Read Why Lords Lose Their Hearts for Free Online

been in her right mind she would have remarked upon it. As things were, however, she hadn’t the strength of a newborn kitten and her eyes closed before she could complete her thought.
    *   *   *
    Archer’s jaw was clenched so tightly that he feared some damage to his teeth. He looked down at Perdita, the shadows beneath her closed eyes giving her a pale and wan look that worried him. For as long as he’d known her, Perdita had been a fighter. Even during the worst of her marriage to Gervase, she’d tried desperately not to let her fear or hurt show. But seeing her thus, laid low by someone they didn’t even know, terrified him in ways he could only begin to explain. When he’d seen that masked figure put his hands on her, Archer had wanted to kill the other man and damn the consequences. But when she’d fallen to the ground, in danger of being trampled by the horses, his priority had shifted to protecting Perdita. A few more inches and she’d have been facing an injury to her head that would not be so easy to come back from. The very notion was unthinkable. And he was more grateful than he could say that she’d escaped with only a bump on the head.
    “She’ll come around, my lord,” said Simmons, the dowager Duchess of Ormond’s personal maid. She’d been at the Ormond town house to visit the housekeeper—she now lived with her mistress at another house in town—and Archer was grateful for her help. Perdita’s own maid had dissolved into a fit of tears and shrieks just as soon as she’d laid eyes on her mistress and had had to be sedated by the physician. Simmons, however, had been through every sort of family injury with her mistress and was really the best candidate for looking after the widowed duchess. “I’ll just send a note round to my mistress and let her know where I am,” she continued. “It’s a good thing I came today, else you’d have been left high and dry, if you don’t mind my saying so, your lordship.”
    Stretching his back, which had grown stiff from tension while sitting at Perdita’s bedside, Archer couldn’t help but agree. “I’m grateful, Simmons,” he told the dour woman. “And I know the duchess would say so, too, if she were awake to do so.”
    Her harsh features softening for the barest moment, Simmons, ran a gentle hand over Perdita’s brow. “She’s a sweet lady, is Miss Perdita,” she said, unconsciously referring to the young duchess by her name before marriage. “She takes enough care of the rest of us, I’m sure.”
    Archer couldn’t help but smile, because her words were true. Perdita did take care of everyone. And perhaps it was time she allowed herself to be taken care of. Standing, he laid a companionable hand on the maid’s shoulder. “I do thank you, ma’am,” he reiterated. “And now, if you don’t mind my leaving you here with her, I must go inform Lord Dunthorp of her condition and find someone to stand watch over the house.”
    “I don’t understand, Lord Archer,” she said, her gray brows furrowed. “I thought it was an accident.”
    Not wishing to let on more than he was ready to, Archer merely raised his brows. “I am just being extra cautious,” he assured her. “Nothing more.”
    He left before she could ask him any further questions. The problem with old family retainers, he decided, was that they expected one to tell them the whole truth of the matter. And in this case, he wasn’t prepared to tell even a fraction of the truth. Not only because it might endanger Perdita’s life, but also because to say the words aloud would make Archer feel like an insane fool. Even so, the situation threatened to strain the bounds of credulity no matter whom he decided to tell. For Perdita hadn’t simply been accosted for no reason. He was quite sure the man in the park today had intended to do something much worse.
    To kill her.
    And he could hardly admit such a thing to the dowager’s maid without being prepared to talk the matter