Madness Read Online Free Page A

lost her balance. He staggered backwards slightly, taking her with him as he fell against the wall and hit it with a solid thunk.
     
    Her whole body jarred and juddered against him. She gasped again, this time in shock comingled with desire. For some of his flesh was now even more solid than it had been a moment before.
     
    Gabrielle was no fool: she had been poked, prodded and pressed enough in crowds and at balls and assemblies to know what this change in his body signified. She looked at her unconscious sister, and shivered. But the stranger had saved her…
     
    And they were going to bludgeon the man to beetroot if she didn’t stop them. She took hold of his hand, pulling it from around her waist with her right hand and stepping forward to shield him. She kept hold of him with her left hand, forcing him to remain behind her.
     
    “That’s enough! He didn’t do anything wrong. If he so much as gets a splinter from that baton I’m going to write a letter to The Times about everything that happened here today. How I can’t even come to visit my sister without being molested. How she herself was accosted and would have been violated by that odious creature had this man not intervened.”
     
    She pointed at the man dangling from the hook, who began shouting the most foul execrations she had ever heard. She could only guess at the meaning of some of them, but his tone was more than enough to discern their import.
     
    The man was foaming at the mouth like a rabid cur, his teeth white and snarling. She shuddered as he ranted about what he was going to do to her ripe young body as soon as they cut him down.
     
    “And your sister!” he shouted. “You bloody pair of whores!”
     
    To her surprise the man behind her squeezed her hand sympathetically, and rubbed the back of it with his thumb before removing his own from her clasp.
     
    She started as his hands both descended upon her shoulders and came around her. Looking down, she saw he was draping his miserably tattered scrap of towel around her bared bosom. She clutched the rough cotton to her gratefully, and tugged up the shredded flap of wool, lace and linen which was dangling down below her navel.
     
    His hands had vanished as suddenly as they’d come, but she reached behind her to touch him to show her gratitude. Her hands had brushed along his lower abdomen, and she’d felt him shudder and jerk. He snatched her hand and squeezed it tightly in both her own, gasping under his breath.
     
    “Oh God,” he moaned softly. “I’m sorry.”
     
    Gabrielle guessed in an instant what the innocent contact had provoked in him, but squeezed his hand once more. She flicked a look at him over her shoulder, meeting the most remarkable pair of pale golden eyes she had ever seen.
     
    She caught a glimpse of a high brow, aquiline nose, generous lips, and a finely hewn chin with a cleft discernable under his heavy beard. If not for his gauntness, pallor, and the filth he was besmirched with, he would have been perfection.
     
    A big if , of course, but once again it made her wonder who on earth he was. For she felt sure she had met him before. Or someone very like him…
     
    “You have nothing to apologise for, sir. You saved me and Lucinda. Thank you.”
     
    She faced the two guards, who were moving in to grab the huge man. “No! Leave him. Take up my sister and bring her to the infirmary. And you, get another man to help you get this vicious brute down and confine him before he harms anyone else.”
     
    Still they pressed forward.
     
    “No! Leave him. He’s done nothing to me. He’s fine. Please help my sister, before I’m forced to lodge a complaint against you for your appalling negligence.”
     
    By now, the look on their faces had grown positively ugly. She had no idea what would have happened at that moment if a tall, sandy-haired man had not entered, and come running over to her side.
     
    “My God, Gabrielle, what’s happened to you?” Dr. Herriot