Brazen Bride

  What other excuse could she have for wanting to lie with him?

  She felt like Queen Elizabeth worrying about Robert Dudley. At least she judged Logan more trustworthy, and less power-hungry, than Dudley had been.

  But like Elizabeth, she felt she was grappling with a relationship that was threatening to develop in ways she didn’t want.

  Ways that could only lead to heartache.

  So no. Logan would have to toe her line, and accept her proposition as it stood; it was safer that way. While their interaction remained on such a footing—a near-commercial exchange—neither she nor he was likely to forget that what happened in her bed had nothing to do with her heart.

  And neither would develop any deeper expectations.

  The men finally lifted the gate into place and secured it. As a group, they stepped back and looked at it—surveyed the pen, admired their handiwork, then congratulated each other on a job well done.

  The lads gathered up the tools. Parting from the other men, Logan bent to retrieve his coat from where he’d tossed it over a log—and Linnet saw the bandage around his torso shift and slide.

  Lips thinning, she stepped out from beneath the tree and waited on the path as, shrugging on the coat, he walked toward her.

  As he drew near, he arched a brow.

  “Thank you for your help. Now come inside and let me check your wound and retie that bandage.”

  Spinning on her heel, she stalked ahead of him back to the house.

  Lips tightening, Logan followed.

  A fter pausing to wash his hands under the pump near the back door, Logan ambled in Linnet’s wake into the downstairs bathing chamber. Without a word, he shrugged off his coat, drew off his shirt, then sat on the bench beside the sink and let her have at him.

  He’d largely worked off his earlier frustration, but was curious as to what was gnawing her. As she shifted back and forth in front of him, unwinding the long bandages, he studied her expression.

  When she next went to step past, he caught her about the waist, held her between his knees. He examined her forehead, then lifted one finger and rubbed between her brows.

  She jerked her head back, stared at him. “What was that for?”

  “There was a furrow forming there.”

  The furrow promptly returned. He raised his finger again.

  She batted it away. “Stop that.”

  “You don’t have any reason to frown, so why are you frowning?”

  She met his eyes, hesitated, then said, “You’re making things too complicated. Just . . .” The last bandage fell free and she scooped it up. “Just sit there and let me check your stitches.”

  Linnet shifted his arm, held it back, and focused on the stitches. She breathed in, steeled herself against being this close to him. Just concentrate on the stitches.

  She examined, gently prodded. Thought again of how he must have got such a wound. Seized on the distraction. “Some man faced you with a sword—someone who knew how to wield one. Right-handed, like you. He went for a killing stroke, but you pulled back just enough, just in time. You must have been fighting on deck during the storm—you could only have just taken this wound when you went into the water. You lost some blood, but you would have lost a lot more if you hadn’t been immersed in icy water.”

  “There were two of them.”

  She glanced up to see his gaze fixed in the distance.

  “No.” His eyes narrowed. “That’s not right. There were three , but I killed one . . . after they leapt on me as I came out of the forward companionway. I came up to see what was happening with the storm.”

  Carefully straightening, she held her breath. His words were coming slowly, as if he were literally piecing the memory together.

  “I didn’t know them . . . I can’t remember who they were. I’m not even sure I knew at the time. I can’t see their faces.”

  When he fell silent, she whispered, “What can you see?”

  “Beyond the storm, beyond the flash of blades . . . nothing.” Suddenly focusing, his gaze shifted to her face. “But I know they were after something I had. That was why they wanted me dead, so they could take . . .” He paused, then, face and voice hardening, continued, “The only thing of potential value I had on me at the time. They must have been after the wooden cylinder.”

  He tensed to stand.

  Slapping her hands on his shoulders, she held him down. “No! The cylinder is where we left it. You can get it in a minute, but first I need to finish checking these stitches, then I need to wash, dry, and rebandage. With stitches you can’t go out without a bandage yet.”

  The look he bent on her should have withered steel, but she was adamant and gave not an inch.

  With a disgusted humph, he settled back on the bench.

  Logan let her finish tending his wound while he struggled to make sense of what he’d remembered. The facts were sketchy, disjointed, some visual memories, others just random bits of knowing .

  When he added them up . . . his blood ran cold. He didn’t know who his opponents were, or why they wanted the cylinder, but of their viciousness, their utter disregard for life, their callousness, their unrelenting evil, he had not a shred of doubt.

  He might not remember who they were, but he knew what they were.

  The thought that such evil might have followed him there, might even now be tracking him to this isolated, windswept, and so beautifully complete little corner of the world—Linnet’s corner, her domain—shook him.

  “I need to leave.” He met Linnet’s eyes as she turned from setting a washcloth aside. “They might follow me here.”

  “Nonsense.” She frowned at him. “You heard the old seadogs—if they didn’t wash up in our coves, then they almost certainly perished.”

  He frowned, shifted as she dabbed along his damp side with a towel. “Others might have been waiting ahead and now be searching—they might hear there was a survivor and come looking here.”

