She heard the undercurrent of desperation in his voice. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him. She didn’t want to make promises.
He tried to struggle up on his elbows. “Stay,” he insisted.
“I’ll be here when you wake.”
He extended his hand.
Helpless to resist, she returned.
He grasped her fingers. “I need you.”
Surely there could be no harm in promising such a simple thing. “I won’t leave.”
On that assurance, he was asleep. Really asleep this time. But even in slumber, he clung to her.
Sighing, she hooked her foot around the straight-backed chair and brought it around so she could sit. “I want you to understand something,” she told the sleeping man. “I’m not promising forever.”
Chapter 7
MacLean opened his eyes to candlelight. He knew where he was immediately. In an attic room in Suffolk, his body torn by an explosion, his mind blank and still—and the woman who called herself his wife hovering close over him like a restless spirit. “What is wrong, woman?” he snapped.
Enid straightened and backed up a long, slow step, her spine stiff with displeasure. “You’ve slept long, ten hours since this morning. We feared you wouldn’t again wake.”
“You’ll not be so lucky again.” His leg hurt, his butt ached. He groped for another pillow to put under his shoulders.
Enid sprang to his assistance. “You’re a more pleasant man when you’re unconscious.”
The village woman he’d met earlier—Mrs. Brown, her name was—stood at the foot of the bed, and she gave her unwanted opinion. “Most men are. Most babes, too.”
Enid’s smile came as suddenly as a spark to flint. “I suppose there’s a lesson to be learned there.”
For all that he wanted to nip at her for her insolence, he was so stricken by the dimple in her chin, the lilt in her voice, the sparkle of her teeth, that he could do no more than stare. Gads, when she was happy everything about her shouted her joy.
She hadn’t smiled at him before. Not once. Not ever.
He couldn’t have forgotten her.
Damn it. Damn it! His name. His home. His mother, his father, his kin. What had this explosion done to him? He’d forgotten all. Oppressed by lucid despair, he pressed his hands to his forehead.
Gently, Enid pushed them away and looked into his eyes. “Do you have a headache?”
She wasn’t staring at him with romantic interest; she was watching his pupils, checking to see if they were normal. His wife. She had claimed to be his wife, yet—how had his wife become this woman of cool blue eyes and steady voice? She said they were estranged; did she cherish no sweet memories of their mating?
Mrs. Brown handed her a steaming cup, and the rich scent smelled of parsley and beef.
His mouth watered, and he found himself reaching out.
Enid steadied the mug.
He swallowed so quickly that it burned the roof of his mouth, and the broth tasted salty and rich on his tongue.
“Do you have a headache?” Enid asked again.
He glanced at Mrs. Brown. She stood across the room, folding linens at the table, too far away to hear him speak, so in a low tone he admitted, “More of a heartache. I don’t know who I am.” Then he cursed himself for showing Enid his soft underbelly. Women scorned a weak man.
But Enid didn’t show her contempt. She answered just as softly, “I’ll take care of you until you know who you are.”
She still wore the dark green gown, a little more wrinkled than before, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. The candlelight caressed her, but tiredness ringed her eyes and curling wisps of hair straggled from the snood that bound her locks. He caught her hand. “And after,” he demanded rather than asked.
“If you want me.” Her tone made it clear she doubted that.
Again a memory slipped from the mists of his mind. Enid, leaning over him, her wrap loose about her shoulders, golden candlelight gleaming on the upper swells of her breasts.
Why couldn’t he remember what happened after? Just that wisp of memory brought his member stirring to life, and he needed to remember everything about her more than he needed to remember all the rest of his life.
He wanted to press a kiss on her fingers, slip an arm around her waist, carry her off to some private place and love her until that tight expression of concern and control slipped and became tender passion.
He wanted to do all those things, but he gazed on their intertwined hands, and the difference jolted him. Her fingers were strong, her nails short, her skin pink and healthy. His hands were skeletal, pasty white, the hands of an invalid. He hadn’t the strength to take her, but more important, no woman would want him like this.
