Love on a Midsummer Night (Shakespeare in Love #2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

control his anger so that it would not control him. A cool head in the midst of fury had saved his life more than once in Belgium, in Italy, in Spain. But now he stood in his own library, fighting his temper as if he were a boy again.
    Arabella looked frail standing before his fireplace, almost as if she might faint. No matter his own emotions, he was not a man who could watch a woman suffer and do nothing. He took his temper in hand, making certain that the black well of his rage was closed behind its wall of stone before he crossed the room to her and steeled himself, taking her arm gently.
    Arabella jumped at his touch, and he knew that she had taken no lover. There had been talk at White’s in the last few days of her wanton wildness, that a depth of fire was hidden beneath her widow’s weeds.
    Pembroke knew women well, and this was a woman who had been touched very little in the last ten years, and then not with tenderness or with passion. At least no touch had kindled passion in her. She was brittle, dried up, as if she might break between his hands.
    Pembroke felt his heart bleed at the loss of her pliant sweetness, a sweetness that had no doubt been killed by the callous indifference of her husband. He pushed his pity aside. Whatever her husband had been, however the old duke had treated her, she had chosen him.
    Arabella relaxed under his hand, and he felt as if he had been given a great gift: her trust. She moved obediently with him as he drew her toward the armchair next to the fire. Her small hands twisted together in their cotton gloves. He pressed her hands with both of his own, chafing them as if to warm them, gently so as not to disturb her bandage.
    Startled, she met his eyes again, and he thought he saw a glimmer of the girl he once had known peek out at him from behind the veil of the past. He knew that girl was an illusion, but still he looked for her. He needed to get away from this woman, or he would keep searching her face for traces of the girl who had once loved him, the girl who had never existed.
    Pembroke stepped back and handed her the glass of brandy he had placed at her elbow. He stood close by until she took the first sip. The brandy and the fire began to bring color back into her cheeks, so Pembroke withdrew to his own corner, where his brandy and cigarillo waited for him.
    Codington came in and Pembroke asked for bandages and warm water. The butler did not raise an eyebrow but left as silently as he had entered.
    “I can dress my wound myself,” Arabella said. “I have no need of water.”
    “You have a great need of it,” he answered. “And soap. I’ve seen too many wounds turn putrid on the battle field not to treat that one.”
    No matter what happened between him and Arabella in the next few moments, he knew that if he ever laid eyes on the duke again, he would kill him.
    “How did you get away?”
    “I struck him over the head with a lamp.”
    Pembroke laughed, a loud guffaw that shattered the quiet of the room. In spite of the dire circumstances, Arabella smiled. Codington brought the soap and water then, along with fresh bandages. Pembroke nodded his dismissal, though the butler’s eyes lingered on her wound.
    Once they were alone again, Pembroke knelt before her, gently peeling away the bloody linen. The blood had dried and had begun to stick to the flesh beneath. Pembroke soaked the bandage with water until it fell away. Arabella flinched at first under his hands, but as he worked, as she saw that he would not hurt her, she sat still under his ministrations, as trusting as a child.
    Pembroke’s heart was throbbing along the line where she had broken it, but he bit down on his pain and dressed her wound. He forced himself to speak lightly, as if he felt nothing. “I can’t believe that little Arabella Swanson of Derbyshire brained the Duke of Hawthorne. But I admire your humor. I never would have thought you capable of making me laugh.”
    “I only tell the