Cates, Kimberly (11 page)

It was all he could do to drag his eyes away from the delicate gown before he terrified her in her innocence. He swallowed hard, struggling to focus on her words, fashion a reply that made some vague sense.

"That will be our bargain if I stay. You can attempt to teach me how wrong I am. While I..."

"Can nail me in a barrel and ship me
off
somewhere?" she asked with a light laugh, retrieving the cloth and dunking it in the water.

He could think of a hell of a lot more appealing things to do with her than lock her away in a keg. Holding her prisoner in a silk-lined bed, with the softest of chains wrought of his kisses. Where the devil had that thought come from? Adam's cheek burned in alarm.

"No barrels," he croaked out as she dabbed at the cut on his brow. "I give you my word as a former officer." She curved one soft hand beneath his jaw, tipping his face up to the firelight. Her fingers were feather light, stirring as brands, as they drifted across his swollen lip, delicately swabbing away the dried blood.

He flinched, and she gave a soft cry of regret, as if she'd hurt him. But she'd done worse than that. Adam's loins knotted, and he knew he needed only to turn his head a little bit to bury his lips in the soft dark cup of her palm. The image appalled him.

Blood and thunder, he had to make an end to this before he botched it beyond repair.

He groped for a plan, desperate. Then he hesitated, weighing a tactic in his mind, measuring the risk. A lieutenant colonel had once taught him that one of the best strategies for gaining someone's trust was sharing a vulnerability of one's own. It could be the most dangerous, or the most successful, of gambits. But he had little choice. Adam sucked in a steadying breath and cast out the dice.

"There is another reason I'm asking to stay here. Juliet, your ladies are not the only ones who are fugitives from their past."

"You are... running from something?"

Not nearly fast enough,
he thought as her sweet brows arched in astonishment, concern. She was woman enough to adore some wild tale about his adventures, Adam thought. But for once, the truth would serve his purposes better.

"Not me. The boy."

She dropped the cloth back into the bowl of water. "Fletcher? He's like a great gallumphing puppy. What could he possibly be running from?"

Adam leaned forward, his hands framing her cheeks, his gaze burning into hers with the fierce fervor he knew no woman could resist. "Can I trust you, Juliet Grafton-Moore? Do I dare?"

Her pulse quickened under his thumb, and Adam felt his own mouth go dry, the need to press soft circles into the ivory satin of her skin astonishing him. He forced his fingers to stay still, concentrating on what he needed to accomplish.

"Fletcher's real name is Kieran O'Hara. There is a price on his head and a hangman's rope waiting for him in Ireland and a firing squad in France."

Horror drew an ash-hued veil over her face. "But he— he's only a boy! He... what could he possibly have done?"

"Attempted murder of a peer of the realm. Assaulting an officer."

"Stuff and nonsense! He'd have to be a monster! There's nothing of that kind of evil in his face!"

"You want evil, my lady, look into the eyes of his accusers. But it won't matter. If they get their claws in him, they'll hang him. Do you wish me to tell you the boy's story? All of it?"

"It doesn't matter. He's innocent. Anyone who looks in his eyes can see it is so." Adam felt a bitter stab of envy, wondered if he'd ever been so certain of the goodness in a stranger.

Still, telling Juliet the whole ugly tale could only help convince her to let them stay under her roof. He drew in a deep breath. "Kieran, or Fletcher, as the case may be, blew a sizable hole in the shoulder of a nobleman who had seduced his sister."

He saw Juliet's eyes flash with admiration and grimaced. "And here, I thought you abhorred violence," he muttered. It seemed Miss Grafton-Moore and Fletcher were two of a kind.

"Fletcher was most put out when the blackguard didn't die, and was damned determined to go back and finish the cur, but his uncle hired me to snatch him out of harm's way. The boy was eager to fight, so old O'Hara hoped Fletcher could make his way as so many other Irish exiles have done before him. Fighting another country's wars, spilling his blood for another man's cause."

"But then how did you end up in England?"

"My young charge is a trifle like a powder keg. I had delivered him to his regiment, and was downing a celebratory bottle of whiskey when I heard he'd pinked some colonel's son in a duel. The officer intended to fling the boy to the wolves. There are a hundred ways a commander can rid himself of a soldier if he chooses."

