A Wicked Pursuit Read Online Free PDF Page B

what it would be like to be given such a ring by such a gentleman. Julia would know, of course; she herself wouldn’t.
    At last she closed the box and slipped it back into her pocket, intending to give it to the earl’s servant as soon as she could. She wasn’t sure she’d sleep now, not after seeing the ring, but soon the exhaustion claimed her, and she fell soundly, deeply asleep.
    It was the sound of a carriage in the drive below her room that woke Gus. Disoriented by the unfamiliar hour, she didn’t wake easily, squinting at the late-afternoon sun that slanted in through the front window.
    Late afternoon: Oh, saints deliver her, she’d slept through the entire day! Swiftly she slid from the bed and hurried to the window. The carriage she’d heard on the gravel drive belonged to Dr. Leslie, and it was now heading for the front gate. If he was leaving, then the London surgeon must be here now with the earl—or he might already have finished his consultation and be gone as well. Why hadn’t Papa remembered to send someone to wake her?
    “Mary! Mary! ” she called impatiently, and the maid appeared. “Where is that fresh petticoat you promised? I must go down to his lordship’s room at once. Hurry, Mary, hurry, else I’ll go down without it!”
    She fidgeted while Mary helped her into a clean petticoat of dark red silk, then smoothed her neckerchief and repinned her blue woolen bodice for her. Ten years older than Gus, Mary had been her lady’s maid since Gus had been a young girl, and because of it often took more well-intentioned freedom than was customary—freedom that Gus usually did not mind.
    But not now, not when she must return to the earl. “I’m not going to be presented to the queen, Mary,” she said. “I needn’t be perfect.”
    “So long as you’re my lady, it’s my duty to turn you out as best I can,” Mary insisted, tucking stray strands of Gus’s hair back beneath her cap. “Forgive me, Miss Augusta, but you worry that you can’t compare to Miss Wetherby, yet much of that’s your own doing, with not taking care to look your best.”
    Over Mary’s shoulder, Gus caught her reflection in the looking glass on her dressing table. She had inherited the most humble characteristics from each of her parents: her father’s round face and dusty brown hair, her mother’s freckles and slight stature. There was nothing really wrong with her appearance, but there was also nothing to it that made her memorable, either, and all of Mary’s fussing wasn’t going to change that.
    “I must go, Mary,” she said, slipping free of the maid’s ministrations. “Everything’s well enough as it is.”
    She hurried back to Lord Hargreave’s bedchamber. She might not be beautiful, but she was determined to be useful, and she briskly marched past the footman holding the door for her.
    Nothing much had changed since she’d left earlier. The room remained full of shadows, with the exception of a single candlestick being held close to the bed by his lordship’s servant Tewkes. The earl continued to be still and pale in the bed, with her father standing solemnly to one side, his hands clasped behind his waist.
    At the foot of the bed, putting his instruments back into a leather case, was a tall, angular gentleman in an impressive wig and a costly black suit, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, whom she guessed must be the surgeon from London. Beside him Mrs. Patton held a basin with the soiled dressings that the surgeon had evidently just changed. He turned as Gus entered, and quickly Papa stepped forward to introduce her.
    “My dear, this is Sir Randolph Peterson, here from London to look after Lord Hargreave, as the earl requested,” he said, unable to keep back his excitement even in a low voice. “Sir Randolph, my daughter, Miss Augusta.”
    “Good day, Sir Randolph, and welcome to Wetherby,” Gus said, automatically falling into her customary role as hostess. “Though I wish the circumstances