Anyone But a Duke by Betina Krahn

Author:Betina Krahn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zebra Books
Published: 2019-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

By the end of their second day of searching for Sarah’s horse, Arthur and Steig had covered all of Betancourt, met every tenant, and checked every potential hideout in half the county. Arthur spoke little as he and Steig entered the stables and handed over their horses to Eddie. Both were walking like every muscle in their bodies was on fire.

Red grinned at the sight of them approaching the house and called to Sarah. She ran out the front doors to greet them, but one look at their taut faces and tortured movement and she stopped.

“I’ve never spent so much time in a saddle,” Arthur said, rubbing his lower back and wincing. “Every bone in my body has been jarred loose.”

Red had a hard time suppressing amusement as they waddled, bow-legged, into the hall. “Aw, ye just need some of Sarah’s liniment and a good night’s sleep,” he declared.

“Yeah?” Arthur looked ready to punch the old prospector—except that would require raising his arms.

“Uncle Red, really.” Sarah took Arthur’s arm to help him to the stairs and then looked at Steig, whose jaw was clamped shut, but whose eyes told the same story. “You come, too. I’m not sure you’ll make it up three flights of stairs tonight. We’ll put you in Arthur’s old room.”

There were several volunteers to apply liniment to Steig’s aching frame, but in the end, stableman Eddie was drafted to the task—him being the most experienced at tending the aches of big muscular beasts. The servants were horrified by the thought of such personal duty with their duke, and he had no valet. That left Sarah to do the deed herself, with Red chaperoning from the open doorway.

Arthur’s groans of relief and twitches betrayed an interesting dance between pleasure and pain . . . something Sarah had never experienced with a patient before. The feel of his warm, naked flesh beneath her hands as she kneaded his muscles was stimulating, to say the least. Her face reddened, her nerves came alive, and her body grew sensitive in places that she now associated with pleasure and him.

When she finished massaging liniment into his back and shoulders, she stood for a moment contemplating his sheet-covered derriere and the backs of his muscular legs. She carried the salve to Red, and thrust it in his hands.

“You’ll have to carry on from here.”

She couldn’t meet her uncle’s eyes as she hurried out the door, and his laughter followed her down the stairs.

* * *

The lights were already dimmed and the house was settling in for the night when there came a pounding on the front doors. Gas lights flared back to life and robe-clad servants scurried to see what was happening. Sarah was in her room, but hadn’t yet begun to change into her nightclothes when she heard the distant thumping. She slipped her feet back into her shoes and headed for the front hall.

A disheveled George Graham staggered through the open front doors, looking like he might collapse. He

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