The Brazen Bride

by Stephanie Laurens

  “But he’s still not really breathing,” Brandon said.

  And she still wasn’t sure if he was alive. Linnet checked for a pulse in the man’s wrist, then in his strong throat. There was none she could detect, nor any discernible rise and fall of his chest, but all that could be due to being close to frozen. There was no help for it; shuffling nearer, with one hand she brushed back the fall of black hair hiding his face, bent close, focused—and stopped breathing.

  He was startlingly, heartbreakingly, breathtakingly beautiful. His face, all clean, angular lines and sculpted planes, embodied the very essence of masculine beauty—there was not a soft note anywhere. Combined with the muscled hardness of his body, that face promised virility, passion, and direct, unadorned, unadulterated sin.

  Such a face did not belong to a man given to sweetness, but to action, command, and demand.

  Chiseled lips, firm and fine, sent a seductive shiver down her spine. The line of his jaw made her fingertips throb. He had winged black brows, a wide forehead, and lashes so black and thick and long she was instantly jealous.

  She’d frozen.

  The boys shifted uneasily, watching, waiting for her verdict.

  As usual her instincts had been right. This man was—would be—dangerous. To her peace of mind, if nothing else.

  Men like this—who looked like he did, who had bodies like his—led women into sin.

  And into stupidity.

  Dragging in a breath, she forced her eyes to stop drinking him in, forced her mind to stop mentally swooning. She hesitated, needing to get nearer—and too rattled to lightly risk it.

  Maintaining her current, already too-close distance, she held her fingers beneath his nose. And felt nothing.

  Turning her hand, she held the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist close, but could detect not the smallest waft of air.

  Lips thinning, mentally muttering an imprecation against fallen angels, she leaned down, close, in—angled her cheek so that it was a whisker away from his lips . . .

  And felt the merest brush of air, a breath, an exhalation.

  She eased back, straightening on her knees, and stared at the man’s face. Then she turned to the wound in his side, checked again. And yes, that was blood, not just seepage. “He’s alive.”

  Chester whooped. The other two grinned.

  She didn’t. Getting back to her feet, she looked down at trouble. “We need to get him up to the house.”

  “O of! He’s so damned heavy!” Easing the stranger’s shoulders down—resisting the urge to just drop him—Linnet settled him against her pillows. Of course, he had to have her bed; it was the only one in the house long enough, big enough, and, very likely, strong enough to be sure of supporting him.

  Stepping back, she planted her hands on her hips and all but glared at him, unconscious though he was.

  Muriel tucked the covers in on the bed’s other side. “Now to thaw him out. I’ll send the children up with the hot bricks.”

  Linnet nodded, her gaze locked on the comatose figure in her bed. She heard Muriel go out, the door shutting behind her. Folding her arms, Linnet swapped her glare for a scowl as she battled to wrench her mind and her senses from their preoccupation with the body in her bed—with the idea of all that muscle, naked, washed, dried, and with his wound stitched, salved, and well-bound, denting her mattress.

  She’d seen more naked men, of all descriptions, than she could count—inevitable given a childhood spent largely on her father’s ship. It certainly wasn’t any degree of novelty, nor attack of missish sensibility, that had left her nerves fluttering, jittery, her breathing tight and shallow, her stomach feeling peculiarly hollow. She would have said, and been certain of it, that seeing another naked male would barely register—would have no effect on her, make no real impression.

  Instead . . . there was a naked fallen angel in her bed, and her pulse was still hammering.

  Of course, after Edgar, John, and the other men had arrived on the beach and carried the stranger up to the house, to her bedroom, then heaved him onto her bed, she’d had to help Muriel tend him. Had to help her aunt peel off his clothes, uncovering all that solid, muscled flesh. Had to help bathe and dry him, then stitch and bind his wound. It was hardly surprising if she still felt hot after all that exertion.

  She hoped her aunt put the uncharacteristic flush in her cheeks down to that.

