“Blood. Already? Tsk, tsk. Soft hands, Mrs. Dart. Should we give it up for the day?”
“No.” Amelia marched back to their starting place and notched another arrow. She wanted to feel a little pain to dull that aching in her heart. And it did sting, just where the bow’s string cut through Drew’s glove and into her fingers. She let loose arrow after arrow for another half hour, stopping only when the bite of the string brought tears to her eyes.
“I’m done, Miss Angleton.”
“I’ll stay out a bit more,” the other woman responded, notching another arrow and hitting her target all in one breath.
Entering into the castle through a side door of an often unused drawing room with windows looking out onto the field, she ripped off Drew’s glove and crumpled it in her hand. She hissed as she viewed the damage to three of her fingers. She’d need to soak them. A poultice of some sort. Mrs. Scott would know.
“I told you to be careful.” Drew stepped out of the shadows.
She shrank away from him but made it only a step before her hand was clasped in his. With a grip both warm and firm, he stretched her palm open, peered at it.
“You did not listen.”
“I did not wish to.”
“Fool.”
She wrenched her hand out of his grasp. “I will not bear your insults.”
He stalked toward her. “Then do not invite them with your actions.” When he towered above her, he snatched her hand back and pulled her across the room.
“Unhand me, sir.”
His grip tightened.
She dug her heels into the floor and pulled back, finally breaking free and stuttering several steps backward, almost falling. She would have fallen, but his arm locked around her waist, steadying her, clutching her flush against his body.
Shocked, her hands came up between them, and her palms flattened on his chest. Beneath wool and muscle and bone, his heart fluttered wildly, and when she lifted her head, she found his gaze wild, too, as it had been the day of his arrival. He began to walk, and she walked with him, a forceful waltz to no music, until her legs hit a sofa and she fell to its seat. He left her, then, to pull the bell across the room.
“Were you waiting for me?” Why would he have been? He’d left them earlier without even a single glance over his shoulder. But how else to explain his presence here just as she was entering?
He returned and sat beside her, taking her hand once more and outlining the thin, angry line across three of her fingers, his own gloveless fingers hovering just above hers. Gloveless. She’d been out there an hour at least. And he’d not replaced his gloves in all that time? Unheard of.
Unheard of for the calm, icy man she’d known over the years. For this one, though? Who more closely resembled the rain-drenched wild man from four days ago, this man would go without gloves. No hesitation.
“Foolish woman,” he muttered, his touch a caress. “No more.”
“No more what?”
“Archery, Amelia. No more.”
She whipped her hand away from him, held it against her chest. “Pardon me? You cannot determine that. I enjoyed myself and do not regret the wound. I shall do it again if I wish.”
“You will not willfully hurt yourself.” He rushed to his feet, paced away, thrusting his hands through his hair.
“It will mend.” As if to prove she was hale and hearty, she stood as well, finding her feet as he paced back toward her.
They almost collided, chest to chest, his hard breaths fluttered her curls. He grabbed her upper arms, as if to steady her, but she was not swaying, not one bit. She held her ground and ignored how being close to him tilted the world and made sensations more intense and the rush of blood pound through her ears. She stood her ground, ignored what would distract her, and lifted her gaze to his.
“You cannot control me.”
For a breath, his hands on her arms tightened, squeezed, then disappeared altogether. “The servants are taking too long to respond. Sit. I’ll return with what you need to treat the wound.”
Then he left. Again.
Sit? Stay? Did he think her a dog? Ha!
