Julie Anne Long

by The Runaway Duke

  “Connor, you are in no condition to move on yet. If you leave, you will have to leave without me, because I refuse to go for a day or so.”

  “Then I shall drag you with me, Miss Tremaine.”

  “And then perhaps collapse in the road, leaving me to the whims of fate.”

  They looked into each other’s eyes, stricken silent for a moment.

  “I am sorry I am of so little use to you,” Connor muttered finally, turning away.

  “Connor!” Rebecca was astonished. “How can you say that?”

  “I’ve left ye to deal with the horses, with the fire—”

  “Because you went out of your way to get shot?”

  He smiled reluctantly.

  “They are after the locket, whatever their motives, Connor, and the locket is my fault.”

  No, the locket is my fault, he wanted to say, and thus the fault is mine for putting you in harm’s way when all I wanted to do was take you away to a place, any place, where no one would try to kill or own your spirit.

  “Let us not think in terms of blame, wee Becca. Let us just think of now, and of the future. We should be safe for a day or so, I am certain.” He was not certain, but he wanted to see the tension leave her face, and it did.

  “May I look at your wound?” she said almost shyly.

  Connor nodded, slowly levered himself up, and shrugged his shoulders until his tattered shirt drooped about his waist.

  It was one thing to take in Connor while he was unconscious, another to feel his eyes upon her, feel the warmth of his breath upon her face, while she confronted anew those fascinating slopes and ridges of muscle and the incongruously soft skin stretched over his hard bicep. Rebecca kept her head down and her eyes focused on her work, unwinding the bandage with infinite care, but her fingers trembled a bit when they met his skin. She could feel heat rising in her cheeks.

  She paused when the bandage was at last loosened, her breath catching. Oh, his curves simply begged for exploration. Rebecca imagined the route she would take: her fingers would drag softly through the coarse hair of his forearm, her palm would glide up over his hard round shoulder, then slide down to fit itself over the swelling muscle of his chest; her fingers would trail down to explore the seam between his ribs . . .

  The blood slowly migrated from her head; it seemed to be pooling, heating, somewhere much farther south, instead.

  Do it, said a wicked little voice in her head. Janet Gilhooly probably did it.

  But what if Connor seized her wrist midway on its journey and demanded to know what on earth she was doing?

  She would simply die.

  What does he see when he looks at me? A child, a friend, a . . . woman?

  Rebecca closed her eyes briefly and took a deep steadying breath, and then reopened them, her sanity regained. She refocused on the task at hand.

  The wound looked splendid, if a musket-ball wound could be called splendid; not angry, not even oozing terribly much. All in all, a nice piece of work, she congratulated herself, feeling a little glow of pride through the fog in her head.

  “Have I thanked you, wee Becca?” Connor said softly. His voice traveled up her spine; he was so close, the words so resonant, they seemed almost to come from inside her.

  It was too much for her raw senses at the moment. She stepped away from him abruptly and released the breath she’d been holding so she could take the breath that would allow her to speak.

  “Connor, if I said thank you to you every day for the rest of my life, it would still not be enough.”

  Connor smiled crookedly in answer.

  “Well, then, wee Becca, see if ye can do something about the woeful state of my shirt this evening, aye?”

  I never noticed before, but his eyes are dangerous. Dark and soft as the hearts of pansies but full of wicked glints. She took another step away from him and then turned and quickly moved to poke at the fire, which didn’t need poking.

  “Perhaps when you are sober you can go in search of your buttons,” she told him.

  Connor laughed and lowered his head to the cushion of folded blanket. “Aye, we can make a contest of it. Whoever finds the most buttons will win.”

  Rebecca was suddenly delighted by the image of the two of them crawling about the floor, searching for buttons.

  “I will win.”

  “You are wrong,” Connor murmured. A moment later he was asleep again, and the cheerfully atrocious sound of his snores filled the room.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The bath was Connor’s idea.

  “How well do you swim, wee Becca?” he asked, laughing, when she staggered from her room in the morning, scowling and blinking away her sleep.

