“Thank you, Mr Anders. Please let Anna know that I intend to return to finish my earlier consultations later.”
“Yes, My Lady. I am sure she and the rest of us will greatly appreciate your attendance,” Mr Anders assured her, a smile of gratitude upon his face.
“Thank you.” With that, Melissa turned to Lord Spurnrose and readjusted her grip upon him before she said, “Shall we?”
Before he could protest, she started walking him further down the dirt track. Though he towered over her and was quite a heavy-set man for a nobleman, Melissa did not allow him to see any sign of her struggle, and to her credit, it was not entirely too bad.
For the most part, he seemed able to hold himself up, only stumbling once or twice with a hiss of air through his teeth as though he was having a greater bout of pain here or there. Melissa watched him carefully out of the corner of her eye, and he would occasionally meet her gaze. Every time he did, her heart racing just a little more and his closeness was something she liked a little too much.
Though she could keep her professional head on, she sensed that at the drop of a hat she might be able to allow it to go the opposite way.
“You know, Lady Belmont, if you keep up like this,” Lord Spurnrose said as they drew closer to his house, through gritted teeth as though the walk was taking a great deal of effort, “people might begin to think you actually care for me.”
Melissa bit the inside of her lip at his words and struggled to stop herself from smiling at him. Instead, she kept her gaze dead ahead, focusing on helping him walk rather than allowing him to goad her into anything. “I care for all my patients, Lord Spurnrose. It would not do for me to be any other way.”
“Do you believe that all healers care for their patients?” Lord Spurnrose asked, and the question caught Melissa off guard. Her gaze shot to his, and her eyes locked upon his green irises. Not for the first time, she noticed how forest green they were, flecked with gold and brown like autumn leaves, and in the sunshine, they danced with playfulness. It was only dulled by the backing of pain that was so clearly still written upon his face.
“All healers, yes,” she said carefully, clearing her throat and forcing herself to blink before she broke her gaze away from his to concentrate on the path ahead. “All doctors, no.”
At her words, she felt Lord Spurnrose tense against her. Out of the corner of her eye, she looked at him and saw an unreadable expression on his face. Something in her gut told her that his experiences with doctors had not been entirely good either.
Clearing her throat once more, she told him, “Doctors and I have never really seen eye to eye.”
“Wasn’t your husband a doctor?”
Melissa tensed up entirely. Her jaw clenched in such a way that for a second she thought she might crack a tooth.
As though he sensed he had said something to offend her, Lord Spurnrose quickly started to shake his head and apologise. “I should not have mentioned him. Forgive me.”
Melissa forced a smile and said, “Don’t be. Thomas was a wonderful man. He truly cared for his patients, and he wasn’t at all like the fools in London who claim themselves doctors.”
She could feel Lord Spurnrose watching her now with a vested interest. The warmth that spread through her face made her feel all too innocent again, and she tried to regain control of herself.
“He sounds as though he was a good man.”
“He was.” Melissa felt a small pang of grief at the memory of her late husband. “He was a great friend to me and a great teacher. I shall always miss him.”
Her cheeks flushed, more out of embarrassment than anything else. She had never felt the need to say such a thing to anyone before. Somehow, she felt as though she was trying to justify something to herself. Normally, she kept her thoughts about her late husband and all others she had lost to herself. Perhaps it was because nobody ever cared to ask, or maybe it was because she didn’t feel like they cared to know.
But somehow, with Lord Spurnrose, she felt he did care, as if he wished to know her innermost thoughts. And that thrilled her a little, but it scared her more.
The way he raised an eyebrow and looked at her suggested he was even more intrigued by her words, almost as though he was surprised at what she had said.
Feeling slightly uncomfortable, she tried to change the subject. “If you are struggling, you can lean on me a little more.”
She could feel him leaning on her quite heavily now, but a part of her suspected it was out of his curiosity and lack of thinking rather than his actual need for her to hold him up. He hadn’t stumbled in quite some time.
And when her words seemed to hit him, Lord Spurnrose pulled back slightly, straightening up as though he realised he had been leaning on her a little too much. As soon as he did, Melissa’s shoulder and arm ached from helping him. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to pull away from him even a little. The warmth of his body pressed against her own was entirely welcome after so long in solitude with nobody but her Flit to cuddle up to at night.
“Forgive me, Lady Belmont. I fear you have made me a little too comfortable,” Lord Spurnrose admitted, and he tried to pull away a little further. On pure instinct, Melissa tightened her grip on him.
“I did not say you could release me entirely, Lord Spurnrose,” she insisted, hoping her voice sounded entirely strict and professional. “I am not going to release you until I have seen you safely to a chair.”
“Then we had better hurry to the house.” Lord Spurnrose laughed, clutching her back just a little tighter. “I do not believe you can take my weight for much longer.”
And again, their gazes met. Melissa felt a rush of heat spread across her cheeks and into her chest. It filled her entire body until she felt as though she might burst into flame.
But at that very moment, they made it to the forecourt of Lord Spurnrose’s manor house. And as though they had rang a bell, the door burst open.
