The doctor was furious at being disturbed before dawn. “There’s nothing I can do for Jasper. He’s a hopeless drunk and cannot pay a physician. Go to Mrs. Green and she’ll give you something for the—”
He broke off as Durward’s purse landed on the table beside him with a loud chink.
“And,” Durward said unpleasantly. “I will be back for it should your patient die.” He handed the doctor his hat and bundled him from the house.
CARINA WASN’T SUREwhen it was she fell into exhausted sleep, slumped in a chair by her father’s side. But when she woke with a start in her own bed, disoriented and anxious, the old mantel clock told her it was after seven o’clock.
In panic, she threw off the bedclothes and stumbled through to her father’s room. He appeared to be sleeping peacefully,though she felt his forehead with some trepidation. His skin felt blessedly cool and dry.
Weak tears started to her eyes, and she hastily blinked them away. The empty chair on the other side of the bed, which Durward had brought in the previous evening, was empty.
Relief turned suddenly to desolation. If it was seven, his ship had sailed two hours ago, and she hadn’t even been awake to say goodbye. She couldn’t remember going to bed. She blinked down at her old, crumpled gown. She would never have gone to bed fully dressed!
Her whole body flamed for Durward must have carried her to bed before he left.
Slowly, she walked around to the chair in which he had shared her vigil over her father, and sank into it, as if to absorb the very last of his presence. Embarrassment burned, and yet there was warmth there too. He had helped Papa. Helpedher. There was hope. Not just for her and her father but for him. For the young man’s desperate, inexplicable hurtle toward his own self destruction.
“Find your peace,” she whispered, “and your happiness, wherever it leads you. You deserve it.”
And perhaps she and Papa did too.
Going back to her own room, she washed in the remaining cold water and put on her second-best gown to give her time to launder the old one. Then she brushed and put up her hair. And realized he must have removed the pins last night, for she had wakened with her hair loose and no pins upon the pillow.
She blushed all over again, imagining those long, aristocratic fingers in her hair, intimate and deft. Strong, too, by the way he handled his horses. How had she not wakened to his touch? To being in his arms...
Imbecile. How like me to have fallen for a handsome face only once he has gone!Her lips trembled into a rueful smile,laughing at herself, because that was easier than missing a man she had barely known.
She marched down to the kitchen, then raked out and relit the cooking fire. She was scrubbing the kitchen table when the back door opened without warning and Lord Durward walked in with a basket full of food.
The brush fell out of her hand with a clatter.
Chapter Five
“Sorry,” Lord Durward said cheerfully. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Not gone. Not gone...She swallowed.
He said, “I hoped you would sleep, so I left the back door unlocked.”
“You went to the market,” she said stupidly.Not gone.
“Just breakfast,” he said deprecatingly. “I’ll put it in the larder, shall I?”
Not gone. “What happened? Did your ship not sail as planned?”
“Sailed without me,” he said from the larder. He didn’t sound remotely upset by the fact.
“But what will you do? Is there another ship? Can you obtain a refund from the company?”
“No idea,” he said, striding out of the larder and filling her suddenly too small kitchen with his large, young, devastatingly male presence.
Dear God. She had always acknowledged his attraction, right from the moment she’d told him to bugger off, and his eyes had danced with laughter rather than outrage. But now, for some reason, the feeling rushed upon her in a welter of heated confusion, gratitude, and anguish.
She hung on desperately to the important part of all this. “But what if they come for you?”
“I’ll have warning,” he said comfortably.
“You missed it because of us. I’m so sorry.”
