“Pooh! You are a rake,” Madeleine said rudely. “You love me only because I have not given in to your demands.” They were at the edge of the street now, and the hackney was waiting, its door open.

Madeleine turned about and almost marched off without saying another word. Then suddenly she thought of something. “You’ll have to come back when you want that plaster removed. Unless you tell your man that it’s a fake.”

“No!” Braddon was revolted by the idea. “Kesgrave is a knaggy old gaffer. He’d have no sense of the fun of the thing. I shan’t tell anyone. Madeleine …”

She stopped and looked back at him, a rounded, curvy girl, her brown hair catching gold lights in the dusty sunlight of the horse yard.

“Thank you for helping me.”

Madeleine gave a sudden, sparkling grin. “It behooves a courtesan to ensure that her master doesn’t get married,” she observed. Then she laughed outright at the look of disgust that crossed Braddon’s face.

“You are not just a courtesan!” he protested.

“I’m not a courtesan at all,” Madeleine pointed out, and turned about again, walking quickly into the shadow of the stables.

From there she watched Braddon hop his way into the hackney, swearing fulsomely when the plaster caught and banged loudly against the hackney door. Good thing he hadn’t really broken his leg. That little maneuver would have hurt like the devil, in Madeleine’s opinion.

It was hard not to feel wistful, watching Braddon cram his large frame into the hackney. Life as his mistress would be blissful.

Madeleine shook herself. Poor Gracie! She had quite deserted her in the middle of bandaging her foreleg.

Poor Gracie indeed! Gracie had just licked up the last of the poultice intended for her leg, and when Madeleine’s father appeared he found his daughter scolding the greedy nag in bursts of irritable French.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Patrick stared at his old friend in utter disbelief and then laughed, a short brutal laugh that had nothing to do with humor.

“She’s your bride—you fetch her.”

Braddon looked at him appealingly. Patrick was the only friend he had who could be trusted to follow through on a scheme in a pinch. Then he gestured at his monstrous plaster propped on a tufted footstool before him.

“Damn it, man, I can’t make my way up a ladder with my leg like this!”

Patrick shrugged. “Then you can’t elope.”

“That’s just it,” Braddon squealed. “I don’t want to elope. If you go up that ladder and bring Lady Sophie over here, she can see the state of my leg. Then she’ll understand that eloping is out of the question. I’m in a cursed hobble, Patrick; you’ve simply got to help me.”

“Send her a note.”