Regency Scoundrels And Scandals. Louise Allen

and dragging it down her arms.

      ‘I..er…I can manage now.’

      He ignored her, lifting the water-sodden skirts over her head and dumping the garment in a heap on the floor, then standing, hands on hips, regarding her as she shivered in stays, petticoat and chemise.

      ‘Did you tie these with a bow or am I going to have to cut the strings?’ He advanced on the neat row of lacing that secured the corset. Eva squeaked. ‘A bow. Excellent woman.’ The stays landed on top of the gown just as the maid knocked on the door. Eva retreated, leaving Jack to deal with the procession of inn servants with tub and steaming ewers.

      She peeked through the gap in the screen, her lips curving in amusement at the sight of the maids reduced to blushing giggles by Jack’s well-displayed physique. They could not be blamed, she told herself, conscious that she was admiring the view just as much as they were. The bruises had begun to turn yellow across his back and chest. She ignored them as she studied the cleanly defined musculature, the narrow hips and the well-shaped calves. Hairy, but just right, she decided, as a violent shiver shook her, reminding her just how serious their situation was. Stop it! she chided herself. Ogling like one of the maids, indeed!

      The door shut and Eva hastily bent to untie her garters and roll down her stockings. Jack reappeared around the edge of the screen. ‘Come on, hurry up, your teeth are chattering.’

      ‘Go away, then! Because if you think I am taking another thing off while you are—Jack! Put me down.’ He bent, swept her up and deposited her, petticoats and all, into the deep tub the girls had brought up. ‘Oooh. That’s wonderful.’ Warmth seeped through her, making her skin tingle and her frozen toes ache. But the momentary discomfort was worth it. She even began to believe that the bone-deep chill would disappear in time. ‘What a huge tub.’ It was big enough for her to tuck in her feet, provided she kept her knees bent up, sticking above the surface.

      Jack began to scoop water up in his cupped hands and pour it over her knees and her shoulders. He paused, his hands and arms deep in the hot water for a moment, letting the warmth seep into him.

      ‘I’ll be quick, you need to get in,’ Eva said hastily.

      ‘No, you aren’t warm through yet, and your hair needs washing.’ Jack picked up one of the ewers. ‘Close your eyes.’ He poured the water through her tangled hair, then found the scented soap and began to work up a lather and rub it in. ‘Sit still, don’t wriggle or you will get soap in your eyes.’ He seemed quite at home doing it. Eva wondered vaguely if he bathed his mistress. Mistresses, more like, she reflected, moving her head languidly to the pressure of his hands. She could not believe that this man would find much attraction in celibacy.

      ‘You’re purring.’ His chuckle was close to her ear. ‘Keep your eyes closed, I’m going to rinse it.’ The warm torrent drowned her protest that of course she was doing no such thing, then she found her head swathed in a towel and realised he was rubbing it dry. It was so easy to let go and allow him to do it. Eva’s eyes stayed closed, even when the towel was lifted away and she heard Jack moving across the room. He came back almost at once, lifted some of the damp weight of her hair and began to comb it.

      ‘Jack, don’t bother with that, you’ll get chilled, I must get out.’ Eva opened her eyes and found he was very close, his fingers working carefully through the tangles.

      ‘No, I’m warm, here in the steam, I promise. Relax while I comb this.’ The grey eyes that could be so hard and cold were gentle as he watched her, the lines of his face relaxed out of their habitual vigilance as she had never seen them before, even in laughter.

      Her eyes drifted shut again. The memory of being cold, of being afraid, seeped away under the strokes of his hands. ‘Lean forward.’ She found herself resting against his chest, her forehead on his shoulder as he reached round her, plaiting her hair into a thick tail. Then he coiled it on her head, fastening it with a pin he must have found with her comb.

      The heavy weight of it made it difficult to lift her head up off his shoulder, or so she told herself. Against the skin of her forehead she could feel the hard line of his collarbone, smell the scent of him through the soap-scented steam. River water, chilled flesh, man. Jack. Her lips moved, touching lightly on the flat plane of his chest and he shifted, his hands slipping down from her hair to hold her against his body as he knelt there beside the tub.

      ‘You are cold,’ she murmured against his skin.

      ‘Warm me, then.’

      Awkward, her wet petticoats tangled round her legs, Eva shifted in the tub until she was kneeling up, breast to breast with Jack. Her hands slid, palms flat, up his back, holding him close to her, pressing herself to the length of his torso so her heat soaked into him. Her nipples peaked, hard under the soaked petticoat, rubbing against the subtle friction of wet linen as she buried her face in the angle of his neck, feeling the thud of his pulse close to her ear.

      Jack’s breath was hot on the side of her face, feathering her ear so that she caught her own breath, the almost-forgotten heavy heat of arousal settling low in her belly. She expected him to touch her ear, perhaps run the tip of his tongue around the curl of its moulding; instead his hands moved down to cup her buttocks.

      The sensation of the two palms, cooler than her own hot flesh, the gentle grasp of the long, clever fingers, had her pressing closer so that when, without warning, Jack stood up, she was lifted with him in one smooth motion. He shifted, taking her off balance so that she clutched at him, then he was standing in the hot water with her.

      They were so close that she could feel the hem of the towel he wore around his waist pressing against her knees, the roughness of wet hair where one of his legs pressed between hers. The sodden fabric she was wearing might as well not have been there as her body melted into his, the touch of hard nipples against her breast, the unmistakable heat and pressure of his arousal against her stomach.

      Eva lifted her face from the shelter of his neck, his hair spiky with wet as it brushed her cheek. ‘Go,’ he said huskily.

      ‘What?’ she whispered. His eyes were closed, the lashes as wet on his cheeks as though he had wept, but the skin below was dry.

      ‘Go. Get into bed.’ Still blind, his mouth curved into a smile that had her longing to touch her lips to the corner of his. ‘I think you have warmed me as much as a friend might be expected to.’

      Jack stood motionless, following Eva’s retreat behind the screen by sound. When he heard the flap of a towel from the direction of the screen he opened his eyes, poured in the remaining ewers of hot water and, discarding the towel, took her place in the tub.

      The heat took him into its embrace like a lover and he leaned back against the high back of the tub, his knees hooked over the other side and his feet dangling. It was possible, he thought hazily, that he would just lie there all night, luxuriating.

      If only he did not have to think. To plan. To try to get some sort of perspective on what had happened just now. The warmth was doing absolutely nothing to subdue the evidence of just how much the sensation of holding Eva in his arms had aroused him.

      What had gone wrong? Cold, battered, exhausted, all he had intended was to get her tucked up in bed, warm and safe. If he had been asked, he would have laughed at the thought that he could have summoned either the strength or the inclination to think about sex. It seemed he did not know his own body as well as he thought.

      There was a discreet cough and he closed his eyes as Eva’s footsteps padded past, wondering if she was looking at him, wondering, for the first time, what she thought of the man she saw.

      Arrogant devil, he chided himself, as he fished blindly over the edge of the tub for the soap. What she saw was an adventurer, a man she could rely on for violence, low cunning and an insolent disregard of her status and position. She saw a man who promised to be her friend and who had damn nearly taken her there and then, dripping wet, on the floor beside this tub.

      But he hadn’t. Why not? Jack began to scrub the smell of the river water and mud off his skin, grimacing as he realised