Someone to Watch Over Me Read Free

Miss…”
    “Duvall,” Grant supplied softly.
    “Miss Duvall’s garments.”
    “I’ll see to our guest,” Grant murmured. “I’ll wager at least a regiment’s worth of men have had the privilege of seeing Miss Duvall naked. She’d be the first to say, ‘Get the job done and modesty bedamned.’” Besides, after the trouble he’d gone to tonight, he was entitled to this one small pleasure.
    “Yes, sir.” She gave him an odd, considering look, as if he weren’t quite behaving like himself. And perhaps he wasn’t. A strange feeling suffused him, the chill from the outside mingling with a heat that burned at his core.
    Stone-faced, Grant continued to cut away the wet clothes, slicing through one sleeve and then the other. As he lifted Vivien’s slim upper torso and yanked the sodden wool from beneath her, someone walked through the half-open door and gasped loudly.
    It was Kellow, his valet, a dignified young man with a prematurely balding head and a pair of round spectacles settled firmly on his nose. His eyes seemed to fill the spectacle lenses as he beheld his employer standing with a knife over the half-clad body of the unconscious woman. “Oh, dear God!”
    Grant turned to fix him with a ferocious scowl. “Try to be of some use, will you? Get one of my shirts. And some towels. And now that I think of it, some tea and brandy. Now, hurry .”
    Kellow started to reply, appeared to think better of it, and proceeded to fetch the required articles. Carefully averting his eyes from the woman on the bed, he handed a fresh shirt to Mrs. Buttons and fled the room.
    Grant’s growing need to have Vivien clothed and warm overrode any desire to see her naked. He caught only a brief glimpse of her body as he and the housekeeper worked to pull Vivien’s armsthrough the long linen sleeves…but his brain gathered the image greedily and kept it to savor later.
    Vivien wasn’t perfect, but the promise of delight was captured in her imperfections. She was charmingly short-waisted, as so many petite women were, with gorgeous round breasts and softly dimpled knees. Her smooth abdomen was crowned with a triangle of spicy red hair just a few shades darker than the sunset locks on her head. No wonder she was the most highly paid prostitute in England. She was lush, pretty, dainty…the kind of woman any man would want to keep in bed for days.
    They weighted Vivien with linens and heavy blankets, and Mrs. Buttons wrapped her stiff, salttainted hair in one of the towels Kellow had brought. “She’s a lovely woman,” the housekeeper said, her face softening with reluctant pity. “And young enough to change her life for the better. I hope the Lord will choose to spare her.”
    “She won’t die,” Grant said shortly. “I won’t allow it.” He touched the pure ivory curve of Vivien’s forehead, using his thumb to brush a tendril of hair beneath the towel. Carefully he laid a cold cloth over a bruise at her temple. “Though it seems someone will be disappointed by her survival.”
    “Pardon, sir, but I don’t follow…oh.” Her eyes widened as Grant’s fingertips swept gently over Vivien’s throat, indicating the shadowy bruises that encircled her slim neck. “It looks as if someone tried to…to…”
    “Strangle her,” he said matter-of-factly.
    “Who would do such a thing?” Mrs. Buttons wondered aloud, her forehead creased with horror.
    “Most often in the case of a murdered woman, it’s a husband or lover.” His lips twitched with a humorless smile. “Females always seem to fear strangers, when it’s usually the men they know who do them harm.”
    Shaking her head at the ugly thought, Mrs. Buttons stood and smoothed her apron. “If it pleases you, sir, I’ll send up some salve for Miss Duvall’s bruises and scrapes, and wait downstairs for the doctor’s arrival.”
    Grant nodded, barely aware of the housekeeper leaving the room as he stared at Vivien’s expressionless face. Gently he rearranged