All About Seduction(19)

Offering a rare concession, Mr. Broadhurst said, “Within the week, then, Mrs. Broadhurst, because these men cannot stay on forever.”

She nodded jerkily. Her hands shook as she tried to undo a button. She couldn’t have said if it was anger or fear or an odd mixture of both. “Really, sir. I need a few minutes to compose myself. And you should go down to offer our guests a cordial before dinner. You must spend time with them or their purpose for being here will be too obvious. I shall run the mill perfectly well while you are occupied with the guests.”

One side of his mouth lifted in the nearest thing her husband ever managed resembling a smile. “It won’t matter if you run the mill well for a month. Only a son will change the will’s provisions.”

Caroline blanched. Her heart thundered in her chest. “I need the practice for the day I will have to run it for our son.”

“Agreed.” Mr. Broadhurst pushed out of the chair. “I shall retire early to give you free hunting.”

She nodded. At least that way if she made a hash of a flirtation, he would not be there to criticize. Stars above, had she really agreed to have an extramarital affair? Her stomach churning, she fought the bile rising in her throat.

Jack Applegate stared at the tinwork ceiling of the dim room. A fire blazed in the fireplace, apparently just for him. The doctor had given him morphine, but it just took the edge off enough so he could breathe in something other than a pant.

He had dozed, but woke thrashing as he dreamed of getting sucked deep into the cogs of the machine, it chewing him up and spitting him out in little chunks.

The bed creaked as he moved to his elbows. The room spun around him and his stomach roiled in protest.

He scooted back against the wooden headboard of the bed brought down and assembled for him. Pain seared through his body and made him gasp so hard his throat dried out. He coughed with a dry heave that only made his leg scream with each jar.

The door clicked open, and silhouetted in the doorway was a woman in a full gown. “Are you all right?”

Ahh, his savior, Mrs. Broadhurst, Caro—although he could never call her by her given name. He didn’t know what she’d said to the doctor to convince him to save his leg, but he had no doubt she was the reason he remained in one piece.

Jack stifled the cough. He was far from all right. Even though the doctor told him the ankle had been repaired in a surgery that took hours, he also said it was unlikely he would ever walk again, and might still lose the leg if sepsis set in. And that he wouldn’t be able to attempt walking for two to three months.

If he couldn’t make it to London in two weeks, he’d never be all right again. But that wasn’t the thing to say to the woman who opened her house to him, washed the blood from his leg and arm—all while directing her servants to make the breakfast room into a invalid’s room for him. Curiously, she had taken care of him when she could have passed his care to her servants.

“I’ll do,” he managed, and then dissolved into a new spate of coughing.

He willed her to turn around and close the door. The last thing he wanted was her seeing him moaning or groaning in pain. She’d meant well. Weak as a mewling newborn kitten, he collapsed back against the head of the bed.

She crossed the room, bent to light a spill from the fire and then light the lamp on the table he’d been operated upon. The gore was gone. A slew of maids had cleaned the mess, while he watched the pile of red rags grow amazingly tall.

She leaned over him and put a cool hand to his forehead. But in doing so, she gave him a lovely glimpse of her bosom.

He gasped. He’d never seen Mrs. Broadhurst in anything that wasn’t buttoned to her neck, but this frilled and flounced, robin’s-egg-blue gown exposed her creamy white shoulders and the rounded tops of her breasts. A glittering blue-stone necklace fell away from her skin and dangled between them. Like a magpie, he wanted to grab it, to feel the heat from her in the gold, to let the back of his fingers graze her creamy skin underneath.

Jack closed his eyes. Never in a million years would she welcome his touch. Even if she had been sold into marriage with a rich old tradesman, she was as blue-blooded as they came. He was nothing better than a laborer. She’d never let him kiss her feet, let alone the things he wanted to do as he watched her from afar.

He’d thought if he could market his designs, he could one day have a chance at a woman like her.

“Where is the maid I left with you?” She pushed back hair that clung to his damp forehead.