She shuddered. After so many years in the military, Adam knew he could tell her tales that would make her hair turn white. "But Fletcher is only a boy," she said.

"Boys are an expendable commodity in the army, my dear. It would have been one thing for the young fool to get his head blown off because of his own stupidity. Another thing entirely to be sent on a suicide mission because some spoilt military brat has gone whining to his papa. If I hadn't intervened, Fletcher would have been dead within the first week."

"So you
are
risking your life to protect him."

"I won't let you entertain any romantic notions about it. It only stands to reason that if his uncle had been willing to pay to keep Fletcher alive once, he'd be happy to do so again. I much prefer the boy stay alive so I can collect the fee.'

He was stunned to find himself wincing at the disappointment that clouded those incredible eyes at his words. "I expect to receive a second payment once we're settled somewhere. The problem is where to settle with him. He's guilty of attempted murder in Ireland and desertion in France. I had to come to England because of my vow to your father. There was nothing to do but bring the boy with me and try to keep him alive until his uncle decides what to do with him next. Miss Grafton-Moore, the Irish nobleman Fletcher shot has offered a sizable reward for his capture, and there are plenty of men greedy enough to take it. Angel's Fall would be the last place they would search for him. But if we continue battling our way through your enemies, and camp in your garden there is a good chance someone will recognize him. That is, if any of those employed in hunting him down should manage to trace our path to London."

She was pale, suddenly very still. "You're pressing an unfair advantage. Using Fletcher's plight to get your way."

"Maybe I am. That doesn't change the fact that I've told you the truth."

She paced away in an agony of indecision, gnawing at the full curve of her lower lip. Adam remembered all too well what it felt like to taste it.

In the end, her gaze flicked to the bruise beneath his eye, the cut on his lip. Blood and thunder, if he'd known they would get this much reaction from her, he'd have been tempted to break a chair over his own head.

"All right," she said, drawing in a shuddery breath. "You can stay."

It was all Adam could do to stifle a war-whoop of triumph.

"But there are conditions you must meet."

"I understand," he managed solemnly.

"I'm certain that Fletcher will respect the fragile state of my ladies if I explain it to him. I know he'd do nothing that might harm them."

"Without a doubt." But the boy would be in absolute agony in the meantime. Adam grimaced. Obviously the naive Miss Grafton-Moore had no idea of the volatile relationship between a sweet-faced youth and the demon he kept tucked beneath the flap of his breeches.

"You, however, pose a—a dilemma of sorts." Rose bloomed in her cheeks, her fingers plucking nervously at the wilted ribbon-tie that streamed in a blue river between the swells of her breasts.

"A dilemma?" Adam echoed hoarsely.

"You must understand that I cannot put the ladies at risk. They have worked so hard to put their pasts behind them, and your reputation is most disturbing."

"Would it be enough if I pledge you my word that I'll not be the fox that raids your hen house?"

"No." She frowned in concentration. "There is only one way to be certain nothing can happen."

Adam would bloody well like to hear it.

"You will take the bedchamber that adjoins mine."

"Yours?" Adam choked out.

"You recall my suite of chambers?"

He did. And it was no grand suite. More like a linen box tacked onto a child's room.

"I can sleep out in the room where my desk is, and you can have the smaller chamber. That way, there is no way out or in except by passing me."

Adam remembered all too clearly the cozy nook where her virginal bed had been tucked. But the idea of sleeping in there, with the scent of her all around him would be pushing the bounds of temptation too far. He'd been without a woman for—hell, who knew how long. And heroic self-denial had been more his honorable half-brother's trait.

"I don't think—I mean, I..." His blood was heating at the mere memory of what had occurred in that room hours before, the yielding of her breasts against his chest, the hot gasp of her breath captured in his mouth as he kissed her— and the instinctive reaction in that most masculine part of him, a hardening of need, a hungering for more.

"I assure you, I am a very light sleeper," she said. "I awaken at the tiniest sound."

