Gareth picked up a tall, skinny bundle of cloth from beside the door and turned to Logan. “We saw you attempting an exit, but before you leave, we wanted to give you something.”
Logan’s head angled to the side, his look questioning.
Balanced long atop both of his hands, Gareth held the long bundle up to Logan. “This.”
Logan looked at the dark cloth, yet made no motion for it.
Gareth lifted it a little higher, and Logan stepped forward, hesitantly taking the bundle. Logan turned, setting the cloth down on the nearby desk and then unwrapping the folds of fabric.
Logan’s fingers paused, gripping the cloth, as he revealed the gift inside.
A gleaming sword reflected shards of light from the wall sconces.
“It is the first creation of the re-opened foundry,” Gareth said. “It is yours.”
Logan’s fingers slowly set the dark cloth down, his hand slipping along the hilt of the sword. The grip was smooth, an elegant line of onyx inlaid with gold. From the ruby embedded quillon, the golden knuckle guard swooped away in three precise arcs balanced equally between delicacy and strength.
“It is remarkable. Unparalleled.” Logan lifted the blade and set it out directly from his nose, eyeing the straight length of it. A low whistle escaped his lips.
“That is the bar we set.” Gareth nodded to the blade. “Every piece that comes from our foundry will meet this level. Steel that will not fail the men that possess it.”
Logan held the sword out to Gareth. “I cannot accept it.”
“You can and you will. I will craft more. A lifetime of them. And in the first set, one for each of your men.” Gareth pointed at the blade. “But this one is yours and I will not accept your refusal of it. You never know when you will need it.”
Logan’s eyes pinned Gareth. A silent look—of gratitude, of respect—passed between the two men.
Logan offered one nod, and then turned to Nicolina. He glanced back to Gareth. “Did you ever tell her?”
Gareth stilled, shaking his head.
Nicolina’s gaze flickered between the two men. “Tell me what?”
Logan turned fully to Nicolina. “Your husband is a legend—”
“Logan—”
“No,” Logan lifted the sword as he looked at Gareth, “you force this upon me, I force this upon you. She has a right to know as your wife. A right to take pride.”
Gareth sighed. It was all the permission Logan needed.
Logan looked at Nicolina. “You need to know what your husband did on the continent during the war.”
Her look went to Gareth, and then drifted slowly back to Logan. “What?”
“Your husband became a legend. It was in a battle on a field where we were backed against a river by Boney’s forces. There was no easy escape. One lone stone bridge. Our artillery had failed—it was weak metal blown, for it could not withstand the pressures of the gun powder. It left our men near to defenseless. But your husband—he carried eleven men off that battlefield in the midst of the carnage—long after his own rifle and steel had failed him—more metal that was brittle and broken.” Logan looked at Gareth. “He was mad to do so, but he kept returning into the field, long after sanity should not have allowed it. Eight of those men lived because of him.”
Her eyes going wide, Nicolina’s gaze travelled to her husband.
Logan looked to Nicolina. “But he never stopped. Not until that shot took his foot. Only then did he cease.”
“Logan—”
Logan lifted his hand to stop Gareth’s interruption, shaking his head at his friend. “His actions alone that day inspired feats of courage that still reverberate through the army. He hates the word legend.”
“I do.”
“But that is what he became that day.” Logan inclined his head to Nicolina. “Gareth may be embarrassed by the sentiment, but it is something you should know, both for you and for his child.” Logan’s forehead dipped down in deference to Nicolina’s slightly protruding stomach.
“Thank you, Logan.” Nicolina smiled, threading her hand along her husband’s arm. “Gareth has always been a legend in my mind. So this does not surprise me. But it does please me.”
“I will leave you to your gathering.” Logan looked to Gareth. “Thank you. It is an honor, and with masterpieces such as this,” he lifted the sword, “I predict the foundry will be profitable within six months.”
“With luck.”
“You don’t need luck, my friend.” Logan tilted his head to them. “You have your wife.” He escaped out the rear door of the office.
Nicolina turned to Gareth and wrapped her arms around his sides, looking up at him. “I am glad he told me that.”
“It is not something I wished for you to have to imagine.”
“No. But it was real. It happened. And Logan was right, it is something our child should eventually know about his or her father. Something to take pride in.”
“When there has been much not to take pride in?”
“Nonsense.” She grinned, shrugging her shoulders. “A rogue. A legend. Who knew they were the same thing?”
He laughed and wrapped his arms fully around her. “Your husband. That is all I ever truly aspired to.”
“And you are legendary at that, as well.” She smiled, squeezing his waist as he chuckled.
She motioned back to the main floor of the foundry with her head. “Onward?”
“Onward, my wife.”
To Capture a Warrior
~ Logan’s Legends ~
A Revelry’s Tempest Regency Romance
.
K.J. Jackson
{ Chapter 1 • To Capture a Warrior }
~~~
Men of uncommon valor.
Each with a past to deny.
Peerless. Formidable. Coveted.
One man to unite them, this band of guards unlike any other.
~~~
Western Spain, deep in the midst of the Peninsular War
July 1812
“Rifle.”
