The Prisoner by Karyn Monk Read Free Book Online Page A

weeks earlier, followed by the illness that had gripped him in prison, and then that final beating from dear Warder Sims only hours ago had combined to reduce him to a weak and shivering invalid. He had no idea how he had made it from the prison to this home. All he could remember was Jack leading him, and the sight of the lovely Miss MacPhail standing amidst a cluster of angels who were waving and calling to him.
    Perhaps sensing that she was being watched, she stirred, her eyes fluttering open. She studied him a moment, her enormous brown eyes void of either suspicion or fear, as if she was merely trying to recall how a battered, half-naked man had come to be lying in her bed.
    And then she bolted upright and scrambled to find something with which to cover herself.
    Clearly, she had remembered.
    â€œGood evening,” rasped Haydon, his throat painfully dry.
    Genevieve grabbed the woolen shawl that had fallen onto the floor and hastily wrapped it over her shoulders and across her chest. How long had he been staring at her like that? she wondered nervously. And what was she thinking, falling asleep beside a strange, naked man, with her hair down and her feet bare, when she was supposed to be watching over him? She reached for the jug on the bedside table and poured him a glass of water, using the simple task to compose herself.
    â€œHere,” she said, modestly clamping her shawl closed with one hand as she held the glass to his lips. “Try to take a small sip.”
    The water trickled into his mouth and throat. Haydon took a swallow, then another and another, until finally the glass was drained. He was a man who had indulged heavily in the finest of wines and spirits, yet he could not remember ever finding a drink so enormously satisfying.
    â€œThank you.”
    Genevieve placed the glass on the table and self-consciously adjusted her shawl. “How are you feeling?”
    â€œBetter.”
    She glanced at the tray Eunice had brought up so many hours earlier. “Would you care to try some broth? It’s cold now, but I could run downstairs and heat it—”
    â€œNot hungry.”
    She nodded and fell silent, uncertain what to do or say next.
    All night long she had tended to him, despite Oliver’s and Doreen’s adamant protests that they had done as much for him as anyone could possibly do. The matter of whether he succumbed to his injuries and his fever or not, they assured her, was now in God’s hands. But it had been years since Genevieve had yielded matters that she believed to be at least somewhat within her grasp, solely to God. Regardless of who this man was or what he had done, she could not simply retire and leave him to suffer through the night alone.
    And so she had stayed with him.
    She had spent long hours swabbing his bruised, burning body with soothing cool cloths, alternately covering him with more blankets and peeling them away, pressing the softness of her palms against his searing forehead and roughly bearded jaw as she tried to ascertain whether she was winning her desperate battle against his fever. She knew every chiseled contour of his chest and shoulders and belly, the hard heat of his skin where it stretched tightly across his pectorals, the dark swirls of hair that formed a mysterious line beneath his navel before disappearing under the thin linen of the sheets. She knew he shifted and tried to curl onto his side when a chill began to grip him, and flailed his arms and legs wide when he was suffering unbearable heat. She knew just how much water she could drizzle from the edge of a cloth between his lips without making him gag or have the water leak down the sides of his face, and how much pressure she could render in her touch to soothe him instead of causing him pain. She was familiar with every bruise and scrape and welt upon him, and was reasonably sure of which ribs were broken and which were sore but solid. This intimate knowledge had made her