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Chapter Two
A few hours later Laura pulled herself reluctantly from bed and walked to the kitchen. A bright sun sparkled on the scrubbed table and Maggie, the maid of all work the squire sent over every morning to do her cleaning, had left her nuncheon and a pot of water simmering on the stove.
She’d remain just long enough for tea and to wash up before returning to her patient. The kindly Scots physician had ridden straight through, he’d told her, and would be needing relief.
She frowned as she poured water into the washbasin. It wasn’t fatigue that caused the vague disquiet that nagged at her. She’d learned to survive on very little sleep while she cared for her dying “aunt Mary.”
No, it was the lingering effects of working for so many hours in such close proximity to the Earl of Beaulieu—a man who exuded an almost palpable aura of power—that left her so uneasy.
He’d not recognized her, she was sure. Even when he looked her full in the face this morning, she’d read only surprise in his eyes—surprise, she assumed, that she was not the aged crone he had evidently taken her to be. An impression she, of course, had done her best to instill and one he might harbor yet if she’d not stupidly looked up.
A flash of irritation stabbed her. She’d grown too complacent of late, forgotten to keep her head demurely lowered whenever there might be strangers about.
‘Twas too late to repair that lapse. However, despite discovering her to be younger than he’d expected, there was still no reason he should not, as everyone else around Merriville had done, accept her as exactly what she claimed to be, the widowed cousin of the retired governess whose cottage she had inherited.
She felt again a wave of grief for the woman who had been nurse, friend and savior. That gentle lady, sister of Laura’s own governess, who had taken in a gravely ill fugitive and given her back not just life, but a new identity and the possibility of a future. Who’d become her mentor, training Laura to a skill which enabled her to support herself. And finally, the benefactor who’d willed her this cottage, safe haven in which to begin over again.
A safe haven still, she told herself firmly, squelching the swirl of unease in her stomach. She need only continue to act the woman everyone believed her to be. Young or not, a simple country gentlewoman could be of no more interest to the great earl than a pebble.
As long as she stayed in her role—no more jerking away in alarm if his eye chanced to fall upon her. She grimaced as she recalled that second blunder, more serious than the first. “The Puzzlebreaker,” as the ton had dubbed him after he’d founded a gentleman’s club devoted to witty repartee and clever aphorisms, was a gifted mathematician and intimate of the Prince’s counselors. But as long as she said or did nothing to engage that keen intellect or pique his curiosity, she would be perfectly safe.
Be plain and dull, she told herself—dull as the dirtbrown hue she always wore, plain as the oversize and shapeless gowns she’d inherited from her benefactress.
And avoid the earl as much as possible.
Dull, dull, dull as the ache in her head from the pins that had contained her long braided locks for too many hours. With a sigh of relief, she loosed them and, tying on a long frayed apron, set about washing her hair.
Beau smiled as he surveyed the modest gig and the even more modest chestnut pulling it. How London’s Four Horse Club would laugh to see him tooling such a rig.
But after a few hours’ sleep took the edge off his fatigue, a deep-seated worry over Kit roused him irretrievably from slumber. A check on his brother, whose color had gone from unnatural pale to ominously flushed and whose rapid, shallow breathing was doubtless responsible for the frown now residing on Mac’s tired face, had been enough to refuel his anxiety.
His physician friend looked exhausted after a ride doubtless as arduous as his own. Humbly acknowledging, at least to himself, that he’d feel better sending Mac off to bed with Mrs. Martin present to direct Kit’s care, he’d offered to fetch the nurse. At least the drive in the pleasant early fall sunshine gave him something to distract himself from his gnawing anxiety.
As the squire’s son promised, her cottage was easily located. He pulled the gig to a halt before it and waited, but as no one appeared to assist him, he clambered down and hunted for a post to which he could tie the chestnut. Finding none, he set off around the walled garden. Surely behind the cottage there would be some sort of barn.
Having found a shed, by its look of disuse no longer home to horse and tackle but still sturdy, he secured the rig and headed back to the cottage. A gate to the garden stood open, from which, as he started by, a black and white spotted dog trotted out, spied him, and stiffened.
