Flowers From The Storm by Laura Kinsale Page B

time she had released the first button, she was aware that he was watching her intently, his face near hers as she bent over. By the third, she had become very conscious that this man was not her papa, that the solid shape of shoulder and muscle beneath the dressing robe was nothing like. By the sixth, the perception of his breath, soft and steady on her hands as she worked, seemed intimate beyond anything proper or acceptable.
    She lifted her eyes. His one-sided smile deepened. He lifted his hand and drew his forefinger down the line of her jaw, catching her chin, raising it a little. Their eyes were at level, inches apart.
    His were dark blue.
    Maddy pulled herself back. She stood straight, her shoes making a loud sound on the wooden floor as she shifted.
    He rose. Without a word, he declared himself ruler of the moment. He lifted his eyebrows a little, as if to ask if she wished to continue. Maddy looked at the open gap in the dressing robe and away from it, having stumbled into something unexpectedly beyond her competence.
    He shrugged. The robe slipped from his shoulders and fell at his feet. He held out his hand for the shirt.
    She really was very experienced, as a nurse. She’d bathed and dressed a number of patients, not all female; she was frequently called upon when a member of the Meeting needed attendance. And of course, she’d always cared for her father…
    He was not her father. He was not a child, nor elderly nor ill. He was something she had never in her life seen before: a man in the full—she could only call it glory—of height and bone and strength of adulthood, standing without a stitch upon him, his hand open for his shirt.
    Every fiber in her wanted to shove the garment at him and rush out of the room.
    But she saw the mocking smile and the anger in it. His body was imposing in the small cell, broad-shouldered and powerful, imposed on her; and he knew it. He meant it to frighten her.
    It did. At least, it felt something like fear, this mortified agitation. She saw the strength, but she saw too the symmetry, the superb length and shape of muscle. Her flustered alarm was mixed up with a dash of plain creaturely admiration that anyone could stand so: tall and straight and insolent, just the way God had made him.
    And God had made him in a striking and brilliant way. A miracle of life breathed into clay. It seemed no more wrong to take note of it than to take delight in the flight of a hawk over the fields outside. That hawk had seemed a marvel to her, a city dweller all her life—and the unclothed figure of a man no less novel and dramatic.
    She laid the shirt in his hand. He swept it up and pulled it on, with a faint hiss between his teeth, jerking his head to settle the fabric over his ears. The white cotton fell free down to his thighs. He took a step past her as if she didn’t exist and reached for the folded stockings and breeches.
    Maddy turned away to the window, having understood his message quite clearly. She gripped her hands together, working her fingers, feeling impelled to apologize but too chagrined to try.
     
    Worldly arrogance and wickedness were not things she’d been brought up to respect, but it was somehow fine that in spite of this place, his affliction, in spite of everything, he asserted his disdain for the circumstances. He was not only a human being; he was a duke, and not about to allow anyone to overlook it. Certainly not one plain Quaker nurse.
    She waited until she heard no more sounds of movement behind her. Just as she was about to turn, he startled her into a jump when he laid his hand on her shoulder.
    He was dressed—more or less. The waistcoat, breeches and coat hung unbuttoned, and the shirt cuffs seemed to be lost somewhere up inside the coat sleeves. He stood scowling at her ferociously, his jaw working. Then he took a step back and held out both his hands.
    It was a strangely vulnerable gesture, abrupt and reluctant. He looked, not at her, but down at his