The Tudor Signet Read Online Free PDF Page B

not?”
    “No, her parents were French. The father was a comte or a vicomte , I believe. He was guillotined during the Terror.” She shuddered. “His wife escaped to London with the child and there met and married George Barwith’s brother. Both died not long thereafter, alas. Miss Bertrand was eight or nine when she was orphaned a second time and came to live...Yes, Blount?”
    “The doctor has arrived, my lady.”
    “Thank you. I shall take him up at once.”
    Lilian hurried out, leaving Malcolm distinctly thoughtful. So Miss Bertrand’s ancestry was French? That was a new twist to the mystery!
     

Chapter 3
     
    Mariette drifted in and out of consciousness. Her head ached, her bottom ached, but her chief emotion was embarrassment. If she had to be shot, why could it not have been a nice, clean bullet through the head?
    Lady Lilian had been gently disapproving, even though Lord Malcolm had apparently told her some story about a poacher. Why he should lie for her Mariette could not guess. She was going to have to thank him for that, which was much worse than having to explain why she had played the highwayman.
    She could see now that it had been a harebrained notion. It had worked for Arnulfo, but Arnulfo was only a character in a book, as Ralph had pointed out. Waldania had seemed more real to her than the medieval England she read about in histories. Not that she had any difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction, though Uncle George was right: if two histories disagreed, as was not uncommon, one or both must have their “facts” wrong.
    As for Mr. Hume, how he could set up to be a historian when, in his philosophical essays, he denied the possibility of knowledge of matters of fact...
    Distracted from her woes, Mariette succumbed to the laudanum drops, sinking into a well of darkness from which she emerged to a dazzle of pain. Her buttocks flamed. A piercing probe drove a lance of fire up her spine. Instinctively she twisted away.
    “Keep still!” came Lady Lilian’s sharp voice and a grip on Mariette’s ankles tightened. Realizing her wrists were held, too, she forced her eyes to open a slit.
    “Nearly done.” An incongruously cheerful voice she recognized as Dr. Barley from Plymton.
    “Try to keep still, Miss Bertrand.” Lord Malcolm’s concerned face hovered above her. It was he who grasped her wrists. “The shot must be taken out for fear of infection. The worst is over now.”
    Gratitude for his reassurance, mortification at his presence, shame for her own stupidity, all disappeared in a whirl of pain as another burning lance transfixed her. She welcomed the dark.
    When she roused again, a streak of light from the setting sun peeped through a gap in the curtains, filling the spacious blue and white chamber with a rosy glow. It illuminated a pair of bony hands. They were knitting something long and mustard-coloured, draped across a black satin skirt which delineated equally bony knees--Lady Lilian’s companion, who disapproved of Mariette still more stringently than did her ladyship.
    To postpone Miss Thorne’s attentions, Mariette lay still. She felt wishy-washy, anyway, and disinclined to move. Her head no longer ached, though it was muzzy from the laudanum, as if a couple of busy spiders had left it hung with cobwebs. Her backside throbbed unmercifully.
    It was going to be a long time before she sat without wincing, or even lay on her back, and riding was impossible. She’d have to walk home, unless Lady Lilian offered to send her in a carriage.
    Not in Lord Malcolm’s curricle! The thought made her hot all over. If she had felt humiliated by Lord Wareham’s contempt, it had been a thousand times worse to find herself sprawled across his lordship’s lap, her cheek pillowed on his hard-muscled thigh. Yet more shaming, she had gathered from listening to Lady Lilian and Miss Thorne that he had cleaned and bandaged her wounds, as well as assisting at Dr. Barley’s ministrations. How was she