Never Less Than a Lady Read Online Free PDF Page B

money I had, left my shawl and bonnet on the shore, and let the world think I had drowned myself.”
    A mark of desperation, and of fierce strength. Intensely interested in the way the pieces of her story were shaping up, he asked, “How did you escape?”
    She shrugged. “I bought a ticket on the first coach I could find, not caring where it took me. But I hadn’t recovered from the beating and miscarriage. When I started bleeding all over the coach, the driver put me off at a village near Rochdale in Lancashire. The local midwife took me in. I was thought to be dying.”
    “Let me guess. Her name was Bancroft?”
    Julia’s face eased. “The real Mrs. Bancroft. Louise was rich in years and experience, and had snatched other females from the jaws of death. I asked if I could stay and help her until I was stronger. Soon I was her apprentice. I took the name Bancroft and we told people I was a cousin. I had an aptitude for the work, and it was very satisfying. She taught me all she knew, and I took care of her as her health declined.”
    “You moved to Hartley after she died?”
    “I wanted a location as remote as possible. As Mrs. Bancroft was failing, she got a letter from a friend saying a midwife was needed in this part of Cumberland, so I moved here after her death.” Julia’s mouth twisted. “I’m guessing that my visit to London with Mariah is what alerted my father-in-law to the fact that I might be alive. If I’d stayed in Hartley, I would still be safe.”
    “You can’t live there again.” His attraction to this small, self-effacing woman was no longer inexplicable. He’d noted her quiet beauty, but there were other beautiful women and most of them weren’t doing their best to be invisible. What made Julia unique was the steel at the center of her soul.
    He felt an intense urge to protect her. Protect, and a good deal more. “Have you thought what you’ll do next?”
    “I doubt I’ll be safe anywhere in England.” She brushed her hair again, her expression bleak. “Perhaps one of the colonies. Midwives are useful everywhere.”
    “I’m guessing that you were married to Lord Branford,” he said in a conversational tone. “Your murderous father-in-law is the Earl of Daventry.”
    She gasped and shrank away. “Dear God, you’re part of that Randall family. I had wondered, but Randall is a common name, and you don’t resemble them.” White-knuckled fingers clenched her blanket. “Are you going to turn me over to Crockett?”
    He caught her gaze. “Never.”
    Watching as if he might transform into a wolf, she asked, “What is your relationship to Branford and Daventry?”
    “Since several cousins have died over the years and Daventry is childless, I’m currently the heir presumptive to the earldom.” His face hardened. “My father was a younger half brother of the present earl. They never got on. My resemblance is to my mother’s family. My parents died when I was small, so I was sent to Turville Park to share a nursery with Branford.”
    “What was he like then?”
    Randall thought back to his arrival at the Daventry estate. He’d been grief-stricken and confused and desperate for a new home. “Branford made my life hell. He was older and larger than I, or I might have killed him myself.”
    She stared at him. “No wonder you joined the army.”
    “So I could learn to fight really well? I hadn’t thought of it in those terms,” he said. “Certainly I fought everyone at Turville. Daventry shipped me off to various schools as soon as he could. I was expelled from one after another until I ended up at the Westerfield Academy.”
    “Where Lady Agnes Westerfield worked her magic,” Julia said softly.
    “She did indeed.” Randall had been a furious, snarling hedgehog of a child before Lady Agnes. She hadn’t tried to restrain him. Instead, she asked why he was so angry. His rage and hurt tumbled out of him as he spoke of the pain and humiliation, the ugly dangerous pranks