On Bended Knee, page 10
part #6 of Wicked Worthingtons Series
There. He saw the dog struggling for the surface. Her tricolor coat waved and swirled with deathly beauty while her three legs tried to climb the watery ladder with all their might. But it wasn't enough. The current rolled her over and pulled her down once more.
Lysander kicked off hard and shot through the water. Reaching his long arms for the dog, he wrapped them about her ribs and held her tightly. They began to sink together as the current pushed them along. Lysander used the opportunity to push off from the rocky Swale River bottom and thrust them both toward the surface.
Topknot struggled wildly. She was already so far gone in panic that she could not recognize that she was being rescued. She twisted violently, then gagged and vomited water in his ear. Lysander was quite grateful that she didn't seemed inclined to bite for their faces were entirely too close.
As he worked his way to the bank and his feet found the bottom, her struggles caused him to fall again and again, her wild snaking motion knocking him off balance and causing his feet to slip on the slimy mud. No matter what, he kept his hold on her until made it to his feet once more and fell the last time on to the damp earthen bank. He eased his grip and Topknot sprang from his arms. She scuttled away into the grass, taking a moment to vomit more copiously.
Breathing hard, Lysander lay on his back on the grass and gazed up at the perfect blue and white Yorkshire sky.
APPARENTLY, FARM WORK DIDN'T pause for congratulations of daring three-legged dog rescues. When Lysander returned to where the pails were, he found Bing relaxing on a fallen log and cleaning his nails with a penknife. At the sight of him, Bing raised his bushy brows. "The Missus just laundered them clothes. You do get yourself dirty, for a toff."
Topknot had followed Lysander along the bank, although she skirted both men warily. Nevertheless, she did wait at the top of the path for them.
It was only then that Lysander detected that Bing thought his actions a bit extreme. "She can't swim," he offered awkwardly by way of explanation.
"Neither can I." Bing hove to his feet. "Blasted dog. Neither use nor ornament, that one. Still, t' Missus would be that sorry to lose her." Bing sent Lysander a shadowed glance. "It's a hard life in t' North, lad. Harder still for t' broken, I'd wager."
Bing bundled the abandoned boots and coat under his arm. He clapped Lysander on the shoulder in an affable fashion and hobbled back up the path. "Come along, you daft Londoner. T' water won't fetch itself!"
Lysander was not used to casual friendliness from, well, anyone. He stood, still dripping, and stared after Bing for a moment before he hefted a double load of pails and followed man and dog back to work.
Chapter 11
GEMMA'S WRIST THROBBED, BUT it was her own fault. She wasn't accustomed to sitting about and resting. Surely it wouldn't do her any harm to take an inventory of her stillroom, she had told herself. A bit of lightweight occupation was just the thing.
Of course, she should've realized that when one did an inventory, one discovered that things were lacking. Then one set about correcting that lack, and then one ended up awkwardly grinding herbs for tinctures with one's left hand while using the right — injudiciously removed from its sling — to brace the mortar from shifting.
Then of course, one might decide to rearrange the awkward position of her stored vials and corked bottles.
Then once she had pulled all of that off the shelves and turned her stillroom upside down, her wrist was too painful for her to put it all back.
Perhaps she should've selected Childbirth and the Practices of Midwifery and taken a seat by the stove as Mr. Bing had recommended.
Physician, heal thyself. Wasn't that always the way? Healers put themselves last, at least the good ones did.
Yet what choice did she have? If she wasn't a healer then she was nothing. Nothing but a weary widow alone on her hillside farm — except for the ridiculous population explosion of chickens, of course.
Perhaps she should title her memoir thus. In the Company of Chickens. Surrounded by Squawks. One Hundred Ways to Cook an Egg.
How would she sign it? Mrs. Oakes? Mrs. Gemma Oakes? The Widow Oakes?
Heavens no. That made her sound as if she were eighty-eight years old. And despite the ache in her wrist, she was not quite ready for a life of sitting by the fire.
