Ah, that was the problem. Wanton as it might be, some part of her wished to remain just as she was. The breeze teasing her bare legs beneath her hem, her hair streaming loose down her back, and this man's hot gaze upon her.
"I think it would be—be best if I..."
"Ah, so you are capable of noble behavior, but I am not."
Her brow furrowed. "What on earth do you mean by that?"
"When I was injured, you stripped off my clothing, bathed me, tended me, and I'm certain you observed all the proprieties you were able to."
"Of course I did!" It wasn't exactly the truth, and she was certain he realized it from the guilty fluttering of her gaze away from him.
"Don't you believe me capable of the same courtesy? I am, after all, an officer and a gentleman."
That irresistible light winked in his eyes again. "You wouldn't want me to feel responsible for soiling your gown, would you? I would have to get down on my knees, beat it again with the rocks to get it clean."
"You've never scrubbed anything in your life, I would wager," she said.
"No. Just think of the damage I might do to your gown, and the guilt I might suffer." Why did it seem so strange? His smile, so beautiful, the effort she could sense in him, as he tried to infuse it with warmth. It made her heart ache for the boy she sensed beyond the brilliant blue of his eyes—a boy who had never really had a chance to be. What had happened to him, she wondered, to banish the child in him so completely?
She held on to the soft folds of cloth for one last moment, then released them. Was that triumph she glimpsed curling one corner of his mouth? She couldn't be certain. He turned away, and all she could see was the back of the shirt she'd mended for him, rows of tiny stitches, catching together the slashes her scissors had made. Why was it she was suddenly so certain that whatever scars lay hidden beneath Captain Redmayne's cool facade would not be so easily healed?
Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she crossed to where she'd abandoned the little soap pot and the damp cloth she'd washed with. The man wanted a bath. She should give him one, not waste time trying to pry beneath the mask he kept so carefully in place. At least, not until he's better able to defend himself, a voice inside her whispered.
And yet she knew well enough that there were only brief times when the gate to the heart might be open, in wounded beasts and wounded people. And unless one stole inside at the exact right moment, that entrance could slam closed forever. Lost with it, the chance to heal.
Yet wouldn't a man as closed, as fiercely private as this one loathe anyone who saw pain instead of strength? Emotion instead of intellect? Vulnerability instead of invincible control?
Why should it matter so much how he felt about her? She would have him with her for only a little while. He was no Milton or Socrates or Captain Blood, to lounge about, tamed to her hand. He was wilder than her falcon, warier than her wolf, no creature to be kept near her hearth fire, content with her fingers stroking the rare gold silk of his hair.
And yet something inside him called to her, something beyond her need to comfort, to heal. A facet of Rhiannon Fitzgerald she'd thought she left behind forever at Primrose Cottage, sensations packed carefully away with lace fans and satin slippers that had danced their last.
That unique delight, that anticipation, that every schoolgirl cherished in her most romantic dreams— emotions that could be ignited in the space of a heartbeat by a man's smile.
Absurd, these feelings. She was a grown woman with no illusions about the reality of her situation. Balls and beaux were lost to her. And even before she left Primrose Cottage forever, a man like Captain Redmayne would have been far beyond her touch. Ambitious, possessed of qualities of leadership that shone brighter than the gold of his hair, Redmayne was a gifted officer. He would need a wife appropriate for advancing his career. Rhiannon would be hopeless.
Even if she weren't Irish—enough of a strike against her—she would have far preferred mothering homesick boys to courting the favor of pompous generals. She hated formalities that permeated the military, and war, to her, seemed the ultimate obscenity. Hardly a view designed to aid in the advancement of her husband.
Lord, what was wrong with her? The man had been shot, and she'd tended his wounds. He wanted to be quit of her as quickly as possible. Once he returned to his real life, he wouldn't think twice about her except with a vague kind of puzzlement and perhaps a bit of gratitude. In the years to come...
But how much time might he have? Weeks instead of years? Days? Hours? Worst of all, she'd seen the shadow of desolation in his eyes—enough to know that a part of Captain Redmayne might welcome death.
