A Wicked Pursuit by Isabella Bradford Read Free Book Online

Gus said, defensive on his behalf. “Mama said that love, true love, would always find a way past all adversities. If you and his lordship love each other, then—”
    “I cannot speak of this any longer,” Julia said, a catch in her voice. “It is too—too tragic.”
    Gus shook her head. “It’s not as tragic for you as it is for him,” she said firmly. “Unless you accidentally did something foolish to make him fall from the horse. Is that the truth, Julia? Is it guilt that makes you shy from him now?”
    Julia gasped. “How dare you speak such a thing to me, Gus? How can you be so—so cruel to me?”
    Abruptly she pulled free of Gus’s arm and bolted for the door, her skirts flying.
    “Wait, Julia, please,” Gus called after her in as loud a whisper as she dared. “Don’t leave now, I beg you!”
    “Don’t leave,” Hargreave said, his voice a rusty croak from disuse.
    Stunned, Gus looked at him. His eyes were heavy-lidded with the drug-induced sleep, but he was awake, and he was watching her.
    How had she forgotten the startling blue of his eyes?
    “My lord,” she said, more flustered than she’d any right to be. Clearly Julia’s voice had roused him, and it must be her that he wanted to stay. Gus only hoped he hadn’t understood all that they’d said. “Pray excuse me, and I’ll go after—”
    “Don’t,” he said. “You’re here now. Don’t leave.”
    Gus hesitated, unsure of why he’d wish for her, not Julia.
    “Don’t leave,” he repeated. “Stay. Sit.”
    “I’m not your dog, my lord,” she said, pulling the chair beside the bed. “I don’t need orders. I won’t leave you.”
    “Good.” His eyes fluttered closed again, as if the effort to speak even that small amount had taxed him. “Thank you.”
    She grinned foolishly, from surprise and relief, and was thankful that he hadn’t seen it. “Is there anything you require, my lord?”
    “Your hand,” he said. “You gave it to me once. I trust you will share it again.”
    At once she slipped her fingers into his as his hand lay on the counterpane, pressing against his gold ring with the onyx intaglio. She squeezed gently, so he’d know she’d done what he asked.
    He did. He smiled wearily, and she smiled, too.
    “What’s been done to me, eh?” His voice was thick with the effects of the draft, but he was still coherent. “Can you tell me that, sweetheart?”
    She blushed at the casual endearment, reminding herself that he’d still no notion of who she was. “You fell from your horse—”
    “I was thrown,” he corrected, “thrown by a four-legged devil straight from the jaws of Hell.”
    “You were thrown, then,” she said. “When you landed, you struck your head, and you broke your lower leg in two places.”
    “Ahh,” he said, and fell silent, perhaps connecting what she’d told him with how he felt.
    “Do you remember being thrown?” she asked cautiously, not wanting to pressure him, but fearing that a loss of memory could signal a more grievous wound to the head.
    “I remember that, yes,” he said. “And the devil-horse. But how or why he threw me—no. No.”
    She didn’t press, not wanting to tax him further. “Would you like me to send for the surgeon to explain your injuries more completely? As you requested, your physician, Sir Randolph Peterson, has come up from London to assume your case, and he will be a guest of this house until he deems you out of danger.”
    “Oh, old Peterson,” he said, smiling faintly once again. “A gaming acquaintance of my father’s, and much esteemed because he tends the scrapes and bruises of the royal princesses.”
    “You have apparently proved more of a challenge,” she replied. She carefully said nothing of having also sent for his father, the Duke of Breconridge; to Gus’s surprise, there had been not a word from His Grace regarding his eldest son’s condition. It shocked her that no one in his lordship’s own family had come to him when he was