Page 88 of A Portrait of Love

The valet nodded, assembling Simon’s shaving gear. Simon pulled off his shirt and tossed it onto the floor, wincing as he lowered his arm.

Peel bent to snatch up his shirt. “You have not been applying the salve Doctor Cruikshank gave you, my lord?”

Simon snorted and ignored his servant’s pained sigh. Instead, he rolled his shoulder, the joint clicking softly with each rotation. Something was still in there; something the doctors in Belgium had not managed to extract. It did not hurt often, usually only if he slept on it, but he was always aware of it.

He dropped his arm and went to sit in front of the mirror.

Peel wrapped a steaming towel around his face and he let out a contented sigh. “I’m always too much in a hurry to do this part, Peel.”

Peel mumbled something that sounded like, “Or too bloody lazy, more like.”

“What’s that?” he said, smiling.

“I can see the skin on your side is cracking—there is a little blood.”

“Drop it already,” he said, no longer amused. “You can slather me in pig fat after my bath.” His eyes located Peel’s in the mirror. “You did order me a bath, didn’t you?”

Peel’s expression told him what he thought of such a question.

Simon grunted. “Good.” He’d been washing himself in a damned basin since he was too much of a bloody scatterbrain to remember to send for a bath most of the time.

Peel removed the towel and began to lather his face. Simon closed his eyes and relaxed.

***

Simon was half asleep as his valet rubbed the not unpleasant smelling substance into the slick, shiny skin that ran along his left side.

He’d not applied any of the unguent since Whitcomb and his scarred skin had begun to tug and shrink and pain him. Specks and streaks of blood showed up on his shirts with increasing regularity.

There was a soft knock on the connecting door.

“Come,” he called, lazily turning his head.

His wife stood in the open doorway, her expression like the one she’d worn this morning, when she’d caught him tugging on his prick.

“Oh!” she began to take a step back.

“Don’t leave,” he ordered, and she froze. “We are finished here. Leave us, Peel.”

His valet left swiftly and quietly through the entrance that led to his small room.

Simon rolled onto his side, the towel Peel used to protect his modesty sliding and drawing her eyes to his hips.

“What can I do for you, my lady?” he asked when he thought she might run.

She hesitated, holding out a rectangle of paper.

“What is that you have?” he asked.

“A letter from the duke.”

“Oh? Why was it delivered to you?”

“I don’t know, but I thought you should have it. Er, quickly. So that’s why I’m here.”

Simon bit back a grin at her uncharacteristic babbling. So, he made her nervous, did he? He knew his behavior was uncouth; the average aristocratic wife would be shocked at seeing her husband without a cravat.

But he didn’t want to behave like average aristocrats.