Read More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress for Free Online Page A

He is not returning until tomorrow, I believe he said. That is too long a time for one bandage even apart from the swelling. I will dress the wound afresh.”
    He did not want anyone within one yard of the bandage or the wound beneath it. But that was a craven attitude, he knew. Besides, the bandage really did feel too tight. And besides again, he had employed her as a nurse. Let her earn her keep, then.
    â€œWhat are you waiting for?” he asked irritably. “Permission? Is it possible that you deem it necessary to have my
permission
to supersede one of London’s most eminent physicians and to maul my person, Miss Ingleby?” It annoyed him that he had not insisted upon calling her Jane. A nice meek name. A total misnomer for the blue-eyed dragon who looked calmly back at him.
    â€œI do not intend to maul you, your grace,” she said, “but to make you more comfortable. I will not hurt you. I promise.”
    He set his head back against the headrest of his chair and closed his eyes. And opened them hastily again. Headaches, of course—at least the caliber of headache that he had been carrying around with him since he regained consciousness a couple of hours before—were not eased when experienced from behind lowered eyelids.
    She closed the door quietly behind her, he noticed, as she had done when she had gone in search of the footstool.Thank God for small mercies. Now if only she would keep her mouth shut.…
    F OR THE FIRST TIME in a long while Jane felt as if she were in familiar territory. She unwound the bandage with slow care and eased it free of the wound, which had bled a little and caused the bandage to stick. She looked up as she freed it.
    He had not winced even though he must have felt pain. He was reclined in his chair, one elbow resting on the arm, his head propped on his hand while he regarded her with half-closed eyes.
    â€œI am sorry,” she said. “The blood had dried.”
    He half nodded and she set about the task of cleansing the wound with warm water before applying the balsam powder she had found among the housekeeper’s supplies.
    She had nursed her father through a lingering illness until the moment of his death a year and a half ago. Poor Papa. Never a robust man, he had lost all his will to live after Mama’s passing, as if he had allowed disease to ravage him without a fight. By the end she had been doing everything for him. He had grown so very thin. This man’s leg was strong and well muscled.
    â€œYou are new to London?” he asked suddenly.
    She glanced up. She hoped he was not going to start amusing himself by prying into her past. It was a hope that was immediately dashed.
    â€œWhere did you come from?” he asked.
    What should she say? She hated lying, but the truth was out of the question. “From a long way away.”
    He winced as she applied the powder. But it was necessaryto prevent the infection that might yet cost him his leg. The swelling worried her.
    â€œYou are a lady,” he said—a statement, not a question.
    She had tried a cockney accent, with ludicrous results. She had tried something a little vaguer, something that would make her sound like a woman of the lower classes. But though she could hear accents quite clearly, she found it impossible to reproduce them. She had given up trying.
    â€œNot really,” she said. “Just well brought up.”
    â€œWhere?”
    It was a lie she had already told. She would stick with it since it immediately killed most other questions.
    â€œIn an orphanage,” she said. “A good one. I suppose I must have been fathered by someone who could not acknowledge me but who could afford to have me decently raised.”
    Oh, Papa
, she thought. And Mama too. Who had lavished all their love and attention on her, their only child, and given her a wondrously happy family life for sixteen years. Who would have done their utmost to see her settled in a