Page 11 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

“I can’t tell you more about yourself, who you are, not even what the C stands for, because . . . well, you didn’t say.”

Oh. Oh, dear.

He didn’t just imagine that Constantia had forgot him when she’d hit her head.

He imagined she’d forgot herself—even her own name!

He left the bedside and returned to the fireplace, as if what came next made it advisable to put a bit more distance between them. “We do have a mutual acquaintance. The Countess of Stalbridge. She is, uh, connected in some way to Mrs. Goode. I took the liberty of writing to her about your . . . situation.”

Little flickers of memory began to penetrate the fog that had settled over her mind. There had been a meeting of the magazine staff . . . She recalled a room. A table. Alarm coursed through her, though its root cause was still shrouded in mystery.

“And what did this Lady Stalbridge say?” she prompted, momentarily grateful for the discomfort that let her disguise the anxious clench of her teeth as pain.

“Very little. That she did not know your real name either. And that . . .”

“Yes?”

His next words required effort. “That she believed you to be in danger.”

The final word crashed around inside her like her artist’s case against the street, until it was dashed to pieces and nothing but jagged edges remained. All at once, she remembered. There’d been a letter. A pile of letters. Hand addressed with their names and directions. Someone knew. Someone was after her—after all of them. She had left the meeting and run . . .

The realization sent papers flying as she tossed aside the coverlet and scrambled to sit upright and thrust her legs out of bed. “I have to—”

“Certainly not.” He stepped toward her.

The whole room spun, and kept right on spinning, even after she closed her eyes. “No,” she mumbled, part resistance, but mostly reluctant agreement. A whole battalion was taking target practice in her head.

Then his hands were on her shoulders, bearing her back to the welcome softness of the pillow. His cologne, a woodsy scent that no doubt made all the young ladies swoon when they got close, filled her nostrils.

She wanted, quite irrationally, to draw a deeper breath.

“If you’re in danger—”

She was. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been. And at present, with a man pinning her to a bed, her danger seemed only to be increasing.

Then, to her shock, he shot upright and withdrew his hands.

“—then you must consider yourself under my protection.”

The protection of the Earl of Ryland? She wanted to laugh.

But his voice was serious and warm, comforting in spite of her instinct never to trust.

“At least,” he went on, “until you get your memory back.”

Her memory. A chill settled over her, restoring her to herself. He’d taken pity on her, in spite of her drawings of him. But whenever she revealed that she knew who she was . . . well, then she would be out on the street.

Given that she presently couldn’t even stand up on her own, she obviously needed time to recuperate, and also time to formulate a plan for getting away and covering her tracks. Again.

Any way she looked it, she was at his mercy. And she didn’t dare tell him the truth.

“That’s very kind of you, sir,” she gritted out. “To let me stay here, until I recover.”

An expression flitted across his face—a gracious smile, or at least an attempt at one, undermined by an awkward tension. He backed away from the bed and retreated to his post at the hearth, where he busied himself once more with prodding unnecessarily at the fire. When he spoke, he did not turn to face her. “That, um, that brings us to a small difficulty. The, uh, the fact of the matter is . . .” A thrust of the poker sent up a shower of sparks. “This house has been leased to someone else. My sisters are already gone into Devonshire and the household staff has dispersed. Every chamber but this one has been emptied of its furnishings, in preparation for some renovations.”

Every chamber but this one . . . She glanced toward the window, at draperies she had, a moment ago, taken for rose pink. She’d assumed she’d been deposited in one of his sisters’ rooms.

But if the fabric was merely faded . . . if those draperies had once been a deeper shade, scarlet or wine . . . then this might, she supposed, be a man’s bedchamber.