  Between them, she and Muriel had stitched and bandaged thoroughly. As he thawed and his blood started to flow normally, he’d bleed as usual; his immersion in icy water had been an advantage in that respect. They hadn’t been able to put a nightshirt on him; not even one of her father’s would fit, and the difficulty in manhandling the stranger’s heavy arms and body . . . Muriel had fetched extra blankets instead.

  “Here’s the bricks.” Will pushed the door open with his shoulder and came in, bearing two flannel-wrapped bricks that had been heated on the kitchen hearth.

  The others—Brandon, at thirteen nearly as tall as Will, Jennifer, twelve, Gillyflower, eight, and Chester—followed Will in, each carrying at least one brick.

  Lifting the down-filled quilt, Linnet took each brick and nestled it on the sheet covering the stranger’s body, working her way around so that eventually he lay cradled in a heated horseshoe that ran from his chest down and around his very large feet. Once the last brick had been set in place, she tucked the quilt in.

  Stepping back, she looked down at their patient. “That’s the best we can do. Now we wait.”

  The children stayed for a little while, but when the man showed no hint of stirring, they drifted out. Linnet remained.

  Restless, wary, strangely on her guard, she had no idea what it was about the man that kept her pacing the floor, her eyes, almost always, trained on his fallen angel face while inwardly, silently, she willed him to live.

  Every now and then, she would pause beside the bed and lay a hand across his brow.

  It remained icy cold.

  Deathly cold.

  Despite all they’d done, it was entirely possible he would never wake, much less recover.

  Why, in this instance, a stranger’s life mattered so much she couldn’t fathom, but she wanted him to live. Actively and continually willed him to live.

  To have a fallen angel fall into her life only to die before she even learned the color of his eyes was simply unacceptable. Fallen angels did not fall from the sky—or get washed up in her cove—every day; she’d never laid eyes on a man like him, awake or comatose, in all her twenty-six years, and she wanted, yearned, to learn more.

  A dangerous want, perhaps, but when had she ever shied away from danger?

  The afternoon waned, but brought no change in her patient. As evening closed in, she sighed. The children came up with another set of warmed bricks. She helped them switch the hot bricks for the cool, then, with the children clattering down the stairs, eager for their dinner, she drew the curtains over the window, checked the man one more time, and headed for the door.

  Her gaze fell on the objects she’d left on the tallboy by the door. She paused, glanced back at the figure so still in her bed, then picked up the three items—the only things other than his clothes he’d been carrying.

  The dirk—a fine piece, far finer than one would expect a sailor to own.

  The saber—definitely a cavalryman’s sword, well used and lovingly honed.

  She’d get the boys to polish both blades. The saber’s scabbard might yet be salvageable.

  The third object, the wooden cylinder, was the most curious. As Will had guessed, the man had been carrying it wrapped in oilskins in a leather sling; with him unable to shrug the sling off, they’d had to cut the shoulder straps to remove it. The wood was foreign; she thought it was rosewood. The brass fittings that held the wooden strips together, and locked one end closed, smacked of somewhere far away, some alien shore.

  Gathering all three items, Linnet glanced back at her bed, at the dark head on her pillows, silent
and still, then she turned, went out of the door, and closed it quietly behind her.

  L ogan woke to a dark room.

  To a soft bed, and the scent of woman.

  That he recognized instantly. All the rest, however . . .

  Where the devil was he?

  Very carefully, he opened his eyes and looked around. His head hurt—throbbed, ached. So badly he could barely squint through the pain. Doing so, he located a hearth across the room, the fire within it a pile of glowing coals.

  Where in all hell was he?

  He tried to think, but couldn’t. The pain intensified when he tried, when he frowned. Shifting fractionally, he realized there was no bandage about his head, but there was one—a large and long one—winding about his torso.

  So he’d been wounded.

  How? Where? Why?

  The questions lined up in his brain, but no answers came.

  Then he heard voices—from a distance, through walls and doors, but his hearing seemed as acute as usual. . . .

  Children. The voices belonged to children. Youthful, too high-pitched to be anything but.

