The Pleasure of the Rose

by Jane Bonander

  • • •

  Once the footmen had placed the patient on the bed, Rosalyn peeled back the blanket and gaped at the new laird, her mouth hanging open and her heart drumming in her ears. Sima pressed against her leg as she sniffed the man, her nose occasionally poking the man’s body.

  Rosalyn was stunned. No, she was dumfounded. This was a savage! An American Indian complete with long black braids that nearly reached his waist, dark skin, and fringed clothing. She finally found her voice. “Geddes Gordon, your brain must have gone soft and turned to porridge somewhere over the Atlantic. I don’t believe what I’m seeing.” Rosalyn stared down at the unconscious man, tossed a doubtful glance at her brother, then returned her gaze to the bed. “Are you sure ’tis the right man?”

  “Aye,” Geddes said. “He’s a half-breed Indian.”

  She snorted a dry laugh. “You say that so matter-of-factly. He’s a savage, Geddes, a bloody savage. Look at him. How can you be certain he’s Shamus’s son?”

  “Oh, he’s Shamus’s son. And whatever you think of him, sister, he is the duke.”

  She couldn’t stop gawking at him. “When you wired that you had found him, you said nothing about this.”

  “I thought ’twas best to let you see him for yourself.”

  Aye, she would not have believed it if he’d simply told her in a letter. “What kind of duke wears braids that hang to his waist?” She reached out to touch one, then thought better of it. She caught a whiff of something unpleasant and wrinkled her nose. “And what in the world is he wearing? They smell like they’ve been dipped in goat grease. Och.” She waved away the air, as if to dispel the odor. “They stink, Geddes, they stink to high heaven.”

  “I need you to nurse him. Doctor Russell is away from the island for a week.”

  She sincerely loathed the island physician, who was drunk more often than sober. “You’d think he’d make himself available for the new bloody Duke of Kintyre,” she murmured as she continued to stare at the unconscious form on the bed.

  “I’m sure when he returns he’ll come posthaste. And by the way, dear sister, your language has become quite unacceptable.”

  “Hang my language. If Fen wasn’t abed with the grippe, I’d have her take a look at the savage,” she mumbled.

  “I’m certain Fenella Begley is the reason your language is improper. The woman spent far too much time with soldiers, doing God knows what.”

  “You know very well that she saved men’s lives in the Crimea and helped more people than you could ever know, Geddes. We’ve been over this before.”

  “Stop!” Geddes raised his hand. “I don’t want to hear how saintly the woman was. She is a nuisance and a besom.”

  She may be an irritating woman in Geddes’s eyes, but she is my only friend, Rosalyn thought. But she knew Geddes turned a deaf ear when she talked about Fenella. Each time they were in the same room the tension between them was so thick one could cut through it. Inviting Fen for dinner always ended up in a debate over something, like the rights of women against putting women in their proper place. Often, Fen had called Geddes bodach behind his back, which amused Rosalyn because Geddes was anything but an old man, although at times he sounded like one.

  “It just occurred to me that perhaps you enjoy sparring with her. It’s probably the solicitor in you.”

  “I don’t like arguing with anyone, Rosalyn. I’m a pacifist by nature. And don’t presume I have anything but distaste for that woman.”

  Rosalyn raised an eyebrow, wondering if perhaps he protested too much, then glanced back at the bed and caught a glint of something gold. The big, savage man even wore an earring. She was flabbergasted by the idea of such a man as the new duke. Astonished, stunned, and…she couldn’t think of enough words to describe how she felt. “Where did you find him?” Her words came out in a rush.

  Geddes coughed and cleared his throat. “He was at an army fort.”

  Rosalyn examined him closely. “He’s not dressed like a soldier.”

  “I, ah, believe he said he was a scout, or some such thing.”

  “Scout,” she repeated. “What in the world is a scout?”

  “He worked for the army in some capacity, Rosalyn; I’m hardly in a position to know everything.”

  “Well, surely you learned something about him. You were together on the ship.”

  “For God’s sake, what does it matter?” he said sharply.

