Sharon Sobel by Lady Larkspur Declines (v5.0) (epub)

vehemence could damage your already weakened heart,” Ben said soothingly, and chose not to add how it had already damaged her cunning performance. Before she could turn from him, he reached out to touch her forehead and was surprised to find it damp and clammy. He frowned.
    Lady Larkspur displayed the wit to flutter her long eyelashes and seal her traitorous lips.
    Silently, he ran his fingers down her lovely face, feeling the firm, smooth skin under the layer of moisture, and her admirable bone structure. With his other hand, he pulled away the layers of blankets to examine the rest of her, and she promptly crossed her hands over the bodice of her nightdress. And there, just where her wrists met, he saw several drops of water staining the fine cloth.
    Ben bit down on his lip as he looked beyond the bed to a basin of water on a nearby table. A linen cloth hung at its edge, its drippings threatening the fine veneer of the wood.
    How excellent her deception! But how much more convincing she would have been if she had bothered to douse her entire body in water just before his arrival.
    “She does not seem to have a great fever,” he said, turning to her mother, but Lady Larkspur had something to say about that.
    “I am very warm,” she insisted.
    “Perhaps you would feel a good deal better if you did not have the weight of ten blankets upon you,” he retorted, and threw half of them off the bed.
    “I will surely die without them,” she insisted, and moved quickly to recover them.
    But Ben was even quicker, and caught her around the waist before she could reach them. Her body pressed against his, and when she turned breathlessly to look at him, her sweetly scented hair fluttered across his face. Through her thin nightdress he could feel the beating of her heart, sure and strong, and the soft uncorseted roundness of her breasts.
    In the course of his professional life, he had necessarily developed an intimate knowledge of the female anatomy, but he did not recall ever having so unprofessional a response to it. Surely, if he had believed her truly ill, he would never have had such a reaction. And since she was already promised to his cousin, his unruly desires must be suppressed.
    He attempted to mask his confusion before she could even guess at it. Still holding her, he reached with his free hand to his leather bag and withdrew his most useful of instruments. Affixing one end to his ear—an awkward business, since he still held the lady upright—he pressed the other against her back. She wiggled, an act for which she surely was not aware of the consequences on his state of mind. And body.
    Her heart, somewhat accelerated in pace, showed no signs of quitting her anytime soon.
    “I can hardly breathe,” she gasped, and tried to pull away.
    Here might have been the one symptom of truth, for his own tight grasp of her put pressure on her diaphragm, and their awkward proximity might very well leave her breathless. Gently, and regretfully, he pressed her back down against, the pillows and covered her with the undermost, thinnest, blanket.
    “Is that better?” he asked as he put back his instrument.
    “No,” she insisted. “I do not feel better at all.”
    He deliberately fussed with the clasp on his case and glanced towards her mother before he spoke. Lady Leicester, apparently unconcerned with the proprieties in the case, dozed in her cushioned chair.
    “I am surprised to hear it, my lady. For I cannot find anything at all wrong with you,” he said softly.
    Lark glowered at him from her nest of pillows and narrowed her eyes.
    “Then you must be a very poor physician, if you cannot discover the cause of my malaise!” she cried out.
    He raised his brows.
    “And you, my lady, must be a very poor patient if you cannot invent symptoms convincing enough to prove me wrong!”
    “I invent nothing! I have been ill since the evening of my sister’s ball, barely able to leave my bed. My … my limbs are quite weak and my