An Unpracticed Heart

Chapter Three

Hartley had no desire to open his eyes. The light was too bright, even filtered through his eyelids. It flickered and swayed, and he had the slightly nauseating sensation of being carried across a large body of unruly waves.

He turned his head, but his cheek pressed against a cool dampness that sent a shudder through his frame. He wanted to move, but his limbs seemed incapable of carrying out the orders sent from his brain. And so he turned his head again, and he opened his eyes.

The light came from a candle on the nightstand, a small pinprick of flame that danced every few seconds, disturbed by a draft of air. A softer glow emanated from the corner of the room, no doubt the dying embers of a fire. Hartley shut his eyes again, eager to dispel the sensation of movement that had taken over him. For he knew it couldn't be anything but a trick of his mind, to feel as if an entire room had been clapped onto the deck of a sailing ship.

And he knew that he was in a house. His mind wasn't so muddled that he couldn't recognize a room from his own father's house.

No, that wasn't right. It was his house now.

He gazed upward, confused at the darkness that met his eyes until he realized he was looking at the great, dark canopy that hung over the bed. He remembered that canopy, and he knew in an instant that he was in his father's bed. Lord Cowden's bed.

But how on earth had he come to be here? The last he could recall—what tenuous powers of recollection he still possessed—he had been at White's.

No, no. That wasn't right, either. He hadn't been at White's for some weeks, not since the incident that had prompted them to ever-so-politely request that he absent himself from the premises. No, he had been somewhere else. Somewhere less... reputable.

He shut his eyes again. His head hurt. But as soon as he recognized the discomfort in his head, he understood that mere words such as "hurt" and "pain" would never be strong enough to convey a feeling more akin to someone using a sharp hammer to pick their way into his skull. He wanted to sit up, to get out of this damn bed and find himself a nice bottle of brandy, or wine, or anything that would help to dull the throbbing in his head.

He grit his teeth as he pulled himself up onto his elbows and waited for his vision to clear. He blinked a few times, allowed his eyes to adjust to the light in the room, and then he froze.

Someone else was in the room.

A large leather armchair sat near the fireplace, so close that it must have been moved to its current position for want of greater warmth or light. Hartley tilted his head to one side, leaning towards the edge of the bed for a better view of his guest. He was gifted with only a few clues—the point of an elbow, the curve of a shoulder, and the flutter of fingers as they turned the page of a book—but enough to let him know that his silent visitor was a woman.

A maid, perhaps? He couldn't imagine the presumptuousness of a servant who would seat themselves in their master's room, in their master's chair, while that very same master slumbered in a bed situated several paces behind them. Or a nurse? But again, why was she tucked into his chair, her head bowed over the pages of a book, when her duty was to be by his side, to look after him?

He cleared his throat and instantly regretted it. The pain in his head took it as a sign to redouble its efforts to make him cast up his accounts on the bedroom floor. From the other side of the room, there came a small gasp, and then the sharp snap of a book being shut, before the rustle of fabric preceded the appearance of two booted feet stretching down towards the floor.

The woman stood up, showing herself to be hardly taller than the oversized armchair in which she had been sitting. She held her hands clasped loosely in front of her as she crossed the space between the fireplace and the bed.