By Love Unveiled Read Online Free PDF Page B

baronet.
    Yet she regarded the peerage differently from some. Mother had opened her eyes to the hardships of the common people, had taught her to treat them as she’d treat anyone else. That’s why Father had been reluctant to be at court. Although his sympathies had always been with the Royalists, he’d been almost content under Cromwell. He’d begun to think it might not be so terrible to have a government ruled by all the people, not just a few.
    Until Cromwell had become a tyrant. And now the court had returned—the idle noblemen led by a debauched king. The earl might seem different, but at heart he was like all the other Cavaliers. He saw the world through jaundiced eyes.
    With angry motions, she ripped a sheet into strips for bandages, still caught up in her feelings of resentment toward him and all his ilk.
    “Why do I get the feeling you wish it were me you were ripping into little bits?” he asked after a moment.
    “Don’t be absurd, my lord. I merely need something to bind your leg.”
    “You’ve enough bandages there to bind both legs, if I’m not mistaken.”
    She stopped to look down at the great pile of linen she’d torn. “I suppose I have,” she said ruefully.
    “Perhaps you should wound me in my other leg,” he drawled. “You seem more than eager to do so.”
    How he could joke when his wound must hurt him terribly, she couldn’t imagine. Perhaps it distracted him from the pain.
    She matched his light tone. “Then I could try your old servant’s remedy on the other leg, too.”
    “Not unless you use those bandages to tie me to the bed,” he said acidly. “I shall tell him upon pain of death that he is not to try his skill at doctoring on any tenant of mine.”
    Just as she wondered why the man she’d just been making into a villain should concern himself with his tenants, William returned with the ointment.
    “That aunt of yours was a mite troublesome,” he said as he handed it to her.
    That stilled Marianne’s heart. “My aunt? How did you come across her ?”
    “She was at the apothecary’s, carping to that poorservant about her missing niece. I suppose she hoped to find you there.”
    Releasing a pent-up breath, Marianne spread the salve liberally over the earl’s sewn wound.
    “She gave me a tongue-lashing, she did,” William went on. “Said you weren’t the town’s personal servant and you needed rest like everyone else. Then she scolded me for not telling her where you were. I told her you were safe. And she said I was to remember you’re an innocent and not to lay a finger on you.”
    That last statement seemed to pique the earl’s interest, for his gaze shot to Marianne’s mask.
    “My aunt is overly cautious.” She wrapped a bandage around the earl’s thigh. “Pay her no mind.”
    “ ’Tis hard to ignore a woman as sharp-tongued as your aunt.” William settled himself in a chair beside the earl’s bed. “Especially one so pretty.”
    “I thought you liked your women blond and buxom?” Lord Falkham quipped.
    Marianne glared at them both. “If you gentlemen would stop discussing my aunt as if she were a tavern wench, I could instruct William on how to care for the wound.”
    A silence fell on the room.
    “Why won’t you be returning to change the dressing?” Lord Falkham asked, his face formidably dark.
    Fear whispered through her. “I’m certain your servant can change your bandages quite well on his own.”
    The earl caught her hand as she finished tying off the bandage. “I’d rather you did it yourself.”
    When she tried to pull free, his hold tightened.
    “Please, my lord,” she said, her heart pounding, “there’s no need for it. I’ve others to tend.”
    “William is unfamiliar with doctoring and might worsen the wound.” But he said the words almost as an afterthought, for he’d taken a sudden keen interest in her hand.
    “I’m certain he can follow my instructions.”
    “Perhaps.” The earl snatched her other hand, which