Read Jo Beverley - [Malloren] for Free Online Page B

dealing with routine matters and visited suspect or interesting places without warning. Something about that snagged, like a painful jerk on a new scar—
    “Business in the dales, Mr. Malloren?” Her voice distracted him before he could grasp what had snagged, and why it was important.
    “Damnation!” He bit off more angry words. “I’m sorry. My nerves are on end. Truth is, dear lady, my wits are scrambled and I don’t know enough about myself to make a sensible story of it. What happened to me?”
    “I don’t know. I found you by the roadside, unconscious, miles from anywhere. You were soaking wet with night coming on.”
    That was not the story he’d imagined at all. “By the roadside … in Arkengarthdale?” He knew enough of the land to see the picture. Sheep-dotted fells climbing up to boggy moor. Scattered, rugged farms and little traffic. “Then I most sincerely thank you, Miss Gillsett, for saving my life. I apologize even more for the trouble I’m causing you.”
    Rosamunde stood there, considering his dim shape in the dark. Diana always said she loved honesty too much, and it was true. She could dance along a lie for a while, but then truth would swell up in her like a pot boiling over. As it did now.
    Was it possible to do this thing at least partly based on truth?
    “Are you sincerely grateful, Mr. Malloren?” she heard herself say. Her hands were clasped tight together and her heart pounded.
    “On my honor.”
    She swallowed. “Then would you consider doing me a service in return?”
    After the briefest hesitation, he said, “How could I refuse?”
    “You can,” she assured him. “I don’t want you to feel obliged if it is impossible for you.”
    “Why not tell me what it is you want?”
    With truth in control she almost blurted out, “A baby.” She had sense enough, however, to know she mustn’t say that.
    What, then?
    Diana had said some women wanted men just for themselves. For the act.
    What where the right words, though?
    “I want …” When it came to it, she could only think of the sheep. “I want tupping,” she blurted out, then covered her mouth with a horrified hand. “I’m sorry. Of course you wouldn’t—”
    “I don’t see why not,” he said, remarkably calmly. “I have to point out, however, that it can have implications, especially for an unmarried lady.”
    She thought for a moment, then said, “I’m not unmarried.”
    “Ah. Not
Miss
Gillsett.”
    “No.”
    “Widow?”
    “No.” That truth spilled out before she could stop it.
    “A neglectful husband, then.”
    She hesitated. In most ways Digby was the sweetest, kindest man, but she knew what he meant. “Yes,” she muttered, hand still half over her mouth.
    Then she realized how this would look to him, and felt her face flame. She must appear to be a woman with a flaming hunger for carnal matters, a woman so desperate for it that she’d proposition a stranger she had found drunk by the road!
    She almost fled then, but reminded herself that it was true. Not in the way he’d think, but true all the same. And what did it matter what he thought? After this, they’d never meet again.
    He was silent, clearly thinking just what she expected.
    “So?” she prompted, and it came out harshly.
    “Now? ’Struth, no.” She heard him mutter something she couldn’t catch. It was doubtless just as well. A tear leaked from one eye, and she fought the urge to sniff. She was making a thorough mess of this.
    “You have been kind to me,” he said, as if weighing each word. “I will gladly be kind to you in turn, dear lady. But my head still aches like the devil, my brain feels scrambled, and I’m not at all sure I won’t cast up my accounts again if I try to move.”
    Of course he wasn’t well enough. Rosamunde wanted to crawl under the bed in the hope that a monster truly did live there, ready to gobble her up. She also wanted it done and over with so she could get him out of the house tomorrow, and out of