  He couldn’t recall anything about children.

  Disturbed, uncertain, he moved his arms, then his legs. All his limbs were functioning, under his control. It was only his head that ached so fiercely. Gingerly, pushing aside lumps he recognized as wrapped bricks, he eased to the side of the bed.

  Some primal memory kept insisting there were enemies about, even though he couldn’t remember anything specific. Had he been captured? Was he in some enemy camp?

  Very carefully, he pulled himself up in the bed, then swung his legs over the side and sat up. The room swam sickeningly, but then steadied.

  Encouraged, he stood.

  The blood rushed from his head.

  He collapsed.

  Hit the floor with a hideous thump , almost cried out—might have cried out—when his head hit the floorboards. He groaned, then, hearing footsteps pounding up some stairs, he slowly tried to push himself up.

  The door swung open.

  Propped on one elbow, he turned his head and looked, knowing he was too weak and helpless to defend himself, but it wasn’t any enemy who came charging in.

  It was an angel with red-gold hair, bright and fiery as a flame, who scanned the room, saw him, then came racing to his side.

  Perhaps he’d died and gone to Heaven?

  “You dolt ! What the devil are you doing trying to get up? You’re wounded , you imbecile!”

  Not an angel, then. Not Heaven, either. She continued to berate him, increasingly irate as she checked his bandages, then small hands, surprisingly strong, gripped his arm and she braced to haul him up—an impossibility, he knew—but then two strapping lads who had followed her in came around his other side. The not-an-angel snapped orders, and one lad ducked under his other arm, the second coming to help her as on a count of three they hoisted him up—

  It hurt .

  Everywhere.

  He groaned as they turned him and, surprisingly gently, angled him back onto the bed, setting him down on his left side, then rolling him carefully onto his back.

  The not-an-angel fussed, drawing down the tangled covers, removing bricks, then lifting and shaking. Logan watched her lips form words—a string of increasingly pointed epithets; as the worst of the violent pain receded, he felt himself smiling.

  She saw, glared, then flicked the covers over him. He continued to smile, probably foolishly; he was still in so much pain that he couldn’t really tell. But he had noticed one thing—he was naked. Stripped-to-the-skin, not-a-stitch-except-his-bandage naked—and his not-an-angel hadn’t turned a hair.

  And although most of his body had wilted, one part hadn’t—and she had to have noticed; she couldn’t have missed it as she’d looked down when she’d steered him to the bed, then laid him down, stretched him out.

  Which surely meant he and she were lovers. What else could it mean?

  He couldn’t remember her, not even her name—couldn’t remember sinking his hands in all that rich, warm hair, pressing his mouth to her sinful lips . . . lips he could imagine doing wicked things . . . none of which he could remember, but then he couldn’t remember anything through the crushing pain.

  An older lady came in, spoke, and frowned at him. She came to the bed as his lover tried to shift him further into the center of the wide mattress. Thinking he should help, he rolled to his right—

  Pain erupted. His world turned black.

  Linnet winced at the gasp that exploded from the stranger’s lips—saw his body go lax, boneless, and knew he was unconscious again.

  “Damn! I didn’t get a chance to ask who he was.” Leaning against the side of the mattress, she peered into his face. “But what caused that?”

  Muriel, too, was frowning. “Did you check for head wounds?”

  “There weren’t any . . . well, not to see.” Linnet knelt beside him and reached for his head. “But his hair is so thick, perhaps . . .” Infinitely gently, she took his skull between her hands. Fingers spread, she searched, felt. . . . “Oh, my God! There’s a huge contusion.” Drawing back her hand, she studied her fingertips. “Blood, so the skin’s broken.”

  The observation led to another round of careful tending, of warm water in basins, towels, salves, and eventually stacks of bandages as between them she and Muriel cleansed, then dried, padded and bandaged the wound. “Looks like he was hit over the head with a spar.”

  In order to properly pad the area so that, once bandaged, their patient would be able to turn on the pillows without excruciating pain, they had to get Edgar and John to come and hold him upright, taking extra care not to dislodge the bandages around his chest and abdomen.