The pain in her wrist depressed her and her inability to work depressed her and the thought of living alone on this farm until she was eighty-eight years old depressed her, which explained why she took the opportunity of any distraction.
"You'd best not track all that mud into the house, lad," she heard Mr. Bing say out in the yard. "You can wash the worst off here at the rain barrel."
At the sound of Mr. Bing's voice so close by Gemma spared a glance through the stillroom window. The rain barrel lay directly outside the stillroom window, offering her a marvelously unspoiled view of Mr. Worthington stripping off his shirt.
Oh goodness, goodness me.
He is stunning.
Mr. Worthington had been magnificent, in a mad foolish way, when fending off the ram. He'd been mysterious and achingly handsome unconscious in her late husband's bed. This morning at breakfast he'd been very attractive in his tongue-tied way.
Yet nothing could have prepared Gemma for seeing Mr. Worthington half-naked and entirely soaking wet. Her body pulsed in response.
The cold water from the pail that he dumped over his head made him toss his head back, his long wet hair flying, his mouth open in an unselfconscious gasp. Gemma realized then that she would never be able to forget that moment, especially after it made her wonder what Mr. Worthington looked like when he orgasmed.
His face damp with sweat, over hers, pleasure thundering through his body, him swelling inside her….
Yes, it would definitely stay with her always.
His shoulders were broad and although he was a bit thin, his muscles lay strapped tightly to his frame. His thinness only revealed the rippling strength all the more when he hauled another bucket of water high to sluice it over his upturned face.
He took the icy blast more stoically this time, merely giving a quick animal shudder like a fine horse. Then he used his hands to sweep the rest of the mud stains from his skin, leaving him clean and gleaming in the afternoon light.
Oh Mr. Worthington, you are beautiful. Those wide shoulders tapered to narrow hips. Soaked trousers clung to the firm buttocks and thighs of a horseman. He lifted a hand to sweep his wet hair from his face and she was treated to the intimate awareness of his paler ribs and dark tufted underarm. She felt like a spy. A deliciously wicked voyeur. Show me more.
The ache, the one she refused to acknowledge, the one that woke her up some nights with feverish dreams, the empty, cold feeling of stretching her hand to meet nothing but chilled linens on the other side of the bed — yes, that ache — roared to life from some hidden place inside her, taking her breath away with the sudden relentless force of her hunger. I want him.
She leaned forward closer to the window, her uninjured hand pressed to the glass as she watched the muscles of his back ripple when he put both hands up to squeeze the water from his hair. She bit her lip as it ran in rivulets down his spine, all the way down, to where his soggy trousers hung low on his hips and she could just barely see where his buttocks began. She went up on tiptoe, striving to be taller, hoping to see more.
He turned her way then and her jaw dropped. If she thought the rear was handsome, she was in no way prepared for the frontal view. The hair on his chest and belly was dark and curling, beaded with water. The damp hair made a tempting inky arrow pointing down, down across his flat muscled abdomen down to his naval and beyond. Was it an invitation? Come this way.
The wet trousers clung. Mr. Worthington was — well, one might say that his large frame and long hands and feet did not disappoint.
Gemma swallowed hard. Oh, so hungry.
She wanted it to be her hands stroking down his body. She wanted to feel the slickness of his wet skin. She longed to run her fingers down the long hard muscles that wrapped his broad shoulders and twined down his arms. She wanted to stroke a fingertip down the raised veins of his forearms, down over the inside of his wrist to feel his speeding pulse, to spread her hands in his, palm to palm, and let their fingers interlace.
She wanted it to be her fingers thrusting into the thick black hair to push it away from his face, her fists tangling in the unshorn length, pulling his head down and his mouth down to hers. The front of her gown would soak up the water on his chest and it would dissolve against her until he would feel her hard nipples jutting into his rippling chest.
She wanted to kiss him and to be kissed by him. Oh, how she wanted to be kissed! She wanted him to wrap his long arms around her and pull her hair down free and press one large palm against the small of her back to pull her as close as he could.
I miss kissing. I miss wanting and being wanted. I miss the hardness in my secret softness. I miss gasping and sighing. I miss the Chinese rockets of orgasms.
