Lost in Your Arms Read Free Page B

handsome gardens, and once she caught a glimpse of the manor, tall and glorious in the late afternoon’s summer sunshine. Yet they drove to a walled garden. There the carriage stopped, and a gentleman stepped from beneath the arbor. Tall, dark and raw-boned, he wore authority like a second skin.
    “Mr. Throckmorton’s a straight-shooter,” Mr. Kinman told her as the footman opened the carriage door.
    But Enid didn’t move. This wasn’t a moment she wanted to rush to embrace. No, not with Mr. Kinman nudging her from behind and Mr. Throckmorton looking grim as death as he advanced to offer his hand.
    But she had no choice, and with a sigh and a wince she climbed from the carriage.
    The muscles of her thighs ached. Ever since they’d left London, she’d been digging her heels into the floor in a vain, compulsive attempt to stop the onward rush toward her fate.
    “Mrs. MacLean, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Mr. Throckmorton bowed formally, his gray eyes seeming to appraise her. To Mr. Kinman, he said, “Stay with the carriage. We’ll be back soon, and you can take her to the cottage.”
    Mr. Kinman touched his forehead like a soldier to his commander, then, to Enid’s surprise, gave her a like salute.
    Mr. Throckmorton led her into the garden, where vivid yellow daisies nodded beside the paths and tall lavender stocks bloomed against the ivy-covered walls. “Kinman likes you. That’s good; he’s a fair judge of character, and knowing of your estrangement with your husband, I had qualms about contacting you.”
    “How did you know of our estrangement? How did you find me? Is MacLean a friend of yours?”
    “Your husband? Yes, a friend and colleague.” He indicated a bench beneath an arbor. “Won’t you sit down?”
    “I’ve been sitting.” Obviously, Mr. Throckmorton knew much about MacLean. Therefore, he knew about her, and she didn’t like that. Anonymity, she had discovered, beat notoriety any day. “With your permission, I prefer to stand.”
    “As you wish.” Taking her arm, he walked her along the small circle that made up the path within the garden.
    “I imagine you found the news of MacLean’s injury unsettling.”
    “It was the worst possible news.” She had left Lady Halifax. “Mr. Throckmorton, how long do you foresee I will be here? I left a beloved patient who is near her moment of crisis, and I would like to be back at her side as soon as possible.”
    Mr. Throckmorton lifted a haughty brow. “The Distinguished Academy of Governesses arranged for another nurse to care for her, did they not?”
    “Lady Halifax is failing badly, and I know what she needs, how she thinks.” Enid’s heart ached as shethought of the old woman who had so bravely sent her on her way. “I would like to be with her.”
    Mr. Throckmorton observed her closely, then passed judgment. “You are a good nurse.”
    “I am.”
    “Your husband needs a nurse now.”
    Her skirt swirled over the tops of the nodding flower heads, and in her present mood she would just as soon have ground them beneath her heel. Poor flowers, to be a substitute for that rotter Stephen MacLean! “What did MacLean do?” she asked caustically. “Crawl into the wrong bedroom window and get shot by an irate husband? Wager he could race his horses along the turnpike and overturn the carriage? Get drunk and tossed by his erstwhile companions?”
    Her bitterness didn’t shock Mr. Throckmorton. On the contrary, he answered as if her censure was the most natural thing in the world. “He was involved in an explosion.”
    Enid thought she should be ashamed of her accusations. She was not. They weren’t unreasonable, not where Stephen MacLean was involved. “An explosion. He was playing with fireworks?”
    “It was a bomb. He was in the Crimea. At the wrong place at the wrong time. A Russian agent set the explosive. MacLean’s companion was killed.”
    “A Russian agent?” She halted, and, wide-eyed with comprehension, she stared at