Free A Fresh Perspective, A Regency Romance by Elisabeth Fairchild

matter where one stood at the top of Helm Crag, was beautiful. Grasmere Lake stretched before them, light dancing on its waters and on the leaves of the silver birches and oaks that lined its banks. Drawing forth his Claude glass, Reed examined the prospect with all due attention and respect. There was a calming effect to be found in a landscape interrupted by hills and mountains so little touched by the hand of man. Pulse slowing, breath gentled, Reed’s fingers itched to record the view in soft washes of watercolor. Neither charcoal nor ink could do justice to this view, though he whipped out his sketchbook and set down the line of the horizon with a few quick dashes.
    He forgot his financial problems, his concerns for Megan fending off the attentions of an Italian, even the lovely Miss Frost, until a high-pitched squeak startled him. Reluctantly he pulled his gaze from the Claude glass. The honorable Miss Frost was nowhere to be seen.
    “Miss Frost?” He called uncertainly and then with increasing vigor, “Miss Frost, where are you?”
    “I have fallen.”
    He determined her direction and scrambled over the rocks that divided them. Poor Miss Frost would appear to have taken quite a tumble indeed. She lay prone in a crevice, shadowed by two great boulders, skirt flung up about her waist in a froth of eyelet petticoat, hair fallen down from its pins, a button on her bodice popped open to reveal far more than might be deemed decent.
    “Dear God!” He felt close to panic. “Shall I give your brother a shout?”
    “Help me, my lord.” She called, voice weak, hand beckoning.
    Down the incline he went after her, an incline so gentle he puzzled a bit as to how traversing it could have so artfully thrown her among the rocks. Slipping off his jacket, as he approached he asked, “Are you injured? Does it feel as if any of your limbs are broken?”
    Weakly, she lifted her head. “Oh my!” she quavered. “I am not at all sure in what state you find me.”
    “Don’t move!” he directed sternly, covering her exposed bodice, draping his jacket over her. With a quick twitch of petticoat he managed to make decent the delectable prospect of her exposed nether regions.
    She sat up with far more energy than he might have anticipated, expression dismayed. “Do you not care, then, for the view, Mr. Talcott? I was sure you would find it enticing.”
     “Dear lady,” he soothed. “Do not stir. You have gone all about in the head. Let me check first to see you have not broken anything vital before you attempt to rise.”
    She sank back. “Assess the damages then.” She flung her skirt up, presenting shapely legs in beautifully clocked white stockings for his inspection. “I entrust myself completely to your probing examination.”
    Nervously, he eyed her limbs. He had never been given leave to stare so freely at a young woman’s beribboned knees much less to lay hands on them. “Very nice,” he said. “I mean, you look just fine to me. Nothing obviously broken or cut. Your stockings are not even torn.”
    Bruises, sir? Do you see any bruising? I am troubled by a prodigious heat in my flesh just here.”
    She took his hand in hers and guided it to a spot beneath the mound of her upflung petticoats, just above the tapes of her stockings. The skin of her thigh did seem warm. The heat was, in fact, quite contagious. He jerked his hand from her leg as if he were burned.
    “You should probably expect some bruising,” he suggested. “Do you have normal range of motion? Does anything pain you?”
    She sat up and primly smoothed her skirts into place. “You are kind to ask. I am pained,” she admitted. “Right here.” Taking up his hand again, she drew it under cover of the jacket he had flung across her chest and placed it with unmistakable purpose against the bared flesh of her breast.
    “Miss Frost!” Shocked, he would have drawn away, had she not held his hand beneath her own with such pressing firmness he could feel