A Most Unconventional Courtship. Louise Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ cold, disdainful look off her face with his passion.

      Which was impossible to contemplate. Chance had a strict code when dealing with women: professionals or experienced society ladies only, and this young widow with her children was quite obviously neither.

      ‘Breakfast is ready.’ It was little Dora, working away in the far reaches of the room behind him where he could not see. Chance tried again to twist round and was brought up short by the pain in his hip.

      ‘Is anything broken?’He kept the anxiety out of his voice, but it struck cold in his belly. What were the doctors like on this island? How likely was he to end up with a limp for life, or something worse?

      ‘Nothing.’ She turned away with a swish of black skirts that gave him a glimpse of petticoats and of white stockings over the cuffs of the short leather boots. The costume was exotic and alluring, yet at the same time practical.

      There was a brisk discussion in Greek going on. He gave up trying to follow it and made himself relax back against the hard pillow. Then the boy reappeared, dragging a screen, which he arranged around the couch. ‘This is mine, but you can borrow it,’ he announced importantly, stomping off, only to reappear with a bowl of water, towel and soap, which he set down on a chair by Chance. ‘You must wash your face and hands before breakfast. Oh, yes, I almost forgot.’ He thrust an earthenware vessel with a cloth over it into Chance’s hands and grinned. ‘You are to push it under the couch when you have finished with it.’

      So, her anger with him did not extend to humiliating him by making him ask about basic needs. That was something to be thankful for. Flipping back the blanket, Chance made the discovery that perhaps he was not so grateful after all. The shirt he was wearing was not his. All his own clothes had gone, down to, and including, his drawers, and someone had bandaged his hip very professionally. Somehow he doubted that this was Demetri’s work.

      He made himself decent again and waited, expecting the boy to come back with some food. Instead, Alessa pushed aside the screen and put down a beaker and plate on the chair, shifting the basin on to the floor.

      ‘Did you undress me and bandage my wounds?’

      ‘Yes.’ She smiled, laughter glimmering in her eyes. He must be showing his embarrassment. How damnably unsophisticated. ‘Mrs Street, my neighbour, helped me. An unconscious man is not easy to handle.’

      I will wager I was not—and aren’t you finding this amusing? ‘Thank you, Kyria Alessa. You must allow me to recompense you for your trouble,’ he said smoothly. He saw from the flash of her eyes that he had succeeded in angering her. She regained her poise with the agility of a cat.

      ‘That is not necessary. Greeks regard it as a sacred duty to care for strangers.’ She stood there calmly, her hands with their long, slender fingers folded demurely across the front of her apron.

      ‘But then…you are not Greek, are you?’

      Again, she dealt with the direct question by ignoring it. ‘You should tell me your name so Demetri can tell Mr Harrison where you are.’

      ‘Harrison?’ The name was vaguely familiar, then he remembered. The events of the previous twenty-four hours were beginning to come back in hazy detail. ‘Oh, yes, Sir Thomas’s secretary. How do you know him?’

      ‘I know everyone at the Residency,’ she replied, without explanation. ‘Your name, sir? Or have you forgotten it?’

      ‘Benedict Casper Chancellor. My friends call me Chance.’

      Alessa ignored the implied invitation. ‘And your title?’

      ‘What makes you think I have one?’ And what makes her ask it as though she is suggesting I have a social disease?

      ‘Your clothes, your style, the way you move. You have money, you have been educated in these things. You have been bred to it in a way that simply shouts English aristocrat.’

      ‘Shouts?’ He was affronted, then amused, despite himself, at his own reaction.

      ‘I should have said whispers. Shouting would, of course, be ungentlemanly and vulgar. So unEnglish,’ she corrected herself with spurious meekness ‘Am I right?’

      ‘I am the Earl of Blakeney.’

      ‘Well, my lord, I suggest you eat your breakfast and then rest. Demetri will ask Mr Harrison to send a carrying chair for you this afternoon.’

      ‘I can leave on my own two feet just as soon as I have eaten and got dressed, I thank you.’

      ‘You can try to see if you can stand, let alone walk, of course,’ Alessa conceded with infuriating politeness. ‘And if you can, you can hobble through the streets in satin knee breeches, a sergeant at arm’s third-best shirt and no stockings and neckcloth. But I imagine Sir Thomas will have something to say about the impression of their English masters that would create with the local populace.’ She picked up the washing bowl and tidied the screen away. ‘I will be back when I have taken Dora to the nuns.’

      There was a skirmish over a missing slate pencil, the whereabouts of Demetri’s jacket, the finding of Dora’s bag, and then the room was silent. The absence of all that vibrancy left an almost tangible gap.

      Chance tossed back the blanket again, reached out to grip the back of the chair, and tried to get up. The effort brought the sweat out on his brow and a stream of highly coloured language from his lips. He hauled himself to his feet and found he could hop, very painfully. But that little witch was quite right; he could not get back to the Residency, nor to the Old Fort, under his own power.

      He could see his evening suit neatly arrayed on a chair, the shoes tucked underneath. Sweating and swearing, he hopped across the room in search of his stockings, using the sparse pieces of furniture as crutches. She was right about that as well—he might get away with this worn old shirt, but he would be a laughing stock with bare legs under satin knee breeches.

      Wooden pails were ranked against the wall, each full of water and white cloth. He fished in one, hoping to find his stockings; he could dry them at the fire. The garment he came up with was unidentifiable, but certainly not his. He hastily dropped the confection of fine lawn and thread-lace back into the water and fished in the next pail, coming up with a delightful chemise. It reminded him forcibly of a garment he had seen on his last mistress the night he had said goodbye to her.

      Now there was a proper woman, he thought wistfully. Feminine, attentive, sweetly yielding to his every desire, and flatteringly regretful to be paid off before he set out on his Mediterranean journey. Why, then, he brooded as he straightened up painfully and scanned the rest of the room with narrowed eyes, why did this one arouse him far more than the very explicit memory of Jenny did?

      The drip of cold water on his bare foot reminded him that he was standing, as near naked as made no difference, clutching intimate feminine apparel, in the middle of some Corfiot tenement and at the mercy of an icy and mysterious widow who might be back at any moment. Chance dropped the chemise into the pail and groped his way back to his bed. It chafed to admit it, but she was probably correct—he should rest if he wanted to escape from this nightmare.

      Alessa climbed the stairs, noting gratefully that Kate had already been and scrubbed the bloodstains off the whitened wood. They took it in turns to look after the communal areas, long resigned to the feckless family on the ground floor ignoring their own obligations.

      There СКАЧАТЬ