A Dangerous Courtship Read Online Free PDF

lacing tightly around their bases.
    "Oh, my," Veronica whispered. "It—it is beautiful. Stunning."
    "Aye," he agreed.
    "When I first saw this place, it never occurred to me that it could house anything so—so magical—so lovely as this."
    "Aye," he agreed again.
    Something in his tone caused Veronica to turn her gaze to him.
    She was quite startled to find the man staring at her, transfixed—as though he'd been doing the very same the entire time she'd been talking about the view.
    A deep heat suffused Veronica.
    If he noticed, he thankfully made no comment.
    "If you'll wait here, my lady, I've something for that wound."
    "Oh, y-yes... my injury." Veronica glanced down at her habit—anything but look at him!—and spied a deep stain of red on her skirts. "Yes, of course I'll wait, sir. But where—"
    She felt a shift of movement and looked up without finishing her sentence.
    He was already gone.
    Veronica leaned forward on the bench, peering into the Stygian darkness of the earthen passageway he'd obviously just entered.
    She frowned, then tamped down a shudder of trepidation. What was he about?
    He returned a length of time later, carrying a lit lantern in one fist and a bottle of spirits and what looked to be bandages in the other. The glow of his lamp cast crazed shadows on what was left of the building's walls.
    Veronica stiffened, easing back on the stone.
    "Do not say you dwell in that cave, sir."
    He shook his head.
    "It is just a passageway, to another area of Fountains—her cellars and what were once prisons, to be exact."
    Veronica relaxed somewhat.
    He knelt before her, setting down the lamp, bottle and bandages. His eyes on a direct level with hers, and his face eerily lit from the lantern below, he said plainly, "It isn't the cave where I dwell, my lady, but the prisons. I find them very roomy."
    Veronica forced down a gasp. "Surely you jest, sir. No one in their right mind would... what I mean to say is, why would anyone ... oh, blast. Tell me, sir, are you a criminal or not?" she demanded.
    "I assure you, I am no criminal."
    "Are you on the run, then? Perhaps hiding from someone?"
    Again, he answered in the negative, though this time not as swiftly or as surely as before.
    "Earlier, when my coachman fired his gun, you—you thought that shot was for you, didn't you?" Veronica asked, deciding she might just as well plunge ahead. After all, she and this stranger had shared kisses and touches. What were a few personal questions compared to that? "You even said you'd been 'found out' What did you mean by that, sir?"
    "Exactly what I said. One can never be too careful these days, no matter where one dwells."
    Veronica blew out a breath of agitation. "I vow, sir, you are being deliberately vague."
    He arched one brow at her. "Am I? Forgive me." Even as he spoke, he lifted her left leg.
    Veronica winced, not realizing how much her injury had pained her until now—as he forced her to straighten her leg out.
    "Are you all right?" he asked.
    Veronica nodded. "Yes, yes. I just... I am afraid to have a look at it, sir, for fear, as you said earlier, it—it may need a stitch. Or two." She prayed that wouldn't be the way of it.
    "I have a lamp now. I'll be able to see the damage fully." With his left hand cradling her calf, he skimmed up the skirts of her habit with his right hand, pushing the material up past her thigh.
    Veronica squeezed her eyes shut tight. "Well?" she murmured, thoroughly drowning in the throes of embarrassment and shame as he viewed her uncovered leg. "Is it terribly bad, sir?"
    "Not as terrible as I had at first thought."
    "It needs no stitch, then?"
    "Not a one, my lady. 'Tis a nasty scrape, but not the gouge I'd feared."
    Veronica opened her eyes. "Thank goodness."
    "It will need to be cleaned though. And wrapped."
    She looked down at him just in time to see him lift the bottle he'd brought. Brandy. A very old bottle, to boot. And what she'd thought to be a bundle of bandages weren't bandages