The thought haunted her, hurt her, filled her with tenderness and sorrow. When she turned back to him, she struggled to hide her discomfiture in a flurry of activity.
"Just take off your shirt and we'll make quick work of this before you grow tired."
"Can you help me? I regret the imposition, but the fastenings are difficult, since the wound in my shoulder objects to being twisted in any way."
Such a reasonable request. And she sensed just how much it had cost him. Captain Redmayne was not a man who would ask for help lightly—confess he needed anyone else for anything, even a task so insignificant as unbuttoning his shirt.
She should have felt warmed by even such a small offering of trust on his part. She shouldn't feel the flutter of butterflies' wings in her stomach. After all, she'd performed this task before. Why, then, this sudden hesitation? This awareness of the pale gold expanse of muscle beneath the thin layer of linen, the tingling of her fingers at the memory of how warm, how smoothly muscled his chest had been, the downy gold dusting of curls that had spanned it.
Redmayne's voice startled her out of her thoughts. "If it makes you uncomfortable, I can manage it." Long, strong fingers fumbled with the cloth at his throat. He winced, and Rhiannon could see how hard he tried to conceal it.
The evidence of his pain was like a sharp smack to her senses. Disgusted with herself, Rhiannon lowered the soap and towels onto a tussock of moss, and stood inches away from the captain. She grasped his hand in her own. "Don't. I was just being foolish. I know it sounds silly, but you shrank when you were in my bed."
"I what?"
"You seemed smaller, somehow. More... manageable."
For an instant something flickered in his eyes, a wariness, dismay, but it was gone so quickly she thought she must have imagined it. He smiled. "A word of advice, Miss Fitzgerald. You should think twice before using such adjectives in a gentleman's presence. It could do irreparable damage to his pride to be described in such terms upon leaving a lady's bed."
Her cheeks stung, but she managed a smile of her own as she reached for the folds of white linen beneath his chin. Her pulse jumped as the tips of her fingers brushed the corded strength of his throat. "You needn't worry," she said, attempting to sound breezy. "You are back in fine form now. Quite dashing enough to make any woman's heart skip a beat."
A moment of silence throbbed between them, and she could feel his gaze burning into the crown of her head.
"Present company included?" Low, so soft, were his words. She could feel them more than hear them, a sensual vibration of them deep in his throat.
"The state of my heart is immaterial," she said briskly. "You are the patient. My only concern should be nursing you back to health." She rushed down the fastenings of his shirt as if she were charging into the teeth of a rebel army.
"I suppose it should be," he mused. "But I find myself curious."
Why he would be she couldn't imagine. Every brush of her knuckles against his bare chest turned her heart into a battle drum. The words slipped out before she could stop them. "Captain Redmayne, did you stand close to one too many cannons during combat?"
His brow furrowed in confusion. "What a strange question. Why do you ask?"
"Because you must've suffered hearing loss if you cannot mark every beat of my heart."
She surprised anot
her laugh from him, a sound full of astonishment and delight.
It braced her, calmed her at least a little. "I assure you, you don't have to worry that you've lost your effect on women. Now, since we needn't pursue that subject any further, perhaps we can concentrate on giving you your bath?" She gently tugged the shirt off, meaning to bustle about her business, laying the garment out on the rock, helping the injured man with towels and soap and scrubbings. But as she bared the tawny gold of his skin, saw the rippling play of muscles there, her throat went dry.
"Rhiannon," he murmured, "aren't you the least bit curious yourself?"
Curious? About the taste and texture of a man's skin, a thousand subtle differences from that of a woman. Saints above, if he only knew. She lowered her lashes to half-mast to conceal the strange rawness inside her, the sense of loss she'd all but forgotten, packed away, knowing that love was as far beyond her reach now as the moon.
"Curious? About what?"
He answered without a word. Long, strong fingers stroked her thumb, his palm cupping the back of her hand, urging her ever so gently to press it against the place where his heart beat. Sensation jolted through her, her hand resting half upon the bandage still wrapped about his shoulder, half on the hot satin of his skin.
