A Lover's Kiss. Margaret Moore

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СКАЧАТЬ fast asleep, sat on a stool with her head propped against the wall. Her hair was in a loose braid, with little wisps that bordered her smooth, pale cheeks. Her modest, plain dress with a high neck was made of cheap green muslin. Her features were nothing remarkable, although her lips were full and soft, and her nose rather fine.

      She didn’t look familiar, yet there was something about her that danced at the edge of his mind, like a whisper he couldn’t quite hear. Whatever it was, though, he didn’t intend to linger here to find out.

      He put his hands on the edge of the narrow bed, ready to stand, when the young woman suddenly stretched like a cat after a long nap in the summer’s sun. Her light brown eyes opened and she smiled at him as if they’d just made love.

      That was disconcerting. Not unpleasant, but definitely disconcerting.

      Then she spoke. “Oh, monsieur, you are awake!”

      French.

      She spoke French. Instantly, he was on his guard, every sense alert. “Who are you and what am I doing here?” he demanded in English.

      The arched brows of the young woman contracted. “You are English?” she answered in that language.

      “Obviously. Who are you and what am I doing here?” he repeated.

      She got to her feet and met his suspicious regard with a wounded air. “I am Juliette Bergerine, and it was I who saved your life.”

      How could one lone young woman have saved his life—and why would she?

      He was well-known in London. Indeed, he was famous. Perhaps she hoped for a reward.

      He rose unsteadily, the pain in his side searing, his head aching more. “Do you know who I am?”

      Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you?”

      “Of course I do. I am Sir Douglas Drury, barrister, of Lincoln’s Inn.”

      “I am the woman who threw the potatoes.”

      Potatoes? “What the deuce are you talking about?”

      “I threw my potatoes at the men attacking you to make them run away. And they did.”

      Was that what he’d been trying to recall? “How did I come to be in this room?”

      “I brought you.”

      “By yourself?”

      Anger kindled in her brown eyes. “Is this the thanks I am to get for helping you? To be questioned and everything I say treated like a lie? I begin to think I should have left you in the alley!”

      Trust a Frenchwoman to overreact. “Naturally I’m grateful you came to my aid.”

      “You do not sound the least bit grateful!”

      His jaw clenched before he replied, “No doubt you would prefer me to grovel.”

      “I would prefer to be treated with respect. I may be poor, Sir Douglas Drury, barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, but I am not a worm!”

      As her eyes shone with passionate fury and her breasts rose and fell beneath her cheap gown, and those little wisps of hair brushed against her flushed cheeks, he was very well aware that she was not a worm.

      She marched to the door and wrenched it open. “Since you seem well enough to walk, go!”

      He stepped forward, determined to do just that, but the room began to tilt and turn as if on some kind of wobbly axis.

      “Did you not hear me? I said go!” she indignantly repeated.

      “I can’t,” he muttered as he backed up and felt for the bed, then sat heavily. “Send for a doctor.”

      “I am not your servant, either!”

      God save him from Frenchwomen and their overwrought melodrama! “I would gladly go and happily see the last of you, but unfortunately for us both, I can’t. I must be more badly injured than I thought.”

      She lowered her arm. “I have no money for a doctor.”

      Drury felt his coat. His wallet was gone. Perhaps she’d taken it. If she had, she would surely not admit it. But then why would she have brought him here? “You must tell the doctor you have come on behalf of Sir Douglas Drury. He will be paid when I return to my chambers.”

      “You expect him to believe me? I am simply to tell him I come on behalf on Sir Douglas Drury, and he will do as I say? Are you known for getting attacked in this part of London?”

      Damn the woman. “No, I am not.”

      He could send for his servant, but Mr. Edgar would have to hire a carriage from a livery stable, and that would take time.

      Buggy would come at once, no questions asked. Thank God his friend was in London—although he wouldn’t be at home on this day of the week. He would be at the weekly open house held by the president of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.

      “Go to 32 Soho Square, to the home of Sir Joseph Banks, and ask for Lord Bromwell. Tell him I need his help.”

      The young woman crossed her slender arms. “Oh, I am to go to a house in Soho Square and ask for a lord, and if he comes to the door and listens to me, he will do as I say?”

      “He will if you tell him Sir Douglas Drury has sent you. Or would you rather I stay here until I’ve recovered?”

      She ruminated a moment. “Am I to walk?”

      That was a problem easily remedied. “If you take a hackney, Lord Bromwell will pay the driver.”

      “You seem very free with your friend’s money,” she noted with a raised and skeptical brow.

      “He will pay,” Drury reiterated, his head beginning to throb and his patience to wear out. “You have my word.”

      She let her breath out slowly. “Very well, I will go.”

      She went to a small chest, threw open the lid and bent down to take out a straw Coburg bonnet tastefully decorated with cheap ribbon and false flowers, the effect charming in spite of the inexpensive materials.

      As she tied the ribbon beneath her chin with deft, swift fingers, a concerned expression came to her face now prettily framed. “I am to leave you here alone?”

      Drury’s crooked fingers gripped the edge of the bed as he regarded her with what his friend the Honorable Brixton Smythe-Medway called his “death stare.” “I assure you, Miss Bergerine, that even if I were a thief, there is not a single thing here I would care to steal.”

      She met his cold glare with one of her own. “That is not what troubled me, Sir Douglas Drury. I do not like leaving an injured man all alone, even if he is an ungrateful, arrogant pig. But never mind. I will do as you ask.”

      Drury felt a moment’s shame. But only for a moment, because even if she had helped him, she СКАЧАТЬ