A thought occurred to him, and panic abruptly escaped from behind its prison bars. “How old am I?”
“Let me think.” Her brow wrinkled, and she counted on her fingers. “You’re thirty-five.”
Relief swept him. “Not an old man, then.”
“Not at all.”
“Just contrary as the devil,” Mrs. Brown said.
He smirked at her. “Do you recognize your master?”
Mrs. Brown went on about her work, not at all offended. “Ah, ye’re a wicked one, Mr. MacLean.”
Enid brought him a hand mirror.
The scars struck him first. Pale lines crisscrossed one side of his face. “I look like Frankenstein’s monster.”
She didn’t answer.
Glancing at her still, set face, he asked, “What?”
“You’ve read Frankenstein?”
“Yes.”
“Who wrote it?”
“Mary Shelley.” He understood Enid now, and he said, “I don’t know why I know that, I just do. I can quote Bible verses, hundreds of them, and do all of Hamlet’s soliloquy.” He gestured grandly and proclaimed, “To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles—”
“—And by opposing end them,” she interrupted. “I do believe you when you say you remember your Hamlet.”
He continued, “I can tell you how to trap a rabbit and clean it, and how to make at least a dozen knots. But I don’t remember who I am, and that’s what I want to know.”
“All right.”
He didn’t believe she had accepted his explanation, and silently he demanded she do so.
“All right!” She spread her hands wide. “I don’t understand how this works, I admit it. You’ll allow me my moments of doubt.”
“You can doubt anything you want, but don’t doubt me. I’m the only man here who is telling you all the truth.”
“How do you know that?”
“I have an instinct.” Let her make of that what she would.
Lifting the mirror again, he touched the scars lightly with his fingertips. They explained why his cheek felt stiff and sore when he spoke. He widened his eyes, flexed his jaw, tilted his head. The man in the mirror made the motions, too, but he didn’t recognize him. Nothing about the juxtaposition of harsh lines, pale scars and dark beard looked familiar to him.
Yet Enid seemed to find nothing unusual in his features. “Do you know yourself?”
“Not at all.”
“Ye’re a man quite in your prime,” Mrs. Brown commented as she moved back and forth in the room, putting the linens away.
He teased, “If you have to wipe a bottom, you’re glad it was mine, heh?”
Enid gasped. “MacLean!”
But Mrs. Brown positively cackled. “I’m getting old, sir, but my eyesight’s fine and I got quite a pleasant eyeful.”
“Mrs. Brown!” Enid sounded even more shocked by the older woman than by MacLean himself.
MacLean and Mrs. Brown exchanged grins.
Handing Enid the mirror, he said, “For a moment I wondered if I’d slept my life away.”
“Gambling it away would be more your style.
”
He frowned. He didn’t understand her. “I don’t gamble.”
“It is your vice.”
He didn’t understand that, either. He knew about cards, he knew about men who spent days and nights in smoke-filled rooms betting their livelihood on a single toss of the dice, but that wasn’t him. He resented her insinuation that he was a weakling like . . . the thought slipped away almost as soon as he formed it. Like who? Whose face did he see, garish with agitation, as he wagered everything on an illusion?
MacLean’s excitement subsided before it had a chance to develop. Faces paraded across his mind in no more context than they would in a dream, and until he could bring the memories up from the depths, he would be helpless to understand them.
Helpless . . . he was helpless, damn it! Extending the mug, he said, “I want more broth, and this time put real food in it.”
She mimicked his deep voice. “Please, Enid, may I have some more broth?”
“If I don’t beg, will you starve me more?”
“I don’t want you to beg, I want you to treat me with a modicum of courtesy. But I forgot!” She snapped her fingers. “You don’t possess manners unless you’ll profit from the effort.”
The trouble was, he rather thought she was right. Command felt right to him. Impatience felt right to him. Words like “please” and “thank you” felt alien. In a tone of grinding rage, he said, “Please, Enid, may I have some more broth?”