I really, truly miss orgasms.
Until this man had arrived in her dale, she'd not touched herself since before she became a bride. She was tempted to do it now. Instead she squeezed her thighs together beneath her gown and leaned so far across the table to the window that her breath began to fog the glass.
He stood there, magnificent, tall and lean, rippling with muscle, just like his fine thoroughbred horse. The light gleamed across his wet collarbone and the cords of his neck as he turned his head.
And gazed directly into her eyes.
LYSANDER FROZE. FROM THE first moment he'd spotted her in the village, Mrs. Oakes had snared his attention. Now, the sight of her gazing at him with open, aching hunger — with her palm pressed to the window as if reaching for him — now he was absolutely riveted by her.
No one had looked at him that way for very long time. Possibly never, not with that particular lonely, aching longing. She had seemed so cool, so distant and controlled. Now, there was darkness in those eyes, sweet and wild and primal. Mrs. Oakes would not be prim in the bedchamber, he understood that well enough. Unleashed from her ladylike bindings of practical hair and drab gowns, she would be hot and writhing and eager.
Lysander became aware that his cock had begun to swell even in the icy clamminess of his soaked trousers. He could not break his gaze away from her stormy eyes. He continued to harden. He decided not to quail but to let her see him, the way that she had let him see her.
When her gaze dropped and she noted her effect on him, her eyes widened and she flinched back from the window, and then her pale face disappeared into the shadows of the room.
Released from the spell of her devouring gaze, Lysander staggered back a step. He drew a deep gasping breath into his panting lungs and then, closing his eyes tight, he plunged his entire head into the icy water of the rain barrel.
It didn't help. The hunger in her gaze was imprinted on the inside of his own eyelids. He would never forget the way she looked at him. He never wanted to forget it.
ONCE LYSANDER HAD CHANGED into the only other shirt he had tucked into Icky's saddlebags, he discovered that his boots could be salvaged by a night by the stove. He stuffed them with clean straw and left them tucked neatly to the side. Outside, Bing mercilessly handed him a pair of rough work boots and a hammer.
It had been a long time since Lysander had worked with his hands. Worthington House had a marvelous workshop in the old stables off the back garden, but it had been years since he had tinkered out there on his brothers' inventions.
Now, he couldn't seem to hammer a nail without slamming his thumb. The nail seemed to slip and wiggle in his fingers and the hammer swung erratically. He hoped Bing couldn't see how his hands tended to tremble.
"Take your time, lad. That plank isn't walking off anywhere." Bing's raspy voice sounded very nearly sympathetic as Lysander tried to repair the ancient stable door.
Lysander flinched from such expressions of pity. He had no right to it. He had his strength, he had both arms and both legs, and had come away from the battlefields with only a few scars. Others had seen so much worse.
Then Bing rolled his eyes and scoffed. "Hold on to t' blasted nail, lad! Pretend that if it gets away, it's going to bite you!"
Lysander relaxed somewhat, secure once more in Bing's refreshingly blunt disdain. He grasped the nail as if it were a viper as instructed, and swung the hammer down.
He smashed his thumb but good. The wild bolt of pain brought those frightening black edges to his vision. His shaking hands curled into fists. No, not now. Please not now.
Topknot came to press herself against his leg and shoved her cold nose into the curl of his fist. He looked down at the dog and managed to uncurl his fingers a little. She shoved her narrow snout deep into that half-open fist and licked his palm. Then she pulled back and gazed up at him with a toothy doggy grin and whacked her tail upon the ground.
She ought to be afraid of him. Everyone else seemed to be constantly watching him to see if he would lose control. Even his own brothers and sisters tread warily around him, except for Atalanta. The last time he'd felt on the edge of control around Attie, she had wrapped her skinny arms forcefully around him and whispered, "You're my favorite. Don't tell."
That was how Topknot was looking at him now. If ever a dog had said, "You're my favorite," shaggy Topknot was saying it now.
"Aye then, lad. It do come upon a fellow now and again."
