A Stranger's Touch Read Free Page B

was truly ill I wouldn’t have left him last evening. I’ll sit with him for a while, Bess. You go to bed. If he is ill for a few days, we’ll have to share the nursing and you need your rest too.’
    ‘So do you, miss, but have it your way. Just watch yourself if he starts to fight—and don’t let him shout out. Your brothers came in a few minutes ago and they’ve gone to their beds.’
    ‘‘Tis nearly morning. Where have they been all this time—and on a night like this?’
    ‘The storm blew itself out a while back,’ Bess said. ‘The darker the night the better for the “gentlemen”.’
    ‘I dare say it was some such business,’Morwenna said and yawned behind her hand. ‘Go to bed, Bess. In a couple of hours it will be time to get up again.’
    Morwenna sat in a solid oak-carved chair with a high back. She had made cushions for its seat and the centre splat had horsehair padding covered by tapestry and studded each side to make it comfortable. The first time Morwenna had brought a survivor to this room she’d installed the chair so that she would at least have some comfort as she watched over her patients. Mrs Harding had been very ill, but Morwenna had nursed her back to health and she’d been overwhelmed by gratitude when she was able to return to London and her husband.
    ‘We are cloth merchants, Morwenna,’ Mrs Harding had told her as she took an emotional farewell. ‘My husband will always be pleased to have you stay with us. If ever you should be in trouble, think of me, my dear, for I would do anything to help you.’
    ‘Thank you.’ Morwenna had smiled and kissed her cheek. ‘If ever I am in London, I shall seek you out, at least for a visit.’
    Morwenna sighed at the memory. It was unlikely she would ever go to London. Herhopes of making a good marriage had gone when her mother died. Since her father’s death she had been little more than a servant in her half-brother’s house. Michael had resented the woman who had taken his dead mother’s place and she suspected that he might resent her, too.
    She would not brood on her life no matter how hard or hopeless it might seem at times. While she had Jacques to make her smile she would find the courage to face each day, though there was little else to make her smile in this bleak house at the top of the cliffs.
    Sitting down again, she studied the man in the bed. His hair had dried now and she saw it was dark blond. On the beach he’d looked colourless, but now there was a flush in his cheeks. When he’d opened his eyes for a moment she’d seen they were a greenish blue; his nose and forehead had a patrician look, which gave him a slightly forbidding expression, but his mouth was soft and sensual. She felt tempted to kiss him as he lay sleeping, her cheeks growing warm as she realised her own thoughts.
    Was she so starved of love that she would consider lying with a stranger? He had beautiful strong limbs and there was not a part of him that she had not seen as she bathed him with thecooling water. A little smile touched her mouth. She’d nursed her brothers before this, so why was she behaving as if she’d never seen a man naked before?
    Time passed and she closed her eyes for a while, woke and realised she’d slept, and then she looked at the bed. Her patient was still there, apparently sleeping peacefully. She’d thought he might have disappeared for surely she’d conjured him out of her dreams. Men like this one did not come into her life often. He was every bit as handsome and powerful a man as her brothers, but there was something about him that made her pulses race. Something about his mouth that made her want to kiss it.
    Giving herself a mental scolding, Morwenna laughed softly. She was a fool even to consider such a thing—especially if this man had come here to spy on them.
    ‘Why are you laughing?’
    Her eyes were drawn to the bed and she saw that he was looking at her. Getting up from her chair, she moved closer to