Beth swallowed and told herself not to think on it. The man was a scoundrel and deserved what he had gotten.
The grizzled man didn’t move. Unconvinced, cautious by nature in some avenues, Beth watched for precious seconds more. Her eyes were on his chest, waiting for some telltale rise and fall.
There was none.
Gathering her courage to her, she leaned closer. Hesitantly, her hand hovered over his mouth. Though the rain beat down on the surface, there was no breath to warm her palm.
The man was dead.
With a sigh, she pulled the pistol from his frozen grasp, yanking it from his stilled fingers. Quickly she turned toward the driver.
She found no cause for hope there. The small, round hole in the old man’s head was exuding blood. Were it not for the rain, it would have covered his face in a macabre mask of scarlet. Rather, there were thin red strips running along it, tiny tributaries dripping along his cheeks to the ground beneath.
Beth shuddered, feeling her stomach lurch and knot at the sight.
Quickly, as she had seen her father do countless times, she made the sign of the cross and commended the man’s soul to a higher authority than any found on earth. She could only hope that he had not suffered.
The deep groan had her starting. She immediately swung around, her heart lodged in her throat. But the dead remained dead. It was the man who had fallen at her feet who moaned.
Mud was adhering to the bottom of her shoes as she made her way over to him now. He had a bullet wound in the shoulder, but he was still alive.
Crouching down, the hem of her dress absorbing the mud, Beth quickly examined the younger man. She placed her fingertips to his throat to feel for a reassuring sign of life.
Mixed with the raindrops, Duncan felt something soft feathering along his skin. His eyes fluttered opened and he tried to clear his vision of the heavy mists that clouded it. He blinked twice in hopes of better discerning the form next to him.
Beth saw the man’s lips move, but heard nothing. She leaned closer, trying to make out the words.
“What?”
His head was filled with the smell of his own blood and the odor of wet wool that clung to the air. But above this was something lighter, something stirring. The scent of a beautiful woman.
Duncan felt his mouth curving, though he wasn’t quite certain how he had managed it. “So I’ve finally reached it, have I?”
The man was obviously out of his head. “Reached what, sir?”
“Heaven.” The single word floated out on the last of his breath. As he drew in another, his ribs ached. Fire burned through him, hurting his shoulder, his ribs, his belly. “For you’re surely an angel.” This time, he was sure he smiled. He wanted to die smiling, if that was the way of it. “Strange! I had never envisioned angels dressed in dark green. I suppose it makes you easier to find, amid the clouds.”
The man was flirting with her. Bleeding like a pig prepared for a feast, and he was showering her with words she knew he felt would turn her head. Obviously he couldn’t be in as bad a condition as she first had surmised, not if he could bandy words about like some shameless miscreant.
She leaned back on her heels, tottering slightly as the ground softened beneath her.
“No, this is decidedly not heaven. And you are exactly where you were five minutes ago, on a Godforsaken road in a Godforsaken country.”
He would have laughed if the fire in his shoulder had let him. “You’re not English, I take it.”
She was American born, with a rich French heritage to fall back on. Neither country called the English “friend.”
She frowned as she looked at his wound. The ball, she would wager, was still lodged there. It needed to come out. But not here.
“No, thank God, I am not. And neither will you be within a short amount of time, if I don’t find a way to bind that wound. You’re liable to bleed to death out here.”
With effort, Duncan raised himself up on his uninjured elbow. He turned his head slightly as a thousand marching militia pounded across his shoulder and arm, making them throb even more. He managed to look down at his shoulder. The hole, he was certain, was small. It felt as if it was a huge chasm. He’d never been shot before. His wounds, and there hadn’t been a significant number, had always been from the sword or the dagger, weapons of choice in his former line of work. This was something new, and he couldn’t say he cared for it.
A cough welled up within his throat. He cleared it to no avail. His throat continued to feel as dry as parchment.
His eyes turned toward Beth. The tables were reversed for the moment. His fate lay in her hands. It wouldn’t be the first time that his life was in the hands of a woman. He had managed to survive until now. Confidence combined with growing weakness curved his mouth.
“I would say that if you are of a mind to do something, do it quickly. I’ve grown very attached to my blood and would like to keep it within the vessel where it currently resides, if at all possible.”
She needed to get him to someplace dry. Beth hissed slightly between her teeth as she glanced in Sylvia’s direction. The woman was still unconscious, despite the rain falling on her wide, pleasant face.
Curse the fates. She would have done better to bring Stephen along with her on this journey. But their youngest stablehand at the Eagle’s Nest was far too lusty and virile for her mother’s pleasure, Beth thought. Stephen was exactly what Dorothy Beaulieu wanted to protect her daughter from.
Lusty or not, Beth could have certainly used his strong back at a time like this.
No use wishing for things that could not be.
Beth looked into the stranger’s eyes. She faltered for a moment, as if she had looked into a glass and had seen something she didn’t want to see. A tiny bit of the future. Her future. She shook the thought away. She did not believe in premonitions or visions.
“I need to get you out of the rain,” she murmured.
Duncan nodded. “Can’t very well lie here and drown,” he agreed.
