chased away his drowsiness until he remembered the squire had called Mrs. Martin a “lady,” widow to a military man. An officer, apparently, since his host would hardly extend such marked gallantries to an inferior. Beau smiled, amused to discover the middle-aged squire apparently courting the nondescript nurse, and curious to watch her response.
“You honor me,” said the lady in question as she gently but firmly drew back her hand.
Coy? Beau wondered. Or just not interested?
Then the nurse glanced up. Illumined as she was by the sunshine spilling into the hall, for the first time he got a clear look at her face—her young, pretty face.
In the same instant she saw him watching her. An expression almost of—alarm crossed her lovely features and she swiftly lowered her head, once again concealing her countenance behind a curtain of cap lace. What remark she made to the squire and whether or not she availed herself of the carriage, he did not hear. Before he could move his stunned lips into the speech of gratitude he’d intended to deliver, she curtsied once more and slipped out.
By the time the squire joined him on the landing his foggy brain had resumed functioning. Mumbling something resembling an apology as the man escorted him to his chamber, he let his mind play over the interesting discovery that the skillful Mrs. Martin was not only a lady, but a rather young one at that.
He recalled the brevity of her speech, even with the squire, whom she apparently knew well, and the way she skittered off when she found him watching her. More curious still. Why, he wondered as he sank thankfully into the soft feather bed, would such an eminently marriageable widow be so very retiring?
Having the widow tend his brother would give Beau the opportunity to observe this odd conundrum more closely. Which would be a blessing, for as his brother’s recovery—and Kit simply must recover—was likely to be lengthy, Beau would need something to distract him from worry. Luckily, nothing intrigued him as much as a riddle.
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 dirt-brown 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