The order thundered across the room, cutting through the echo of the last blast from the spent rifle the soldier was holding out.
Bridget’s look whipped to her father. Perched on his knees on the floorboards, his arms flew about him, gunpowder spilling as he manically measured and poured it into one of the four rifles scattered about his legs. He grabbed the ramrod, jamming a linen-wrapped lead shot deep into the barrel. Without looking up to her, he thrust out the Baker rifle to her, his other hand already reaching for the gunpowder to load the next.
She snatched the rifle from her father’s hand, her fingers clutching the still warm barrel from the last shot.
Bridget ran across the room, her hands so quick to get rid of the rifle she tossed it into the soldier’s waiting hand, then snatched the spent one from his grip. He pulled the butt of the rifle to his shoulder, aiming out the window, his dark eyes trained on the cobblestone lane below.
A dream. This had to be a dream.
An hour ago she had been dressing wounds.
They were supposed to be safe here. Safe. The lieutenant colonel had guaranteed it.
But they weren’t. And now they only had one man defending them against the oncoming French troops.
What had made the building so safe as an infirmary—two stories high, built of dark grey stone and with sight lines in all directions above the neighboring cottages—had also made it a target.
It was the safest place in the village. Also the most strategic.
But this wasn’t a dream. The stench of burnt gunpowder searing her nose and the constant barrage of lead balls picking at the exterior stone wall just two feet away from her assured her this was horrifyingly real.
Bridget stared at the man perched along the side of the open window. Careful, practiced, only a sliver of his body would show along the window’s edge to the oncoming soldiers. His dark eyes intense, unflinching as he set his aim, he didn’t blink as a bullet tore into
the grey stone next to his head, exploding shards of rock onto the side of his face.
He was hard. He was war. And beautifully, tragically, the last thing set between her and death. A brutal, horrifying death.
Within seconds of gaining control of the building, Boney’s soldiers would dispose of her father, of the ten wounded men that were under their care in the adjoining room—most of them already touching death and of no help to them.
Her…her they would most likely keep. Keep until her body had been defiled and ravaged and torn in two. And then maybe, if she was lucky, they would kill her.
She had accepted that possibility when she followed her physician father into this war. She had come, willingly, because her father depended upon her like no other.
Her father was a physician that could actually save men with his abilities—not just blithely saw off appendages and let soldiers bleed to death like so many of his compatriots. Even as a physician, surgery was where he excelled, and he had taught her everything he knew. It would have been reprehensible for him not to serve the crown—to serve the brave men where he could. And that meant Bridget had needed to come with him to the continent. To this blasted war.
Bridget’s gaze locked onto the soldier’s forefinger. The slightest twitch and he slowly pulled the trigger.
A slight nod was the only indication he had hit his target, his hand flinging out the empty rifle as he yelled again, his look not leaving the cobblestone street below.
“Rifle.”
Even though it thundered, the calm of his voice was like no other. Low. Commanding. Gentle as it cut into the acrid air of the flash of gunpowder.
Bridget jumped, grabbing the stock of the spent rifle and spinning back to her father. She grabbed the next two primed and loaded rifles by the barrels, the metal of one of them burning into her palm as she rushed back to the soldier and shoved it in his hand.
The soldier had burst into the building, running up to these rooms with five rifles bundled in his arms and a heavy satchel of ammunition in a knapsack. He’d dropped all of that to the floor in a frenzy, rushing from window to window, desperate for the perfect vantage point. Her father had gone to lock every door he could between them and the approaching French soldiers outside.
But they had come. And they were getting closer.
This soldier—a marksman of the highest order—had held them at bay for a half hour. Picking off Boney’s soldiers one by one.
But it wasn’t enough.
The cries, the French yelling below, filling her ears was close—too close. They had made it to the corner of the building if the voices she heard were any indication.
Crack.
Another shot off. Screams from below.
No matter how fast her father loaded the rifles. No matter how quickly she delivered them to the soldier. No matter how many men the soldier shot down.
They were here.
Bridget pushed another rifle into the soldier’s waiting hand as she took the spent rifle.
This time, her hands were shaking as her fingertips touched his.
He hadn’t looked at her. Hadn’t acknowledged her other than the legs that brought the rifles to him, but at that moment, he paused, looking to her.
His dark eyes, almost the color of ink, pierced her. “You will survive this, lass. You will.”
She froze, his words hitting her.
He told the lie so effortlessly, so calmly and without a hint of doubt that she wanted to believe him.
Hell, she did believe him.
Before she could move again, spin back to her father to retrieve the next rifle, he turned back to the window, squinting his left eye closed. Not a second passed before he shot.
But as he opened his eye, lifting his head, he didn’t immediately fling the rifle out for her to take.
“Our forces. They’re almost here.” His mouth pulled back, almost to a terse smile.
Bridget stepped to the side of the window, hiding her body behind stone as she searched through the peaks of the surrounding cottages.
A flicker of movement, and she leaned forward to see a number of men moving along a far off lane.