But when he leaned forward, sweat burst forth on his brow, mingling with the rain, as a weakness bit into him, devouring a large chunk. The response angered him that much more because he feared it. The weak were swept under, swept away by the strong and the ruthless. He had learned that lesson years ago. During his youth, spent in the streets of London, he had seen strong men laid low by fate and an enemy’s sword in a moment of weakness. They were quickly snuffed out.
He had vowed then that it was never going to happen to him.
Biting off an oath, he struggled forward.
The fool was going to do more damage to himself, straining this way, Beth thought, annoyed. She quickly laid a hand on his arm to stop him before he fell at her feet again.
“Wait, put your arm around my shoulders—“
Were he better, he would have liked to have placed his arm around something more supple than her shoulders. The smile that lifted the corners of his mouth made promises that he couldn’t hope to keep in his present state.
“That is tempting, mistress, but I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be able to satisfy you at the moment—“
The conceited oaf. Did he think she was looking for a quick tumble? Exactly how disheveled and wanton did she appear?
“You will satisfy me, sir, if you lift your mind from the level of your boots and your loins and concentrate on getting yourself into the coach.” She took a deep breath as she positioned herself beside him. “Now, your arm, sir.” It wasn’t a request; it was a direct order.
“As you wish, General.” Even in his weakened state, the man’s wide, sensuous mouth mocked her.
Let it. It was nothing she wasn’t accustomed to. Even her sisters, who loved her, always teased her about her ways. They called her the queen, or the dictator. Only her father seemed to understand that she wasn’t meant for needlepoint and starched caps. Only her father indulged her and let her mind flourish when all the others around her wanted it to remain shut up behind closed do
ors, like a fragile flower that couldn’t exist in the light of day.
It was from Philippe Beaulieu that she had learned the basic skills for caring for the sick.
Beth nodded at the man’s cryptic salutation as if the title was her due. “That’s better.”
She shifted until her side was pressed against his. Carefully, she lifted his good arm and brought it around her shoulders. Holding it firmly in position, she tucked the other around his waist. It made her think on a grotesque minuet.
Beth braced herself. “All right, on the count of three, we will rise.”
Wounded, wet, and weak, Duncan was still not oblivious to the warm body next to his. “Aye, and perhaps even sooner than that.”
She turned to look at him, her hair plastered to her head, her eyes a bright, knowing blue. Her first estimation was correct: good Samaritan or not, the man was a lecher. “You are not taking your condition seriously, sir.”
“On the contrary, mistress, I am taking it very seriously. It is not every day that a beautiful woman wraps her arms around me.” He only wished he was well enough to do something about it. As wet as a field mouse straggling in from the river, the young woman beside him still put Elaine to shame.
Beth’s breasts rose in impatient indignation as she drew another breath. To her growing annoyance, the man’s eyes were fastened there as if she was the hole and he the lacing.
She gritted her teeth together. “One, two, three.” The last word was ground out as she rose wobbly to her feet, pulling him up with her as she straightened.
Perspiration joined hands with the rain, but she managed to bring him to his feet. The next moment, they almost went down again and would have if Beth had not braced herself quickly.
Duncan struggled to gain his footing on the wet, muddied earth. His head spun violently and he fought to hold onto it as red flares discharged in his brain, threatening to overtake him and drag him under.
For one embarrassing moment, Duncan sagged against the young woman. He felt her waver unsteadily beneath his weight and thought that they were both doomed to fall. But he managed to right himself at the last moment. The movement brought her closer to him, crushing her to his side.
A pity he couldn’t really enjoy it.
Duncan forced a smile to his lips, though he knew it was a thin effort. “You caught me unawares,” he murmured against her hair. “I never learned to count past two.”
This was harder than she imagined, but determination stiffened her back and strengthened her aching arms. “Let’s see if you learned how to walk.”
With small steps, she succeeded in guiding him toward the coach.
Duncan groaned. The coach looked to be in the next county. “I’ll do my best, General.”
Her arm tightened around him as he mistepped. “See that you do.”
In her soul, Beth cursed the rain, England, and the highwayman. And the wounded stranger at her side.
Chapter Four
If the rain had not plastered her hair and clothes to her body, the effort of guiding the man to the coach would have easily brought about the same result. The man she held onto was making an effort to help, but he was losing blood quickly and was a good deal weaker than she’d wager he was content about. He was certainly a great deal heavier than she had first thought. She was fairly staggering beneath the burden.
Beth gritted her teeth and muttered under her breath as she forced one foot ahead of the other. Passage was hindered by the fact that her heels were sinking into the muck with each step she took. How quickly dust turned to mud, she thought. Her eyes strayed toward the driver on the ground. And how quickly flesh turns to dust.
With renewed determination, her eyes fixed on the coach door, Beth concentrated on getting the man beside her to her destination.
“Don’t drag your feet so,” she panted.
“I shall remind you of that someday, General,” Duncan promised, a weak smile on his lips.
The man was delirious, she thought. He was obviously confusing her with someone he knew. Someone he intended to see in the future. Someone whom he undoubtedly would share his muscular body with. If she managed to save it, she thought wearily.
