Yesterday's Roses (28 page)

Ariel nuzzled against his hand like a newborn kitten seeking milk at its mother's breast. She gave another yawn, and her eyes fluttered shut.

“Was she frightened by the storm?”

“Not as much as some people I know,” Jake teased, reaching over to give Hallie's thick braid a tweak.

Hallie grinned sheepishly. “I was worried that the noise had disturbed Ariel. I thought she might need soothing.”

“Perhaps it was
you
who needed
her
soothing,” he replied in a semi-serious tone. “Holding her does have a calming effect. Sleep doesn't come easily to me these days, and I've found that it helps to discuss whatever is on my mind with her. Ariel is an excellent listener.”

“She's only four months old.”

“She's also the only female I know with whom I can get a word in edgewise.”

“Then you're spending too much time with the wrong kind of women.”

Jake reached down and lightly traced the shape of her mouth with his fingertip. “That's because the right one spends her time avoiding me.”

Hallie nipped at his finger playfully. “You're welcome to discuss anything you like with me. I promise to be as attentive as Ariel.”

“Anything?” he asked, raising one eyebrow suggestively.

“Within reason, you wicked man!”

“Pity.” He sighed theatrically. Giving the sleeping Ariel a wink of mock conspiracy, he murmured, “Remind me to tell you about my intentions toward a certain Mission Lady, Sprite.”

“You're a rogue, Jake Parrish!” Hallie giggled. “Still, despite your naughty ways, I'm glad you've taken an interest in the baby. I was worried you would never accept her.”

It was Jake's turn to look sheepish. “I did behave like a bastard, didn't I?”

“I distinctly remember pointing that out.”

“Yes. You did.” He chuckled.

“What made you change your mind?”

A tender smile curved his lips. “Do you remember how restless she was the night after Serena's funeral?”

Hallie nodded. Ariel had howled incessantly that evening, much to the despair of the wet nurse and the nanny. Hallie had examined the poor babe but had been unable to find anything wrong with her. It was puzzling.

“I understood exactly how she felt.” He sighed. “I, too, was feeling out of sorts. I was exhausted, my wound hurt, and there was nothing I wanted more than to sleep, which, of course, was out of the question considering the racket she was making.”

Jake raised his eyes and caught Hallie's compassionate gaze with his hungry one. No. That wasn't quite true. What he'd wanted more than sleep was to curl up in Hallie Gardiner's arms. And it hadn't been just the noise that kept him awake, it had also been the void he'd felt after she left for the Mission House.

He glanced down at the bundle in his arms, unconsciously toying with the lace edge of the blanket framing Ariel's face. “The screams went on for hours. Finally, out of sheer desperation, I ordered the baby brought to my bedchamber. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, I only knew I'd go mad if she didn't quiet. I remember looking into her little red face and thinking that she looked as lost as I felt. She seemed so helpless that I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to comfort her. I didn't know what to do—I'd never held an infant before, so I simply laid her against my chest, her heart against mine, and stroked her back. Like magic, she calmed.”

Jake smiled with fond remembrance. “I thought of you when her sobs faded and she began to make little hiccupping noises. Anyway, before I knew it, we had both fallen asleep. It was the soundest I'd slept in months. It comforted me to feel someone else near, to feel another heart beating next to mine.”

Hallie could picture Jake asleep with the fairylike Ariel curled up on his powerful chest. The thought made her ache to wrap him in her embrace and to press her own heart against his. What a lonely man he was. And how she loved him!

“I imagine she sensed that something was wrong,” Hallie murmured. “You made her feel safe. Any woman would feel safe sleeping in your arms.”

“But there's only one woman I'm interested in having sleeping there,” he purred, his gaze raking her body provocatively.

Did he know how he tempted her when he looked at her like that? Hallie blushed and looked away. Lord! How she longed to say yes to his seductive invitation—to fall sleep with the feel of his naked skin warming hers, to wake up next to him and to let his smile be her dawning light.

Embarrassed by her own desires, Hallie turned her attention back to Ariel. “She's fast asleep now. Would you like me to put her into her cradle for you?”