With a wicked curse the soldier shoved her away from the window, sending her stumbling. Another shot blasted into the stone of the windowsill where she had just been. Jagged flecks of stone sprayed into her eyes.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
More shots.
And then a very distinct sound. A door slamming open.
“Blast it to hell.” The soldier swore under his breath, the first indication she had seen from him of any alarm.
He stepped away from the window, pointing to her father. “All of them, I need all of them loaded now.” He ripped his spent rifle from her hand and rushed to her father, bending down next to him, his fingers flying as he loaded it.
“Five. Dammit, five bloody rifles. I should have grabbed more.”
Crack. Crack.
The floorboards shook under her boots as another door below them crashed open.
And then the terrifying sound of feet thundering up the stairs.
Not looking at his hands as he loaded the last rifle, the soldier looked up to her father. “The window.”
With a nod, her father jumped to his feet and grabbed her arm, yanking her across the floor to the open window. The soldier followed him, juggling every rifle with him and lining them up on the floorboards in front of him.
Her father stuck his head out the window, then quickly pulled himself back in, his panicked hazel eyes on her. His words flew in a frenzy. “Our forces are coming. You can make the jump, Bridget. You’ll be safer out there than in here.”
Crack.
A shot blasted through the lock of the door.
The door to their room exploded open, the wood splintering.
Bridget screamed, gripping her father’s arm. “You can—”
Her words ripped from her throat as she went flying through the air.
Shoved—pushed through the open window to fall through the air.
Terror like she had never known seized her.
Falling.
Falling.
Falling.
She hit the ground.
{ Chapter 2 • To Capture a Warrior }
The breath he gasped filled his lungs, blasting him into consciousness. Blasting him upright. His hands flailed, searching for anything to clutch onto, and he opened his eyes only to see hazy light.
Nothing but hazy, white light.
Hell.
Not his sight. Not his eyes.
Panic stormed him.
His legs tangled in sheets, in blankets, his arms thrashed about, desperate for something solid.
Sudden warm hands caught his bare forearm, clutching it, stilling it.
“Hunter, calm, calm.” The soft voice slid as honey into his ears. A woman. “You are awake, finally. But calm. Calm. You need to calm.”
His arms stilled.
“Please, Hunter. Lie down, lie down and let me help you.”
Help? What did he need help with? He needed to get back to that front line. To the men that would die because he wasn’t there. He was the one that had to help. He was the one with the vision. The aim. The gift.
He choked on a gasp. His eyes. His sight.
That was why he needed help. He couldn’t see a blasted thing. Just haze.
The fingers on his arms pressed into the muscle. Then one of her hands left him only to land on his shoulder.
His body fighting defeat, fighting the damn bed he’d been forced into, he nonetheless couldn’t resist the palm gently pressing on his shoulder and guiding him back down to the bed.
It took long moments before his breathing slowed, and the insistent palm on his shoulder didn’t move, didn’t twitch until he stilled.
“There. Thank you.” The voice reached into his mind, calming him where he couldn’t calm himself. “Now if you will manage to lie still for a moment, I can tend to your head.”
Without waiting for a response, a flurry of fingers descended onto his forehead. He realized a thick covering of bandages had been wrapped about his skull.
Quickly, the strips of linen lifted away from his scalp as the woman spoke. “You do not know how relieved I am that you have awakened, sir.”
The last strip of linen moved along his temple and then lifted from his face, freeing his skin to the air. He opened his eyes, blinking.
Blinking again.
And again.
A ceiling. White. Plain plaster. An almost indiscernible crack running from the corner.
His sight was perfectly fine. Not harmed at all.
He shifted his head to the left to look up at the woman tending to him.
Her.
The girl in the infirmary. The girl bringing him rifles. The girl with the wide green eyes and light brown hair.
The girl he pushed out the window.
She survived.
She blinked, her green eyes piercing him. “You, sir, are not only a hero, but you have proved these so-called surgeons here very wrong, and for that, I am eternally grateful.”
His mouth cracked open and before he could talk, she set a wet cloth to his lips, dripping water into his mouth. Heaven.
He took a moment to let the moisture sink into the crevices of his mouth, his throat. He opened his lips again. “You.”
A soft smile lifted her lips. “Yes.”
“How—how are they wrong?”
A frown quickly replaced the smile. “They thought to place you in the death room. They were not going to bother with you.”
“I was to die? What happened to me?”
She leaned in over him, setting the wet cloth to his lips again and her voice dipped low. “There was the bullet along your skull. And then the bullet in your foot. And then the bullet that tore through your side. Between all of it, they did not think to give you a chance.”
He closed his eyes for a long breath. He moved the muscles in his arms, his legs, his torso, praying all of him was intact. He opened his eyes to her. “But then they did give me a chance?”
She nodded, her green eyes somber. “They did. I saw you when you arrived and I watched where they were to place you, and I…well…” Her words trailed as the edges of her eyes crinkled in a cringe. “I threw what could only be considered the most obnoxiously ridiculous fit ever achieved in a battlefield infirmary. I had to validate the belief that many men hold in that women are hysterical creatures.”
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