  Examining the wound, Edgar opined, “Hard head, he must have, to have survived that.”

  John nodded. “Lucky beggar all around, what with that slash and the shipwreck and storm. Charmed life, you might say.”

  Linnet thanked them and let them go back to their dinners. Muriel, too; after closing the door behind her aunt, Linnet turned back into the room. Folding her arms, gripping her elbows, she halted by the bed and stared down at her patient.

  He’d been a fighting man—in one or other of the services at one time was her guess. He had numerous scars—small and old, most of them—scattered over his body. A charmed life? Not in the literal sense. But she really, really wanted to know who he was.

  Given her position in this corner of the world, she needed to know who he was.

  Retreating to the armchair by the window, she sat and watched him for a while. When he showed no signs of stirring, let alone waking and doing something stupid like trying to get up, she rose and went downstairs. To finish her dinner and organize another round of hot bricks.

  T hree hours later, Linnet stood once more by her bed, arms folded, and frowned at her comatose fallen angel. By the dim light thrown by the lamp she’d left on the small table nearby, she studied his face and struggled to tamp down her concern.

  His color wasn’t bad, but his face was tanned, so that might be misleading. His breathing, however, was deep and even, and his pulse, when she’d checked it mere minutes ago, had been steady and strong.

  Yet he showed no signs of waking.

  After his ill-advised excursion, he’d lapsed back into unconsciousness, if anything deeper than before. Bad enough, but what was truly worrying was his still chilled flesh. Even the spots that should by now have warmed remained icy cold.

  At least she now knew his eyes were dark blue. So dark she’d originally thought they were black, but then he’d looked directly into her eyes and she’d seen the blue flames in the darkness.

  So he was a fallen angel with black hair and midnight eyes—and despite the four changes of hot bricks they’d applied, he was still too damned cold for her comfort. Too unresponsive, too close to death. And she couldn’t shake the absolute conviction that it was, somehow, vitally important that he lived. That, somehow, it was up to her to
ensure he did.

  It was ridiculous, but it felt as if this were some God-sent test. She rescued people all the time—it was what she did, a part of her role. So could she rescue a fallen angel?

  She paced, scowled, and paced some more while about her the house, her house, her home, slid into comfortable slumber. Edgar and John both helped about the manor house; after dinner, after the usual sitting and chatting in the parlor—tonight mostly speculating about the wreck and their survivor—the pair had retired to the cottage they shared with Vincent, the head stableman, and Bright, the gardener. Mrs. Pennyweather, the cook, and Molly and Prue, the two maids-of-all-work, would by now be snug in their beds in the staff quarters on the ground floor.

  Muriel and Buttons—Miss Lillian Buttons, the children’s governess—had rooms on the first floor, in the opposite wing to Linnet’s large bedchamber. The children had rooms in the extensive attic, on either side of the playroom and schoolroom.

  As the manor house of the estate encompassing the southwestern tip of Guernsey, Mon Coeur was a small community in its own right, with Linnet, Miss Trevission, its unquestioned leader. Indeed, she was more a liege lord, a hereditary ruler; that was certainly how her people saw her.

  Perhaps noblesse oblige, that sense of responsibility for those in her care, was what so drove her to ensure the stranger lived.

  Halting by the bed, Linnet looked down at his face. Willed his lashes to flutter, willed him to open his eyes and look at her again. She wanted to see his lips curve again; they had before, in a wholly seductive way, but she suspected he’d been delirious at the time.

  Of course, he just lay there. Placing a hand on his brow, then sliding it down to the curve of his throat, she confirmed he was still far too cold. He was literally comatose, and nothing they’d yet done had succeeded in warming him sufficiently.

  Drawing back her hand, she huffed out a breath. She’d intended to sleep on the daybed before the windows, but . . . her bed, the manor’s master’s bed, was wide—designed for a couple where the man was large. Of course, if she was going to warm him up, she’d need to sleep close, rather than apart.