Page 46 of Taken By the Broken Duke
“Interesting notion. I would have splashed rainwater on it. Where did you read this?”
“A friend of mine keeps a large and varied library. He sends me books he thinks I would find interesting,” Juliet said.
“He?” Horatio probed. “Should I be jealous?”
Juliet flushed as she crouched beside her makeshift kettle. “I don’t know. Kissing me does not mean that you care enough to become jealous at the presence of another man.”
“I was told that you are promised to another,” Horatio said, “yet you allowed me to kiss you.”
Juliet considered her answer. It involved a secret that was not hers to tell.
“I am not. But I pretend to be,” she finally said.
Horatio looked confused. “What would be the point of that? Do your Aunt and Uncle try to force you into marriage?”
“They have suggested matches. None of them what I would regard as suitable. And I have become increasingly afraid that I will eventually have to accept one of them because I am living off my Aunt and Uncle’s charity. I do not like being their dependent.”
“Understandable,” Horatio replied, wincing as he shifted in his seat, “but why not simply find a husband of your own? You are a beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished woman.”
Juliet blushed even more deeply and looked away.
“I mean it,” Horatio continued, earnestly. “I cannot conceive why you are not married yet.”
“I have told you,” Juliet murmured, unable to look at him now, “I do not want to make a man whom I care about into a widower.”
“Your Aunt claims there is no illness.”
Now, Juliet looked up. There was fire in her eyes. “She is lying. You have seen the attacks I have suffered. I am not prone to swooning over nothing, I can assure you.”
“I believe you,” Horatio said, simply. “So what does this other man get out of your… arrangement?”
“He is just a friend who wishes to help,” Juliet said, evading the question.
Nigel’s secrets were his own to keep. She would not betray him by telling Horatio the real reason that Nigel wanted to pretend to be engaged.
“Just a friend,” Horatio said, flatly.
“Yes. Just as you and I are… what are we? Engaged to be married but in name only? Or perhaps not even that. Frances thinks it is she who will be your wife of convenience.”
“She cannot compare to you. You are as beautiful as you are enigmatic. I have never met a woman so able to tie my heart into knots,” Horatio muttered.
He levered himself to his feet and Juliet stood, crossing the floor to him and pushing him back down.
“No. Stay where you are or you will open the wound further. I am going to remove your coat, waistcoat, and shirt, then clean and bind the wound.”
Horatio smiled as he obeyed, watching her as she set about her work. Juliet knew she was blushing furiously as she undressed Horatio. Even blood-streaked and rain-soaked, his body was remarkable. Juliet wondered if all men were so endowed with the body of a demi-god. She thought of Hercules as she dipped a wad of cloak into the boiling water and set about wiping away blood from his side. Horatio watched her face the entire time, not wincing or making a sound. So he was stoic, as well as brave and strong. A true hero of fairy tales. As she scrubbed at the blood, Juliet saw Horatio’s pale skin revealed. Just as she had seen it after he emerged from the water of the mere. She felt the scarring that reached around from his back.
“What happened here?” she whispered, letting her fingers linger for a moment.
“I was working at an inn in Cornwall, owned by my good friend and savior, Dickens Hall. There was a fire. I dragged Hall through it and timbers fell across my back. He in turn came back to drag me out. We saved each other, but the inn burned to the ground. I discovered that my father had never formally removed me as his sole heir a month later.”
“Dickens Hall? As in…”
“Mr. Hall, the butler of Ravenscourt. Yes, I gave him the job, just as he once employed me when he found me starving and close to death by the roadside.”
Juliet pressed a wad of fresh cloth, cut from her cloak, against the newly cleaned wound, and began binding the dressing in place with a bandage from the same source. The revelation was a remarkable one. He had already mentioned to her his time spent wandering the byways of England but she had imagined him a wandering gentleman, with money in his pocket. Not a starving wretch. Or the employee of an innkeeper. There were layers to this man that she had not dreamed of.
“I’m sorry for the part I played in the circumstances that led you to that roadside,” she said, suddenly.
