The Misfit Marquess Read Online Free Page B

light coverlet revealed a heavy bandage encasing her heel. It was secured by a length of torn linen cloth that looped several times over the bandage and around her ankle.
    She knew at once that the damage her foot had suffered was not trivial, although a twinge in her shoulder revealed a less severe injury. There were other parts of her that stung, and then she remembered a horse coming at her. She recalled she had received cuts to her jawline, her arm, and where the horse's hoof had struck her head. She reached to feel for a sticking plaster on her forehead, and was not disappointed.
    The clouds in her head dissipated rapidly, as though to keep pace with the return of sharp and painful sensation to her body. Feeling faint, she almost wished she had not looked at her foot, had not reminded herself of her injuries.
    "My heel!" she said aloud, hearing the amazement in her own croaky words as she remembered the wound that had left her gasping in the premorning dark.
    She was answered by nothing more than a nod, but the nod was enough movement to catch Elizabeth's eye. The hair stood up on her nape, although she had no reason to think why it should, other than the lateness of the hour. Her gaze slowly lifted from her injured foot to the space beyond the bed. Despite knowing someone was there, she was still a little shocked to discover the viewer was Lord Greyleigh, not a maid as one might have supposed. Unmoving and unblinking, he sat in a chair opposite the bed, watching her every movement.
    Ah. Yes, she thought. Lord Greyleigh. There had been a horse, other than the one taken from her.... Lord Greyleigh's horse. This man had held her as he had ridden. He must have found her, must have brought her here. ... It all came flooding back at once, and she understood that she had to be within Greyleigh Manor.
    Their gazes locked, and the moment grew long. Elizabeth felt slow heat fill her cheeks—not embarrassment, not anger, but something wholly new, outside her previous experience. It was a kind of self-awareness, she thought, or perhaps it was a shared awareness of one another. This was the look that two tigers surely exchanged upon meeting in the jungle, a wary acknowledgment of the other's existence, a fiery curiosity only just banked by primal caution.
    She shook her head once, as though to cast off such fanciful notions, and the moment was broken. Lord Greyleigh blinked, Elizabeth's flush grew deeper, and she felt social order replace uncivilized stares.
    "Why are you in my room?" She spoke in a soft, confused tone, less croaky this time.
    "Not your room," he answered, his words coolly polite if not cordial. "The room belongs to me. I am Lord Greyleigh. Your . .. home has been destroyed by fire. We are searching for records, but are afraid they are destroyed. Do you know your name?"
    What a curious question. And what did he mean, her home had been destroyed by fire? And why that hesitation when he said the word "home"?
    "Come, surely you know your own name," he pressed.
    "Elizabeth."
    "Your surname, girl. I need your surname."
    Elizabeth put her head on one side, as much from vexation as from a curious exhaustion, the latter no doubt owing to having been dosed with laudanum, at least to judge from a spreading headache and queasy sensation that had begun to grow in the pit of her belly.
    Despite any lingering fuzziness, however, she realized in a flash that she could not tell him her name. If he had no notion of her identity, better that she remain anonymous. But how not to answer his question?
    He sighed, a soft sound that was somehow still ripe with meaning—frustration perhaps. But why frustration? That emotion seemed disproportionate to the circumstances.
    He reached with a small show of irritation to the queue that was no longer quite securing his hair, and pulled it free. The pale strands of his hair fell to his shoulders. While she had never talked to this man the few times she had seen him in London, she'd had eyes to