Free Barbara Metzger by The Duel

streaming down her cheeks, staring at him as if he could put a broken doll back together. Ian had to do something. He could not let the boy die. He could not, for his sake, for her sake, for the sake of his own miserable soul.
    So he prayed.
    Ian prayed for the first time in more years than he could remember. He swore he would be a better man, if only the boy was saved. He’d do anything, give up women and become a monk if he had to—get married, even. May he be struck by lightning if he ever stepped off the straight and narrow path again, if the boy lived.
    When he was done with his admittedly self-serving, once-in-a-blue-moon bargaining, Ian started to sing a hymn—all the while holding Troy, while Athena tried to get more medicine down his throat. More landed on Ian’s sleeve. Athena’s off-key voice, choked with tears, joined Ian’s.
    And Troy winced. He lowered his brows, opened his eyes, and said, “You…sing…almost as badly…as m’sister.”
    Athena grabbed for Ian’s arm. “He is going to be all right!”
    The earl felt as if his horse had won at the Derby, as if he’d been dealt four aces, as if…as if his prayers had been answered. He did remember to send a silent thank you heavenward. Then he felt obliged to remind the girl that her brother was not out of danger yet.
    “Oh, but I know he will recover. He will! I knew he was much stronger than everyone said. And he never gives up, not my baby brother! He never did—not from the first time I held him, when our mother died and he was so sickly.”
    Athena was laughing and crying at the same time, with relief and exhaustion and enough overwrought emotion to level an elephant. Now that this latest crisis was over and she did not have to be strong anymore, she fell to pieces. She could not keep herself from great, gulping sobs and shaking shoulders.
    The surgeon had not arrived and Mrs. Birchfield was asleep, so who could comfort the girl? There was nothing for Ian to do but gather her into his arms. She fit under his chin, wetting his chest through the thin fabric of his shirt. He awkwardly patted her back, thinking, Zeus, he hated a woman’s tears, but this one deserved a good cry.
    A woman’s tears?
    A woman?
    Ian felt the dampness, but he also felt the unmistakable press of firm, tender, womanly flesh against his chest. For all her slight stature, Miss Renslow did not have a schoolgirl’s figure under that loose-fitting gown. No, he was tired and imagining things that could not be there, like breasts. His mind was suddenly jarred into a frantic recollection of her earlier words, though, words he’d been too concentrated on Troy to absorb. She’d bathed Troy as a child. She’d held him when their mother died. She’d called him her baby brother.
    Her fifteen-year-old baby brother. Which made Miss Athena Renslow older than that. How much older?
    Surprised that his lips were able to move, considering he’d just been run over by a hay wain, Ian gasped, “Just how old are you, anyway?”
    With her face still pressed to his chest, Athena sniffed and said, “Nineteen. Twenty next month. People think I am younger because I am small.”
    Nineteen.
    The earl’s arms dropped to his sides and his feet stepped back so fast he tripped over the dog, who snapped at his toes.
    Nineteen.
    And she was alone in this room with him. Alone at his home, except for a half-comatose brother and a handful of servants. Alone in the world, except for a missing uncle and two brothers, one a miser and one an underage invalid.
    Nineteen. And alone in his arms while he wore no coat, no cravat. Bloody hell, he did not even have shoes on his feet.
    Ian waited for the lightning to strike him.
    Maybe no one knew. That was it. No one knew she was here except the servants, and they would not talk if instructed not to…unless they already had, at the pubs and the next door servants’ halls. No, Ian hastily told himself, his mind in a maelstrom, his people did not gossip about