An Independent Miss by Becca St. John Read Free Book Online Page A

breath
away.
    Yes, she’d been courted, but solely
by men as focused on serious studies as she. They did not leave her breathless.
    Andover did.
    “Of course.” She found her tongue,
took his arm. “Do you think, in the conspiring, they imagined a plaid?”
    “Ha!” He shot her a quick look and
laughed. “Vertical and horizontal laid upon each other.” Fist to mouth, head
turned, he coughed, hiding a bark of laughter, much as her brother or father
were wont to do.
    “What?” she asked.
    He looked toward the path. The part
of his lip not swollen beyond recognition caught firmly between his teeth.
Suppressed humor again, much like the men in her family whenever she said
something they considered earthy.
    She sighed, adjusted her bonnet,
nodded to Maddy and Jimmy, both with baskets for the Smiths, not to wait, but
go on ahead. No need for close chaperones now they were betrothed.
    His hand, gloved this time, covered
hers on his arm. No warm flesh to warm flesh, to tickle her senses. He matched
his step to her smaller ones, as they followed the two retainers.
    She dared a look at his booted leg.
He didn’t limp, but she knew it hurt by the way he’d rub it when he thought no
one noticed, just as he’d done in the study earlier that afternoon. The
Redmond’s had not been kind to their guest. First Charles and Annabel’s wicked
game of blind-man’s-bluff and then Thomas turning to fisticuffs. Honestly, she
could throttle her own siblings.
    She offered arnica salve, a
wondrous mixture for bruises.
    He refused it.
    No, she corrected herself, he
hadn’t so much refused her salve as refused any mention of salves or ointments.
    I
am not comfortable with such things.
    She dipped her head, bit her lip,
trying to reconcile her skills with his reaction to medicines.
    There were people like that, who
refrained from doctors and medicines and the like. She respected them, often
wondered what came first, their healthy continence or the disregard for
disease. But why would they choose pain if it could be relieved?
    She refused to think of it just
yet, on this their first stroll without parents or siblings or anyone who would
jump into a conversation. Maddy and Jimmy were now out of sight, leaving them
to converse in private.
    There were so many things she would
like to ask him, to speak about.
    She couldn’t remember a one.
Totally lost the easy comradery of their budding friendship.
    Instead, the healer in her kept
sneaking sideways glances at the swell of his lip, the slight crook of his
nose. One moment she’d be full of remedies to suggest, the next amused by the boyishness
of his wounds.
    Like his smile, those hurts broke
the austerity in his dark chiseled looks. A wayward lock of hair kept falling
over his forehead and into his eye, revealing less a dream and more a tangible
human.
    He neither complained of, nor acknowledged
pain, though he must hurt like the devil. She suspected that was why he didn’t
speak much, the swollen lip making it difficult.
    It was a quiet lane that led to the
Smiths’ home, the path dappled with shadow and light as the sun slipped through
a canopy of trees. Felicity’s hand rested lightly on Lord Andover’s arm, her
mind whirling with thoughts even as she scrambled for conversation. Something,
anything, to say that would keep her speaking, and save his mouth having to
form words.
    She looked at that mouth and
sighed.
    “Lady Felicity?”
    She jerked, noticed his frown.
    “Is my appearance so ghastly?”
    “No.” She promised, horrified for
her soppy staring.
    “I am sorry to have been in a
fight.”
    A fight for her. She swallowed
another sigh. “It’s nothing. With Thomas, one half expects a fight, though…”
she had rather he not suffer for her, “…though not usually physical
altercation. He’s grown beyond that, or so I thought.” She rambled now. He
would think her a mindless bore.
    Embarrassed, she looked into the
growth along the path, a habit gained from years of wild