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

globe-trotter from your past?”
    “Because he was not! Interesting. I am sorry, Irene, but he was my father’s curate for a time, and rather tedious, I fear. I am certain that he is still being tedious in Africa. But he is not here.”
    The patient reached up a hand of bronze. “Miss Huxleigh,” he murmured.
    I blushed.
    “Most intriguing.” Irene sat on the edge of the bed, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Whenever you go on one of your governess tirades he calls your name. Obviously, the sound of your voice as well as your appearance rings a bell with him. Could it be the schoolroom bell? Could this be a former charge?”
    “Irene! I may be past thirty, and some of my erstwhile charges may be twenty or so, but I assure you that this man is not one of them.”
    “No.” She regarded him cold-bloodedly. “It is hard to tell, of course, but I would guess him to be our age.” She quirked a brow in my direction.
    “Perhaps.”
    The sick man lashed his head from side to side, as fever victims do when trying to elude the heat and pain of their malady. I unthinkingly picked up the damp cloth Sophie had left in a Sèvres basin and dabbed at his forehead.
    “Mary,” he said suddenly.
    I gave Irene a triumphant look and wrung the cloth out over the basin. “You see. Huxleigh is not a unique name. It is Mary Huxley, poor woman, who chafes his mind.”
    “Hmm.” Irene looked unconvinced. She rose with a sigh. “Since you are doing nurse duty, you might as well tend him until dinner. Godfrey can stand watch then, and I shall take the first part of the night.”
    “You have given yourself the bitterest hours. He will be most restless then.”
    Irene grinned impishly. “He will also be most talkative. Call me if his condition should worsen.”
    She was gone, leaving me with a cloth dripping onto my sleeve cuff and a delirious stranger on my hands.
    “I see her game, of course,” I told my indifferent charge as I swabbed his face again. I was getting quite used to the sun-darkened skin, despite the man’s obvious English origin. No wonder Irene was curious; this man must have quite a tale to tell should he live to murmur more than a few ambiguous names.
    “She hopes that I will meditate upon your features and recognize you from mere proximity. But I shan’t.”
    I sat back in the straight chair by the bedside to watch and wait. His face had turned toward my voice, although his eyes had remained shut, an arrangement I much preferred.
    “Mary,” he murmured again.
    A name infinitely more common than Penelope, I reflected smugly. For once Irene the Female Pinkerton was utterly on the wrong track.
    “Little Mary,” he repeated, stirring my sympathy, for the man obviously spoke of a child. “And Allegra.”
    This name caused me to sit up straighter. Allegra Turnpenny had been one of my charges during my last position of governess a decade before, at the end of the ’Seventies... and a Mary Forsythe was one of her little friends who had come to the house on Berkeley Square!
    “And Miss Huxleigh,” he went on in a mumble that I was thankful Irene was not present to hear. “Berkeley Square.” Suddenly I knew! I leaned forward, studying these altered features for any trace of their original expansive merriment. There was none. Yet, oh, I was grateful for Irene’s pragmatic “privacy.”
    For somewhere beneath this weather-worn mask lay the face of my charges’ young uncle, Mr. Emerson Stanhope, who had gone so gaily off to war in a dazzling red uniform. Who had once played a surprise game of blindman’s buff with me in the schoolroom and touched my naive heart with a deathless and most inappropriate hope for one who was far above my station.
    The door to the chamber swung slightly ajar. I started as if caught filching handkerchiefs. A shadow tumbled in from the passage. Lucifer swaggered over to the sickbed, then bounded onto my lap.
    For once I felt no urge to instantly unseat the beast, but let him curl