  He wasn’t telling her everything. When her brother became impatient with her he was usually trying to hide something. “What’s his name?”

  “His name is Fletcher.”

  “Maker of arrows,” she mused. “Fletcher MacNeil. Very Scottish sounding, wouldn’t you say?” To look at him, however, sent another message. She shivered.

  She turned back to the bed. Sima continued to sniff the man, as if wanting to remember his scent. “Well, in his current state he appears harmless enough.”

  “Of course he’s harmless. He is the son of Shamus MacNeil. He is educated, not a savage, although he does look like one. When he was awake, we got on famously.”

  “No doubt you sat up until the wee hours of the morning playing lively games of chess,” she said dryly.

  “Aye, we did. He won every game.”

  Rosalyn changed the subject. “When did he get this fever?”

  Geddes stood beside her. “It started a few days ago. It’s been getting worse; he drifts in and out of consciousness. And his cough has become more pronounced. The fever rises at night. The ship’s surgeon seemed to think it would pass.”

  She put her hand on his head. He was warm but not burning up. “He needs cleaning up,” she said, gingerly touching the new duke’s clothing, “Here, we’ll have to get this animal hide off him.”

  Sima let out a short yelp, and when Rosalyn looked back Geddes was almost at the door. Thank the lord Sima was there to alert her to Geddes’s attempt to escape.

  “Just where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’ll get Barnaby to help.”

  “Oh, don’t be a fool, Geddes. The man’s ancient. That poor old sod can barely climb the stairs.”

  “He is the valet.”

  “Barnaby Phigg was the valet. I know he’s been in the MacNeil’s service since he was a lad, but he cannot help. Lifting this…lug could kill him. Just look at the man. He’s huge and unconscious. He’s dead weight.”

  Geddes returned to the bed, muttering.

  Together they shifted the new duke and stripped off his buckskins, leaving him naked as a new bairn—which, Rosalyn thought as she studied his scarred and well-developed body, he was not. Never had she seen such a man. She tossed his clothing onto the rug and something clattered to the floor. It was a knife, one wicked enough to flense a whale. “The bloody savage carries about a knife?” She pinned her brother with another withering look.

  “’Tis no different than someone toting a hunting rifle.”

  “A rifle is a more civilized weapon. Huns and savages wield knives,” she answered.

  Geddes sighed. “I’d like to know where you learn some of your facts, dear sister.”

  Ignoring him, she carefully picked up the weapon by the leather handle and laid it on the table beside the bed, scrubbing her palm against her skirt when she’d finished. “They use knives to scalp women in America, after they’ve raped them.”

  “Europeans brought scalping to America, Rosalyn. He’s really quite civilized.”

  Still skeptical, she eyed her brother. “If he can truly beat you at chess, I’ll eat one of my roses.”

  He gave her a rather smug grin. “Then cook it up, dear sister, cook it up and prepare to dine.”

  She shook her head at his nonsense, then kicked at the skins that lay on the rug. “Take those filthy things out of here. They smell like dead cattle and cow dung. And send up Marvella with bath water. Not Annie.” Rosalyn gave an indelicate snort. “That’s all we need, one gossipy maid to tell the entire island that the new Duke of Kintyr
e is a half-breed savage. We’d have all the nosy, superstitious villagers camped out on our doorstep waiting to get a look at him.”

  “They’ll find out sooner or later.”

  “Aye, that’s what I’m afraid of,” Rosalyn said, turning back to the duke. He lay there, all brawn, carved in granite, but his skin began to glisten with sweat and was flushed all over. “Run along with you now. Get the water. It looks as if his fever is rising. The bath should help him.”

  Geddes left the room in a hurry.

  Rosalyn continued to study the unconscious duke. You are hiding something from me, brother. I will find out what it is.

  Next to the bed, the stinky buckskins were heaped on the floor. Sima had become interested in them, poking through them as if searching for a tidbit. Knowing her dog, she wouldn’t be surprised if Sima attempted to eat the hide.

  “Nay,” Rosalyn scolded. “You’d probably get a bellyache and be too sick to nurse those pups when they come.” She picked up the clothes, holding them away from her, walked to the fireplace, and tossed them into the fire. They sputtered and burned and smelled worse than a hot day in the stables before they were mucked out.