Kneeling, he held out a hand. After a watchful moment, apparently deciding Beau posed no threat, the dog relaxed and ambled over. Beau scratched the canine behind his large ears, earning himself an enthusiastic lick in the process, after which the dog collapsed in a disgraceful heap and rolled over, offering his belly.
“Some watchdog. Where’s your mistress, boy?”
The dog inclined his head. When the rubbing did not resume, with an air of resignation he hopped up and loped off into the garden. Amused, Beau followed.
Behind the walls he found cultivated beds, herbs interspersed with a charming array of asters and Michelmas daisies and alternating with chevrons of turnips, onions and cabbages. Inhaling the spicy air approvingly, he was halfway across the expanse of tilled ground when a slight movement near the cottage drew his attention and he halted.
Halted, caught his breath, and then ceased to breathe.
A young woman leaned back against a bench, eyes closed, her head tilted up to a gentle sun that painted a straight nose, arched brows, high cheekbones and full lips with golden highlights. The collar of her gown lay unfastened, revealing an alluring triangle of warm skin from her arched neck downward to the top of an old worn apron, whose blockage of the view that might otherwise have been revealed below he would have fiercely resented had not the garment redeemed itself by clinging snugly to its wearer’s generous curves.
The lady’s hair, which she was drying in the sun, swirled over the back of the bench and cascaded down beside her in a thick fall of burnished auburn curls.
Just then she reached up to comb her fingers through one long section, fluffing it as she progressed. The movement stretched the threadbare apron taut against her body, its thin white cloth silhouetting her breast against the dark bench, full rounded side to sun-kissed tip.
Beau’s mouth grew dry, then dryer still as one curl tumbled from her shoulder, caught on the apron’s edge and came to rest cupped, like a lover’s hand, around the outline of that perfect breast.
She sighed, a slight exhale that parted her lips and made her look like a woman rousing to passion’s whisper. His body tensed in automatic response, his mouth tingling to trace the outline of that arched throat, taste the honey promised by those lips, his fingers itching to tangle themselves in that cloud of copper silk and pull this arresting vision closer.
A vision that was, he realized with a shock that rippled all the way to his toes, the woman he’d hitherto identified as the mousy, nondescript Mrs. Martin.
He tingled in other places, as well. And had not yet regathered wits enough to decide what to do about it when the dog, whose presence he had totally forgotten, had the deplorable ill timing to seek out his mistress.
At a lick to her hand, Mrs. Martin sat up and opened eyes as piercingly blue as the clear autumn sky. Eyes that went in an instant from sleepy to shocked. With a small shriek, she leaped up and backed away.
Conscious of a sharp sense of loss, he nonetheless endeavored to set her at ease. “Please, don’t be alarmed, Mrs. Martin. It’s Hugh Bradsleigh—Kit’s brother. I’m sorry to have startled you.”
As big a plumper as he’d ever told, he knew, realizing he’d never have been treated to this glimpse of heaven had the reclusive Mrs. Martin sensed his presence earlier. He still couldn’t quite believe the silent woman who had toiled at his side all night and this enchanting siren were indeed one and the same.
“L-lord Beaulieu! You—you startled me. Misfit,” she scolded the dog, who hung his head, tail drooping, “why did you not warn me we had visitors?”
Misfit. Beau grinned. Now there was an apt name. If he’d had the foresight to bring a bone, the wretched animal probably would have given him the run of the cottage.
Nonetheless, the pooch had led him to The Vision and thus Beau felt compelled to defend him. “He did inspect me rather thoroughly before he let me in.”
He watched regretfully as with one hand Mrs. Martin fumbled to fasten the buttons at her collar and with the other gathered her glorious, sun-burnished hair into a knot. Though he was somewhat guilty at having startled her, he wasn’t so conscience-stricken that he felt compelled to point out the dowager’s cap for which, with sidelong glances as if she expected he might at any moment attack, she was quite obviously searching.
Instead he picked it up. “Your cap, Mrs. Martin.” With a slow smile, he held it out, just far enough to be polite but not so close that she could reach it without approaching him.
And, ah, how he wanted her to approach. After a moment, skittish as a startled doe, she did. “Thank you, my lord. I’ll take it now, if you please.”
Come get it, he almost said. Biting back the words lest he frighten her off, he simply stood, waiting.
