A Soul of Steel by Carole Nelson Douglas Read Free Book Online Page A

better off without Godfrey now.”
    “Why?”
    Irene flashed me a probing look. “You might prefer privacy when you discover who he is.”
    “ You are here, are you not? And I do not require privacy, I require belief. You really think that I know this man?”
    “Not... yet.”
    I sighed pointedly and examined this most inconvenient person. Against the pallid bed linens, his profile was etched as sharply as charcoal on canvas. Not even illness could bring pallor to that tea-stained face. Yet his gaunt features were well modeled, and the absence of the turban revealed hair of a lighter brown than his beard, grizzled at the temples.
    Drawing nearer, I found myself unable to guess his age. Perhaps the extreme thinness made him seem older. Certainly the sun had tanned his skin until it cracked at the outer eyes into a fan of fine lines.
    He moaned and I leaped back, my skirts brushing against my shoes like a swiftly drawn theatrical curtain swaying over the boards. My heart beat in the same breathless rhythm.
    “He will not bite, Nell. Quite the contrary. Sophie was unable to get even a leek gruel down him.”
    “Leek gruel! I can hardly blame the man. An invalid should have barley soup and custards, not some foreign fluid made from disgusting bulbs.”
    My indignation must have stirred the sick man. I heard another moan from the bed, and then—to my chagrin—my own name was intoned, or slurred, rather.
    “Miss... Huxleigh.”
    I leaped backward like a scalded cat, despite Irene’s promise that he would not bite. Who was this man? How dare he know me when I did not know him? Was it some kind of dreadful trick?
    Irene’s warm hand took my icy one in a firm grip, the only grip she ever used. “He cannot hurt you, Nell, but obviously you have inspired some powerful memory. Think! If he has been poisoned and should die, you may be the clue to his past, and to the poisoner. Is there anyone you have not seen in some years?”
    “M-my late father.”
    “Someone alive, or presumed dead, perhaps. Someone from Shropshire?”
    I had not thought of the county of my upbringing for many years. “No one from Shropshire would come to such a condition as this.”
    Irene’s grip loosened in disappointment. “Oh, come now. As I remember, you yourself had come to a sorry state in London when I met you, only—what?—three years from Shropshire’s genteel safety. You had been wrongly dismissed from your position, had no lodgings, no food... indeed, had I not intervened you might have become as hungry and ill as this man.”
    Her words prodded me closer to the bed. Was there truly someone I knew beyond this intimidating appearance? Someone from Shropshire? Or who had left Shropshire before I did?
    My heart stopped. At least my hand, which had come to rest over that organ, could feel no flutter in the general vicinity.
    “Yes, Nell?” Irene urged, her voice the intense hiss of a demonic barrister conducting a cross-examination. “What have you remembered?”
    “Not... what. Who.” I whispered, as she did, not because it was a sickroom, but because I hardly dared credit the notion that invaded my mind.
    I leaned nearer the semiconscious man. Could this be what had become of my once-attentive curate, the sole man ever to have courted me in any manner, however tentative? Could this be Jasper Higgenbottom, returned from converting the heathens of Africa, himself converted to sun and turbans and the scent of alien spices?
    “Nell?” Irene shook my hand, which she still clutched.
    “Er, no. This is no one I remember. The ears are wrong.”
    She leaned over me to inspect these organs.
    “What is wrong with them?”
    “N-nothing. These are quite well shaped and discreet. The person of whom I was thinking had far more prominent—and unfortunate—ears.”
    “Oh. A shame. And did this large-eared person of your acquaintance abandon Shropshire for a foreign land?”
    “Yes.”
    “And why have you never mentioned this interesting