Briar Rose

  Decidedly uncomfortable, she felt his uniform jacket, hearing the crinkling of paper beneath her hand. Withdrawing an official-looking document, she read the name penned on it so precisely: Captain L. Redmayne.

  L. Redmayne. What did the I stand for? She wondered. Linus? Lovett? More likely Lucifer?

  Lucifer... that most beautiful of all angels, fallen from heaven itself to carve out his own kingdom below. A dark place. A tragic one. She shivered, sensing that this man would have the power to tempt any woman to sin.

  She knew nothing of him, only his name, which she'd stolen from the smooth surface of the letter. Knew nothing about the enemies he'd faced in the looming shadows of the standing stones. That information might prove crucial if she tried to protect him during the journey back to wherever he belonged. She glanced down again at the letter she held. Might this missive hold some vital bit of intelligence that would help save both their lives?

  She nibbled at one ragged fingernail, uneasy at the prospect of prying into an unconscious man's correspondence. For all she knew, it might be a love letter from a sweetheart or wife far away. Yet wouldn't it be crumpled then? Edges frayed from reading it over and over? This was crisp, the seal new-broken.

  In any case, she might need whatever information the letter held if she was to navigate them through the next few days. There was no telling how long Captain Redmayne would be incapacitated by the wounds he'd suffered.

  Pricklings of guilt stinging her cheeks, Rhiannon slipped her thumb beneath the broken seal, opening the missive. Holding it to the light, she read: "The most dangerous serpent is the one who sleeps beneath your own roof."

  Chill fingers seemed to skate down her spine. She shuddered. A warning—vivid enough. A traitor coiled somewhere within his very garrison, waiting to poison this man with its venom. She read on: "Would you know your enemy's name? Meet me at the town well in the village of Ballyaroon Wednesday next. I will find you among the crowd."

  Among the crowd at Ballyaroon? Her brow wrinkled. No one walked there but ghosts. It was nothing but rubble in the middle of nowhere, the town utterly destroyed by the English during the rebellion of 1798. Why would anyone write such a thing? Because he didn't intend a meeting with Captain Redmayne at all—except at the deadly end of a pistol barrel.

  She swallowed hard. That had to be it. Ballyaroon might no longer be a village, but it was completely deserted, miles from anywhere, anyone. No one dared stray near it, haunted as it was by screams of those too newly dead. It was the perfect place to lure someone you intended to murder.

  God above, had this man been mad to come here? As if treachery among his own ranks wasn't danger enough, he'd be loathed like a rabid wolf by every Irish-born crofter who crossed his path.

  Hatred of the English had been a chronic fever in Irish blood for six hundred years. It surged into violence and then, battered back by British swords, sank beneath the surface again to simmer in the veins until it broke into yet another rebellion. An officer accidentally separated from the rest of his men might easily become a target. Captain Redmayne must have known how dangerous it was when he found himself alone.

  She folded up the letter again, her fingers plucking nervously at the seal. The good news was that his assailants must know how deserted this place was. Perhaps they hadn't searched for him at all after he was shot. Once wounded, they would believe there was no chance that their quarry could escape alive.

  In all likelihood they'd ridden away, certain of their triumph. If not dead already, Redmayne would bleed to death in but little time. No one who knew the isolated reaches around Ballyaroon would guess that any living soul would trek up into this fiercely lonely wild place.

  He'd been hunted, left for dead. And for some reason fate had seen fit to cast him into her path. But Rhiannon was Irish enough to know that fate could be malevolent as well as kind, cruel as well as kissed by magic. Time alone would tell which spirits had been responsible for the outcome of this day.

  Returning the letter to Captain Redmayne's pocket, she turned to an equally disturbing task, getting him out of his soiled clothes.

  Grasping the heel, she worked the polished boot from his uninjured leg, then attempted to strip away the other. A low groan tore from the officer's throat. She winced. Only one thing to do. Cut it away, so it wouldn't hurt quite so much. She grasped heavy shears and carefully slid one blade inside the expensive leather. A sheen of perspiration dotted her brow as she wrestled with the recalcitrant leather, even the officer's boot seeming to object to suffering the indignation of such clumsy handling.

