A Wicked Pursuit by Isabella Bradford Read Free Book Online Page B

head to help him sit to drink. He, in turn, ignored Mrs. Patton completely, his gaze intent on Gus, who felt her cheeks grow hot for what seemed like the hundredth time this afternoon in his company.
    “You’re Miss Wetherby’s sister,” he said, incredulous. “You’re not a servant at all.”
    “I never pretended I was,” she said defensively. “Not once.”
    “I must insist, my lord,” Mrs. Patton said, holding the cup before him.
    He didn’t let her put the spout to his lips to sip, but instead grabbed the cup from her hand and emptied it from the side, in a single long gulp.
    “Oh, my lord,” Mrs. Patton said, shocked, as she took back the glass. “That was rash. That was canary, with twenty drops of laudanum. For you to ingest it in such haste—”
    “I am often rash,” he said, even as he sank back against the pillows, breathing hard from that small exertion. “Did you enjoy your little ruse, Miss Augusta? Did it please you to make a fool of me?”
    “I never made a fool of you,” Gus said, striving to remain calm even as she defended herself. No matter how irrational he was being, he remained a very unwell man, one who should not be unnecessarily excited. “There was no harm intended, my lord, nor any done. If you are feeling foolish, then it was of your own doing, not mine.”
    He was already fighting against the laudanum, his eyes closing and his words slowing and slurring. “You should have told me, Miss Augusta. Told me who—who you are.”
    “I’m sorry, my lord,” she said, “but I do not see how it would have mattered under the circumstances.”
    “Miss Augusta, please,” Mrs. Patton said sternly. “It is much better for his lordship that we let the draft take its course.”
    To Gus, he looked as if the laudanum had already taken effect. His eyes had closed and his features had relaxed, his head sinking more deeply into the pillows. She doubted he’d even heard what she’d last said.
    But he had.
    “It—it matters,” he said, no more than a rough whisper. “Because it—it was you.”

CHAPTER
3

    Harry didn’t need the high-flown advice of Sir Randolph or even the more modest Dr. Leslie to know when the fever they’d feared finally began to take hold later that night. Not even the laudanum could spare him from the fire that consumed his body, or the sweating and restlessness and confusion that followed. Worst of all were the dreams, dreams that plagued him with a relentless fury each time he closed his eyes.
    They all began the same way. He was once again riding in the misty woods looking for Julia, following her teasing laughter. That was the best part of the dream, and unfortunately the part that passed the fastest.
    Because before he could stop it, he was being thrown from his horse again, unable to save himself as he flew through the air. Sometimes he fell on the hard, leaf-covered ground. More often he landed in an unexpected place, like the patterned carpet of the dining room at White’s, with all his fellow club members clustered to stare down at him, or the floor in the center of the House of Lords. In one of the dreams—or the nightmares, really, for that was what they were—he was hurled into the muddy track at Epsom, with a score of horses and jockeys thundering down upon him, and in another he was tossed into the lion cage at the Tower of London, a place he hadn’t visited since he was a boy.
    In every dream, he was trapped, doomed, unable to move or save himself because of his broken leg. Yet in every dream, too, there was another constant, and that was Miss Augusta, the gray-eyed sister her family called Gus. Each time when he’d despaired of rescue and the pain had become almost unbearable, she appeared to join him exactly as she had in reality. She came, and she took his hand. She murmured ordinary things to him in an extraordinary voice, and promised she would not leave him alone.
    But in his nightmares, she did not stay. She vanished like the mist