In the Arms of the Heiress (A LADIES UNLACED NOVEL) by Maggie Robinson Page B

weren’t yourself. And you did warn me there was difficulty at night.”
    “I did, didn’t I? And now you have all the proof you’d ever want. I’ll leave in the morning.”
    “No!” Louisa sat up, oblivious to the fact that her dressing gown covered very little of her at the moment. “You can’t go! We have a plan.”
    He collapsed in the chair next to the fireplace. There was no warmth there, and the man looked like he needed some to recover. He was shaking from cold—or something else. He stared at his feet, which were long and oddly appealing in their nakedness. Much like the rest of him.
    “I didn’t mean to startle you, but you were crying out. Why don’t we go into the sitting room? Have something to drink. We’ve both had a shock.”
    “Don’t pity me. I can’t bear it.”
    “I’m not pitying you. One might think you were very clever—you got me in your bed, did you not, after I expressly forbid such familiarity. Why, you might have ravished me and no one would be the wiser.” She pulled the folds of her robe tighter.
    Charles’s lip curled. “I could claim I was exercising my rights.”
    “You know perfectly well you have no rights. Come. Let’s go where it’s warm. Your room is like an icehouse.”
    How could he have thrown the covers on the floor? Louisa swore she could see her own breath.
    “I’ll be all right.”
    “At least let’s do something about the fire in here then. I’ll fetch the brandy.” She slid off the bed and stood up, a little shaky herself.
    He looked up. “Didn’t Mrs. Evensong tell you about my problem?”
    “I only know of your bad dreams, and you told me about them.”
    “I drink, Miss Stratton. As much and as often as I can. I promised her I would try to do this job sober. I wouldn’t be plying me with brandy if I were you. There isn’t enough in the house for me once I get started again, and I might not remember I’m supposed to be a gentleman. Next time you come in the room in the middle of the night, I really might ravish you.”
    “Oh.”
Oh.
Charles Cooper was no sort of white knight at all. “Then what can I do? Shall I ring for tea?”
    “Do whatever you want. You’re my employer, after all.”
    He looked so bleak and miserable in the dim room, the candle guttering with each draft of wind from the uncaulked windows. Louisa would see to getting that fixed.
    Someone would still be up in the house—Grace prided herself on round-the-clock service. And if she had to, Louisa could manage herself. She’d spent most of her lonely childhood in the kitchens with the servants. “I’ll rustle up a tea tray. You tend to the fire. Or do you want me to?”
    “There are some things I can still do myself, Miss Stratton. But you’re safe from me. Bedding a woman is not one of them.”

Chapter

    12
    C harles opened the window wider to clear his head. He estimated he was up high enough in the house so if he threw himself out the rattling window, he’d fall to his death. That wouldn’t do much for Louisa’s reputation, but it was a tempting thought nonetheless. He was sick of being sick, driven mad with dreams of carnage and his complicity in it.
    After the injury to his eye, he’d been sent to one of the concentration camps to “tidy” it before it was inspected by members of the do-gooders of the Fawcett Commission. Word had spread that something was seriously amiss in Kitchener’s army, finally reaching Parliament and the public. Somehow he and his ragtag team were supposed to convince the visitors that the brutal conditions of the Boer women and children were not as bad as initially reported.
    No. They had been worse. A full quarter of the inmates under his brief tenure died. The simplest hygiene was nonexistent. His own men died as well—more soldiers were felled to disease than battle. Charles had felt as though he was swimming against an impossibly polluted tide, where death by drowning would be a welcome thing.
    The clean sea beyond the ledge