maid filled a copper tub with water. Not meeting Julia’s eyes, she carefully placed folded linens on the rosewood vanity table. The young woman looked vaguely familiar and Julia wondered whether she had glimpsed her freckled countenance in the debauched scene the evening before. Dismissing the thought as unproductive and heeding the need to collect herself, she watched the maid’s plump backside retreat from the room and then quickly divested herself of her soiled clothes, ripping at the stays pinching her ribcage, struggling out of her sorely used chemise. Layer after layer was removed and thrown in a heap, until she stood in her plain white cotton shift and silk stockings.
Leaning on the edge of the tub, she carefully peeled down her stockings, wincing as the gossamer fabric clung to the crusted gash on her calf. She shuddered at the memory, at her loss of control, at the recollection of lost hours in that hideous, cork-lined room. Where had it come from, that feral panic, so unlike her customary calm demeanor?
She lingered but briefly in the fresh, warm water, as she had no desire to be interrupted by the man she was convinced had been sent by Faron. She would be able to think more clearly when she’d bathed and had something to eat. Swallowing more nervousness, she wondered why the strange man, as she now called him, would leave her to her toilette for so long. Darkness would come soon, she saw by the fading light spilling through the tall, mullioned windows. The fire had made the room overly warm and she longed to throw the windows open wide but was certain they were locked.
She dried herself quickly and took up the fresh muslin shift the maid had left on the four-poster bed. Her leg began to throb again, weeping a thin stream of blood, as the shift dropped over her head and skirted her legs. Fresh weariness invaded each and every muscle of her body. Lowering herself to the edge of the bed, she smoothed a palm over the cool sheets. Perhaps she would allow herself just a moment to close her eyes and sort out the madness of the last twenty-four hours.
None of it made any sense. The pulse continued to pound behind her eyes like a hammer on a blacksmith’s anvil. Even if he were connected with Montagu Faron, why would Sir Wadsworth invite her to a sordid country-house weekend? Meredith had been frantic with worry at the invitation, urging Julia to ignore the summons with its elaborate script and aristocratic seal. Questions crawled into every corner of her mind, forming a thick web of confusion. And fear. Pulling the feather pillow over her head, Julia buried her face, and her uncertainties, in the softness.
When she opened her eyes again, it was dusk, the air thick, heavy, and eerily still. For a moment, she thought she was back in that horrid place, Sir Wadsworth’s perverse chamber. She wasn’t certain what had awakened her. She lifted a hand to sweep aside the tangle of her hair, then froze.
She surged upright, fists twisting into the sheets, unwelcome pain shooting through her calf. “What are you doing?” she asked, knowing very well whom she was watching—certainly not a serving maid, but him, dark hair falling across his brow, as he finished winding a clean linen bandage around her bare calf. “How dare you!” She tried a fresh assault while attempting to pull her leg beneath the counter-pane, despite the numbing pain.
He ignored her and leaned forward to strike flint to steel and light the bedside lamp. In the dim glow, his features were drawn, pulled taut across his cheekbones and shadowed by a day’s growth of black stubble. “I dared,” he said, “in order to keep the wound clean. It didn’t require stitching. Consider yourself fortunate.”
In the lamplight his eyes were brilliant, and she could see they were an unusual shade, more gray than green, but not decisively either color. They were deeply set in a long face punctuated by a wide, spare jaw. Her eyes swept closed when she again felt the gentle pressure of his fingers on her leg, where a pulse throbbed fiercely and with rhythmic intensity. Not exactly in pain but something else. She couldn’t stop time by closing her eyes so she stared at the opening of his shirt, the same one he’d worn earlier. She fought the urge to leap from the bed and seek haven in the farthest corner of the room. She was a woman nearing her third decade, educated better than most men, but nothing had prepared Julia for this.
She was all but naked and alone with a man for the first time in her life. She bit her lower lip to halt her traitorous thoughts and to keep from crying aloud. The last thing she wanted to admit to herself was what she’d always known. Her life with Meredith had been a prison, albeit a gold-plated one, built to keep evil out, to contain a malevolence that threatened, however subtly, every waking hour. It had required a watchfulness as unrelenting as the queen’s royal guard. Against all good judgment and dire warnings, Julia had forced her way out, providing the crumb on the trail that had allowed the man—and Faron—to find them.
“Sir Wadsworth’s invitation was a ruse, wasn’t it?” she blurted out. Heat swept up her neck and flooded her cheeks.
He released her leg, placed it back under the sheet with cool efficiency, and settled into a chair by the bed with a confidence that Julia found appalling. “You are searching for answers, but you will find none, Miss Woolcott. You’ll discover I’m a man of few words, a predilection which, trust me, works in your favor. Now, would you like something to eat?” he asked, gesturing to a tray at the foot of the bed.
She would get little from him, that was clear. She tamped down her anger with herself by pretending to eat, picking at the morsels, eyes lowered to her plate of chicken, cheese, and bread. The situation was untenable. Impossible. Rage seeped into her consciousness against the backdrop of guilt and self-recrimination. She would simply not allow it. She chewed mechanically, the food in her mouth tasteless.
He was quiet for the moment, watching her profile, watching her eat. Lamplight cast half his face in shadow.
Suddenly, she wanted to lash out. “Would you at least tell me your name?” she demanded when she could stand it no longer, lifting her eyes to his. “It doesn’t have to be real—I would not even expect it to be.”
She was pretending to brush the crumbs away from her lap and into her cupped hand when he abruptly stood. She jerked her head up to see him move to the fireplace mantle and pour two glasses of wine from an opened bottle. Because she was too anxious to keep her thoughts from straying, she found herself distracted by the way his shoulders moved beneath his shirt, and by the stretch of his back narrowing to his waist in perfect proportion to his long, muscular legs.
With an impartiality that surprised her, she conceded that her captor was a beautiful man. Her eyes, so accustomed to peering through a lens, were startled by reality. Her mind raced ahead, searching for something of use. He moved with an expansiveness that was unfamiliar to her, fluid but powerful, as though more accustomed to the outdoors than confinement in drawing rooms and parlors. His tones were educated and well modulated but told her little more than that he was not from the lower classes.
He turned toward her, placing a glass on the tray. “Drink your fill. You appear as though you need it.”
Her fork clattered against her plate, her nerves stretched taut. “Need it for what, sir? You prevaricate, and your insinuations are becoming tiresome. Name or no name, there is little you can do to convince me of this charade involving Sir Wadsworth. It’s simply preposterous, your keeping me here against my will.”
He inclined his head a fraction of an inch, fixing those pale gray eyes upon her. “Alexander,” he said.
At last, like a wretched bone thrown to a dog. Surname or Christian name, it probably didn’t matter.
“You’re the one making insinuations,” he said softly, watching her carefully.
She pushed aside the tray, leaving the wine untouched. Her fingers moved unsteadily to the high neck of her shift. “I have little enough information. While you—”
“Really?” His tone stilled her fingers on an ivory button.
“You know my name,” she snapped, thinking of the invitation that had arrived at Montfort. “Of that, at least, I’m certain.”
He arched a brow. “Miss Julia Woolcott, amateur botanist, photographer, and recently published authoress of a monograph entitled Flowers in Shadows: A Botanical Journey.”
Julia could not keep