“I can feel them again.” Beneath the coverlet, he flexed his fingers. “They ache a bit. Coming back to life will do that to a body. I’ll live to use them to catch women flying off of crates.”
More color had returned to his face and to his lips.
She hadn’t fully realized how desperately worried she’d been until relief nearly made her dizzy.
He continued chafing his own hands. Suddenly he stopped.
“Who is that?”
She followed the direction of his gaze. “Oh. That’s Gordon.”
“We have a cat now?”
He sounded so surprised she gave a short laugh. The word “we” landed strangely on her ears. For some reason, it was a relief to hear it. “He visited last night and I let him in. Then I let him back out. He returned today. He seems to like it here. Probably we have the juiciest mice in all The Grand Palace on the Thames.”
“So you let thecatstay last night. I see. I take it the cat isn’t a right bast—”
Very surprisingly, he stopped just short of using the whole objectionable word.
Gordon stared benignly back at the two of them as if he’d never seen anything more interesting in his life.
“Do you mind having him here?” she asked, somewhat carefully.
“No. Clearly you missed having a homely hairy beast about the place.”
She snorted softly. “Where did you sleep?”
“With Delacorte.”
“I imagine he’s twice as good as a heated brick.”
“Aye. But there were a few drawbacks,” he said shortly.
She blew out a breath.
“All right. You ought to be able to chafe your arms a bit on your own now. You do that while I do—”
She stood and reached for a shawl and dropped it down over his head as if he were a parakeet in acage. And perhaps a little too vigorously rubbed his hair.
He squawked a little.
“Sorry,” she said insincerely.
More gently, she wound the shawl around his head, turbanlike.
He ought to have looked absurd, and any other man might have. Instead, he resembled a stern sheik, awaiting the arrival of his harem.
“Stockings now,” she said valiantly. “Or can you do them?”
“I’ll do them,” he said.
She watched to make certain he could.
He bent and peeled his wet wool stockings from exquisitely shaped, huge, hairy calves. She tried not to stare at his big bare feet, tufted in hair. Like the rest of him, they were profoundly, aggressively masculine.
He pulled his feet up into his nest of blankets and rubbed them with his hands.
She collapsed in a weary heap on the opposite end of the settee. Who knew relieving men of their clothes could be so thoroughly draining?