Brazen Bride (3 page)

Some primal memory kept insisting there were enemies about, even though he couldn’t remember anything specific. Had he been captured? Was he in some enemy camp?

Very carefully, he pulled himself up in the bed, then swung his legs over the side and sat up. The room swam sickeningly, but then steadied.

Encouraged, he stood.

The blood rushed from his head.

He collapsed.

Hit the floor with a hideous
thump
, almost cried out—might have cried out—when his head hit the floorboards. He groaned, then, hearing footsteps pounding up some stairs, he slowly tried to push himself up.

The door swung open.

Propped on one elbow, he turned his head and looked, knowing he was too weak and helpless to defend himself, but it wasn’t any enemy who came charging in.

It was an angel with red-gold hair, bright and fiery as a flame, who scanned the room, saw him, then came racing to his side.

Perhaps he’d died and gone to Heaven?

“You
dolt
! What the devil are you doing trying to get up? You’re
wounded
, you imbecile!”

Not
an angel, then. Not Heaven, either. She continued to berate him, increasingly irate as she checked his bandages, then small hands, surprisingly strong, gripped his arm and she braced to haul him up—an impossibility, he knew—but then two strapping lads who had followed her in came around his other side. The not-an-angel snapped orders, and one lad ducked under his other arm, the second coming to help her as on a count of three they hoisted him up—

It
hurt
.

Everywhere.

He groaned as they turned him and, surprisingly gently, angled him back onto the bed, setting him down on his left side, then rolling him carefully onto his back.

The not-an-angel fussed, drawing down the tangled covers, removing bricks, then lifting and shaking. Logan watched her lips form words—a string of increasingly pointed epithets; as the worst of the violent pain receded, he felt himself smiling.

She saw, glared, then flicked the covers over him. He continued to smile, probably foolishly; he was still in so much pain that he couldn’t really tell. But he had noticed one thing—he was naked. Stripped-to-the-skin, not-a-stitch-except-his-bandage naked—and his not-an-angel hadn’t turned a hair.

And although most of his body had wilted, one part hadn’t—and she had to have noticed; she couldn’t have missed it as she’d looked down when she’d steered him to the bed, then laid him down, stretched him out.

Which surely meant he and she were lovers. What else could it mean?

He couldn’t remember her, not even her name—couldn’t remember sinking his hands in all that rich, warm hair, pressing his mouth to her sinful lips . . . lips he could imagine doing wicked things . . . none of which he could remember, but then he couldn’t remember anything through the crushing pain.

An older lady came in, spoke, and frowned at him. She came to the bed as his lover tried to shift him further into the center of the wide mattress. Thinking he should help, he rolled to his right—

Pain erupted. His world turned black.

Linnet winced at the gasp that exploded from the stranger’s lips—saw his body go lax, boneless, and knew he was unconscious again.

“Damn! I didn’t get a chance to ask who he was.” Leaning against the side of the mattress, she peered into his face. “But what caused that?”

Muriel, too, was frowning. “Did you check for head wounds?”

“There weren’t any . . . well, not to see.” Linnet knelt beside him and reached for his head. “But his hair is so thick, perhaps . . .” Infinitely gently, she took his skull between her hands. Fingers spread, she searched, felt. . . . “Oh, my God! There’s a
huge
contusion.” Drawing back her hand, she studied her fingertips. “Blood, so the skin’s broken.”

The observation led to another round of careful tending, of warm water in basins, towels, salves, and eventually stacks of bandages as between them she and Muriel cleansed, then dried, padded and bandaged the wound. “Looks like he was hit over the head with a spar.”

In order to properly pad the area so that, once bandaged, their patient would be able to turn on the pillows without excruciating pain, they had to get Edgar and John to come and hold him upright, taking extra care not to dislodge the bandages around his chest and abdomen.

Examining the wound, Edgar opined, “Hard head, he must have, to have survived that.”

John nodded. “Lucky beggar all around, what with that slash and the shipwreck and storm. Charmed life, you might say.”

Linnet thanked them and let them go back to their dinners. Muriel, too; after closing the door behind her aunt, Linnet turned back into the room. Folding her arms, gripping her elbows, she halted by the bed and stared down at her patient.

He’d been a fighting man—in one or other of the services at one time was her guess. He had numerous scars—small and old, most of them—scattered over his body. A charmed life? Not in the literal sense. But she really, really wanted to know who he was.

Given her position in this corner of the world, she needed to know who he was.

Retreating to the armchair by the window, she sat and watched him for a while. When he showed no signs of stirring, let alone waking and doing something stupid like trying to get up, she rose and went downstairs. To finish her dinner and organize another round of hot bricks.

T
hree hours later, Linnet stood once more by her bed, arms folded, and frowned at her comatose fallen angel. By the dim light thrown by the lamp she’d left on the small table nearby, she studied his face and struggled to tamp down her concern.

His color wasn’t bad, but his face was tanned, so that might be misleading. His breathing, however, was deep and even, and his pulse, when she’d checked it mere minutes ago, had been steady and strong.

Yet he showed no signs of waking.

After his ill-advised excursion, he’d lapsed back into unconsciousness, if anything deeper than before. Bad enough, but what was truly worrying was his still chilled flesh. Even the spots that should by now have warmed remained icy cold.

At least she now knew his eyes were dark blue. So dark she’d originally thought they were black, but then he’d looked directly into her eyes and she’d seen the blue flames in the darkness.

So he was a fallen angel with black hair and midnight eyes—and despite the four changes of hot bricks they’d applied, he was still too damned cold for her comfort. Too unresponsive, too close to death. And she couldn’t shake the absolute conviction that it was, somehow, vitally important that he lived. That, somehow, it was up to her to ensure he did.

