Slightly Sinful Read Online Free PDF

had shown no flicker of returning consciousness since the first moment she saw him. He was deathly pale-almost as white as the bandage in which his head was swathed and the large nightshirt that Bridget had found for him and that she and Phyllis had dressed him in after shooing Rachel from the room. That fact would have amused Rachel if she had been in the mood to feel amused. She was the one who had found him naked, yet her old nurse now thought that her modesty needed preserving.
    A few times Rachel felt the pulse in his neck to assure herself that he still lived.
    Flossie and Geraldine returned early in the evening-empty-handed.
    "We went all the way to the village of Waterloo and out beyond it to where the battle was fought yesterday," Flossie told them when they all gathered in the sitting room, which was set up for cards later in the evening-this was a working night, Rachel gathered. "You can't imagine the sight, Bridge. Poor Phyll would have been in a dead faint from the first moment."
    "There were plentiful pickings out there," Geraldine said. "We could have been as rich as Croesus by now if we had not run into a couple of greedy women. The very first dead body we came across was that of a young officer who couldn't have been a day over seventeen, could he, Floss? And he was being stripped of all his precious finery by two women who had all the tender sensibilities of two blocks of wood. I gave them the length of my tongue, I can tell you."
    "She made the air turn blue," Flossie said admiringly. "Then one of the women made the mistake of sneering. I punched her senseless. Look, Bridge, my knuckles are still red. It will be days before I have the hands of a lady again. And one of my precious nails broke off. Now I'll have to cut the others to match. I hate having short nails."
    "I sat guard over the boy," Geraldine told them, "while Floss went in search of a burial party that would treat him with the proper respect. Poor lamb. I shed more than one tear over him, I don't mind telling you."
    "After that," Flossie explained rather sheepishly, "we didn't have the heart to raid any of the other bodies, did we, Gerry? We couldn't help remembering that all those men had mothers."
    "I like you both the better for it," Phyllis assured them.
    "So do I," Bridget said. "I didn't say so at the time, but I was glad young Hawkins was coming this afternoon and I had an excuse not to go out myself. It didn't seem right somehow. I would rather end up in the poorhouse than make my fortune off the deaths of brave boys."
    "We will have to discover another way," Geraldine said. "There is no chance that I am going to get philosophical about this, Bridge, and return meekly to earning my living on my back for another ten years or so. I may have to do it, of course, but only after finding that man and giving him what for. Then I won't find the whoring so bad even if we don't recover a penny of our money. But how did you do, Rache? Did you find anything?"
    They both looked at her hopefully.
    "No treasures, I am afraid," she said with a grimace. "Only liabilities."
    "Rachel came across a wounded, unconscious man in the forest," Phyllis explained, "and brought him home with her. He was naked."
    "That must have been a thrill," Flossie said, looking interested. "Was it, Rachel? Was he worth looking at?"
    "He certainly was that, Floss," Phyllis said, "especially in the part that matters most. Very impressive. He is up in Rachel's bed, still unconscious."
    "There is a sergeant up in the attic too," Bridget said. "He helped Rachel bring the other man here, but he was half dead himself. He lost an eye in the battle. We put him to bed."
    "And so now, since yesterday morning," Rachel said, "you have acquired three more mouths to feed, all courtesy of me. But if your young officer had been alive, would you have been able to leave him there to die any more than I could with this man?"
    "We would be fighting over whose bed we were going to put him