Marrying Miss Hemingford Read Online Free

said.
    Anne followed with her burden as she was led along a corridor and into a room that was lined with benches and chairs, but no other furniture. In spite of the early hour, there were people waiting, old, young, crippled, deformed, all poorly clad, all grubby. She was about to sink into one of the chairs, when the woman said. ‘Better bring her straight through.’
    She ushered Anne into an adjoining room, which was evidently the doctor’s surgery, for there was a bed, a desk with a lamp on it, two chairs and a large cupboard, most of it extremely shabby though perfectly clean. Of the doctor there was no sign.
    â€˜Put her on the bed. I’ll fetch Dr Tremayne. He’s having his breakfast before he starts. They all come so early and he’d come straight from his bed if I didn’t insist he had something to eat and drink first.’
    She disappeared and Anne gently laid the child on the couch. She was trying to staunch the bleeding with a towel she had taken from a hook on the wall, worrying that the little girl was so pale and lifeless, when she heard the door open and close behind her and turned to face the man who had entered.
    She had expected a middle-aged man with thinning hair and a rumpled suit. What she saw was the most handsome man she had seen in a long time. He was older than she was by a year or two, tall and spare, with thick dark hair, much in need of a barber, and a tanned, almost rugged complexion. She might have been right about the crumpled suit, except that he wore no coat and was in his shirt sleeves. Nothing could have been further from the dandies who strolled in and out of London drawing rooms during the Season than this man. In spite of a slight limp he exuded masculine strength, and she felt her breath catch in her throat.
    He barely glanced at her as he went over to the child and began examining her with gently probing fingers. Anne wondered whether she was expected to go or stay, but her heart had gone out to the little scrap of humanity and she wished she could do something to help. She hesitated. ‘Will she be all right?’
    â€˜Let us hope so.’ He still had his back to her and clicked his fingers at the plump woman who had followed him into the room. ‘Padding and a bandage, Mrs Armistead, if you please.’ These were put into his hand and he carefully bandaged the head wound and put some ointment on the grazed arm and leg, ignoring his audience. When she saw the child’s eyelids flutter, Anne breathed an audible sigh of relief.
    â€˜You may sigh,’ he said sharply, proving he had been aware that she had stayed. ‘What were you thinking of to allow a child so small to run out alone? Have you no sense at all?’
    Anne was taken aback until she realised that he hadmistaken her for the child’s mother, which just showed how unobservant he was. The little girl was in dirty rags whereas she was wearing a fashionable walking dress of green taffeta, a three-quarter-length pelisse and a bonnet that had cost all of three guineas. The thought of that extravagance in the face of this poverty made her uncomfortable. She looked at Mrs Armistead, who lifted her shoulders in a shrug.
    â€˜I am not the child’s mother,’ she said, and suddenly wished she was. She could dress her in warm clothes, give her good food, care for her as her mother evidently did not. ‘I never saw the child before today.’
    â€˜Oh.’ Alerted by her cultured voice, he turned from his ministrations to look at her for the first time and she saw deep-set brown eyes that had fine lines running from the outer corners as if he were used to squinting in strong sunlight, but the eyes themselves were cold and empty and his expression severe. She smiled, trying to evince some response from him.
    â€˜Madam.’ He bowed stiffly, hiding the fact that he had been taken by surprise. What he saw was not only a tall graceful woman of fashion, but also an