It was ridiculous, but it felt as if this were some God-sent test. She rescued people all the time—it was what she did, a part of her role. So could she rescue a fallen angel?

She paced, scowled, and paced some more while about her the house, her house, her home, slid into comfortable slumber. Edgar and John both helped about the manor house; after dinner, after the usual sitting and chatting in the parlor—tonight mostly speculating about the wreck and their survivor—the pair had retired to the cottage they shared with Vincent, the head stableman, and Bright, the gardener. Mrs. Pennyweather, the cook, and Molly and Prue, the two maids-of-all-work, would by now be snug in their beds in the staff quarters on the ground floor.

Muriel and Buttons—Miss Lillian Buttons, the children’s governess—had rooms on the first floor, in the opposite wing to Linnet’s large bedchamber. The children had rooms in the extensive attic, on either side of the playroom and schoolroom.

As the manor house of the estate encompassing the southwestern tip of Guernsey, Mon Coeur was a small community in its own right, with Linnet, Miss Trevission, its unquestioned leader. Indeed, she was more a liege lord, a hereditary ruler; that was certainly how her people saw her.

Perhaps noblesse oblige, that sense of responsibility for those in her care, was what so drove her to ensure the stranger lived.

Halting by the bed, Linnet looked down at his face. Willed his lashes to flutter, willed him to open his eyes and look at her again. She wanted to see his lips curve again; they had before, in a wholly seductive way, but she suspected he’d been delirious at the time.

Of course, he just lay there. Placing a hand on his brow, then sliding it down to the curve of his throat, she confirmed he was still far too cold. He was literally comatose, and nothing they’d yet done had succeeded in warming him sufficiently.

Drawing back her hand, she huffed out a breath. She’d intended to sleep on the daybed before the windows, but . . . her bed, the manor’s master’s bed, was wide—designed for a couple where the man was large. Of course, if she was going to warm him up, she’d need to sleep close, rather than apart.

Swinging away, she crossed to her chest and hunted out her thickest flannel nightgown. One eye on the bed, she stripped out of her warm gown, her woollen shift and fine chemise, then pulled the nightgown over her head.

Her patient hadn’t stirred, hadn’t cracked an eyelid.

Quickly letting down her hair, she slid her splayed fingers through the mass, shaking the long tresses loose. Lifting her woollen robe from its hook on the side of her armoire, she donned and belted it—another layer of armor against any attack, however feeble, on her modesty.

Approaching the bed, she inwardly scoffed. No matter who he proved to be, she’d been managing men all her life; she harbored no doubt whatsoever that she could and would manage him. Just like the others, he would learn. She ordered, they obeyed. That was, and always would be, the way of her world.

Lifting the covers, she checked the bricks and, as she’d suspected, found them already cooled. She removed them, stacked them by the door, then returned to the bed.

Calmly lifting the covers, she slid into the familiar softness, to the left of her fallen angel. Laying her hands along his bandaged side, she gently pushed, persevered until he rolled over on his undamaged right side. Quickly shifting nearer, she spooned around him, using her body to prop his in that position.

Reaching over and under him, she wrapped her arms about as much of him as she could. Then, because his back was there and convenient, she laid her cheek against the smooth, cool skin. She doubted she would sleep, but she closed her eyes.

S
he woke to a sensation of floating. Her wits were slow, reluctant to surface from the pleasurable sea in which they were submerged. A curious warmth suffused her, tempting her to simply relax and let the tide of tactile sensation sweep her on. . . .

It took many long minutes before her mind assembled enough coherency to sound any alarm, and even then some part of her questioned, unable to believe, unable to perceive any danger—not in this.

Not in the long, rolling swells of pleasure that something, some being, sent smoothly sliding through her.

But then a hard palm and long, hard fingers closed about her bare breast—and she came awake on a shocked gasp of sensual delight.

Wits reeling, waltzing to a tune she had never before encountered, she had to open her eyes to orient herself. To convince herself that yes, somehow their positions had changed, that both she and her fallen angel had turned, and now he was spooned about her, his chest to her back.

His hands on her body.

His erection nudging between her thighs.

She knew perfectly well she should leap from the bed—now, right now, before his wandering hand and the pleasure his touch wrought laid seige to her wits again.

But . . . his hand, his fingers, stroked and caressed, played and teased, and she closed her eyes on a sigh.

Damn—he knew what he was doing. Knew better than any other man she’d ever met how to do this. She bit her lip on a moan as his questing hand shifted and closed again, then settled to pay homage to her other breast.

He was clearly experienced, and she was no wilting virgin, no paragon of missish modesty, yet . . .

She couldn’t allow this.

She’d be disgusted with herself in the morning if she did. Not least because, as she well knew, letting her fallen angel have her so easily, without even having exchanged one word, would give him too much power over her.

Or at least lead him to think he had power over her, and that would lead to unnecessary battles. She was queen in this realm, and such things happened at her command—only at her command.

Accepting she would have to end this now, she sighed, opened her eyes, and took stock—which only resulted in sending a wholly unfamiliar shiver down her spine.

Her robe was undone, the halves spread wide. Her nightgown was rucked up, above her breasts in the front, to the middle of her back behind her, which was why she could feel . . .

She had to end this
now
, but she was too wise to try to wriggle away, even leap away. Either move left it up to him to let her go. And he might not. Not readily. He might try to make her plead.

Used to playing power games, chess of a sort, with men, she mentally girded her loins—dragged her senses in and shackled them—then stretched her arms up over her head, sinuously straightening her long body and turning within his hold to face him.