"Juliet, I—after what happened between us..." He started to protest, knew he was on dangerous ground. He'd been angling for hours to be allowed into Juliet Grafton-Moore's inner sanctum. The woman had agreed to let him into the house. What was he doing? Trying to get her to boot him out the door?

"You only kissed me as a ploy. It's not as if you were attracted to me
that
way." She said, and he knew in that instant how reprehensible he'd been when he'd done it. That he'd bruised a tender corner of the woman she kept hidden behind the guise of angel. The problem was, he had been so attracted to her his whole body burned.

She crossed to the fire, and Adam groaned inwardly as fireshine shone through the delicate fabric of her damp nightgown, outlining the delicate shape of her body with its glow. A tiny waist, hips full enough, womanly enough to cradle a man, slender legs that seemed to go on forever, and breasts with rosy tips pressing kisses of temptation against silvery embroidery.

"What about your reputation?" he asked quietly.

"Everyone knows that I have no interest in—well, in carnal relations. I mean, I'm certain they are lovely in the bonds of marriage. Papa always said so. But—" She stumbled to a halt, her cheeks flooding with an especially kissable shade of pink. "I have my mission here, and it is the most important thing in my life. I would never allow anything to endanger it."

She gestured toward the corridor beyond. "I'll get you settled for the night. I'm certain you are anxious to get out of your clothes. I certainly want to get out of mine."

Color flooded her cheeks yet again.

"I mean—because they're wet," she choked out. "It's only natural to want to be rid of them." Then she glared at him, a stern line between her finely drawn brows, a dimple peeking from one cheek as a smile darted about the corners of her mouth. "Don't you dare laugh at me."

Adam was charmed by her humor.

"You needn't fear, Mr. Slade. I'm certain we'll rub along well enough. After all, it will only be for a little while. Do you think you can manage to get up to my bedchamber in the dark?"

"The dark?" he echoed, edgy with unexpected shame at the memory of how many times he'd slipped into other women's rooms—past fathers and zealous brothers and jealous lovers pure frothing for the chance to plant a sword-thrust through his heart—one more part of the sensual games they played.

He'd always taken almost boyish delight in scandalizing prim-nosed ladies with vague allusions to his adventures. Why was it the thought of Juliet knowing his notorious past made him feel old and jaded and somehow soiled.

"I'd light a candle, but there's no sense creating an uproar among the ladies tonight," she explained, sweeping a tendril of angel-gold hair from her cheek. "There is plenty of time for them to be astounded by the arrangement in the morning."

"Oh. I—I think I can manage to travel the stairs without breaking my neck," Adam allowed. "Lead the way." She doused the candle he'd lit and locked the door, casting one more glance at the rear gate. From the sudden determined angle of her chin, Adam realized that battle was far from over. For a second, he half expected her to argue with him again. But she left that for another time.

Then she turned and made her way out of the kitchen into the hallway, a slender wraith leading him up the stairs. An odd tightness bit at Adam's chest as shadow dipped its fingers into her curls, reminding him of their clinging silkiness. Ripples of angel-white floated against the darkness ahead. Once, Adam banged his boot against some object in the hall, and Juliet gasped, both of them freezing as a tinkle of prisms knocking together sounded like pistol shots in the stillness of the sleeping house.

Juliet turned, groping along his damp sleeve, until she found his large hand. She slipped hers into the cup of his fingers, like a trusting child, or a battlefield angel come to lead a war-weary soldier to a place where there was no more blood or death or terrified men battling for their souls.

Damn, what was he thinking such rubbish for? Adam brought himself up short with a throb of panic.

They would only be together a little while, just as Juliet said. Then why was it that any time in her presence suddenly seemed an eternity?

Bah! He'd just have to convince her to leave this place as soon as possible. And he'd have all day, every day to chip away at her resistance. It couldn't take that long to make her see reason, could it?

He cursed the sudden jolt of memory regarding the last time he'd tangled his fate with a determined good Samaritan—recalling his idealistic brother, a cave in Scotland, and the highlands crawling with troops hungering for Gavin Carstares's blood. In the end, Gavin had left that embattled land only because it was the one way he could save a dozen orphans and the woman he loved.