  The boot thunked to the floor at last, and she glided her hands up the muscled length of his calf to ease down his bloodstained stockings. The instant her fingertips brushed his bare skin, her cheeks tingled and she felt a need to turn her eyes away—an entirely impractical notion—yet this was a man... a man's body beneath her hands. A very handsome one at that. Sick or well, she was undressing him.

  She swallowed hard. What kind of featherbrained idiot was she, indulging in such nonsensical thoughts? He was injured. He needed her help. And she wasn't some giggling schoolgirl to be reacting this way.

  Resolutely she stripped away his other stocking, trying not to notice how strong, how beautifully shaped, his feet were. Moistening her lips, she moved to the red coat. Reluctant again to jar one of his wounds, she took up the shears, making short work of the fine red wool, the dashing gold braid. In minutes it joined the boots in ribbons on the floor.

  The shirt he wore beneath was still pristine white where the jacket had protected it, only the ripped sleeve blood-soaked. She slipped her fingers beneath his neckcloth, unnerved by the vulnerability of the skin at his throat, the pulsebeat, faint but steady, the soft stirring of his breath against her wrist as she unknotted the cloth and slid it from beneath his neck.

  Then, fearing that she might nick him, Rhiannon opened his shirt enough to slide her hand inside it, laying the outer edge of the scissor blade against her own palm as she snipped the exquisite linen away. A broad landscape of muscles rippled against the back of her hand. Ridges, hard and powerful, beneath skin like rough satin. Warmth seeped through her, fiendishly intimate, the soft prickle of a silken web of hair roughening the hard plane ever so slightly.

  She glanced back up at his face, the aristocratic line of his jaw, the arrogant slash of nose, the chiseled perfection of his parted lips, exquisite despite their pallor, enthralling despite his unconsciousness. What would he think if he awakened to find her handling him thus? The coolness of his eyes, like ice in a mountain stream, flickered into her memory.

  The scissors slipped, sharp pain slicing into her thumb. Rhiannon yelped, yanking her hand out from beneath the shirt, thrusting the wounded digit into her mouth, a hot flush of embarrassment flooding her whole body. She was appalling, thinking such things about the poor man while he lay there, helpless!

  But she had to admit that it had felt so good to touch someone, to feel human warmth, a need even her precious woodland creatures couldn't fully satisfy. Before Papa died, there had been hugs aplenty— she'd never passed him without his reaching out to tug her curls or pat her cheek or scoop her up in a loving embrace. She'd never realized how much she missed that contact until now.

  But this was hardly the same. This man was helpless, in her care. And yet perhaps, hurt as he was, he needed the comfort as much as she did. Maybe there was a loved one he was worrying about, missing, someone wondering why he hadn't returned to his post. A sweetheart or a wife, a passel of golden-haired children. Why was it that the possibility stung her so badly? Because once she had dreamed of having her own rollicking brood, one more hope that had faded.

  Taking fierce hold of her ridiculous emotions, Rhiannon returned to her task, ridding the captain of his shirt. But as she stripped it away, she discovered something far more unnerving: raised slashes where sabers must have bitten, scars from battles he'd fought, deaths he'd barely escaped. He was a soldier. It shouldn't have surprised her that
he carried such marks of his trade.

  But no creature so beautiful should have been savaged this way. What had these wounds and the violence they represented cost him? Not only his body but his soul?

  Somber, she worked to remove the breeches that clung to the officer's lean hips and steely-thewed thighs like a second skin. Rhiannon eased off his breeches, then took a clean rag, a bucket of water, and began gently scrubbing away the smears of dirt, the dark stains of blood. First, his face—haughty angles, broad brow, stubborn jaw—then down the cords of his throat.

  If he'd been Irish, she might have thought him king of the otherworld come out to wander—all powerful, ruthless, perhaps a trifle cruel—come to take a mortal he desired. But he wasn't a man born to standing stones and tales of fairy magic, myths of Cuchulain or Manannán mac Lir, Celtic god of the sea. He was polished to a far different sheen, this man.