  The hunting box fortunately had two rooms, the main room featuring two bunks and an actual bed, a hearth, a table and benches, and the rather bedraggled stuffed head of a buck mounted on the wall. The second room was tiny and seemed to be for storage of such useful things as brooms and snares and old powder horns, but it also featured a bed. Apparently the previous Dukes of Dunbrooke had believed in comfort for all members of their hunting parties.

  Rebecca had done a cursory bit of dusting and chasing of spiders with the broom while Connor slept the day before, and had given the beds a good smacking with the broom, as well, which had at least rearranged the dust. Fortunately the structure was snugly built, and there was no evidence that rodents had moved into the mattresses.

  But it would hardly have mattered if they had. Rebecca had fallen into bed like a rock shortly after she and Connor had shared one of the meat pies from the Thorny Rose, and slept even through the sound of Connor’s impressive snoring in the next room.

  Connor had already made tea and sliced the second meat pie into pieces for each of them. Never shy when it came to meals, Rebecca nearly lunged for her half.

  “Swim?” she finally asked, through bites. And then she stopped chewing.

  “Connor, you divided this pie evenly. You should have given yourself a larger slice.”

  “Why is that, wee Becca?”

  “You need nourishment to heal quickly.”

  Connor gazed at her for a moment, bemused. It was a sweet and curious feeling to be fussed over.

  “My thanks, wee Becca, but I think God favors those who share selflessly, aye?”

  Rebecca snorted. She studied him objectively for a moment.

  “You really do look much better this morning, Connor. Your eyes are clear and your color is good.”

  The corner of Connor’s mouth quirked.

  “Thank you, Dr. Tremaine. Though how you can see my color through my beard is beyond my ken.”

  “How does it feel?”

  “My arm? As though it may fall off.” When Rebecca blanched, he quickly amended, “Better, it feels better this morning, truly. I am healing quickly, I promise.” He added, unable to resist teasing her, “My eyes are clear and my color is good, you know.”

  She made a face at him.

  Truthfully, the ache in his arm had acquired the rhythm of a storm tide: rushing in to torment him, then ebbing deceptively, then rushing in again. It was malevolently consistent. He’d experienced worse, however. Favoring his arm seemed to help. Talking about it did not.

  “I will snare a hare this afternoon, for supper, wee Becca. I promise I shall eat the better part of it, if that will ease your mind. We can even make a stew, if we can find a few edible mushrooms.”

  “Poaching?” Rebecca sounded half aghast, half thrilled.

  Connor almost laughed. His string of crimes was certainly lengthening. Although it wasn’t strictly a crime to snare hares on his own land.

  “One hare surely will not be missed, and our supper will be, if we have none.”

  “Will you show me how to set a snare?”

  “Oh, aye, why not? We will turn you into a regular lad, yet, wee Becca, what with the pistol in your boot and the trousers.”

  Instead of laughing as he had expected, to his astonishment, Rebecca flushed p
ink and lowered her head.

  All at once he was conscious of having made a mistake with his words, but he had no idea of the precise nature of it or how to fix it. He supposed, in a way, that teasing her about turning into a lad was his way of trying to convince himself that she did indeed resemble one. In truth, the last thing she resembled was a boy, and that was in no small part the fault of the trousers. It might be preferable to put her back in a dress, where he could not see precisely where her legs began and ended.

  Idle observations, nothing more. He tried to push these thoughts away. But fatigue and nearness were making it almost impossible.

  He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Aye, swim. I know of a place to bathe, if ye’d like to be a bit cleaner, and perhaps change into fresh clothing.”

  A look of such longing crossed Rebecca’s face that Connor burst into laughter. The embarrassed pink left Rebecca’s cheeks in the face of the merry sound, and she laughed, too.

  “But before we have a swim, wee Becca—you do swim, aye?”

  “Aye,” she drawled. “Robbie Denslowe taught me.”

  “Naturally,” Connor said. “I think we should put the locket in a safe place, lest it go floating down the river. Ye’re wearing it still?”

  By way of answer, Rebecca fished about inside her shirt and plucked out the locket.

