Read Online Lost in Your Arms by Christina Dodd - Free Book Online

looked at everyone else. She had been demoted to the role of caretaker. Which is, of course, what she was. She preferred the part.
    At least he didn’t kiss the others , she thought, and promptly blushed at her own foolishness.
    “How do you feel?” Mr. Throckmorton asked him.
    “As if I’ve been beaten and starved.” MacLean gestured to the maid. “Is that food on that tray?”
    “Aye, sir.” Mrs. Brown hurried to him, Sally in her wake. “Let me slide another pillow beneath yer shoulders and we’ll get some broth into ye.”
    MacLean’s eyes narrowed. “Broth! I don’t want broth, I want real food.”
    He had come awake with a vengeance.
    “Mrs. MacLean has the final say on yer care.” Mrs. Brown courteously turned to Enid. “Mrs. MacLean, what have ye to say to that?”
    “Hm?” Enid wrenched her mind away from the turmoil of her emotions and back to the business at hand.“Oh! Broth now, and once we see if he holds it down we’ll start him on soft foods.”
    He groaned. “I have a taste for peaches.”
    “Tomorrow,” she promised, but she didn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at him. Smug, self-satisfied. When had he learned to kiss like that? And with whom? And why was she jealous of some faceless woman now when for eight years all she’d asked of fate was that MacLean stay far, far away from her?
    She moved to help Mrs. Brown raise him on the bed but found herself supplanted by Mr. Throckmorton and Mr. Kinman, both of whom assisted Mrs. Brown effortlessly. Enid watched as Mrs. Brown lifted the mug of broth off the tray, and decided she wasn’t needed. Decided she was glad of it.
    “I’m Throckmorton,” he introduced himself. “This is Kinman, my right-hand man. That’s Harry over by the door, he’s in charge of the gatehouse, and that fellow with the crossed arms is Jackson. I’ve hired him as your valet, to care for you and your clothing, to shave and bathe you as you wish.”
    A valet? Enid looked at Jackson, who moved to the bedside and bowed. Jackson was of medium height and age, with brown hair, slightly stooped shoulders, gold-rimmed glasses, and the most impressive set of side-whiskers she’d ever seen. He might have been innocuous except for his superior air, which many valets considered so much a part of their nature.
    A valet. Enid’s duties were swiftly disappearing.
    Enid moved back toward the stairway, back to Harry’s side. “MacLean’s awake,” she said unnecessarily.
    “He is.” Harry never took his gaze off the bed. “Will he recover?”
    “It’s too early to tell.” She hesitated. “But yes. I think so. If sheer willpower can make it so, he’ll recover.”
    “Willpower.” Harry sounded skeptical. “Does it mean so much?”
    “It means everything. I’ve cared for a great many patients, and it’s their will that keeps them alive past their time. Willpower that drives them to recover. Or a lack of will that brings them to an untimely end.”
    “MacLean has always had the most fortitude of any man I’ve ever met.”
    Fortitude? Stephen MacLean had fortitude?
    “I would never have recognized him.” Harry turned his remarkably large brown eyes on her. “Would you?”
    She didn’t like Harry, she realized. She didn’t like him or trust him at all. He watched too intensely. He dressed in dark clothing. He stood too tall, and with the coiled tautness of a steel spring. His size, his strength, everything that should have made him a good bodyguard instead exuded a faint sense of threat.
    But she didn’t know him. Certainly Mr. Kinman trusted him, and more important, Mr. Throckmorton.
    And she . . . she had suffered too many changes in her life lately. She’d had too little sleep and too much worry. She should remember—she had proved herself to be a poor judge of character. She had married Stephen MacLean. So she contented herself with a mere, “MacLean is greatly changed.”
    “Enid!” MacLean sounded testy. “Come here, Enid. You know I’m too