  If the villagers thought Fenella was an oddity because she had served as a nurse in the Crimea, what in God’s name would they think of their new duke? This was the man who was supposed to rescue the MacNeil legacy and fortune. A true-to-life American Indian. A redskin, complete with braids and a knife, and the body of a warrior. Aye, she’d read about them. Had what she’d read been real or exaggerated? Could he possibly gain the respect of the islanders? Certainly they would fear him.

  His chest was wide and smooth, muscles defined sharply beneath the dark skin. She wondered what it would feel like against her palm. Lower, his genitals rested impressively in a nest of thick black hair. Interesting, she thought, that he would have so much hair there and on his head, and so little everywhere else. She forced aside the pleasurable pang that cramped her lower belly and quickly covered him with the blankets.

  For so many years she had been as celibate as a nun. She’d felt no passion looking at a man, so she was surprised she could feel anything at all in this case. Perhaps it was fear, but she didn’t think so. Yet even covered he was dangerous. His face was darkly intriguing, his cheekbones sharp and his full lower lip sensual. “Well, my savage duke,” she murmured, “just what is to become of us now that you’re here?”

  Chapter Three

  A noise woke him. He listened for other sounds, but heard nothing familiar. The smell was different, too—no stale, salty air. No dampness. At least he was on solid ground; his stomach had stopped rolling and tossing with the ship.

  He struggled to open his eyes. His gaze met a huge, wooly head with a long dark snout. Enormous eyes peeked out from beneath thick furry brows. “What the hell?” He jumped to a sitting position, but he had moved too quickly and felt faint. Expelling a vile curse, he fell back against the pillows, coughing as though he’d bring up a lung. He slowly opened his eyes again. The animal was still there. Its giant tongue came out and slathered his cheek with animal spittle.

  Another figure appeared at the bedside. He peered up. It was a woman. She whispered something that Fletcher didn’t understand and the great gray behemoth left the bedside.

  Fletcher swore soundly again; he ached all over. Every muscle in his body screamed in pain. With effort, he surveyed his surroundings, noting the high, intricately stuccoed ceiling and the wide shaft of light that came in through a long window across the room. “Where am I?” he asked, and then swore once again, as even the sound of his own voice made his head ache.

  The woman blinked and continued to stare but said nothing.

  Fletcher rolled his tongue over his teeth. His mouth was dry and he coughed again. “Who are you? Ah, hell, never mind. The inside of my mouth tastes like buffalo shit. Get me some whisky.”

  She didn’t say a word, just stared at him, her expression one of shock and bewilderment.

  He cursed loudly once again. How could he communicate if she couldn’t understand him? “You do speak English, don’t you?”

  Her expression quickly changed from confusion to impatience. “Aye, but from the sound of it, not as colorfully as you do.”

  Oh, God, he thought, a sharp-tongued woman. They were the worst kind. “I asked for whisky,” he repeated. “Please.” He felt like hell and needed a drink.

  “To wash away the taste of buffalo dung, I imagine,” she answered, her voice sharp and sarcastic.

  Fletcher frowned. “Whiskey.”

  “You’re ill.” She paused, then added, “Your Grace.”

  The first few weeks of the voyage he’d spent with his head over the side of the ship, relieving himself of anything he tried to eat. And then the fever and cough had hit him, making him as weak as a kitten. He was glad the trip was over, but he still felt like hell. He studied her, noting her starchy demeanor. “Do you work for me?”

  She opened her mouth and then closed it and finally said, “Aye, I’m in your employ.”

  “Then get me some goddamned whisky! Now!” Christ. Suddenly he felt as though he were rocking with the waves again, and he fought back the nausea that climbed his throat.

  She backed away from the bed but did not appear afraid. Her gaze grew hard and she didn’t look away.

  He looked down at himself. “Where are my clothes?”

  “In the fireplace.”

  “You burned my clothes? You burned my clothes?”