If they both didn’t drown out here.
From where he had fallen, it was no more than four yards to the coach. It felt as if it were a long, tedious journey. She was breathing heavily by the time they reached it.
Beth swallowed and braced the man against the side of the coach.
“Stay,” she muttered breathlessly, as she struggled to open the door while holding him upright.
It was only the sweet scent of the woman that had him leaning so heavily on her arm, not the encroaching weakness, Duncan thought. It was a thin lie, but he held onto it as if it was a raft in a turbulent sea.
He blinked, fighting to keep his mind awake. He spied the wide figure on ground, dressed in black. Had the woman been shot as well?
“Your friend?” As he asked the question, Duncan fought to remain above the waves of scarlet that reached up to pull him under like a violent sea assailing the sides of a ship during a storm.
His concern surprised her. “She only fainted.”
Duncan heard the thinly veiled disgust. “She sleeps heavily.”
“Yes,” Beth agreed, far from happy about the matter. “I know. My mother sent her with me in hopes that she would protect me.”
Duncan sagged against her once more, this time partly by design. The woman was soft in body, if not in temperament, and he required very little at the moment. “I would venture to say that you were in no need of protecting, General. You seem very capable.”
That was both her strength, and to some, her failing, she thought. But what was, was.
“I would hold that thought and my tongue, if I were you.” She looked into the interior of the coach. But in order to gain it, he would have to walk up two steps, or be dragged up. She certainly couldn’t carry him. “You need your strength.”
As she turned, her breasts rubbed against his arm. He would have to be dead and buried not to feel them and not to react.
“It takes very little strength to talk.”
She knew she had absolutely nothing to fear from this man. He was as weak as a kitten. But there was just the smallest prick of nervousness weaving through her. Anticipation, perhaps. Uncertainty.
But of what? And why?
“Nonetheless, I wish you wouldn’t.” She addressed herself to the immediate problem. “Can you manage the steps?”
He shifted so that he was leaning on her and not the coach. His eyes sparkled with more feeling than he had at his disposal. “It will be a sad day when I cannot lift a leg, mistress.”
Beth nodded, trying not to think of how physically close she was to this man. And of the effect it was having on her. He was wounded and needed her skill, not some detached flights of fancy.
“Good, then get in.”
He cocked his head, unable to resist despite his condition. “What was that?”
“Get in,” she repeated, gesturing toward the coach as she braced herself, her hand splayed on the side. “Get in, get in.” He was rapidly growing too heavy for her.
“Oh.” He clutched to the side with one hand, the other still draped over her shoulders. “I thought you’d said get on.”
Beth all but pushed him into the coach, then climbed in after him. “Your lust far outshines your ability at the moment, sir.”
“I would like to show you otherwise someday.” He chuckled to himself, the sound low in his throat, and completely unsettling to Beth.
She was just angry, Beth thought. And rightly so. She was trying to save this heathen’s life, and he was after a way to get under her skirts.
With tentative fingers, she probed the wound carefully. It was not clean through. The bullet was still in there. Damn.
“Quiet,” she snapped at him. “Or I shall forget that you have rendered me a favor and that I am obligated to you.”
He tried his best not
to wince as she touched his shoulder. It felt as if a torch had been placed at its root. “Are you now, pretty lady?”
She raised her eyes to his. “I am obligated to save your life as you have saved mine, nothing more.”
As gently as possible, she tore away his shirt from the wound. She could see that even the slight movement inflicted pain. His jaw tightened as he clenched his teeth. It amazed her that his smile never wavered.
“Your eagerness would please me more at another time, General.” Duncan barely ground out the words.
Exasperation sapped her patience. He was wounded, perhaps severely so. Didn’t he know the danger he was in? “Will you hold your tongue?”
Never let it be said that a Fitzhugh whimpered before pain. Duncan reached for her, but even his good arm dropped weakly at his side. His strength was rapidly leaving him.
“I would rather hold yours. Gently,” he whispered, not from intimacy, but from ebbing strength. “Between my teeth.” For a moment, he locked them together. “Like so.”
Something hammered within her chest like a hummingbird hovering over a morning glory. She knew it was born in her indignation and anger, not by the image his words aroused in her mind. She succeeded in ripping the shirt further, a little less gently this time.
“Does everyone in this Godforsaken country prattle on so?”
It was as dark and dreary in the coach as if it were twilight instead of midday. Yet her hair gleamed before him. Or was that just his eyes playing tricks as his soul whispered away?
“Only when inspired.”
“Or when half mad, I wager.” Beth stood up in the coach and lifted her skirt. She saw interest glow in his eyes as she began to tug on her petticoats.
His vision was beginning to blur. Duncan nodded feebly toward her skirt. “Isn’t that something I should be doing?”
Beth ripped at the petticoat a little too hard and rent it completely. “If you don’t shut up, the first bandage will be applied to your mouth, sir.”
Damn the man’s eyes, did he think her flattered by this? Did he feel he had to play a role for her? She wanted only to get him to his home, tend to his wound, and be off, her debt repaid. She didn’t want her feelings stirred, or this strange, nameless warmth seeping through her body.
Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) Page 3