  Linnet blew out a dismissive breath. “If they’re waiting ahead, then they’re either somewhere in England, or somewhere even farther away—we assumed your ship was heading north, but it might just as well have been going the other way.” Opening a pot of salve, she dabbed two fingers in, then—trying not to notice whose chest she was tending, or indeed anything about that chest at all—she smeared Muriel’s potent cream down the still red, but healing, wound.

  “And,” she continued, doggedly stroking, “no one other than locals knows you’re here. How could anyone—especially off-island—learn you’re here?”

  She glanced up, saw his jaw clench. Setting aside the salve, she reached for the roll of clean bandage she’d left ready.

  “Matt and Young Henry went to the market with the cabbages the second day I was here—they would have mentioned it to someone.”

  “No, they wouldn’t. Trust me—they know better than to gossip about something like that.” As she shifted around him, bandaging his chest again, she looked into his face, saw his disbelief. “If you need more reassuring on that point, both lads are ex-buccaneer brats. They know to keep their mouths shut about anything that washes in from the sea.”

  Logan gave up arguing. He didn’t have enough facts to win, or even to make sense of his burgeoning fear. His pursuers were people any wise commander would fear—of that much he was now sure. And in that vein, the fear he felt wasn’t personal. All his fear was for her and hers.

  He didn’t know why—couldn’t formulate a rational argument—but he knew what he felt.

  Later, standing before the sideboard in the parlor and turning the wooden cylinder over and over in his hands, he still couldn’t say why he felt so strongly, but the premonition of danger, of impending threat, was impossible to deny.

  A fter dinner, he sat on the parlor floor with the children and taught them another card game.

  Linnet sat in her armchair and watched, not the children but him.

  She could almost see the connections forming, the intangible links.
Brandon and Chester he’d held in the palm of his hand from the moment he’d opened his eyes, but Willard—Will—was both older and more wary. Although friendly, Will had initially held back, hesitated to commit to the near hero-worship the younger boys had so enthusiastically embraced. But Will was now a convert, too.

  All three asked questions—about this, that, male-type questions—all of which Logan either answered or used to gently steer their thoughts in a more appropriate direction.

  The girls, too, Jen and Gilly, enjoyed his company, and while they didn’t take the same advantage of his presence, they, too, were benefiting simply from having a large, strong, adult male about with whom they could interact freely, and trust implicitly to care and watch over them.

  Children knew. Her children—her wards—certainly knew. She, Muriel, and Buttons hadn’t raised them to be anything but quick and bright. Enough to be wary of strangers, ready to be suspicious, ready to react to any even minor detail that wasn’t quite right.

  All of them had looked at Logan, looked at him and seen, and known he was trustworthy.

  And in that they were correct. He was good with them, instinctively knowing when to be firm, when to laugh and tease. When to be kind. He was good with them in ways neither Edgar nor John, both of whom were fond of the children, could emulate. Where the older men struggled to find the ways, Logan simply knew.

  She doubted he was even aware of it; his reactions to the children were immediate, innate. It occurred to her that while he might still be wrestling with what sort of man he was, she and her brood could fill in many traits—all the important ones, certainly.

  He was good, kind, considerate without being overwhelming. He was commanding, yes, but only in spheres in which he was experienced. He was trustworthy, caring, strong, able, and, after his response to his latest recollection, she could throw loyal and protective—highly protective—into the mix.

  She also suspected he could be recklessly brave.

  And on that note, she decided she would stop—she was making him sound like a saint, and he was definitely not that.

  Underneath his protectiveness and caring lay a dictatorial possessiveness she recognized all too well; she carried the same trait. That was one reason he and she would never be compatible beyond a certain point. For a few days, even a few weeks, they could brush along well enough, but eventually the inevitable clash would come—and she would win. She always did, and then he’d leave—if he hadn’t remembered and left already.

  “Time for bed.” Pushing out of the armchair, she rose, let her skirts fall straight as she fixed the children with a direct look that slew their protests before they uttered them.

  Edgar and John had already retired. Buttons was struggling to stifle her yawns. Muriel looked up from her knitting and smiled over the top of her spectacles. “Indeed. It’s grown late.”

  Within minutes, Linnet was alone with Logan in the parlor, with only a single candle burning and the sound of footsteps retreating up the stairs. She arched a brow at him, wordlessly asking why he’d remained.

  “I recall last night you said something about ‘doing the rounds.’ ”

  She might have known. “I check all the doors and windows on the ground floor—a habit my father instilled in me.” Shielding the candle flame, she started for the back door, smiling wryly when Logan fell in behind her. “At one time, pirates, then later buccaneers, used to lurk in the southern reaches of Roquaine Bay.”

  “I’d always heard that folk from the Isles were descended from pirates.”

  “You heard aright—we are.”

  “Are there any pirates—or, for that matter, buccaneers—remaining in these parts?”

  She smiled. “Nearer than you might suppose. But they’re no threat to you, much less to this household.”

  Reaching the back door, she slid the twin bolts home; as she led the way on, she pretended not to notice that he checked, then tried, the door.

  H er “rounds” done, she parted from him on the first floor and headed upstairs to check on her wards. Logan watched her go, imagined her bending over the small beds, tucking hands beneath covers, dropping kisses on foreheads.

  Doing all the little caring things women—mothers—did, even though she wasn’t their mother.