She saw the planes of his face harden, his eyes darkening to midnight blue. Her sensitive fingers felt the quickening of his pulses, a rhythm that matched her own.
She yanked back her hand as if she'd touched a hot coal. He moved swiftly, as if to recapture it, stop her from pulling away, but the action cost him. His breath hissed through his teeth, and he clutched his injured arm tight against his ribs in an instinctive effort to shield it.
"You hurt yourself!" Rhiannon scolded, both relieved and disappointed that she'd been given an excuse to back away from feelings that were too potent, too dangerous, too new. "I knew that would happen! Now, will you behave yourself, and let us get on with this bath of yours before you exhaust yourself so badly you fall face down in the dirt?"
For a moment a mutinous spark ignited in Redmayne's eyes. Then he extinguished it. She could feel him release her from the sizzling bond between them as if he'd snipped some invisible thread.
"You would make a formidable drill sergeant, madam. Even a superior officer can tell when it's wisest just to follow orders." With that, he attempted to unbutton his breeches on his own. She almost allowed him to struggle—he'd made her so uncomfortable and, she suspected, committed the far more unforgivable sin of enjoying her discomfiture.
He plunged on manfully, if unsuccessfully, until she relented.
"For goodness' sake, let me do it or I'll get so exhausted from waiting that I'll be the one plunging face first onto the ground." But she was in far more danger of her knees crumpling for other reasons. It was one thing to undress such a devastatingly handsome man when he was bleeding, unconscious, perhaps dying. Then she'd had to uncover his wounds to tend them. It was another proposition altogether to undress that same man when he was towering above her, so heart-stoppingly masculine, every muscle taut, every sinew hot with life and the echoes of undisguised male hunger.
She knew she should hurry up and get this bathing affair over with as quickly and efficiently as possible. Concentrate on the task at hand and not get distracted by six feet three inches of dashing English officer. She was concentrating on the task so hard she leaped back in surprise when Redmayne let fly a low curse as her fingers twisted fiercely at a recalcitrant button.
"Rhiannon, I'm aware that a portion of my... er, anatomy is causing certain difficulties between us at present, but even so, I'd prefer to keep it in working order for sometime in the future. If you could be a trifle more... cautious when you're digging about."
Hot blood flooded her cheeks. "I hurt you! I'm so sorry!" It was instinctive, cultivated through years of soothing injuries and fears, the reflex to reach out her hand, smooth it ever so gently across what pained someone. She was horrified the instant she realized exactly what her palm cradled at present. Hot, hardening male.
She jerked back her hand, appalled. "I can't believe I... I mean, I didn't intend to... didn't think..."
"I'm doing enough thinking for both of us right now," Redmayne growled. He turned away, but not before she glimpsed the iron ridge of his jaw. Was it clenched in disgust or in a battle to get his unruly emotions under control? She couldn't be certain.
"We'll just leave the breeches on," he said tightly.
But enough of him was already exposed to set Rhiannon's knees quivering.
In an effort to hide the worst of her humiliation, she grabbed the small cloth, rinsed it in the stream, then dipped it into the soft soap. By the time she turned around, Redmayne had settled himself on a flat rock, putting his body more easily within her reach. He had teased her earlier, taken irritating masculine pleasure in her instinctive reaction to him, like a regal male lion displaying his mane to a lioness. And yet there now seemed to be a difference in the captain, a tension unlike any she'd felt in him before. Frustration, almost. Irritation.
Why? She should be able to get a sense of what was wrong, and yet every time she used her fairy arts to probe into Captain Redmayne's feelings, she felt as if she had stumbled into a choking mist that obscured everything. One of his own construction? A protective veil to guard the heart of a most private man? Or was he hiding something that was truly alarming? A deed beyond forgiveness?
