Healing Hearts by Taryn Kincaid Read Free Book Online

housekeeper set aside one small ramekin of the creamy spread for their household use. “Nothing for it, Miss Emma. We cannot slaughter a chicken, we agreed. Be glad we’ve still got a cow and a few hens left.” She looked up from the market basket she was filling with eggs. “Have you got those handkerchiefs ready for me, child? They’ll be good for a few pence, even without the fancy monograms.”
    Emma produced a small pile of folded muslin squares. Mrs. Billings clucked her tongue. “Such a pity to cut up your pretty chemises. Without your elegant embroidery they won’t fetch near the price of the others.”
    Emma bit her lip. Where had Papa gone? What had he done? If they were turned out of the house tomorrow, how would she ever find him? Could she become a man’s mistress to save their livelihood? Now? After she’d seen what joy the touch of man who tangled her emotions could bring?
    She squared her shoulders, hardening her resolve.
    “I’m afraid it’s as you say, Mrs. Billings. Nothing else for it.”
    ***
    Adam awoke in a bed not his own. Nor was he lodged in the rooms he’d taken at the Bird & Barley. Afternoon sun slanted into the bedchamber from a narrow parting in the drawn window curtains. He wore another man’s nightshirt, but his own clothes had been brushed and were folded neatly at the foot of the bed.
    He stretched and groaned, and then slowly dressed. His left leg remained a bit stiff, but the worst of the pain had ebbed away, leaving only the dull muscle soreness that visited him after strenuous exertion—a strengthening ache he could live with. Not nearly as bad as usual today. He surveyed the room. A copper hip bath, a pile of damp towels heaped next to the foot, as if someone had forgotten to whisk them away. Someone had bathed him?
    The indomitable Miss Emma Whiteside?
    Not very likely, though it pleased him to entertain that notion. Yet, somehow Emma had managed to transport him to her home. He smiled as memories of their ride came back to him like shards of a colorful mosaic. He thought of the way he’d fondled and caressed her, inhaling her wonderful scent. The way his touch had plucked reluctant sighs of contentment from her.
    The sounds of a violent argument belowstairs erupted through the bare floorboards. Adam couldn’t decipher the words, but a man’s booming voice clashed with a woman’s horrified cries.
    Emma.
    He had to reach her. He glanced swiftly around the bedchamber in which she’d placed him. Her room, he wondered? All soft shades of blue and cream. Not masculine. But no feminine frippery, either. How the hell had she gotten him up here?
    His walking stick lay across the foot of the bed and he snatched it up, scrambling as fast as he was able across the room. He clattered down the stairs, nearly stumbling in his haste.
    A burly man in a many-caped cloak, a man who had not even had the manners to remove his dusty hat upon entering the house, confronted Emma across the sitting room. Muddy boot prints tracked over the polished wood of the front parlor, the pattern like those of an animal stalking his prey.
    The sight of those careless footprints on the bare, carpetless floor made Adam’s blood boil, in a way it had not done since he’d dragged Michael Whiteside’s body from a ditch at Albuhera.
    Emma gripped the back of a damask-upholstered settee. Adam suspected she’d leapt behind the long, low sofa in order to put some distance between herself and the intruder. Adam sized up her adversary. As his gaze swept the room, he also noted the absent rugs, and the dearth of the sort of figurines and boxes that usually cluttered sitting rooms.
    “Today?” Emma offered the bearlike man a glare that could have shriveled a gooseberry, but her knuckles were white and her voice broke as she beseeched him. “I’d thought…tomorrow. Please, Mr. Farraday, you must give me a little more time.”
    “You are out of time, wench,” Farraday spat. “I’ve come to