Page 36 of Harpy of the Ton
“And where’s that?”
She paused, focusing on an image—a red-bricked building, an unkempt hedge, and a column of thick gray smoke spilling into the sky…
Then the image faded, consumed by the smoke. Another tear spilled onto her cheeks. But the sympathy she’d first seen in the doctor’s gaze had now gone.
“Exactly,” he said, with a sharp nod. “I’ll not turn you out—yet. But the time will come when we must decide on your future—that is, if nobody comes to claim you.”
To claim me…
She shuddered. Was she the property of another?
You will belong to me—utterly and completely…
A heavy voice, thick with lust and laden with threat, pushed into her senses, and her gut twisted with fear.
Where had she heard those words?
She glanced about, pain thickening behind her eyes. But the figure was a product of her imagination. The room was empty save her and the doctor.
“You’re distressed,” he said. “It’s to be expected—you’ve suffered a severe concussion. But you’ll soon recover. For now, you must rest. You can take some of my wife’s broth later.” He picked up the phial and shook a few drops onto a spoon. “Are we going to do as we’re told?”
She tried to shake her head, then groaned as pain flooded her senses. He held the spoon to her lips, and she swallowed, wincing at the bitter taste. Then, with a firm but gentle hand, he pushed her back onto the pillows.
“Sleep now,” he said. “The best remedy is rest.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but the words never came. The world slipped sideways, and she slid, once more, into oblivion.
Chapter Twelve
“Remind me whywe’re doing this?”
Lawrence glanced at his friend, who steered the cart toward the cluster of buildings that ran either side of the main street at Drovers Heath.
“You know why, Ned,” he said. “If it’sher, then Fate’s given me a chance for justice.”
“That’svengeance, not justice,” his companion replied. “If it looks like horseshit, and smells like horseshit, then it’s horseshit—no matter how many flowers you sprinkle over it.”
“I can’t see the harm,” Lawrence said. “It’s not as if I’ll be holding her captive.”
“Not in chains, perhaps, but if she’s lost her memory, you’ll be imprisoning her by deceit and filling her mind with false memories.”
Ned steered the carthorse toward a small, neat building, a climbing rose framing the front door, where a coach-and-four waited.
“Whoa there!” Ned drew the cart to a halt. “This is Dr. Carter’s house.”
The carriage with a crest painted on the side, a driver, and two liveried footmen looked as out of place next to the tiny building as Mrs. Chantry would in a brothel.
Lawrence grinned to himself. Perhaps that prim schoolmistress needed a good, hard shag to loosen her character—then she wouldn’t be so ready to look down her crooked nose at him and his children.
“The children…”
He recalled their faces that morning—Bobby’s resolute look as she stuck out her lower lip and declared she didn’t want a mother; Billy’s intelligent eyes sparkling with the notion of the mischief he’d make. And Jonathan…
Lawrence’s resolve almost faltered as he recalled the eager expression in the sensitive little boy’s eyes.
“What did you tell your children?” Ned asked.
“That I may have found them a mother.”