  He still wasn’t sure what to think of this household, but the longer he spent within it the more he realized that for all its unconventionality, it worked. It provided those who lived there with all they needed for a full, happy, and contented life.

  A safe life, too, as far as Linnet could guarantee.

  Reaching her room, he went in. Closing the door, he crossed to the window, and as he’d done the night before, stood looking out. He’d thought, last night, that he’d been drawn to the view because that way lay England, but in reality, it was the sense of peace, even in the face of the strafing winds and beneath the roiling skies, that drew him. Held him.

  Outside the window, nature ruled over a raw, rough, elemental landscape, yet people had lived there for centuries—possibly longer than they’d lived in England. The rawness, the roughness, reminded him of Glenluce, yet here the elements were harbingers of excitement, adventure, and exhilaration, lacking the bleakness, the grayness, that characterized Scotland.

  This was home yet not, familiar yet different, and somehow more welcoming. Perhaps that was why he felt so intensely about protecting it, defending it, from any threat.

  Such a depth of innate protectiveness wasn’t something he’d felt before—not anywhere, not for anyone. His memory might still have holes, but he was indisputably sure of that.

  Just as he knew that Linnet herself would deny he had any right to feel so. There was no logic or rationale behind his unbending conviction that he was, somehow, protector and defender of these innocents, of this small realm. As if he’d fallen under some spell—the house’s or hers. Perhaps both.

  Regardless, Mon Coeur increasingly felt like the lock his key fitted.

  The door opened. He turned his head as Linnet came in.

  Locating him, she set the candlestick on the tallboy and walked deliberately, with certain intent, toward him. She was wearing another of her fine woollen gowns, a plain, modest creation in smoky green, yet the sleeves outlined the graceful lines of her arms, the scooped neckline drew his eye to the swells of her breasts, while the clinging skirts flirting about her long legs teased his senses.

  Fixing his gaze on her face, he steeled himself to hear her push to continue their “arrangement,” with him repaying his obligation to her by educating her, tutoring her, in the ways of the flesh.

  Her flesh, and his.

  He didn’t want that—didn’t want to, couldn’t bring himself to, treat her like that, to view her and her body as part of some bartered exchange. He, body, mind, and soul, would be delighted to make love to her if she wanted him—if, freely, she wanted to lie with him, to explore that side of paradise with him without any hint of obligation or coercion.

  He wanted to deal with her on a different plane—man to woman, gentleman to lady, lover to lover. He wanted nothing, no other consideration, tainting what they shared, coloring it, corrupting it.

  As she halted before him and looked into his eyes, he wanted to tell her, to find the words and rescript their relationship, nudging it onto the simple, direct, conventional path, one he’d followed with no other woman but wanted to follow with her.

  He knew what he needed to say, but he didn’t have the words.

  Regardless, he couldn’t speak them. Uncertainty, lack of memory, forced him to silence.

  He didn’t yet know his recent past—didn’t know if he had a wife waiting for him. He didn’t think he had, yet the possibility was there.

  Making love to Linnet at her instigation, more, at her insistence, was one thing—something his honor didn’t approve of but could live with given he had no real choice. That she would leave him no choice. But to speak, and lead her to believe there could be more between them when he didn’t know if th
at were so, would be the action of a cad.

  He looked into her eyes, lucent in the moonlight, and knew he wasn’t going to like where she would lead him. Yet until he knew all about Logan Monteith, the man he was now, the commitments he’d made and had yet to fulfill, he was helpless to, on her own turf, take the reins from her.

  Linnet studied his eyes, examined what she could see in his face, in the chiseled angles and planes. “You’re thinking too much.” He was thinking of ways to argue, to discuss their situation. She trapped his dark gaze. “Stop resisting. You know there’s no point. Your obligation to me is mounting, so how are you planning to balance the account?”

  She felt utterly brazen—and just a touch guilty—holding to such a line, compelling him in a way she knew he didn’t like, yet that way would keep her firmly in control, dictating their relationship.

  Ensuring it remained superficial.

  Ensuring she did nothing to encourage him to think it might be more. Could be more. That she might ever wish for more.

  His eyes narrowed on hers. “What do you want of me? What lesson am I supposed to teach you tonight?”

  His voice had lowered; she hid a smile. He was, it seemed, going to fall into line. “I want to learn more—I want you to show me more beyond what we’ve already shared.”

  His lips thinned. “You’ll need to be more specific.”

  Her own eyes narrowed. Perhaps she’d been too quick to assume his capitulation. How could she be specific if she didn’t know? . . . she smiled. Smugly. “I want you to treat me as you would a slave—a pleasure slave.”

  His eyes widened.

  She let her smile deepen. “As a female given to you to do with as you wish— specifically for you to indulge your most potent desires.” Boldly, utterly brazenly, she arched a brow. “Is that specific enough?”

  His lips tightened to a grim line. His eyes were deepest midnight. “You don’t know what you’re asking for. Try again—you don’t want that.”

  She raised her brows higher, haughty and assured. “I know what I want—your desires unfettered. I want to know—to experience—what meeting those desires means. What fulfilling your most potent desires feels like.”