Taking the cup, she said, “I’d be delighted to get you more broth.”
“And this time, put some real food in it.”
The flame in her burned vibrant and restless, yet contained by her strength of will, and her smile blazed with hauteur. She tossed her head. A few more errant curls drifted from the snood and settled around her shoulders. Her skirts swished as she descended the stairs.
He watched her until the last strand of hair disappeared from sight. “Where is she going?” he asked Mrs. Brown.
“Downstairs we have a cookfire with someone always ready with food should you wish for some.” She came to the bedside, her arms full of linens, her simple, kind, wrinkled face set in smiling lines. “Mr. Throckmorton has gone through a great deal of trouble for you.”
“I’ll wager he has. Are there guards below, too?”
“Night and day. A great deal of trouble, indeed.”
“He considers me worth the trouble.”
“Ye’re an arrogant bear of a man.” She studied him until he thought she could see right through his skin. “Scared to death, aren’t ye, m’lord?”
He flinched, and the movement shot pain through his whole body. “What do you mean?”
“Everyone wonders if ye’re playing a game, saying ye don’t remember. I know that ye aren’t, for if ye did ye’d not be shouting and nasty to hide yer terror.”
“I’m not terrified.” He wasn’t!
“Of course ye’re not. I’ve raised a dozen boys, and I don’t know a thing about men.” She placed a stack of towels on the table beside his bed. “For yer bath tomorrow.”
“I’m not taking a bath.”
“We’ve already discussed it, Mrs. MacLean and I, and we’re going to give ye a sponge bath, just like we do every other day.”
“The hell you are.” He refused to expose this white, emaciated body to anyone, certainly not a female who had once fawned over his strength and masculinity. Fawned enough to marry him, if he was to believe her.
Mrs. Brown’s smile widened. “See, there it is again. Ye’re so terrified, ye’re snapping about every little thing.”
“It’s not a little thing,” he said from between clenched teeth.
“My point is, I’m right fond of Mrs. MacLean. I’ve watched her bring ye from the brink of death, talk to ye when I thought her addled to do so, turn yer big, limp body so ye wouldn’t get bedsores when she’s just a slip of a thing who shouldn’t be lifting her own teacup.” Mrs. Brown placed her hands on her broad hips. “Now I understand a man having his fears, and I understand ye’re a man used to command, but when I hear ye being so nasty to Mrs. MacLean, I think to myself that I ought to explain to her how frightened ye are so she’ll not take offense.”
He stared at Mrs. Brown, seeing the iron beneath the kindness. She threatened to tattle to Enid that beneath his gruff exterior lay a scared little boy. Enid would be nice to him, of course, but he knew that beneath her courtesy would be the lash of condescension all women felt for puny men.
He wasn’t weak. He wasn’t scared of the great, gaping hole in his mind, or that he would never find himself again. It wasn’t true—but it didn’t matter. Mrs. Brown would say it was, and his denials would fall on deaf ears.
“Of course, I’m just a servant. My place is to keep my mouth shut.” Mrs. Brown’s face lost all kindliness and gleamed with demonic determination. “And I could keep mum if ye could find it in yer heart to be a little bit more civil to our dear Mrs. MacLean.”
A deal. Mrs. Brown was offering him a deal! And he spied a way to sweeten the pot. “You’ll get me out of taking a bath.”
“Ye smell.”
“Females are too fussy about cleanliness.”
“Ye haven’t had a real bath for at least seven weeks. The cows in the barn have complained of the stench.”
In slow, succinct tones, he said, “I’m not having her bathe me.”
“Ah. It’s her you object to.” Mrs. Brown nodded. “Ye don’t want her to bathe ye. Now, that I can arrange.”
She moved away before he could say more, and he heard Enid’s footsteps on the stairs. By the time she entered, Mrs. Brown stood across the room wiping off the dining table.
Enid held a cup and, under her arm, a package wrapped in brown paper. Coming to his side, she extended the cup. The same cup as before.
He wouldn’t take it. He glared at that cup as if it were possessed of unnatural powers. “No more broth.”