  She looked completely unapologetic. “They stank like cow dung, or, if you prefer, buffalo dung, and were not fit to be saved. And my dog found them irresistible, and I was afraid if she tried to eat them, she’d get ill. So, aye, I burned them.”

  Ah, so the behemoth was a dog. It was almost as big as a horse. “That wasn’t your decision to make,” he groused. “There is a way to clean them.”

  “’Tis done, and there’s no retrieving them.”

  Hell. He saw his knife resting on the bedside table. “At least you didn’t burn this.” He picked it up. “Are you ever going to get me that whisky?”

  Her gaze was focused on the knife. “Are you threatening me with that barbaric weapon?”

  “If that’s what it takes to get me a drink,” he countered.

  She tossed her head; he noticed the fine, porcelain line of her neck and thought he detected a pulse at her throat. “As you wish.”

  Her tone was like ice. Everything about her was icy. Cold. Wintery. Just like the damned weather in this place. The last time he’d been awake they had been skirting the Scottish shore. The seas were wicked, the air was damp and bone-chilling, and the sky shrouded in misty clouds. He missed the Texas heat.

  She returned with a glass and a bottle.

  Ignoring the glass, he took the bottle from her and drank deeply, the liquor burning a path to his stomach. He lay back and felt himself relax, although there was still a chill in the room. He swore he could see his breath. “It’s cold as a witch’s tit in here.” He pulled the blanket higher, cradling the bottle close.

  “I’ll have someone add peat to the fire. Surprisingly, your clothes didn’t generate as much heat as I thought they might, considering all the raw animal fuel they contained.”

  She was pretty damned rude for a servant. “Who in the hell are you?”

  “I’m Rosalyn Marshall. Your Grace,” she added, as if it were an effort to address him so.

  “Geddes’s sister.”

  She gave him an imperious nod.

  The widow. The veritable paragon of womanhood, according to her brother. She was pretty, but she looked like the kind of woman who would never dream of shedding her clothes and sliding naked into bed next to a man and pressing her breasts against him. The kind of woman who wouldn’t dream of grabbing him between the legs and giving him a good, hard squeeze. The kind of woman who could freeze a man’s balls off by just looking at them. Brrr.

  In other words, she looked like the kind of woman he had avo
ided all of his life.

  “Is there someone else besides you working here?”

  Her head inched up a notch. “You’re not happy with me?”

  He scrubbed his face with his hand. “I would say, ma’am, that you’re not happy with me. I get the impression that you feel you have better things to do.”

  “I think it’s best if I deal with you. I’m not afraid and your bellowing won’t send me running from the castle.” She crossed her arms over her generous bosom. “If you must know, Your Grace,” she said, once again appearing hesitant to use the term, “you are not what we were expecting.”

  “Just what were you expecting?”

  She blushed but did not break her gaze. “Geddes wired me that he’d located you, but he neglected to inform me of your unusual lineage.”

  Fletcher puffed himself up and scowled. “He didn’t tell you I was a goddamned red-skinned savage? Well, then, off with his head!”

  She looked at the floor and appeared to stop a smile. “You may tease if you like, Your Grace, but you have no idea how people will react when they first see you and realize that you truly are the new duke.”

  “Believe me, ma’am, sometimes even in Texas we breeds attract more attention than we wish to.”

  “Nevertheless, I am here to take care of you. You have a fever and your cough is troublesome. I am a suitable nurse.” She had haughtiness about her, a cool superiority that made him want to give her trouble. God, women like her really brought out the worst in him.

  He kicked off the blanket, leaving himself bare. “I want a bath, and some clothes. And I’ve got to get up; my ass is getting numb from lying here. And where’s the piss pot?”

  A pink stain crept up her neck, into her cheeks. “The chamber pot is under the bed.”

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, testing his strength—and her resolve. He felt dizzy. “Whoa.… Will you get it for me?”

  “What?”

  “Get me the piss—ah, chamber pot. Please.”

  With obvious reluctance, she got to her knees, reached under the bed, and brought out the pot. From his position he could see the swell of her breasts. They were creamy and soft looking. She removed the lid and dropped it on the floor; it clattered noisily. She started to walk away.