Lysander shot a glance at the wiry older man, but Bing had his crossed arms resting on the top of the stone wall and simply gazed down the dale with a sleepy expression.
Lysander realized perhaps he did not mind Bing's erratic and distant sympathy. Bing had been to war. Bing knew what Lysander knew. Yet here he was, working in the peaceful dales and looking after the lady doctor. Bing didn't seem a bit like a primed pistol about to fire.
Lysander had to know. "What do you do?" He struggled for the words. "When it comes?"
Bing scratched his head for a moment, knocking his cap askew. "Well, I like to find me something to hammer on, usually. Slow and easy, y'know, like ticking on the clock or t' Sunday chapel bells in t' village."
Slow. After a moment of thought, Lysander found another nail, positioned it on the gate planks and lifted his hammer. Bang. He took a breath. Bang.
He didn't hit his thumb. The nail went in straight and true. Instead of a violent and furious noise, the hammer and nail met with a clear pure sound that rang out across the grassy fields. Like a heartbeat, slow and steady, and strangely calming.
Without thinking Lysander set three more nails, forming a neat square where the planks overlapped.
Bing tucked his wayward cap straight and peered closer. "Well now. You be right handy for a toff."
As the afternoon waned, Lysander applied the same logical and soothing process to repairing a section of fallen dry-stone wall.
"Let the stone do what it wants, now. Stone'll be stone, be no makin' it clay." Lysander held the field stones in his hands, and examined each one closely and carefully, comparing it to the space it was meant to fill. He found his mind both sharpened and soothed by the methodical spatial problem.
"'Tis a shame you'll be ridin' off soon. With this bum leg, there's only so much I can do about the place. I don't like to let the Missus down, although she'll never so much as hint at it, no she won't. Still, I know she worries."
Lysander wanted to ask about Mrs. Gemma Oakes. He wanted to know everything about her. His piqued interest had flared into burning curiosity since that moment by the window. The slender, lovely Mrs. Oakes was an enigma. Until their heated moment through the window, he'd thought her cool and distant, even solitary. Now her hidden passionate side had been revealed to him. What else was there to learn?
He'd seen a small library full of well-loved volumes on his way down to find the kitchen, but the room had the air of a place long undisturbed. Had she no interest in reading or was she too busy healing dale folk and dogs? And strangers?
Bing went on. "She's a good woman. Rock solid, as they say. She's stronger than she looks, but it's a hard life in t' North."
Harder still for them what's broken.
Was Mrs. Oakes broken? This morning that thought would not have crossed his mind. She'd seemed entirely collected and in control of her rustic corner of the world. But the dark, lost, lonely gaze of the woman in the window belied that impression. She may not be broken, but neither was Gemma Oakes entirely whole. He knew that now.
"I'd take it as a kindness if you'd linger a day or two. 'Tis a big job to get t' place into shape after such a harsh winter. The local lads will help when they can, but it'd be a right blessin' to get a head start on t' job."
Stay?
Lysander felt torn. He was supposed to be helping his family by looking for his brother, Poll. However, he'd suspected from the start that it was a hopeless chase, trying to track down the nomadic theatrical troupe that Poll traveled with, based on nothing but a six-month-old postal address. It been Attie's restless inability to help and his own inability to bear up that had sent him on this road.
He should go home straightaway. He should go back to Worthington House and wait with the others — wait to see if Iris healed or worsened, to watch as she bloomed or faded like the flower for which she was named.
Perhaps he did believe in cowardice, for he felt like a craven at the very thought of going back to that hushed, intense household that filled him with dread. It made him want to run as fast as he could in the opposite direction.
Even considering returning made that terrible, itchy agitation tighten every muscle in his body.
He let his gaze rest on the vast and lovely view down the dale. It was better here. He liked working with Bing and the animals. Here, no one gazed at him with wistful curiosity, wondering when he would go back to the way he used to be. He couldn't go back to that man. He couldn't even find that man. He would never be that boyish Worthington prankster again, that laughing flirt who ran off to play soldier as much out of boredom as out of patriotism.