  “I know a very safe place for it,” Connor said, and waggled the fingers of his outstretched hand until Rebecca unfastened the locket and deposited it into them.

  The heat of the smooth metal surprised him; he frowned at it, puzzled. And then he comprehended: It’s warm from her skin. Specifically, the skin between her breasts.

  Connor stared dumbly down at the locket.

  Dear God, man. It’s not as though you’re holding an actual breast. But suddenly, the soft heat of the locket seemed searing.

  I am weak. I am weary. I am injured. It’s weakness, that’s all.

  The sooner they were in Scotland, the sooner he left for America, the safer they both would be.

  He waited a moment before lifting his head, because he could not guarantee what Rebecca would see in his eyes at that moment. He drew in a long, steadying breath before he spoke.

  “I have the perfect place for it, wee Becca.” He strode over to one of the solid wooden posts that flanked the hearth, untwisted the top of it, dropped the locket in, and twisted it back on again. “A little discovery I made last night,” he said to her astonished face. It was a lie. He’d known about the post since he was a boy. All Dunbrooke heirs knew of this particular hiding place. “I defy anyone, particularly a daft highwayman, to find it there.”

  “Shall I give you my pound note for safekeeping, as well?” Rebecca dug it out of her trousers. Connor, thinking quickly, rolled it into a cylinder and tucked it into the toe of his boot.

  “Only the truly brave or truly perverse would think of looking for it there,” Connor said with satisfaction.

  After breakfast, they wandered out to set the snares for their hoped-for dinner.

  “I knew a Gypsy once,” Connor said, “who had trained his dogs to help him poach hare with a net. One dog was taught to wait at one end of a field, while t’other dog chased the hare into his net at the field’s other end. The hare had no choice of where to go, really. Clever dogs, those.”

  “Was he ever caught?” Rebecca asked, watching Connor as he deftly laid the snares that had been stored in the hunting box. “The Gypsy, I mean?”

  “Aye, but not punished,” Connor said, thinking how Rebecca would enjoy knowing Raphael. “Did you know, wee Becca, that if you are very patient, you can catch a fish by tickling its tummy?”

  “Tickling it?” She was fascinated.

  “You let your hand dangle, just float, in the water near where fish like to linger, so the fish get used to the sight of it there. Ye must be patient. And then when the fish come near, ye rub their tummies, as ye would a hound. They rather like it. When ye’ve calmed them, ye can grab them out o’ the water, and then enjoy your dinner.”

  “It hardly seems fair to the fish.” Rebecca sounded skeptical.

  “Ah, but let that be a lesson to you, wee Becca. Never let a stranger tickle your tummy.”

  After setting their snares, they took the horses, which had spent a comfortable evening in the small stable behind the hunting box, and packed them up with the musket and clean clothes and blankets, and together they rode to the place where the stream widened.

  The day was mild, and the trees on either side of the bank formed a graceful arch over the pool, providing shadow and light in equal parts.

  “This is how we shall do it, wee Becca,” Connor instructed. “Ye can remove your clothes under the blanket and splash on into the water. I shall keep this blanket over my head until you do, and then I shall keep an eye out for predators, wolves and highwaymen and the like, while ye bathe. When ye’ve finished, it will be my turn.”

  Rebecca turned crimson, but Connor kept his expression faintly amused and challenging, and held the soap out to her.

  “Wolves,” she said derisively, finally, and took the soap from him. “Cover your head.”

  He dutifully covered his head and listened to the soft thump of her clothes hitting the riverbank, and then the patter of her feet and a splashing as she parted the water.

  “Eeeee!” she shrieked in glee. “Oh, this is wonderful!”

  Connor took the blanket from his head.

  All thought fled his mind.

  “Connor! It’s lovely!”

  He couldn’t breathe.

  Her body was just a silvery blur, really, shimmering beneath the surface of the water, but then she lifted her slender white arms and shoulders from the water and pushed her wet hair back from her face and smiled, her eyes glowing. His imagination completed the symmetry of her body for him, and suddenly the blur was torture.

  “I have never been happier to have a bath,” she declared, and stroked her way into a patch of light in the water.