  Glistening with dampness, scrubbed clean, he seemed like some warrior Caesar, vast empires crushed beneath his heel. A man completely out of place in this humble gypsy caravan, with its bright paint and cramped quarters, sheets so often washed they were worn soft as a baby's cheek.

  She drew the sheet up over his body.

  "Sleep now. Rest," she whispered to him. "I've got you safe." His eyes fluttered open for a moment, heart-piercingly blue.

  "Safe?" He laughed, an ugly sound.

  She reached out to touch him.

  He stiffened. "No... don't..." A groan tore from his lips. Then he sagged back, unconscious. Had she hurt him somehow? Jarred his wound? Rhiannon wondered in dismay.

  "I'm sorry," she murmured, stunned to find that even though he was still again, his image was branded into her mind. That face, so white, that gaze, so disturbing.

  What was it Papa had always told her? There were some deeds so dark that no salvation could touch the sinner; a shadow of the past would always cling to his eyes. To such men, death was a gift.

  Rhiannon had wanted so badly to believe that no one was ever beyond hope, beyond help. But as she stared into the chiseled features of the English officer, she wondered if those ice-blue eyes that had pierced her to her soul were the very kind Papa had warned of so long ago.

  Redmayne struggled within the red mist, sinking and falling, drifting and sailing, lost in a place woven of shadows. Shadows he dreaded, fought a lifetime to forget. Dangerous. So dangerous to let them in, haunting, crippling, weakening him like a subtle poison. But he was tired, too tired to escape them this time, to lock them back into the darkest reaches of that exquisite hell called memory.

  The chamber waited for him—huge and cold and glittering red. Rippling bed-curtains the color of fire materialized out of the mist, unfurling like the wings of some hungry dragon around the vast, heavily carved bed, swallowing its prey whole. The boy huddled within the belly of the beast, drawing himself into a ball, his white-gold hair tousled, his small hands clutching his knees against his chest to hold the sobs inside. Couldn't let them out. Couldn't...

  Desperate, he folded himself up inside, ever so tightly again and again and again, every fear and grief, every bit of pain or joy. Make it smaller and smaller until every fragment of himself disappeared where the man could never find it.

  Fire bloomed in Redmayne's shoulder as he stirred, restless, trying to shift away so he wouldn't have to see the boy, the glittering chamber, feel the crushing sense of helplessness.

  But he couldn't escape, trapped as surely as the child was within that hazy world. The gilt door creaked open, light from it slashing across the mist-shrouded bed. He could feel the boy's heart thundering, the fear, the despair clawing in his throat. Footsteps, so soft for such a big man, drummed in Redmayne's ears.

  Eyes like pale stones peered down through the swirling haze, probing like fingers, as if they could peel back the top of the boy's head and see inside. Sweat beaded Redmayne's brow, trickled down his throat. No! He didn't want anyone to see.

  "Papa," the boy cried out. "Papa!"

  "Your papa isn't here," a dragon-voice murmured, so quiet, so cold. "You belong to me now."

  Redmayne woke with a start, fighting to shove himself upright. Pain exploded in his shoulder, his arm collapsing beneath him, hurling him back against the mound of damp pillows. Knife blades seemed to screw themselves into his shoulder, but even that breath-stealing pain couldn't fully banish the icy shadows of the dragon bed or kill the taste of the little boy's cry on his lips.

  Something butterfly-soft brushed his brow. "Captain Redmayne?"

  The sweet feminine voice stunned him. He clung to it, trying to wrench himself away from the child and the chamber and the echoes that haunted him there. Sweeping the last webs of unconsciousness from his brain, Redmayne forced his eyes open, staring into a face oddly familiar. Spice-colored hair, freckles, huge worried eyes. He'd thought her an angel. But no self-respecting angel would let her charge stumble into hell.

  "Captain Redmayne," she urged gently. "You called for your father just now."

  Redmayne stiffened, appalled. Had he called the name aloud? It was contemptible enough to do so in one's dreams, but to voice the name where someone else could hear was unthinkable.

  "I'll get word to your father that you've been hurt," the woman said. "Just tell me where I can reach him."

  "Six feet under." Redmayne forced his voice into some semblance of his accustomed chill drawl.

