Read Corey McFadden for Free Online

as Radford turned toward her. Then she opened them just the tiniest slit. A smile curved his lips. “Feeling better, Miss Romney?” he asked with a hint of amusement in his eyes.
    “Yes, thank you,” she murmured, giving in and opening her eyes all the way. She had a feeling he knew she had watched Amelia’s attempted seduction. She hoped he didn’t know how relieved she had been at her step-cousin’s routing. Maude still felt a languor that somehow made her nerves tingle, an odd sensation, tied up with the feel of his arms about her. The pain, no doubt, was making her delirious.
    He moved toward her to look again at the swollen ankle. Ignoring the obvious impropriety, he sat down on the bed, and probed her foot gently, noticing her wince as he touched the worst spot.
    “I do not think it is broken,” he said seriously, “but you will need to rest it for some time. Do you think you can manage to stay off your feet for a few days?”
    Without quite realizing it, his probing touch had turned to a gentle caress. Maude was mesmerized by his finely chiseled features and the deep blue eyes which danced with amusement. He had a shock of dark hair which he wore shorter than the current fashion, just touching the edge of his high, starched neckcloth. He smelled good, like leather and clean linen. The white of his shirt front glowed in the light of the one candle near the bed. He was quite the handsomest man Maude ever remembered seeing, next to her father, of course. Too bad he thought she was an idiot. Befuddled by the trend of her thoughts, she closed her eyes as the pleasure of the touch of his cool fingers spread through the hot, stabbing pain.
    “I—I shall try, thank you. I’m sure it will be fine,” she stammered, confused and at a loss for words, an unusual state for her.
    “Well, I’ll leave you then. I shall send a servant up to tend you, that is, if your good aunt can spare one from the festivities.”
    He drew the coverlet up from the foot of the bed and placed it over her, carefully arranging it so that the injured ankle rested outside the blanket. Then he turned away and headed for the door. 
    Maude sighed to herself as she watched the door close behind him. She was tired to death and with the earl’s departure, the pain intruded on her consciousness in full force. Tomorrow she would have to deal with her aunt’s and cousin’s fury, and John’s snide scorn. Well, she would let tomorrow take its course. Right now she would sleep. At least she would not be departing for Tibet.
     

Chapter Two
     
    Amelia was married to Geoffrey Talbot, an acceptable match as far as Claire was concerned. No one so fine as an earl, thanks to that interfering little prig, Maude, but a gentleman with a decent yearly income, nonetheless. After a month-long round of merry wedding and Christmas parties the radiant couple had departed last week for a trip to the continent and Claire was well satisfied with the success of her scheme.
    Amelia had made a stunning bride, as Claire had known she would. Thank heavens the girl was such a beauty. Lord knew her dowry was modest enough, only what Mr. Parsons, junior solicitor of Booth and Parks, the Romney family’s solicitors, had allowed Claire to skim over the past ten years from Maude’s estate. It had grown increasingly annoying, in this last year, to deal with Mr. Parsons. It was obvious that he had found another woman somewhere along the way, as his physical demands on Claire had dwindled, until finally it seemed he no longer had need of her body at all. That would have been just as well—Claire had always found his requests base and distasteful—but she had had nothing else with which to bargain, aside from the “small percentage” that he now took. It galled Claire to pay him for what she had once gotten free, but as a practical woman she had seen no alternative. His veiled suggestion that perhaps Amelia might accommodate him had been treated with the scorn it so richly