"But he didn't," Basia said. She tilted her head back to look at him.
She was exhausted, her shoulder screaming with fresh pain, but she felt incredibly dangerously alive. "He jumped it."
"I didn't care about the horse," Henry said harshly. The words hung in the freezing air, heavy and absolute.
Basia stared at him. She saw the dark, frantic intensity in his eyes. This wasn't the bored nobleman who had told her to go to the kitchens. This was a man stripped down to his raw nerves.
She swallowed hard, tasting the lingering copper of blood in her mouth. She wasn't used to men looking at her like this. They looked at her with pity, with disgust, or with cheap lust. But Henry looked at her as if she were the only solid thing in a collapsing room.
"A hundred guineas," Basia whispered. It was a defensive reflex, a cynical shield thrown up to break the sudden terrifying intimacy of the moment. She didn't know how to handle being valued. Henry let out a low, ragged laugh.
It wasn't amused. It sounded like pure relief tearing out of his chest. He slid his right hand from her shoulder up to the back of her neck, his leather-gloved fingers tangling in her cold, messy hair. "I will pay you a hundred guineas," Henry said, his voice dropping to a low, fierce murmur, his face inches from hers. "I will pay you a thousand, but I am not letting you walk away from this estate. You are keeping the job." "I'm keeping the horse, too," Basia countered, her breath catching slightly as his thumb brushed the fading yellow bruise on her cheekbone.