The Last Debutante by Julia London Read Free Book Online

testing its strength.

Five
    H AD SHE TRULY left England for this? Daria was accustomed to dining on fine china, at a set hour, in an actual dining room. She was accustomed to spending her days calling on friends and receiving callers, to servants and carriages and footmen and fine linens.
    She was most certainly not accustomed to preparing food and sweeping floors and hunting in the woods for “healing plants.” She’d ruined her best shoes and the hems of her gowns, and worse, and no one had brought her trunk up from the road. It had probably been eaten by bears. Or worse.
    Neither was she accustomed to being so tenderly kissed by wild, muscular men. The memory of it made her shiver. It had happened so quickly! She couldn’t stop him from pulling her down . . . Well, perhaps she might have stopped him if she’d tried. But his touch was so moving, and his mouth so warm, so soft. She’d felt athousand tiny sparks of light flare in her the moment his mouth had met hers.
    It was almost as surprising as finding Mamie in the state she had. What in blazes had happened to her grandmother? Daria could see no reason for her to remain in Scotland. The standard of living here was agrarian, beneath what Mamie had known all her life. There was no society, nothing to keep her—it made no sense. Daria recalled a sophisticated woman who smelled of lavender and slipped her sweetmeats and told her fantastic stories of princesses and princes. After her husband had died, the widowers in and around Hadley Green had courted Mamie, and she’d seemed happy to entertain their attentions. She’d gone on picnics, she’d dined at important tables, she’d hosted society teas. She had been, to Daria’s young eyes, quite lovely.
    That woman was not in this cottage.
    The woman in the kitchen moved as if she weren’t certain what she was to do next. She pulled bowls from the shelf and set them on the table, then picked them up and replaced them, only to find another size.
    “What is the matter?” Daria asked.
    “What is the matter?” Mamie repeated sharply, and slapped the bowl on the table before whirling about to face a surprised Daria. “I told you to leave the poor gentleman alone, that’s what! I specifically asked you not to enter that room, and look what you’ve done!”
    Girlish panic raced through Daria. Did Mamie know he’d kissed her? Could she see that the kiss was still singing through her? Daria was prepared to confess he was delirious, calling her by another name.
    “I didn’t do anything!” Daria protested. At least shedidn’t think she had. There had been a bit of a contretemps between her and her grandmother this morning, as Daria had refused to accompany her into the forest again, on the grounds that she did not gather berries like a farmer, and certainly not in forests full of wild animals and men who shot other men and left them to die. Mamie had seemed confused by her refusal, desperate to go out, and just as desperate not to leave Daria alone with the stranger. She had indeed forbidden Daria from entering his room while she went out to gather whatever in heaven’s name it was she gathered in the woods.
    “Well, now he’s awake and I’ve nothing to ease his pain!” Mamie added, and pivoted around to the shelf. “You have vexed him with your meddling.”
    “ My meddling?” Daria exclaimed. “He awakened all on his own—” Another pointless argument. She had begged, argued, and cajoled her grandmother to summon help, but Mamie was steadfast in her refusal to seek it, and seemed quite perturbed with Daria for even asking.
    But now, she was suddenly smiling as if she’d not been the least bit cross only moments before. “Be a sweetling and go out to fetch the bandages I’ve hung out to dry. We must change them.” She winked at Daria, then rose up on her tiptoes to the shelf to reach the brown vial.
    “He doesn’t want a tincture,” Daria said reprovingly.
    Mamie’s face darkened again.