  Connor’s will had abdicated. He could only stare helplessly.

  “Any wolves?” she called to him.

  He opened his mouth. He could not speak.

  “Connor?”

  “No wolves,” he managed finally, hoarsely.

  He sat down heavily on the bank and briefly cradled his head in his hands. What the bloody hell was the matter with him? It was hardly as though women were mysteries to him; it was not even as though he’d been deprived of one for any length of time, thanks to Janet Gilhooly. But this was different. For days now, something immense had been creeping up on him; and now it had finally knocked him sideways. He couldn’t name it, couldn’t even get a grip on it so he could hold it still in the beam of his mind to determine whether it was friend or foe. It had overcome him so completely that he was it, and now he could only cower like a boy on the riverbank, feeling exposed and confused and aching with a need so absolute it seemed unconscionable.

  This, at last, made him angry, which was a relief; anger was at least familiar. He worked on the anger, gnawed upon it until he was good and irritable.

  “Will you be all day, Rebecca?” He heard the petulance in his voice; he didn’t care.

  Rebecca glided through the water toward him, looking for all the world like a selkie.

  “Sorry, Connor! Blanket, please!” she demanded cheerfully.

  He took refuge under a blanket while she rustled around on the bank of the river. He identified the sounds to himself as she rustled: now she was rubbing the water from her skin, now she was tossing her head, her wet hair slapping lightly against her bare back, now she was stepping into her dress. He remained motionless and silent; it seemed safest at the moment not to jar himself overmuch in his current peculiar condition. He was painfully, appallingly hard; the fabric of his trousers stretched taut, teasing his sensitive skin.

  The water would cool his thoughts. Not to mention his thrumming, bulging, mutinous body.

  “Ready!” Rebecca called.

  Conno
r lifted the blanket from his head, caught a split-second glimpse of sleeked-back hair, shining eyes, and brown muslin dress, and immediately dropped the blanket over Rebecca’s head. He stripped down in seconds and hit the water to her squeaks of protest.

  “You forgot the soap! Mind your arm!”

  Connor had forgotten all about his arm. He jerked it from the water just in time to keep from wetting the bandage.

  “Throw me the soap, there’s a good lass.” The bar went hurtling through the air, and miraculously Connor caught it in one hand before it could go bobbing out to sea. Rebecca clapped her hands in appreciation, and Connor gave a little bow in the water. His mood was rapidly improving.

  He pushed his body through the water a bit, taking care to keep his wounded arm elevated. It was wonderful; the first foot or so of the water warmed by the sun; from his hips down, the water was cool, velvety. He dunked his head and spluttered, rubbed the soap over his grimy face and hair, dunked himself again, as cheerful as a bird in a mud puddle.

  “Blanket!” Connor finally called cheerfully; he was feeling a good deal more cheerful.

  Rebecca dutifully tented her head. Connor waded ashore, shook himself out like a duck hound, ruthlessly rubbed himself dry and rustled into his clothes.

  “All right, then!” he announced brightly.

  Rebecca dropped the blanket from her head. She smiled at him, her eyes shining, streamers of damp hair floating about her face.

  And because it suddenly seemed unthinkable not to, Connor kissed her.

  It astounded both of them; he hadn’t known he intended to do it until he was committed to the act. He felt strangely disembodied; his head was bending and his lips touching hers, he felt Rebecca go rigid and draw in a little astonished breath, heard the distant, feeble, panicked voice in his mind suggesting he should stop, for pity’s sake. But the kiss had a momentum of its own.

  He pulled her lower lip between his lips, and the taste of her, the play of textures, was shocking: cool silk, a drugging sweetness and heat, maddening. Undone, Connor groaned softly, and his hand went up to cup her face, as much to steady himself as to touch her skin. He drew closer, until his painfully sensitive arousal just grazed her thighs; he dared not move any closer. His mouth moved over hers softly, savoring the silk of her lips, coaxing her open. And glory of glories, her lips trembled and parted, inviting him in. Tentatively, his tongue stroked into her mouth, and then when her head went back, it stroked deeper still.