He nodded. “My leg is usually strong enough to allow me to stand unaided. But tonight, well … I'm glad you're here.” It was a statement of fact, and for once there was no bitterness in his voice as he referred to his handicap.

“I'm glad too,” she whispered, taking Ariel from his arms. A smile tugged at Hallie's lips as she tucked the blankets around the diminutive form. Wasn't it just like Jake to purchase something as beautiful—and impractical—as a pink silk coverlet tor an infant? Obviously little Ariel was on her way to becoming thoroughly spoiled.

When Hallie at last turned from the cradle, her heart was wrenched by the sight of Jake struggling to rise to his feet. His face was drawn in lines of frustration, and she noticed that the motion of the rocking chair was doing nothing to aid his efforts.

Wordlessly, she held out her hands to him.

He grew very still as he sat poised at the edge of the chair, staring at her open palms. Slowly, he let his gaze travel from her hands to her face. She nodded her encouragement.

After a moment's hesitation, he slipped his hands into hers and let her help him to his feet. It was the first time he had willingly let anyone aid him in such a manner, for to do so was to acknowledge defeat to his shameful weakness. He let out his breath slowly. It wasn't nearly as hard as he had imagined.

As Hallie slipped her arms around his waist and held him while he positioned his cane, Jake decided that he liked her assistance a great deal. He liked the way her hands felt clasped against the small of his back. He liked the way her unbound breasts grazed his silk-clad chest, and most of all he liked the way she met his gaze without a trace of pity. The only thing he read in the tawny depths of her eyes was love.

Steady now, he leaned forward to drop a quick kiss on her lips. “Thank you,” he whispered before stepping away.

In companionable silence, they made their way down the corridors. The storm had eased until all that remained was the gentle tapping of the rain against the windows. Somewhere in the house, a clock struck midnight. It was Christmas Day.

Grinning, Hallie paused to wish Jake a Merry Christmas. But when she saw his expression, the gay felicitation died in her throat. Every line, every feature of his face was rigidly controlled—too controlled. She'd seen that look too often not to recognize it. It was the face of a man who was suffering, of a man who had become so accustomed to hiding his pain that even in an unguarded moment such as this, he kept his discomfort well masked.

“Jake.” She grasped his arm to halt him. “Let me help you.”

One corner of his mouth curled up. “I know I'm moving slower than a snail over hot tar, but I'm perfectly capable of escorting you back to your room.” Looping his free arm around her shoulders, he teased, “Besides, someone has to protect you from all the ghosts and goblins brought on by the storm.”

“Of course you're capable,” she declared, snuggling close to his side and wrapping her arm around his taut waist. “I don't doubt you could walk me all the way to Timbuktu—and back—if you wanted to. What I was referring to was your pain.”

“I'm fine.”

“Liar.”

He shrugged. “All right, so this damp cold makes my leg a bit stiff.”

“And it aches?” she prodded gently.

“Like the devil,” he admitted with a sigh.

She stared down at the lattice print of the hall carpet. “In Europe they use massage and hot poultices to relieve such pain.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes.” She stole a glance up at his face. He was staring down at her, his expression unreadable. Clearing her throat nervously, she suggested, “I could do it for you if you'd like.”

He continued to stare at her for a moment, before shifting his gaze down to his hand clutching the gold top of his cane. Now there was a dangerous idea. Did she realize what her hands caressing his naked thigh would do to him?

He chuckled softly. “Do you really think that would be a wise idea?”

“I wouldn't suggest it if I didn't think it would help. I promise you that when I'm finished with the treatment, you won't spare your leg another thought.”

“Oh, I don't doubt that for a minute. At least the part about sparing my leg a thought.” He wondered vaguely if anyone had ever died from unrelieved lust. If not, he was sure to make the medical annals as the first. That is, if he was thickheaded enough to submit to Hallie Gardiner's ministrations, which he wasn't.

“If you'll just let me get you settled in your bed, I can run down to the kitchen to get what I need. Let's see now, a—”

Jake's groan cut her off. “No.” Never! Well, at least not until hell froze over.

