to the child. Or a real wife to…the father.”
“Hmph. We shall see. I like to get these hands on him!” Magda declared.
Amalie imagined she would. “No chance of that, Mags.”
The memory of his hands upon her bared legs surfaced and gave Amalie a lilting little feeling in the pit of her stomach. His touch had been meant as impersonal, she knew, as efficient and medically inquisitive as Dr. Raine’s or Magda’s. Yet it had affected her in an entirely different way.
Captain Napier was no stodgy old Londoner with more than fifty years to his credit, nor was he a great strapping woman with hands like giant claws. He was somewhere near thirty, terrifically attractive, and had wonderfully agile hands.
Also, he could make her laugh. How long had it been since her laughter had not reeked with sarcasm or self-deprecation? Lord, she’d become a regular martinet, a thoroughly unpleasant companion to one and all.
Perhaps that was the reason everyone left her alone in the library so much of the time. She must somehow work harder to get past her anger at what had happened to her. Acceptance was the key, she knew. She had to accept her fate and be gracious.
Alex dressed himself. Not the easy task he had always taken for granted before he had been wounded.
