The Misfit Marquess Read Online Free Page A

by someone riding a horse.
    She opened her eyes, and was for a moment too dizzy to make sense of anything. Then her befuddled sight was caught by the sight of a lock of pale hair. Grandfather? But Grandfather was dead these five years and more.
    She blinked, and moaned, and then the face above her own turned downward to glance at her briefly. In that moment she recognized the man carrying her, even though the sight of him was as unexpected as would be Grandpapa. She did not know this man except by sight, having never been introduced to him, but it was impossible not to recognize Lord Greyleigh. It was a strand of his peculiarly light hair, far too long for fashion and escaping from a queue, that had puzzled her.
    "A surgeon is coming to see to your injuries," Lord Greyleigh told her, not bothering to look down at her again. His words were clipped, no doubt from the effort of supporting her.

    How had she come to be in his arms? Where did they ride to? Was she ill? Fevered? Her foot ached abominably with every stride the horse took.
    The pale sunlight disappeared, and Elizabeth opened her eyes to find the newly rising sun had been blocked by a large, looming brick edifice, the imposing fagade of a weather-aged manor house.
    "What is . .. this place?" she managed to whisper.
    Lord Greyleigh glanced down at her again. "Greyleigh Manor."
    She tilted her head to glance upward at the man who spoke, amazed that Greyleigh was not part of some dream she had been having, but real and warm and holding her steady between his arms.
    "Not your house!" she said, the words pathetically small and thin.
    "What? Afraid to enter the madman's house? I cannot say I blame you, my dear lady." His voice did not sound annoyed, as she might have expected—if anything, he sounded amused. Darkly amused, no doubt, even if she judged from only half of the rumors attached to his name—rumors that circulated every parlor, even so far away as London.
    Even though Lord Greyleigh spent little time in London— preferring his rural estate near Bristol—rumors about him traveled into the City all the same. The kinder gossipmongers called him eccentric, and the less kind dubbed him lunatic.
    She wanted to say any other circumstances would suit: a farmer's holding, or the local squire's home might provide her a temporary shelter, perhaps—anyplace other than the home of Lord Greyleigh the madman. She wanted to insist he release her, that she was well enough, that she did not wish to be any bother to him. ... But the shadows grew darker, and were inviting and far less horrible than reality, and Elizabeth gave in to their gentle summoning, until she knew nothing more of being cradled in Lord Greyleigh's arms.

    Chapter 3
    Elizabeth's heel ached dully, but in the end it was her inability to flex it that finally dragged her out of an already fitful slumber. She blinked her eyes open, finding the room inadequately lit by a single branch of candles. She was absolutely at a loss to explain how it had become night again, for the last moment she remembered was the faint grey of early morning showing just beyond the shoulder of a crazed man ... a man who struck her, who presumably took her horse.
    Still, it was now clearly night again, as if time had been wound backward. How she could be so sure it was evening, she did not know, but there was a stillness around her that spoke of nighttime.
    She was alive, and she was in an unfamiliar, white damask-covered bed with its curtains tied back. Her own bed at home sported neither posts nor white damask. Her next thought was to ponder how she'd come to this bed, one wholly foreign to her, and into a night rail she knew was not her own. She could not imagine how she had come to be here.
    The mystery was beyond the cloudy reasoning that seemed to have taken the place of rational thought, and so she allowed her attention to shift entirely to the condition of her right foot. She struggled up to a sitting position, and a flick of the