She took the few steps that separated them, then snatched at the cap. Her hand grazed his palm as she grabbed, and for a moment, their fingers caught.
He felt the flame of contact in every nerve. And so, he realized exultantly as he watched her, did she.
Her blue eyes widened in shock, her lips once again parting slightly in surprise—an unconscious invitation. She even forgot, for a moment, to take the bonnet.
All too soon she remembered. Murmuring a disjointed thanks, she jerked it away and jammed it down on her head.
“I’ll … just gather a few supplies.” With that, she swiftly retreated into the interior of the cottage.
Leaving Beau gazing after her, amazed.
He sat down on the bench she’d just vacated to pull together his disordered thoughts. The young Mrs. Martin—she could not be more than five-and-twenty—possessed not just a pretty face, but an alluring figure. Indeed, the rush of attraction to that lush body still thrummed in his blood. An attraction that, based on her reaction to their unexpected touch, experience told him was mutual.
With his typical methodical precision, he pondered the implications of these new discoveries.
The first question posed by his now-fully-piqued curiosity was why so lovely a lady would choose to mask her beauty beneath dowager caps and ill-fitting gowns.
His second thought was of Kit—reviving a burden of worry heavy enough to extinguish the lingering embers of lust. For the immediate future all he had need of was a skillful nurse. Attraction or no, until Kit was out of danger there’d be no time to pursue other matters.
Still, that the intriguing Mrs. Martin had twice managed to distract him from his pressing anxiety was mute testament to the power of that attraction.
As he stirred restlessly, wondering how much longer it would take for her to “gather supplies,” it suddenly occurred to him that having the most capable nurse in the neighborhood take up residence at the squire’s manor would be much more convenient. Having that nurse be a lovely and discreet young widow with whom a mutual attraction had flared might, once his brother’s condition improved, afford enticing possibilities.
Despite his worry, a ghost of desire stirred at the thought and he grinned, more cheered than he’d been since he received the dire message of his brother’s injury. Kit would survive—he was in Beau’s care and he must survive—but after this present crisis he would doubtless require a long convalescence. Beau had detailed his men to wrap up the investigation in the north, and must shortly return to London to assemble his report. The imperative to resolve his present case would not permit him to linger here, but he would certainly visit frequently to check on Kit.
Beau took another deep breath of herb-scented air. Now this was a charming bower to which he’d happily return.
But first, he’d have to win over the shy Mrs. Martin, which would probably also require penetrating the puzzle of why she seemed to take such pains to remain invisible.
How fortuitous, he thought, his grin widening. He did so love solving puzzles.
He reconsidered the alarm that had crossed her face when she’d seen him watching her in the squire’s entry. Since his name and title were rather well known, she’d likely recognized who he was from the first, but in the sickroom she’d displayed no awe of his position or inclination to toady; indeed, rather the opposite. He smiled again at the memory of her stubbornness regarding Kit’s treatment and her total lack of deference as she ordered him about.
So why the mistrustful look? Perhaps she’d been raised on warnings about the subtle seducing ways of the high nobility, and saw him as such. Though he was by no means a saint, he could recall no escapades scurrilous enough to have penetrated this deep into the hinterlands. Not in recent years, at any rate, he amended.
He must demonstrate that though the wealthy Earl of Beaulieu might sit at the councils of government and move in a society many country folk deemed immoral, he was also Hugh Bradsleigh, a man like any other, who would never lead farther than a lady would willingly follow. Somewhat to his surprise, he found the notion that the lovely Mrs. Martin might be that rare individual who could appreciate him for himself alone immensely appealing.
Disarming her wariness would be quite a challenge—the one thing, he thought, spirits rising in anticipation, he loved almost as much as solving puzzles.
Chapter Three
A few moments later Mrs. Martin returned with a large satchel. The care she took that their hands not touch as he relieved her of it reinforced his conviction that she was not indifferent to him—an encouraging sign.
Once the lady realized he meant her no harm, she would doubtless be less wary. And begin allowing herself to respond to the pull he felt crackling between them.
He paused to savor the small delight of taking Mrs. Martin’s hand as he assisted her into the gig. Availing himself of this unexceptional excuse to lean close, he caught a whiff of soft perfume. Rose with a hint of lavender? Lovely, and it suited her.