“Please, Jake,” she pleaded, tightening her arm around his waist and pulling him to a stop. “Let me do this for you. You've done so much for me today. I want to do something to repay you.”

“Hallie …” he began, glancing down into her face. She was gnawing on her lower lip, her soft eyes entreating him. Damn. How could he possibly say no to that beseeching expression? Administering this treatment obviously meant a great deal to her.

He groaned again. Lord give him strength! It looked like hell was about to freeze over.

Chapter 17

Within half an hour, Hallie had stoked the waning fire in Jake's bedchamber, set a kettle of water to boil, and laid out the makings for a linseed poultice on a small table.

Jake, who had adamantly refused to lie in bed for the treatment, was relaxing in a chair in front of the hearth with his leg propped up on an ottoman.

“No wonder your leg aches,” Hallie scolded as she knelt between his knees and uncorked a small brown bottle. “It's freezing in here. On nights like this, you need to make sure the servants set a proper fire, and you'd probably be more comfortable if you had Hop put some hot bricks around your leg.”

“Fine,” Jake mumbled, closing his eyes and swallowing hard as Hallie began to pull up his dressing gown to expose his disfigured limb. Did the woman realize he was naked underneath? he wondered. Not that he was worried about his modesty being compromised, mind you. It was just that he was becoming aroused by Hallie's touch, and he found his lack of control embarrassing.

Every muscle in his body tensed as she pushed the hem to the uppermost region of his thigh.
A few inches more …

Then he released a quick breath of relief. She had stopped just short of the articulation where his thigh joined his groin and had let the excess fabric drape modestly between his legs. With that mound of silk shielding him, perhaps she wouldn't notice the way his hardened flesh was beginning to protrude.

Gently, Hallie prodded the length of the ugly scar.
No wonder it pains him so,
she thought, her heart swelling with sympathy. He'd obviously been badly hurt, and whoever had tended to the injury had been less than skilled. The damage was extensive, leaving an ugly red scar that was about two inches wide and ran from several inches above his knee to just below the apex of his groin. She felt him flinch as her fingers found the hard protuberance where the torn muscles had healed over the crookedly knit bone.

“I'm sorry, Jake,” she whispered, more out of compassion for what he must have suffered at the hands of the army surgeons than for any discomfort he'd felt during her examination.

Not looking down at her, Jake buried his cheek against the velvet of the wing-backed chair and nodded tersely. She hadn't hurt him, though his throat was too constricted from his sudden panic to tell her so. Christ! He'd forgotten how much he hated having the maimed area touched. Even now, after all these months, he associated being touched there with being subjected to more pain.

His gut tightened, for he half expected to feel the agony of a scalpel cutting through his flesh. Then his gorge rose with terrible swiftness.
The probe. They would dig deeply into the wound, scraping metal against bone, unmindful of his tortured screams.
A groan escaped his lips.

Hallie watched the sweat bead up on Jake's ashen face. Lord! It must hurt even worse than she'd first imagined. Pouring a generous amount of Celine's liniment into her palm to warm it, she crooned, “Try and relax, darling. It'll feel better in a little while.”

She spread the oily liquid over the limb and began her manipulations, keeping her touch light at first. As Hallie gradually increased the pressure, she could feel Jake's tense muscles begin to loosen beneath her palm. And though he didn't make a sound or open his eyes while she worked, his face began to lose its strained expression.

It feels wonderful,
he thought, surrendering to the soothing sensation of Hallie's now deeply kneading motions. Whatever she'd used on his leg had turned warm beneath the friction of her hands, and the heat penetrated all the way to the bone, easing the chronic ache.

It was the first time since he'd been wounded that his leg had actually felt good.

Neither spoke for a long while, he caught up in the pleasure of being free from pain, she scrutinizing the twisted configuration of the injury. Just as Jake felt the last of his tension ease away, Hallie's movements abruptly ceased and he felt her fingertips graze an area in his inner thigh.

“Gunshot,” he supplied, looking down at where she was tracing a star-shaped scar. “Fortunately, the Reb who shot me wasn't armed with rifled musket.”