“Thickened with gruel,” Enid assured him.
Excellent! To him, gruel now sounded like manna from heaven.
She let him take the mug, balancing it as if he were a child who might slop all over himself. As he well might, he admitted. His hands trembled with weakness, and he wanted to swallow every bit at once.
She wouldn’t let him. She removed the mug after every swallow and gave him water instead.
And his stomach filled rapidly. He couldn’t believe half a mug of broth and thin gruel satisfied him.
Enid understood without him saying a word. Mrs. Brown hovered in the background, watching with an anxious gaze that belied her previous curtness. Enid handed her the mug. “Don’t take it too far.”
“Ye’ll want more soon,” Mrs. Brown told him. “Yer stomach’s shrunk, and that gruel’s more than ye’ve had in weeks.”
He looked at his hands again. He stretched out his arms before him, then to the side, then back to meet in the middle. His muscles trembled from the effort, but his muscles could be trained to work his will again. It was the other he didn’t know about. His mind. “Will my memories return to me?”
“When your strength has returned,” Enid assured him.
“Is that what the doctor says?”
“I threw the doctor out.”
“So you know what you’re talking about.”
“No.”
He stared at her. Audacious female, to think she knew better than a learned physician.
Yet he’d known some physicians in his time—not that he remembered any specifics—and they’d been fools, and supercilious into the bargain. He’d rather trust his life to her slender hands than to those idiots. “Right,” he said briefly.
She relaxed, and he realized she’d been waiting for him to rail at her. Handing him the package, she said, “Mr. Throckmorton sent this to you.”
She had to cut the string that bound it, but when he spread the brown paper flat, he didn’t recognize the charred remains of the kilt. The plaid was red, a green so dark as to be almost black, and a thread of yellow. The
sporran’s fur was scorched, and the leather clasp had been so mangled as to be impossible to open, but this was his sporran, although he didn’t know why he knew.
Picking up the towels off the bedstand, Enid waved them before his nose. “We’re going to give you a bath.”
He shot a glance at Mrs. Brown, who nodded at him. Folding the brown paper back over the remnants of his past, he laid the package on the night stand. “I’m not getting naked in front of you, lass.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “I don’t know why not.”
“You’re not the brightest, and you’re not bathing me.”
“I’m not the brightest?” Enid’s eyes narrowed. “At least I know when I stink.”
He did feel filthy, and since Mrs. Brown had mentioned it, he’d noted a bit of an odor about him, but he wasn’t about to admit it. “It’s a good, manly smell.”
“If men smell like something out of the rubbish heap,” Enid said briskly. “Maybe you can’t smell yourself, but tell me the truth”—her voice held a coaxing note—“doesn’t your skin feel crusty?”
He wouldn’t have some young female handling him as if he were a piece of meat. Especially not Enid, who had already proved she could bring him to aching readiness with a feeble bit of a kiss. Enid, a female who claimed to be his wife, whom he suspected of lying while hoping she told the truth so on some future date he’d have the right to tumble her beneath him on a bed. Craftily, he said, “A bit of a wash won’t do the trick. If you’re going to embarrass me, then give me a real bath in a tub.”
“We can’t. You can’t walk. You’re thinner, but you’re still too big for us to lift, and that’s what it’ll take to get you into a tub.”
“Get the men to do it. That Kinman and that Harry chap, and the valet Mr. Throckmorton hired for me. Jackson.”
“They’d hurt you. Hurt your leg.” But she was yielding, which showed him how badly he must indeed smell.
“Mrs. Brown can stay and supervise them,” he decided. “They’ll do as she tells them.”
Obviously tempted, Enid hesitated.
“He’s right, Miss Enid.” Smoothly, Mrs. Brown took her cue. “We can get the big tub from Mr. Throckmorton’s bedchamber. Mr. MacLean can almost stretch out in that. The maids will get the water boiling, the men will bring it up, then I’ll make sure nothing’ll hurt Mr. MacLean.”
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