The Many Sins of Cris De Feaux (Lords of Disgrace) by Louise Allen Read Free Book Online Page A

doing.
    * * *
    Come the morning Cris was not certain that he needed any acting skills to convince his hostesses that he was unable to travel. His exhausted muscles, eased the day before by the hot bath and Collins’s manipulation, had stiffened overnight into red-hot agony. After another painful massage session he swore his way out of bed and through the process of dressing. He negotiated the stairs with the assistance of the cane Collins had produced from somewhere and had no trouble sounding irritable when he and the other man took up their carefully calculated positions in the hall in order to have a sotto voce argument. He pitched both his voice and his tone to tempt even the best-behaved person to approach the other side of the door to listen to what was going on.
    ‘Of course we are going to leave after breakfast. How many more times do I have to tell you, Collins? I cannot presume upon the hospitality of three single ladies in this way.’
    ‘But, sir, with the risk of your bronchitis returning, I cannot like it,’ Collins protested. ‘And the pain to your back with the jolting over these roads—why, you might be incapacitated for weeks afterwards.’
    ‘That does not matter. I am sure I can find a halfway acceptable inn soon enough.’
    ‘In this area? And we do not have our own sheets with us, sir!’ Collins’s dismay was so well-acted that Cris was hard put to it not to laugh. ‘Please, I beg you to reconsider.’
    ‘No, my mind is made up. I am going—’
    ‘Nowhere, Mr Defoe.’ The door to the drawing room opened to reveal Mrs Perowne, her ridiculous cap slightly askew as it slid from the pins skewering it to her brown hair. Her hands were on her hips, those lush lips firmly compressed.
    The thought intruded that he would like to see them firmly compressed around— No .
    His thoughts could not have been visible on his face, given that she did not slap it. ‘The doctor said you were to stay in bed yesterday and you ignored him, so no wonder you are not feeling quite the thing this morning. If you have a tendency to bronchitis it is completely foolish to risk aggravating it and what is this about a painful back?’
    Cris discovered that he did not like to be thought of as weak, or an invalid, or, for that matter, prone to bronchitis, which should be of no importance whatsoever beside the necessity of convincing Mrs Perowne that he should stay put in this house. His pride was, he realised, thoroughly affronted. That was absurd—was he so insecure that he needed to show off his strength in front of some country widow? ‘The merest twinge, and Collins exaggerates. It is only that I had a severe cold last winter.’
    ‘Oh, sir.’ The reproach in Collins’s voice would have not been out of place in a Drury Lane melodrama. ‘After what the doctor said last year. Madam, I could tell you tales—’
    ‘But not if you wish to remain in my employ,’ Cris snapped and they both turned reproachful, anxious looks on him.
    ‘Mr Defoe, please, I implore you to stay. My aunts would worry so if you left before you were quite recovered, and besides, we are most grateful for your company.’ There was something in the warm brown eyes that was certainly not pity for an invalid, a flicker of recognition of him as a man that touched his wounded pride and soothed it, even as he told himself not to be such a coxcomb as to set any store by what a virtual stranger thought of him. Before now he had played whatever role his duties as a not-quite-official diplomat required and it had never given him the slightest qualm to appear over-cautious, or indiscreet, or naïve, in some foreign court. He knew he was none of those things, so that was all that mattered.
    But this woman, who should mean nothing to him, had him wanting to parade his courage and his endurance and his fitness like some preening peacock flaunting his tail in front of his mate. He swallowed what was left of his pride. ‘If it would not be an imposition,