Jake sighed and leaned back, relaxing again as she resumed her massage. “He was probably some poor farm boy toting his daddy's shotgun. I would have lost the leg for sure if I'd taken a minie ball. At least that's what the surgeons said. As it was, the bone was badly broken, and they wanted to amputate it at the thigh and be done with it.”

Hallie stared up at him in horror. “They would have amputated your leg without trying to save it?”

“When you have thousands of wounded and comparatively few doctors, there is often no choice. You do whatever is quickest and most likely to save the patient's life.” He opened his eyes and forced himself to study his maimed limb.

He'd always avoided looking at it, hating the nightmarish memories that the scar brought back. And aside from Seth, who had been with him through his ordeal, he'd never discussed his wound with anyone. It was too hard to remember.

But looking at his thigh now, cradled between Hallie's hands, it didn't seem nearly as disturbing as it once had, and he felt an odd need to tell her about it. If anyone would understand what he'd been through, Hallie would.

“I was afraid,” he confessed in a hoarse voice, watching her hands move fluidly over his ugly war memento. “I remember lying in the dark alone. It was cold … raining … I was terrified that no one would find me. Almost as afraid as I was of what would happen when they did.”

His hands tightened on the arms of the chair at the horror of his remembrance. “I would have died undiscovered on the battlefield if Seth hadn't been so relentless in his search for me. It was a good thing I was moaning, or he probably wouldn't have found me lying among the piles of dead soldiers.”

Hallie wanted to weep at the thought of her beloved Jake lying on the cold ground, hurt and alone. What she wouldn't give to have been there to comfort him, to have been able to spare him the nightmare of such memories, to have saved him from being mutilated in such a tragic fashion.

As she fought to suppress her sob at the horror of his story, her hands tightened on his thigh. She felt him flinch at the sudden pressure. Shooting him an apologetic look, she quickly resumed her gently kneading manipulations.

“You're lucky to have a friend like Seth,” she murmured.

Jake gave her a gentle smile and nodded. “Yes. He even insisted on staying with me while the surgeons did their work. It was he who convinced them not to do the amputation. I was told that he persuaded them to remove the bullet and set my leg by holding them at gunpoint. He paid for that bit of insubordination by being assigned the duty of burying all the amputated limbs that had piled up outside the medical tents.”

Hallie let her fingertips trace the jagged path of the scar. “It must have been a terrible wound.”

“It got worse with the surgeons' efforts.” He reached down and after a moment's hesitation touched his thigh. Pointing to a wide puckered area, he explained, “That's where the bone came through the skin. They cut me from here—” his hand mapped out an area encompassing several inches above and below the puckered scar. “—to here to probe for the bullet and remove the bone fragments.”

He swallowed hard as a shudder rippled through his body. Unable to keep from trembling now, he ran his finger over the entire perimeter of the long scar. “A few weeks later, they cut me from here to here to remove the infected tissue and to probe for the fragments they had forgotten the first time.” He fell silent for a moment, stroking the area reflectively.

“How awful for you!” she blurted out, hating the thought of her Jake being subjected to such savagery. “No wonder you think of doctors as a pack of butchers.”

With some difficulty, he admitted, “It was awful. They were afraid to give me chloroform, because of what had happened the first time, so they tied me down and operated without it. Even with morphine, it hurt so badly I wanted to die.”

Jake squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. He'd hated being tied and helpless. He could almost feel the rough hemp ropes cutting into his wrists and ankles as his body arched uncontrollably at the agonizing brutality of the procedure.

“Jake?” Hallie pulled his hand away from the scar and clasped it in hers. He clung to her with bone-crushing desperation. His face was as pale as ashes, and he looked as if he was about to be sick. “You don't have to tell me about it if it's too painful.”

He opened his eyes to focus on Hallie's upturned face. The tenderness of her expression and the loving warmth of her eyes chased away his dark musings.

“No,” he whispered, squeezing her hand gratefully. “I want to tell you.”

She nodded, understanding his need to talk. Perhaps, if he could release the festering memories from his sickened soul, he could begin to truly heal. Only then would he be whole again.

“Were you all right?” she asked. “I mean, after they'd cut out the infection?”

