“Oh, can’t I?” she shot back. “I’ve spent the last hours frightened to the heart that you were injured somewhere on the road from Chiswick. Do you have any idea what that feels like? To know I couldn’t go back for you? That I couldn’t help you? I couldn’t even ascertain if you were alive or dead. And now you expect me to leave. To just…what? Hail a hackney to take me back to Green Street?” Her face crumpled slightly. “Confound you. I thought I’d lost you all over again.”

His breath burned in his chest. He hadn’t thought—hadn’t considered. It had been too long since anyone cared about him. Not the title or the succession, but him. “I’m sorry I caused you distress.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just…let me look after you. I won’t be satisfied until I see for myself that you’re going to be all right.”

He could do little else but stare at her, his jaw clenched hard against the emotion dammed up within him. She couldn’t possibly comprehend the danger she was in. Not only the fact that she was here, at a hotel in the dead of night, but that she was here. Alone with him when he was in such an unpredictable mood.

He wanted her, damn him. He needed the solace of her arms. To lose himself in the sweet-scented feminine softness of her body.

It was already impossible to be near her without longing for her like a lovestruck pup. Thus far, only the respectability of daylight—of mannerly visits in the Trumbles’ parlor and polite encounters on Bond Street—had kept that longing in check. And even then, he’d faltered. The day they’d kissed in Hyde Park, and then again when he’d waltzed with her on the Parkhursts’ terrace. With each touch of her lips and clasp of her hand, he’d lost a little more of his implacable resolve. The very resolve that was meant to see him through this.

If only she’d waited until the morning to call on him, he might have regained some semblance of control over himself. But now…

“Let me see.” She stretched out her hand to loosen the tie of his banyan.

This time he made no attempt to stop her. He didn’t back away, merely stood there, holding his breath as the silken garment slipped over his shoulder and down his bare arm, exposing the bullet wound to her view.

But it wasn’t the bullet wound that caught Maggie’s eye. It wasn’t his arm at all. It was his naked chest.