He started to open it, but stopped himself. She was still naked, he remembered. He couldn’t just burst in on her.
1446 Words
Dr. Osbourne examined both Mrs. Frawley and the girl Lord Amberville had brought to the manor house. “I can find nothing wrong with your housekeeper,” he said when he joined His Grace in the duke’s immaculate and impeccably furnished office. “She confessed to no physical malady, but only muttered something about a button. I allowed her to speak to her maids, and then gave her a sleeping draught. She should be fine by morning.”
“A button,” Jourdian repeated. Sitting behind his desk, he tapped a pencil upon a neat stack of business papers. “And the girl?”
“I failed to find a single bruise or other injury on her person, which leads me to believe that you did not run over her in the meadow.”
Jourdian leaned over the massive desk. “I told you that after I fell off my horse, I discovered the girl on top of me. What do you think she did? Fall out of the sky?”
The doctor took off his spectacles and scratched the back of his neck. “I have no explanation. And she did not give me any further information about herself than she gave you, Your Grace. Her poor health is the sole thing of which I am certain. I don’t believe I have ever seen such frailty in all my years as a physician.”
“And yet she glows.” Jourdian stood, walked around his desk, and stopped before the doctor. “Her skin. Didn’t you notice?”
“Her skin glows?”
“Do you mean you didn’t perceive an odd sort of shimmer about her?”
Dr. Osbourne’s bushy white eyebrows knitted together. “I’m sorry, your lordship, but no, I didn’t.”
Jourdian couldn’t understand it. The girl did shine, damn it all. He’d seen her twinkle with his own eyes!
“Perhaps the glow you describe was but the sun sparkling on her pale skin,” Dr. Osbourne suggested. “Or perhaps your fall from your horse caused you to imagine her gleam. Your Grace, are you quite certain that you do not wish for me to examine you as well? I’d be happy to—”
“No. I told you I’m fine.” Jourdian returned to his desk and sat back down. Maybe the doctor was right, he mused. Perhaps the girl’s odd sparkle had been sunshine. “She’ll recover, will she not?”
“It’s difficult to be certain. I recommend that you continue to provide her with regular meals and a place to rest. Perhaps when her physical condition strengthens, her memory will improve and she will be able to tell you who she is, where she’s from, and why she wasn’t wearing any clothes.”
Jourdian decided to have the girl fed ten huge meals a day and to forbid her to get out of bed. Surely such a course of treatment would hasten her recovery.
“You know, Your Grace,” Dr. Osbourne said, “her attitude does give us somewhat of a hint about her. She’s quite the sweetest person I believe I have ever met, but she… Well, her bearing is almost regal. And she snaps out commands as well as any noble person I have ever…er… Of course, I do not mean to say that the members of the aristocracy are dictatorial—”
“Never mind that. What about the girl?”
Dr. Osbourne replaced his spectacles on the end of his nose. “I believe she is accustomed to delivering orders and seeing those orders followed. Her manner of behavior does not strike me as that of a commoner, your lordship.”
Jourdian knew the physician had a point. But the girl did not seem to be of privileged birth. Her naïveté…her unsophisticated way of expressing herself…
Her artlessness was in direct contrast to the pretentiousness and insincerity so common among the ladies of the upper classes. And surely if a female member of some wellborn family were lost, he would have heard the news by now.
“I will take your observation into consideration,” he said. “Good day, Doctor.”
Dr. Osbourne started to leave the room. But before he passed over the threshold of the door, he turned to face the duke again. “I realize you are a busy man, Your Grace, but I believe it would be in the girl’s best interest for you to keep company with her as often as possible. She asked for you several times during the course of the examination, and your visits with her might very well—”
“I am not her nursemaid.”
“No. No, of course not. I only meant—”
“Moreover, I fail to see how my being with the girl could possibly have any effect on her recuperation.”
“Perhaps it would have none at all, but—”
“Send me a bill for your charges. Good day, Doctor.”
Dr. Osbourne left instantly.
“Nursemaid, indeed,” Jourdian muttered, then heard something clomping up the hall. His head aching from the aftereffects of his two falls from his horse, he looked up and saw a black and white blob shoot past the doorway. Ulmstead followed, bent over at the waist with his hands outstretched in an effort to catch the black and white blob.
“Ulmstead!”
Ulmstead came to an abrupt halt in front of the door. “Your Grace?” he panted.
“What was that thing that just tore down the corridor?”
“A hog.”
“A hog?” Jourdian shouted.
Ulmstead wiped a few beads of sweat off his shiny head. “The animal entered the house with you and the girl. I tried to force him back outside, but he… Well, he vanished. Into thin air. A quarter of an hour ago, I discovered him asleep atop the billiard table, comfortable as you please as if he had every right to be there.”
“What? How in God’s name did a hog get on the billiard table?”
“I have yet to understand how the creature managed such a feat.”
“Get rid of him.”
“At once, Your Grace.” Ulmstead turned and dashed down the hallway. “Here, piggy! Here, piggy, piggy, piggy!”
Jourdian rested his head in his hands, thinking about all the strange things that had happened during the course of the afternoon. Lightning out of nowhere, in a clear blue sky, and with no resulting thunder or rain. His stirrups falling from two thick, unsevered straps of leather. Magnus going straight to the manor rather than the barns. Evermore’s calm and levelheaded servants… Ulmstead swiping at thin air and muttering something about a vanishing sausage, and Mrs. Frawley losing her wits over a button. A hog sleeping on the billiard table and now scrambling around the house.
And everything had started with the girl. The naked girl who shone as if made of naught but minuscule stars. The second he’d set eyes on her, his whole life had turned completely upside down.
Who the bloody hell was she?
“Your Grace?”
He saw a young maid standing in the hallway. “What is it?”
Tessie jumped; the red birthmarks staining her face turned a deeper red. “Mrs. Fraw—Mrs. Frawley’s in the bed.”
Jourdian waited for the maid to continue, but she only stared at him with the same sort of fear she’d have exhibited if staring at a man-eating monster. “Unless you have something to tell me that I do not already know, you are dismissed.”
Tessie wrung her hands in her apron, then lifted them to her face to cover the embarrassing birthmarks she knew were a flaming scarlet. “I do. I have. New information, Your Grace. I—Mrs. Frawley’s in the bed, but before the doctor’s medicine put her to sleep, she told me what to do. I did everything she told me, but the girl who was naked in the meadow with you won’t stay in bed! She won’t put on the gown I brought her, and she won’t eat!”
His eyes mere slits across his face, Jourdian stalked out of the room, brushed past the maid, stormed down the corridor, and took the steps of the staircase three at a time. In short order he stood before the door of the yellow chambers.
He started to open it, but stopped himself. She was still naked, he remembered. He couldn’t just burst in on her.
- Writer