  The woman looked as horrified as if she'd kicked him in his wound. "I—I'm sorry."

  "Don't exert yourself into paroxysms of regret, madam. It happened too long ago to be of any consequence." He grimaced, glancing about. "Who are you, and exactly where am I?"

  "My name is Rhiannon Fitzgerald. And you're in my gypsy cart in a glen ten miles from the ruins of Ballyaroon."

  Redmayne should have been grateful, her answer scattering the last vestiges of his dream to the winds. Other images flooded to replace them. Deserted roads he'd traversed alone. Battered ruins that had once been a village. The first crack of a shot shattering the unearthly stillness. A trap laid ever so carefully for a fool careless enough to wander into it.

  By all logical accounts, he should be on his way to hell now. He could remember his enemies closing in on him. The tramping of their footsteps drawing ever nearer to the ring of stones in which he'd sought shelter until at last it seemed they should be treading on his very hand. And even if he dismissed that extraordinary escape, they should have hunted him down while he lay flat on his back, unconscious. God knew, it should've been easy enough for his enemies to find this monstrosity the woman called a gypsy cart.

  If and when they did find him, this time he'd be ready.

  Instinctively, Redmayne groped at his waist. "My pistol—where's my pistol."

  She looked puzzled for a moment, then sighed. "It's in the clearing where I found you, I suppose."

  "Could I trouble you to go and fetch it?"

  "I'm afraid it's ten miles away, and growing dark. It could be anywhere between here and Ballyaroon. I was somewhat distracted because of your wounds."

  Redmayne's lips tightened. "I see. I suppose it doesn't matter. After all, you must have some kind of weapon hereabouts, traveling the way you do."

  "I have Milton." She smiled at him.

  "Milton? Is that your husband?" He should have been more relieved at the prospect.

  "No. I'm not married." A becoming pink stained her cheeks. The woman was blushing, and a horde of frustrated assassins might be swarming down on the cart at any moment!

  Redmayne pressed his fingertips to his throbbing temple.

  "If you would allow me to speak to this Milton, whoever he is, Miss Fitzgerald, I'm certain we can come to an understanding—"

  "I don't think it would do much good. You see, Milton is my dog. He takes great pride in guarding the camp. He had a most unfortunate collision with a horse's hoof when he was foxhunting, and ever since then his senses haven't been quite clear. He has a habit of growling at tree roots and missing entirely any rabbits tha
t run beneath his nose. But he tries very hard to be fierce when he isn't stumbling into trees."

  Redmayne grimaced. "I hope he writes poetry better than he keeps watch."

  A tentative smile curved those too tender lips. For an instant he wondered if he'd ever been quite so innocent. "I'm afraid I named him Milton not because of his literary prowess, but because—"

  "Because he can't see well. But I must say, it's obvious even the beast sees things more clearly than you do."

  "I don't understand."

  "What were you thinking? A lone woman, taking up a strange man in the middle of nowhere—a man who'd obviously been shot and left for dead. Any person with half a wit would have left me there and driven as far away as possible. I doubt the men who did this to me would be averse to putting a few holes in you for good measure while your guard dog attacked his own shadow."

  Surprising himself with a sharp tug of impatience, Redmayne struggled to sit up, the fresh-smelling sheet sliding down the plane of his chest to pool against his stomach. He glimpsed the pale tan of his bare skin. What the devil?

  He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt bed linen against his skin. He'd slept in his shirt and breeches as long as he could remember, always prepared to rush from his chamber in a heartbeat. Battles and ambushes, emergencies of all kinds, didn't keep regular daytime hours, and a commander would look dashed foolish running around with a sheet clasped about his hips.

  He raised his gaze coolly to the young woman, intensely aware of his own nakedness, and that she had seen it. Why should the thought be so unnerving? "My clothes seem to have gone missing. Don't tell me you left those back in the clearing, too?"

  "Oh, no," she said earnestly. "I washed them in the stream. They're all dry now."

  If Rhiannon Fitzgerald had had time to do all that, he must have been unconscious for hours. Had he been muttering in his sleep the whole while? The thought rose, most unwelcome.