Page 59 of An Inconvenient Duke

“It’s nothing, really. It’s not even bleeding anymore.” She lightly closed her fingers into a fist to hide it. When he refused to let her pull her hand away, she lowered her shoulders in capitulation. “I fell as we were leaving the gardens and cut my palm.”

When they were being shot at, she meant. Guilt pierced him that she’d been hurt tonight because of him—for Christ’s sake, that she could have been killed. Ruefully, he placed a kiss to her knuckles, then eased open her fingers so he could examine the wound. “Why didn’t you say something about this before now?”

“We were a bit busy.” She smiled conspiratorially. “And then a bit busy again.”

This time, he didn’t find her attempt at humor at all amusing. The thought of anything happening to her chilled his blood. “You should have told me.”

“It’s only a little cut. It barely bled at all.”

But her assurances did little to ease his concern. Or his guilt.

She pulled her hand away and deftly changed subjects. Right back to him. “So this warehouse that obviously isn’t a warehouse—you come here to do…what exactly?”

He handed back the brandy. “To be alone.” He strode over to his training equipment and snatched up one of the clean lengths of cloth that he used to wrap his hands whenever he punched at the bags.

“Then I’ve ruined it for you.” She stared into the glass. “You’ve allowed a woman into your gentlemen’s club.”

“A very beautiful woman.” He raked a hot, searing look over her, seeing right through the coat to the delectable curves he knew were hidden beneath. “If being alone with you is ruining it, then I’ll gladly have it ruined.”

In the firelight’s glow, he could see the bright flush of her cheeks and the slight upward curve of her lips. “Are you certain?”

“You’re special.” More than she realized. “And you’re right. You’re the first woman I’ve allowed through those doors. Most likely the first woman ever allowed through those doors.”

That surprised her, and her gaze darted up to his. “Ever?”

“It’s an armory.” With a shrug, he splashed water from a pitcher into a bowl on an old side buffet that he used as a washstand after his training sessions, when he wanted to wash away the sweat and grime and memories of the past. “Military men usually don’t want women around and underfoot, especially where arms and weaponry are concerned.”

“Worried we’ll use them against you?”

“Terrified.” He ripped the length of cloth in two, then plunged half of it into the water to wet it. “No one else knows about this place, except for Merritt Rivers and Brandon Pearce.” He wrung out the excess water. “I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Of course.” She paused, then asked, “Brandon Pearce…the Earl of Sandhurst?”

“Don’t let him hear you call him that, or you’ll find yourself dragged out for a duel, skirt or no.” He brought the cloth over to the settee and sat on the edge of it beside her. “Those are fighting words as far as he’s concerned.”

“What is it with you former soldiers,” she mused as she leaned back against the arm of the settee and extended her injured hand toward him, “that none of you are grateful for your titles? You should be honored to possess them and what they represent—England’s appreciation of your heroism.”

“It’s not that we’re ungrateful.” He kept his face carefully inscrutable at discovering her wound to be much deeper and bloodier than she’d let on. “It’s that we know what we’re giving up by leaving the military.”

She studied him over the glass as she rested it against her sensuous lips. “Bad food and people trying to kill you?”

He threw back, “A night at Vauxhall, you mean?”

Her lips curved in a smile against the rim of the glass.

Careful not to cause her pain, he used the wet cloth to wipe away the dried blood and clean the cut. Her hand was small and dainty, and his gut tightened with self-recrimination to know that it might very well be scarred forever from this.

“What was it like,” she asked, most likely reading his emotions and attempting to distract him, “being in the army? What was ittrulylike?”

“Truly?” His brows drew together in a frown, but he never lifted his gaze from her palm. “Freezing cold when it wasn’t boiling hot or pouring rain. Loud when it wasn’t unbearably silent. Usually uncomfortable. Always filthy. Long stretches of boredom broken by moments of sheer terror.”

“Well.” She sharply sucked in a mouthful of air when he touched a sore spot. “All that and poor pay, too? I can’t see why every man wouldn’t choose that for his livelihood.”

His lips twisted at her sarcasm. “Fortunately, it runs deeper than that for a career soldier.”

“How so?”

“When you’re in the military, you have a sense of purpose, of a larger fight so much bigger than yourself and whatever regiment or battle you’ve been placed in.” He slid the wet cloth over her palm to wipe away the last traces of dirt and blood. “Every day, you wake up knowing that you are fighting for morality and liberty, for a cause so good and right that it seems that it can’t be anything other than divinely guided.” He dropped the wet cloth to the floor and reached for the dry length that he’d flung over his shoulder. “You work hard all day to move just a tiny sliver closer to the end, and when your head hits your pillow at night, you can sleep well knowing that you did everything you could that day to support your men and the cause you’re fighting for.”