Troubled by her train of thought, she approached him, even her dark musings unable to obscure the way his skin glowed in the sunlight, the smooth expanse marred by a sprinkling of white scars. Once the bullet wounds were healed, they would add to the tally of violence marked there, angry red, fresh, and raw. And then, soldier that he was, Redmayne would march out to court other saber slashes, other pistol balls, wounds to both his body and his soul. It saddened Rhiannon more than she could bear, but it also steadied her hands, softened the jagged edges of her nerves. She wanted so much to break through the barrier he'd constructed, to make this solitary man feel not quite so alone.
"Captain?" she said as she approached him, astonished at the strange prickling of tears beneath her eyelids. "I feel so foolish addressing you that way after we've been through so much together. Would you mind so very much... I mean, if you told me your name?"
"My name?" He slanted a glance at her, brows lowered, as if she'd asked him a far more difficult question.
"Yes. Please."
He hesitated, as if the very sound of his own name was strange to his tongue. "I suppose you could call me... Lion."
Lion. It fit him far too well—the tawny skin, the gold mane of hair, the quiescent power that could suddenly be transformed into something dangerous. "It's most unusual."
"My father used to call me by that nickname. Lionel, it seemed, was far too much of a mouthful to call a small boy."
"Lion." She tested the cadence of it, smiled. "I like it."
"I am much relieved." He didn't look any such thing. Instead, he seemed clenched inside himself, almost as if she'd stolen something from him.
"Could you lie down upon the mossy part of the rock? That way the water won't run down to dampen your breeches quite so badly while I scrub you. I'd like to keep your leg wound as dry as possible."
It seemed like a good idea until he complied with her request. He eased himself back onto the stone, looking for all the world like a jungle cat, and Rhiannon remembered with stark clarity how she had lain beside him the night before, two strangers, barely touching. What would it be like to feel free to reach out? she wondered. To caress his magnificent body, to warm the cold places inside him with her kiss?
Stop it, Rhiannon. She brought herself up sharply. You're only making this more difficult. Warming the cloth between her hands, she leaned over him and gently washed his face—the bold blade of nose, the aristocratic sweep of cheekbone, the rigid line of his jaw. Her fingertips brushed his skin, the silky gold of his hair, his breath heating the tender inside of her wrist.
&n
bsp; She moved down his throat, along the strong bow of collarbone, heated dips and hollows where his pulse beat strong. His chest, even swathed in bandages, gleamed powerful, with a stirring masculine beauty.
Despite his complaints, he was so clean it seemed as if she were running the cloth over him for the pure pleasure of it, the way a mediocre sculptress might trace the contours of a masterpiece that could never belong to her.
It was sinful, no doubt, what she was feeling. And yet could anyone blame a scullery maid for running her fingertips across a fold of satin if she had just one chance to touch it? A chance that might never come again.
Succumbing to her own wickedness, Rhiannon let more of her hand slide off of the cloth, come in contact with his skin. The muscles beneath her hand grew as taut as iron bands, Redmayne so still it was almost frightening. She glanced at his face, saw his eyes shut tight, a knotted muscle twitching in his jaw.
"Did I hurt you? Are you all right?"
"No, damn it. I'm not all right."
"What... what is wrong?"
"This." He growled, his hand sweeping up to delve into the damp tangle of her hair. He tugged her mouth down toward his. Her heart slammed against her ribs at the hot intent glimmering beneath his lashes. And
Rhiannon wondered if she'd ever have the will to draw another breath as the sensual fullness of Redmayne's mouth closed over hers.
The contact jolted through her as if he'd infused her with the very essence of life—awakened her from a nursery world, all bright smiles and pretty stories, fistfuls of daisies and scuffed play slippers—and suddenly she'd awakened in a realm of legends and lovers, passions and promises.
She should have been shocked. For his was no tentative kiss. It gripped her in a fist of sensation, wild and wonderful and so unfamiliar she never wanted it to end.
She sensed that he expected her to draw away from him. But her own lips melted deeper into his as he explored the contours of her mouth, tasting, nipping, soothing the tender curves with his tongue. A gasp of pleasure parted her lips, her elbows buckling, until the tips of her breasts, unbound beneath her damp shift, brushed his naked chest.