“I wouldn't call how I felt ‘all right.' I thought I had died and gone to hell.”

“No wonder. You'd been through hell.” She kissed the hand clasped in hers. “What I meant was, was the infection gone? I've heard there's only limited success in doing such operations.”

“No it wasn't. That's when they suggested amputation again. At that point I almost agreed, I was so miserable.”

“Whatever did you do?”

“Celine happened to be working at the hospital, cleaning the floors and changing the bed linens. Sometimes she would help bathe the soldiers, myself included.” He shrugged. “You get to know someone pretty well when they wipe your bare bottom for you. For some reason she took a liking to me.”

Hallie smiled a little at that. “I guess Celine is no more immune to your handsome looks than the rest of us poor females.”

For the first time since he had begun his story, Jake laughed. Wrapping her braid around his hand and giving it a tug, he teased, “You're a saucy baggage, Dr. Gardiner. Perhaps Celine developed an infatuation for my backside—rather like a certain Mission Lady I know.”

He chuckled again at her embarrassed squawk. “Whatever it was, she used to make me special treats and coax me to eat them, even when I was at my worst. It was her care that saved my leg … and probably my life. Never underestimate those nasty unguents and poultices of hers. They work.”

Hallie nodded, making a mental note to ask Celine what she'd used to cure such an infection.

“But do you know what was worse than anything else?”

She shook her head.

“The loneliness. Seth eventually had to move on with the army, and though he did manage to check up on me from time to time, I didn't see much of him. There were other patients to talk to, of course, but only Seth could make me laugh.”

“How long were you in the hospital?”

“Six months. I was confined to my bed most of the time, although toward the end I was able to get around on crutches. Since I couldn't do much else, I wrote volumes of letters to Penelope and Serena. Penelope was a lively correspondent, but Serena …”

He drew a ragged breath, remembering the pain of waiting for a letter that never arrived. “How I longed for a kind word from her.”

The desolation of his words wrenched Hallie's heart. With a sob, she threw her head back and met his anguished gaze, exclaiming, “If you'd been mine, I would have fought the whole Rebel army just to get to your side. I never could have borne it, knowing that you were alone and suffering.”

Grasping her face between his hands and staring into her eyes, brilliant with emotion, Jake murmured, “I believe you, Mission Lady. And God help any Rebel who would have tried to stop you.” Then he swooped down and crashed his lips against hers in a needful, urgent kiss. As his lips claimed hers, Hallie's head fell back and she welcomed his kiss with an ardor that made him moan.

How she loved him! She loved the feel of his mouth moving against hers, drawing her lower lip into his mouth, sensuously sucking and nipping in turn. She loved how the masculinity of his scent stirred her senses, making her quiver out of control. He was like a heady drug, and she craved him as desperately as an addict craved opium.

With reckless abandon, she deepened the kiss, hungry to taste every intoxicating inch of his mouth. She could hear him moan again as his tongue, so wet, hot, and insistent burned against hers. And as if in answer to his primal call, a searing ache exploded low in her belly. Gasping with a need she didn't understand, yet desperately wanted to fulfill, Hallie pressed her quivering body into the junction between his legs.

Jake gasped with erotic torment as she undulated against his thinly veiled heat. Dear God! She was like a fever in his blood, fueling his desires until he burned with a heat that he knew could be cooled only by dipping into her soothing flesh.

With a sob, he crushed her face closer to his. Her lips were ripe with a provocative invitation which his body begged to accept, and the passion with which she met his kiss inflamed him until his need to possess her was almost unbearable.

Unmindful of anything but the way his kisses made the secret places in her body tingle, Hallie let her hand slide up the length of his thigh. So lost was she in their unbridled passion that she didn't notice when her fingertips grazed the dark thatch of curls beneath the pooling silk of his robe.

Groaning now with savage desire, Jake grasped Hallie's buttocks and pulled her nearer. She jerked as a jolt of excitement raced through her body. Unbidden, her hand slipped the rest of the distance until she was intimately cupping his engorged sex.

Fire streaked through Jake's loins at the sudden contact, and his head snapped back as if he had been burned. Panting harshly, he could only stare at her, stunned.