LITMIR.BIZ

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out in his flash of overwrought temper after finding Verity safe and sound and his mad dash south more or less unnecessary. ‘Lady Chloe explained about your rescue of Miss Verity and told me in no uncertain terms that we are all deeply in your debt and I owe you an apology.’

      ‘I was protecting my own,’ the man stubbornly insisted, as if he could think of nothing he would like more than a good fight with his uncouth host.

      ‘Shame you weren’t about when the child needed you most then, isn’t it?’ Luke rebuked him grimly and met the man’s pained blue eyes, so like Verity’s there really was no questioning his claim to be the girl’s father.

      ‘Aye,’ he replied with a deep sigh and looked easily as weary as Luke felt.

      ‘I am here, you know?’ Verity intervened even as Chloe sent Luke a warning glare to inform him he was making things worse for the poor man.

      ‘Something I trust Lord Farenze and his daughter are about to remedy,’ Chloe said and Verity looked as if she was about to argue. ‘This is not the time for anything other than making sure poor Mr Revereux is made comfortable as he can be with a bullet wound in his shoulder—explanations can come later.’

      ‘I don’t know about that, but would you mind finding out how my poor horse does, Miss Verity?’ the gentleman asked faintly. The girl still hesitated and Luke’s admiration for her courage increased.

      ‘Very well, but please don’t think I’m too young or stupid to know what’s going on,’ she said sternly and managed her exit a great deal more gracefully than the master of the house had done.

      * * *

      As soon as Verity was out of earshot Luke watched Chloe ruthlessly uncover her patient’s wound, despite his protests this was too public a space for a gentleman to remove so much of his clothing.

      ‘Pray stop being such a baby,’ she ordered the strapping sea captain, who bit his lip, then fainted again while she examined the wound for stray fragments of cloth and lead, then cheerfully pronounced the ball had passed along the fleshy part of the gentleman’s upper arm and avoided any major veins or arteries.

      She frowned in concentration while doing her best to remove every shred of fine linen threads from his wound then clean it with a solution of what smelt to Luke like rosemary and brandy, before binding it up with a pad soaked in herbs and honey and bandaging it in place.

      ‘It’s as well we’re still only in March,’ he observed as Chloe sat in one of the kitchen chairs with a relieved sigh and accepted a cup of Cook’s best tea. ‘The poor man would be mobbed with bees and wasps if he set foot outside later in the year.’

      ‘It will stop infection, although Captain Revereux must have the constitution of an ox to manage to ride here from Bath with a wound like that draining him of energy all the way,’ she said.

      ‘True, although it would be as well if we wait to get the whole tale out of him before we declare him a hero. He doesn’t strike me as being the type to dwell on his good deeds and he is a little late in rescuing his daughter from the wolves,’ Luke said, glad he hadn’t been called upon to test his limited knowledge of herbs and doctoring in his current state of travel-stained weariness.

      ‘And Mrs Wheaton is quite right, Papa, you really do need a bath,’ his own daughter told him with a fastidious wrinkling of her nose at the smell of sweat, road mud and horse so strong on him it almost drowned out the astringent herbs.

      ‘I’m a trial and embarrassment to my womenfolk at the best of times,’ he said with an unrepentant smile and went away to remedy it with an energy he’d have thought impossible, before Lady Chloe Thessaly admitted she loved him.

      * * *

      ‘Why did Lord Farenze call you Lady Chloe when you were arguing, Mama?’ Verity asked even as she accepted Chloe’s help to don a fresh gown and sat still for her to comb out her tangled mane of wheat-blonde hair.

      ‘Because it’s my real name, my love.’

      ‘Then you are the daughter of an earl or marquis or duke?’ Verity said as she held Chloe’s gaze in the mirror.

      ‘An earl,’ Chloe admitted with a sigh.

      ‘The men who tried to make me go with them, then attacked Mr Revereux, said the Earl would have their hides if they let us escape. What an odd coincidence.’

      ‘I’m afraid not, love,’ Chloe admitted, wishing Verity was less intelligent for once.

      ‘He is the same one, then? My own grandfather paid those men to kidnap me and attack anyone who got in their way? What kind of man would do such a thing to his own flesh and blood?’

      ‘The earl who wanted to capture you is your uncle and not my father and I don’t really want you to know what kind of man he is now.’

      ‘I want to know why he thinks I would want to live with him when I’d rather be your next scullery maid. He had poor Mr Revereux shot because he stopped those bad men carrying me off.’

      Chloe was unsure how much Verity had heard or understood of the arguments in the kitchen, so she took a deep breath and told Verity how she and Daphne grew up together on a rundown estate in Devon. How their father and brothers ignored them until they decided Daphne would net them a fortune as a beautiful and biddable young lady they could sell to the highest bidder. She couldn’t describe Daphne’s visit to Lady Hamming in Edinburgh because she didn’t know about it herself, but she also admitted that her father, the Earl of Crowdale, thought their aunt should introduce his prettiest and most docile twin daughter to Edinburgh society before she married the old man he agreed to sell her to.

      ‘Rumours that my father was in debt were probably flying about London and a London Season is very expensive. My aunt has always doted on her brother and nephews, so they knew she would do as they asked her to at no cost to them.’

      ‘It’s a sad story and I feel sorry for Aunt Daphne, but what has she got to do with that man who says he is my father?’ Verity asked.

      ‘Well, instead of marrying her to an elderly duke, your grandfather and uncles brought my sister back to Carraway Court in disgrace. They ordered me to pack enough for both of us, because we were going to live in the most remote place they could find since she refused to marry that rich old man. So I packed all I could in the time they gave me and was glad to quit the Court with my father and brothers stamping about there as if every breath we took was costing them dear.

      ‘Our things were bundled into a farm dray and we were taken to meet the stage coach, then thrown off it at the turning leading up to a farmhouse high on Bodmin Moor, where no tenant would stay because it’s so isolated you can only walk there or ride a single pony across the moor. It was miles from our nearest neighbours. The roof leaked in places and the wind howled across the moor as if the hounds of hell had been let loose to roam the earth. We were often cold and hungry as summer turned to autumn, then winter, and the local people would leave scraps of firewood and any vegetables they could spare us where our narrow track left the road. They had the kindness our own kin lacked and we might have died of cold and hunger if not for them.’

      ‘Why did they turn on you because Aunt Daphne didn’t want to marry some horrid old man, Mama?’

      ‘Because she was with child,’ Chloe admitted reluctantly.

      ‘How old were you both then?’

      ‘Seventeen at the turn of the year.’

      ‘Then you must have been the one who was pregnant, Mama, since you had me when you were seventeen.’

      ‘I’m sorry, my love, but your true mother was my twin sister, Lady Daphne Thessaly.’

      ‘Then I’m a bastard,’ Verity whispered blankly, the full nuances of that word seeming to hit her like a blow.

      ‘A love child,’ Chloe corrected her gently.

      ‘And you lied; you pretended I was your child.’

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