How to set her at ease? he mused as he settled the satchel to one side of the seat and walked over to untie the chestnut. Questions about home and family, interspersed with teasing compliments, had usually relieved anxiety in the shier or more tongue-tied young ladies with whom he’d had occasion to converse, he recalled.
By the time he’d rounded the gig and hopped in, Mrs. Martin had repositioned the satchel between them and moved to the edge of the seat—as far from him as possible.
Suppressing a grin, he set the gig in motion. “Did you grow up in this area, Mrs. Martin?”
She slid him a sidelong glance. “No, my lord.” “It is home to your late husband’s family?” There was a minute pause. “No, my lord.” “Do you enjoy the country? Your garden is certainly lovely.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
“I must thank you, for your devoted care of my brother. We are both much in your debt.” “Not at all, my lord.”
“I must apologize, as well,” Beau persevered. “I fear I’ve not been entirely courteous. Kit and my sister are all the family I possess, and I’m very protective of them. It’s distressing to know Kit was—still is—in danger.”
“Naturally, my lord.”
Beau stifled a rising exasperation. Could the woman not string together more than three words at a time? Even the most stuttering of young females managed better. Was she really as dull as she seemed?
He felt an irrational disappointment. Idiot, he chastised himself. Just because a woman possesses a certain skill—and a voluptuous body—does not mean she owns a mind of equal caliber. Besides, discretion is a more useful quality in a bedmate than conversation.
If he managed to persuade her there—an intention this one-sided conversation was doing little to strengthen. Until he recalled that sinuous fall of mahogany silk spilling about her sides and shoulders, one copper curl resting where he would wish to touch, to taste.
Interest stirred anew. Doubtless the effort would be worth the prize. Experience taught him women valued baubles, time, attention—and marriage. All he need do is discover which combination of the first three this little brown sparrow desired, and the attraction to him she was taking such pains to suppress would win out.
For a moment he allowed himself to contemplate the gloriously satisfying interludes that might thereafter ensue. And when his brother was fully healed, when he left Merriville for good, he would, as usual, be most generous.
He frowned slightly. A generosity, it occurred to him as he recalled the necessity of tying up his own horse and the total absence of servants, of which she seemed to stand in definite need. Did she truly—she a lady of gentle birth—live entirely alone in the cottage with only that unreliable mutt to safeguard her?
A well-honed protective instinct sprang up to overlay a more base desire. He glanced at her silent figure, as far away from him on the narrow bench as she could manage without falling out of the gig altogether, and smiled, a stirring of fondness in his chest.
A mutually satisfying interlude would benefit them both. He need only persevere, gently but persuasively, until Mrs. Martin realized the truth of that herself.
Would this interminable drive never end? Laura’s neck ached from keeping her head angled to the side, as if in rapt contemplation of the country scenery through which she walked nearly every day. Would such action not have looked extremely peculiar, she’d have been tempted to jump from the gig and finish the journey on foot.
At last it seemed Lord Beaulieu had, mercifully, abandoned his attempt to engage her in conversation. Perhaps, if she were lucky, her monosyllabic answers to a nerve-racking series of personal questions had left an impression of such dullness that he would not choose to pursue her acquaintance any further.
She needn’t find his queries alarming. Most likely the earl was merely attempting to make sure that the person he’d asked to care for his brother was entirely respectable. At least she hoped so, not daring to sneak a glance at his expression to verify that theory.
Her heart still beat a rapid tattoo, but that was to be expected after Lord Beaulieu had nearly scared her witless, suddenly appearing as if conjured out of air. Whatever had possessed Misfit to allow him to enter the garden unannounced? The animal was too shy of gunfire to make a hunting dog, for which reason the genial squire allowed the hound to stay with her, but he was usually an excellent watchman, greeting any approaching interloper, man or beast, with a volley of agitated barking.
Her cheeks warmed with embarrassment as she recalled how disheveled she must have appeared to him. She’d caught a speculative gleam in his eye at first, but sprawling like a wanton as she’d been, her hair all unpinned, she supposed she’d deserved that. Fortunately she’d also been wearing one of the oldest of Aunt Mary’s gowns, possessed of no style whatever and overlarge to boot.
