Her Mystery Duke Read Online Free PDF Page A

last. It had once been so easy.
What had happened?
    Deep groans echoed.
    She jerked around and looked to the bed. The large form
under her covers startled her. Oh yes, the gentleman!
    He would need something to drink. She took the pot, heated
more water and steeped some elderberry tea. Then she filled a cup, grabbed the
spoon, and hurried back to him. Settled on the bedside, she spooned small
amounts between his lips. Aided his natural functions with the chamber pot.
She’d played nurse many times for Papa. There was a resignation about the act.
An acceptance that calmed her. It took her mind off the ever-present ache. The
emptiness within her. The sense of having been denied and never being given any
recompense. It was pure self-pity and enough to send a spiral of shame through
her any time she admitted the true source of that inner aching. That pervasive
frustration.
    She couldn’t help it. She hurt inside, every moment of every
day and every night.
    She shook herself. He would need gruel. She’d better make
some.
    Like an automaton, she worked. Bathing his body until it
cooled, feeding him sips of tea and watered gruel, and snatching bits of rest
in between the times his restiveness and ravings wouldn’t allow it. He
developed a rasping, dry, unproductive cough that alarmed her more than
anything.
    But by the morning of the third day, his body felt markedly
cooler whilst she bathed it. Exhausted and dreamy minded, she found her strokes
growing slower, lingering, as her fingers kept straying from the edges of the
cloth to feather over his smooth, slightly moist skin.
    The chiseled angles of his face, shadowed with a thick
growth of black beard, caught her eye once again.
      He opened his eyes. Wondrous,
clear pools of emerald, framed by thick, dark lashes, gazed at her with
lucidity.
    Her heart skipped a beat. Then, hit by the beauty of those
eyes, she sucked in her breath.
    He touched her hand. “Who are you, darling?”
    “Jeanne.” Goodness, her voice sounded almost as raspy as
his.
    The barest hint of a smile flitted across his dry, pale
lips. “Jeannie.”
    “Jeanne.” She repeated firmly. Papa had called her Jeannie,
had screamed the name in his sleep, roared the name in rage. She sagged at the
thought.
    “Jeanne.” Her name spoken in his voice sent tingling warmth
through her insides, chasing away bad memories.
    She stared at him, a little bemused. She knew next to
nothing about him, and yet she felt closer to him at this moment than she’d
been to anyone in her whole life, except Papa.
    He enveloped her hand with his. As she stared into his
compelling eyes, it grew harder to think clearly. She glanced away and studied
the lines of a crack in the plastered wall.
    “And what is your name?” Perhaps she should have said “sir”
but seeing as he was naked in her bed and she had already touched every inch of
his body, she didn’t.
    “David…” His voice faded. Wheezing resumed.
    She glanced at him again. His eyes were closed and his mouth
was open.
    The warm, soaring energy building in her at his unexpected
lucidness, at the sound of his voice, at his touch, suddenly disappeared and
she was left weakened.
    Her gaze drifted towards the rise and fall of his muscled
chest. The strong, perfect lines of his nakedness. Her fatigue eased, replaced
by a baser type of energy than a moment before. She was aware her mouth hung
open. She was aware that she was ogling a helpless, unconscious man. But her
greater worry was fighting the urge to run her hand down that expanse of fine
dark hair and hard planes. The compulsion to watch his now flaccid, and rather
sizable shaft, swell into throbbing life.
    Oh, good heavens, she wasn’t about to take advantage of a
helpless gentleman, just to humor her fancy. Yet how novel to be the one in
control. Completely in control.
    She’d always been the one desperate for a gentleman’s money.
Willing to do anything he wanted to get what she needed for herself. For Papa.
    She