Benedict's Challenge - Carole Mortimer Page 0,3

through narrowed lids. He perused the first floor, the second, then higher. That questing gaze stopped the moment he spied Chloe looking back at him as she stood at one of the small windows at the top of the house.

Firm lips curled into a smile as he lifted his top hat and bowed to her.

Chloe heard a pounding on the door behind her before she could respond to Lord Winter’s acknowledgment of her. She turned back into the room in time to see Mrs. Tailor unlocking the door so that Lord Gordon might enter.

The riding crop he carried in one of his pudgy hands and the glitter of anger in his piglike pale blue eyes did not bode well for Chloe’s immediate welfare.

Chapter Two

One week later.

“There is a young lady at the back door asking to speak with you, Your Lordship,” Carlton, Benedict’s butler, informed him as he stepped into the infirmary.

Benedict finished adjusting the bandages on what he had initially thought were Jimmy’s broken forearms, but which he now believed were but severely bruised, before answering the butler. “You may show her into my examination room and tell her I will be with her shortly.”

“Got yaself a lady friend callin’ on ya, Ya Lordship?” Jimmy teased.

Benedict gave the younger man a chiding smile. Despite the difference in their stations in life, Benedict of the aristocracy, Jimmy from the London slums, the two men had formed a friendship of sorts since Benedict had taken the beaten Jimmy into his infirmary a week ago.

He was very pleased with Jimmy’s progress during that time. The bruises had faded from his face, the swelling gone from about his eyes, and his split lip had healed. His arms were severely bruised, possibly sprained rather than broken. That and the internal bruising to one of his knees had so far kept Jimmy from returning to his life in St Giles, one of London’s many impoverished areas.

Benedict liked to think that regular bathing and the delousing of Jimmy’s body while he was here would have also added to the younger man’s comfort.

“No, I do not think so.” Benedict stood as he answered the younger man’s teasing. He turned enquiringly as his butler lingered rather than left to do his bidding. “Do you have something you wish to add, Carlton?”

The butler looked hesitant. “I do not believe the young lady to be one of your usual…patients, my lord.”

“Explain, if you please?”

“Her gown is made of silk, even if it is too big for her and unsuited for the cold weather. Also, she is not wearing a cloak and bonnet. She is exceedingly thin, and her face very pale,” Carlton explained in an increasingly worried tone. “The dark circles beneath her blue eyes are so intense, they almost look as if someone has struck her.”

“Blue eyes, you say?” Benedict echoed sharply.

His butler nodded. “Of such an intense blue as I have never seen before— Your Lordship…?” Carlton called after Benedict as he rushed from the infirmary toward the back of the main house.

Benedict had spent the past week lecturing himself as to the inadvisability of his calling at Gordon House for a second time, completely in the hope of seeing his blue-eyed angel again rather than any concern for that ill-mannered blusterer, Lord Henry Gordon. Unfortunately, Benedict had no reason to call on the older man now that Gabriel had settled the situation regarding who was responsible for the attacks outside Club Venus.

It had been a very long week.

There had been the usual rush and bustle of patients calling, plus Jimmy to care for on a day-to-day basis. Benedict had also attended the wedding of Gabriel and his Victory before they left for their honeymoon in France, where they also hoped to learn more of the niece Gabriel now knew he had. A young lady who would be aged nineteen. Another of Benedict’s close friends, Lord Julius Soames, the Earl of Andover, had also returned to London from spending the holidays in the country, and the two men had dined together in the evening twice this week.

Still, it had possibly been the longest week of Benedict’s life. It was made worse by the fact he knew he could not just barge into Lord Gordon’s household or demand the other man tell him the identity of the blue-eyed angel Benedict had seen looking down at him from the gallery and attic in the other man’s home.

Benedict’s own discreet enquiries as to who she might be had proved unsuccessful. Frustratingly