“Sors de mon chemin,” Reynaud snapped.
The footman goggled at him, and it took a moment for Reynaud to realize he’d spoken in French, the language he’d used for most of the last seven years. “Ridiculous,” he rasped, the English words strange on his tongue. “I’m Lord Hope. Let me pass.”
“Miss Corning says as how yer to stay right there,” the footman replied, eyeing the knife. The boy swallowed. “She gave me strict orders.”
Reynaud clenched his knife and started for the footman, intending to move him bodily. “Who the hell is Miss Corning?”
“Me,” came a feminine voice from beyond the footman. Reynaud paused. The voice was low and sweet and terribly cultured. He hadn’t heard English spoken in such tones in a very, very long time. And the voice… He might move mountains and kill men for such a voice. Might forget what he’d fought so long for. It was more than attractive, that voice.
It was life itself.
A slip of a girl peered around the footman. “Or is it ‘I’? I can never remember, can you?”
Reynaud scowled. She wasn’t what he’d expected somehow. She was of average height, with gold hair and fair skin and a pleasant expression. Her eyes were wide and gray. She was very English-looking, which made her exotic. No, that wasn’t right. He swayed where he stood, trying to clear his mind. It was just that he still wasn’t used to the sight of a blond woman. An English woman.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
Her pale brown eyebrows flew up. “I thought I’d explained. Pardon me. I’m Beatrice Corning. How do you do?”
And she curtsied as if they stood in the most formal ballroom.
Damned if he’d bow; he was unsteady on his feet as it was. He started forward again, intending to bypass the chit. “I’m Hope. Where’s my—”
But she touched his arm, and the contact froze him. A wild image of her rounded form lying beneath him as he pressed his length into her softness filled his head. That couldn’t be a true memory, he knew. Was he still delirious? His body seemed to know hers.
“You’ve been ill,” she was saying, speaking slowly and firmly as if to a small child or a village idiot.
“I—” he began, but she was crowding him, moving him inexorably backward, and the only way to continue forward would be to push past her and perhaps hurt her.
His entire being recoiled at the thought.
So, slowly, gently, she maneuvered him into the scarlet room until he was staring down at her bemusedly by the bed again.
Who was this female?
“Who are you?” he repeated.
Her brows knit. “Can’t you remember? I’ve already told you. I’m Beatrice—”
“Corning,” he finished for her impatiently. “Yes, that I understand. What I don’t understand is why you’re in my father’s house.”
A wary expression crossed her face, so quickly he almost thought he’d imagined it. But he hadn’t. She was hiding something from him, and his senses were put on the alert. He glanced uneasily around the room. He was cornered here if an enemy attacked. He’d have to fight his way to the door, and there wasn’t much room to maneuver.
“I live here with my uncle,” she said soothingly, as if she sensed his thoughts. “Can you tell me where you’ve been? What has happened to you?”
“No.” Brown eyes stared up through a mask of blood, dull and lifeless. He shook his head violently, banishing the phantom. “No!”
“It’s all right.” Her gray eyes had widened in alarm. “You don’t have to tell me. Now, if you’ll just lie down again—”
“Who is your uncle?” He could feel some imminent danger raising the hairs on the back of his neck.
She closed her eyes and then looked at him frankly. “My uncle is Reginald St. Aubyn, the Earl of Blanchard.”
He gripped his knife harder. “What?”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “You need to lie down.”
o;Practically the whole staff was,” Mrs. Callahan continued, “and them that had stayed… Well, they’re gone now. It’s been five years, after all, since the old earl passed.”