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the coming three weeks. He did not appear to be feverish. And he clearly had no intention of playing the part of languishing invalid. Nursing him and running and fetching for him would not be nearly a full-time job. Probably the housekeeper would be instructed to find other tasks for her. She would not mind as long as her work never brought her in sight of any visitors to the house. It had been incautious to come into Mayfair again, to knock on the door of a grand mansion on Grosvenor Square, to demand work here. To put herself on display.
    But it was such a pleasure, she had to admit to herselfas she opened the door next to the library and discovered the music room, to be in clean, elegant, spacious, civilized surroundings again.
    There was no sign of a footstool anywhere near the hearth.
    J OCELYN WATCHED HER GO and noticed that she held herself very straight and moved gracefully. He must have been quite befuddled yesterday, he thought, to have assumed that she was a serving girl, even though as it had turned out she really was just a milliner’s assistant. She dressed the part, of course. Her dress was cheap and shoddily made. It was also at least one size too large.
    But she was no serving girl, for all that. Nor brought up to spend her days in a milliner’s workshop, if he was any judge. She spoke with the cultured accents of a lady.
    A lady who had fallen upon hard times?
    She took her time about returning. When she did so, she was carrying the footstool in one hand and a large cushion in the other.
    â€œDid you have to go to the other side of London for the stool?” he asked sharply. “And then have to wait while it was being made?”
    â€œNo,” she replied quite calmly. “But it was not where you said it would be. Indeed, it was not anywhere in plain sight. I brought a cushion too as the stool looks rather low.”
    She set it down, placed the cushion on top of it, and went down on one knee in order to lift his leg. He dreaded having it touched. But her hands were both gentle and strong. He felt scarcely any additional pain.Perhaps, he thought, he should have her cradle his head in those hands. He pursed his lips to stop himself from chuckling.
    His dressing gown had fallen open to reveal the bandage cutting into the reddened flesh of his calf. He frowned.
    â€œYou see?” Jane Ingleby said. “Your leg has swollen and must be twice as painful as it need be. You really must keep it up as you were told, however fretful and inconvenient it may be to do so. I suppose you consider it unmanly to give in to an indisposition. Men can be so silly that way.”
    â€œIndeed?” he said frostily, viewing the top of her hideous and very new cap with extreme distaste. Why he had not dismissed her with a figurative boot in the rear end ten minutes ago he did not know. Why he had hired her in the first place he could not fathom since he blamed her entirely for his misfortune. She was a shrew and would worry him to death like a cat with a mouse long before the three weeks were over.
    But the alternative was to have Barnard fussing over him and blanching as pale as any sheet every time he so much as caught sight of his master’s bandage.
    Besides, he was going to need something to stimulate his mind while he was incarcerated inside his town house, Jocelyn decided. He could not expect his friends and family to camp out in his drawing room and give him their constant company.
    â€œYes, indeed.” She stood up and looked down at him. Not only were her eyes clear blue, he noticed, but they were rimmed by thick long lashes several shades darker than her almost invisible hair. They were the sort of eyes in which a man might well drown himself if the rest ofher person and character were only a match for them. But there was that mouth not far below them, and it was still talking.
    â€œThis bandage needs changing,” she said. “It is the one Dr. Raikes put on yesterday morning.