By the time she’d buttoned up properly and tidied her hair, that unnerving look had vanished, though she’d remained so rattled, she’d forgotten where she’d left her cap. He’d had to hand it to her, which he did politely but pointedly, as if to subtly underscore how unladylike her behavior had been.
Charleton would have been much less kind.
Then there’d been that odd rush of … fear?—when her fingers chanced to entangle his. So jolting had that touch been, she’d made sure to avoid it happening again.
To her enormous relief she spied the gateposts to Squire Everett’s manor. A few more moments and she’d be delivered from his lordship’s excruciating proximity.
They were nearly at the manor when Tom rode toward them. A single glance at his face, tears tracking down the dust of his cheeks, was enough to drive the discomfort of the earl’s hovering presence from her mind.
“Oh, Tom! He’s not—” she began.
“No. Not yet. But the doctor was sending me for you, Lord Beaulieu. He said you should s-see Kit n-now before …” Swallowing hard, Tom left the sentence unfinished.
With a muffled curse the earl pulled up the chestnut, tossed the reins to her and sprang from the gig. By the time she’d controlled the startled horse and guided him to a halt before the front entrance, the earl had vanished.
The squire’s son was weeping openly as he helped her down from the gig. “I … I’m so sorry, ma’am. I should never … How can I ever forgive myself if—”
She patted his shoulder. “You mustn’t blame yourself! If the shot that wounded him was a ricochet, it might just as well have been his own bullet that struck him as yours.”
Shaking his head against her reassurance, Tom took the chestnut’s reins and led both animals toward the barn. For a moment Laura just stood there before the entry.
Should she go in and offer what help she could? But the earl’s physician was there, and much more knowledgeable than she. If the boy were truly dying, his family and friends would not want an outsider hanging about. Perhaps she should just quietly return to her cottage.
She considered the tempting notion for a moment before rejecting it. As long as the boy lived, she must at least offer her help. Only if the earl refused that offer might she in good conscience return home.
When she entered the sickroom a few moments later she found Lord Beaulieu bending over the boy, lips moving as if in conversation with his brother, hands clasping Kit’s limp arm. Though the earl seemed oblivious to her arrival, the doctor spied her immediately and walked over.
“There’s an infection beginning in his lungs, just as we feared. I’ve given him syrup of poppy, but weak as he is, I daren’t bleed him. If you’ve aught of remedies to try, I should be grateful of them.”
Laura scanned her memory for the treatments Aunt Mary had used when one of the squire’s tenants had contracted an inflammation of the lungs the winter previous. “We might set a pot of mint steeped in boiling water by his bedside,” she whispered. “The vapor seems to make breathing easier. And wrap his neck with flannel soaked in camphor.”
The doctor considered a moment. “It canna hurt. An herbalist had the teaching of you, the squire said? There’s much they use that works, though we’re not knowing the whys and wherefores. Let’s try it, for God’s truth, I’ve done all I can for the laddie.”
After that she lost track of time. When she finally slipped from the room to find the necessary, night had fallen. On her way back the squire intercepted her, begging her to let him send Maggie to the cottage for her things so that she might remain at the hall to tend the patient. Taken aback, she fumbled for an answer.
“Both Lord Beaulieu and Dr. MacDonovan asked that I add their requests to my own,” he said. “The doctor admires your skill, and his lordship wishes every experienced hand available be put to his brother’s care.”
Though logically she knew if she were to be of continuing assistance it made much more sense for her to stay at the hall, still she resisted the notion of quitting even briefly the cottage that meant safety and comfort. A stirring at the depths of her being still whispered danger.
Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself crossly. The earl was fully occupied with his brother, whose survival remained in grave doubt. He had neither time nor interest to waste on his brother’s nurse.
“You will stay, won’t you, Mrs. Martin?”
Since refusing so sensible a request would appear both uncharitable and extremely odd, despite her forebodings Laura had little choice. “Of course, it would be much more convenient for me to remain. If my being here will not be an imposition on you or Lady Winters?”
“It will be a blessing,” the squire returned with a sigh. “My sister is in a state, what with sickness and more noble visitors about, and I’ve all I can do to keep the house running. ‘Twould be a great comfort to me to know you were watching over the boy.”
“I must stay, then.” She made herself smile. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
He nodded and pressed her hand before releasing it. And so she returned to the sickroom, her concern over her patient’s condition underlined by the disquieting knowledge that for the indefinite future she would be residing under the same roof as the unsettling Earl of Beaulieu.
Just after dawn a week later Laura roused herself from a light doze. She glanced up quickly and was reassured to find her patient still sleeping deeply, brow free of perspiration and color pale but natural.
Another quick glance confirmed that the earl also slept, his tall form curled on a pallet beside his brother’s bed where he’d had a cot installed at the start of the crisis.
Though Lord Beaulieu had helped as much as possible, the responsibility for Kit’s care had still fallen primarily on Dr. MacDonovan and herself. She’d endured an exhausting and anxiety-ridden blur of time while Kit Bradsleigh teetered on the edge between living and dying, too preoccupied with nursing him to worry about the elder brother who seldom stirred from the boy’s side.
Last evening, the lad’s temperature had spiked and then, for the first time since the inflammation began, dropped to normal. After having hovered for days in a restless, semiconscious haze of pain and fever, Kit woke up clear-eyed, keen-witted—and ravenous.
Laura sent for as much chicken broth as she gauged her patient could tolerate, and Dr. MacDonovan. The physician, who’d been eating a late dinner with the earl, came at once, Kit’s brother on his heels. After a swift examination, to everyone’s great relief the doctor declared that, though Kit was still very weak and would need a long period of rest to fully recover, his lungs were clearing and he was probably out of danger.
The squire went off immediately to fetch a bottle of his best claret while Dr. MacDonovan laughingly admonished Kit, who demanded a glass of his own. As thrilled and relieved as the others, Laura uttered a quick prayer of thanks. And then shooed the men out, telling them that since her patient needed rest and their well-deserved celebration would likely be lengthy, they should take their bottle in the salon and she would keep watch alone. Abjuring her as a downy, kindhearted lass, Dr. MacDonovan shook her hand heartily and ushered the earl out.
She heard Lord Beaulieu come back in after midnight and gave him a nod of reassurance as he silently approached his brother’s bed. He took Kit’s fingers and held them a moment, as if to verify that the fever had really left, then looked back at her with a tired smile. “Thank you,” he whispered, and took up his post on the cot.
The earl’s valet would see to Kit’s needs when he woke, and both the doctor and Lord Beaulieu would keep the boy occupied during the day. Her work here would soon be done—perhaps for good, as Lady Elspeth, sister to Kit and his lordship, was expected soon.
She could return to the safety of her cottage before the household reverted to a normal routine—and the earl had leisure to become curious about his brother’s nurse.
She paused a moment by the doorway. In the hazy pastel light of dawn, the earl’s stern features were relaxed, his handsome face more approachable. She felt again that inexplicable pull, as if his commanding personality called out to her even in sleep. A tiny sigh escaped her.
If events had not transpired as they had, she might risk lingering here, responding to the wordless, urgent imperative that somehow drew her to this man. And then shook her head at her own foolishness.
If events had not transpired as they had, she would never have landed in this remote rural corner of England.
Fatigue must be making her whimsical. Straightening her weary shoulders, Laura slipped from the room.
Two paces down the hallway, a touch to her back made her jump.
“Don’t be alarmed, Mrs. Martin!”
She turned to see the earl behind her. “My lord?”
“I’ve not had the opportunity before, with you so occupied tending Kit, but I didn’t want another day to go by without thanking you for your efforts. Though at times I may have appeared … less than appreciative—” he gave her a rueful grin “—I want you to know mere words cannot convey the depth of my gratitude.”
She felt a flush of pleasure at his praise even as she set about denying it. “Not at all, my lord. I did only what any person trained in the healing arts would have.”
“You’ve done a great deal more, as we both know. Left the familiar comfort of your own home, devoted nearly every waking hour and worked yourself nigh to exhaustion in Kit’s care. Indeed, the squire’s since told me were it not for your prompt and skillful action immediately after his wounding, Kit would never have survived the journey back to the hall. And before you deny it, that assessment was confirmed by Dr. MacDonovan himself.”
