by Mary Balogh
During his brief spell of consciousness, the mystery man had spoken with the refined accents of a gentleman. He must be an officer, then, who had been wounded in battle. Perhaps he had family members right here in Brussels who were anxiously awaiting news of his fate. How frustrating not to be able to inform them that he was safe—though that was not by any means a foregone conclusion, Rachel thought, getting to her feet for the dozenth time to feel his forehead, which was surely warmer than it had been an hour ago. He might yet die of his ghastly head wound—a truly nasty cut that ought to have been stitched but had not been, and a lump the size of a large egg. He might very easily die if he became fevered, as so many men did after submitting to a surgeon’s knife. At least his leg had not had to be amputated.
She ought to tiptoe up to the attic to look in on Sergeant Strickland again, she thought. She had heard the sounds of two men leaving the house within the past hour, but two of the ladies must still be entertaining. Perhaps she ought to go down to the kitchen to make some tea for them all. They must be weary and thirsty after a night’s work.
It was truly amazing how quickly she was adapting to being where she was.
She ought to do something or she would be nodding in her chair again.
But she became suddenly aware of a slight stirring from the direction of the bed. She sat very still and willed him to live, to recover from his wounds, to open his eyes. She felt very responsible for him in some curious way. If only he could survive, she thought, perhaps she could forgive herself for having been in the forest on such a sordid mission. If she had not been there, after all, she would not have found him. No one would, and he would surely have died.
Just when she thought she must have imagined his movements, he opened his eyes and gazed blankly upward. Rachel got hurriedly to her feet and leaned over the bed so that he would not have to turn his head in order to see her. His eyes turned in her direction and focused on her in the candlelight. They were dark eyes and convinced her that she had been right about something else—he was a handsome man.
“I dreamed I was in heaven and it was a brothel,” he said. “Now I dream that I am in heaven with a golden angel. I believe I like this version better.” His eyes fluttered closed and his lips curved upward at the corners. He was a man with some sense of humor, then.
“Alas,” she said, “it is a very earthly paradise. Are you still in great pain?”
“Did I drink a barrel of rum dry?” he asked. “Or did I do something else to my head?”
“You fell and hit it,” she said. “I think you fell from a horse.”
“Unpardonably clumsy of me,” he said. “And deuced embarrassing too if it is true. I have never fallen off a horse in my life.”
“You had been shot in the leg,” she said. “Riding must have been very difficult and excruciatingly painful.”
“Shot in the leg?” He frowned and opened his eyes again. He moved both legs and swore most foully before apologizing. “Who shot me?”
“I believe,” she said, “it must have been a French soldier. I hope it was not one of your own.”
His eyes focused more sharply on her then. “This is not England, is it?” he said. “I am in Belgium. There was a battle.”
She saw that his cheeks were now noticeably flushed with fever. It was in his eyes too—they seemed unnaturally bright in the light of the single candle. She turned to the bowl of water that was on a table beside the bed, squeezed out the cloth that was soaking in it, and held it to his cheeks one at a time and then to his brow. He sighed his appreciation.
“It is best not even to think of it now,” she said. “But the battle was won, you will be pleased to know. I daresay it was still being fought when you left the battlefield.”
He stared up at her, a crease between his brows for a moment before he closed his eyes again.
“I am afraid,” she said, “that you have a slight fever. The musket ball was still lodged in your thigh and had to be removed by a surgeon, you see. Fortunately, that happened while you were unconscious. You really ought to drink some water. Let me help you sit up high enough to sip from this glass. It will not be easy for you—you have a nasty lump on your head. And a cut.”
“It feels as if the lump must be the size of a cricket ball,” he said. “Am I in Brussels?”
“Yes,” she said. “We brought you back here.”
“The battle. I remember now,” he said, frowning. But he did not say any more about it. Rachel was not sure she wanted to hear any of the gory details anyway.
He drank a little water, though she knew that the pain of lifting his head was almost unbearable for him. She lowered him carefully to the pillow again, wiped up some of the water that had run down over his chin, and then pressed the cool cloth to his forehead once more.
“Do you have any family here?” she asked him. “Or any friends? Anyone who will be anxiously awaiting news of your fate?”
“I . . .” He frowned at her again. “I . . . am not sure. Do I?”
“We really would like to inform them that you are safe and that you are here in Brussels,” she said. “Or perhaps your family is all in England. I will write a letter to them tomorrow if you wish.”
She was quite unprepared for what he said next.
“Who the devil am I?” he asked her, though she had the feeling it was a rhetorical question.
It chilled her to the bone.
He appeared to have lapsed into unconsciousness again.
IT WAS DAYTIME WHEN ALLEYNE AWOKE AGAIN. NOT that he had been entirely unconscious through the night. He was aware that he had been alternately burning up with heat and shivering with cold, that he had dreamed and had strange hallucinations—none of which he could now remember—and that he had called out several times. He was aware that someone had hovered over him all night long, cooling his hot face with wet cloths, tucking warm blankets about him, coaxing water between his lips, and crooning comforting words to him.
But he awoke feeling totally disoriented. Where the devil was he?
He had been shot in the leg, he reminded himself, and knocked from his horse, jarring every bone in his body as he landed and giving himself a massive concussion. He had been picked up and brought to a brothel, which was inhabited by at least four painted whores and one golden angel. He had contracted a fever and had been having hallucinations through the night. Perhaps it was all a strange, bizarre dream.
He opened his eyes.
He had not imagined the angel. She was rising to her feet from a chair beside his bed and coming to lean over him. She set a cool hand against his brow. Her hair was pure, shining gold, her complexion roses and cream. Her eyes, hazel in color, were large and thickly fringed with lashes several shades darker than her hair. Her mouth was wide and generous, her nose straight. She was neither slender nor plump. She was beautifully proportioned and all woman. She smelled sweet, though of no discernible perfume.
She was surely the most lovely woman he had ever seen.
He was in love, he thought, only half in humor.
“Are you feeling any better?” she asked him.
She was also, if his guess earlier had been correct, living in a brothel. Did that make her . . .
“I have the monarch of all headaches,” he told her, giving his attention to his physical condition—not difficult to do when it was clamoring to be noticed. “I feel as if every bone in my body has been wrenched none too gently into a new position, and I dare not even try moving my left leg. I am uncomfortably warm, yet I am shivering too. My eyes are sensitive to the light. Apart from those minor complaints, I am, I believe, in the best of health.” He tried to grin at her and felt a sharp pull from somewhere to the side of his head—that must be where the wound was. “Have I been a troublesome patient? I believe I have.”
She smiled down into his eyes. She had white, even teeth. The expression warmed her eyes and made her purely pretty as well as beautiful. It also gave her sparkle and a look of mischief.
He was in love indeed. He was a hopeless case. Terminally besotted.
But she had bathed his brow and murmured soft nothings to him all through a fevered night. What red-blooded male would not be infatuated, especially when she really did look like an angel?
Of course, he was at least partially delirious.
“Not at all,” she said in answer to his question, “except that you do have a nasty habit of inviting me to go to the devil whenever I try to lift your head so that you may drink.”
“No! Have I really been behaving with such dastardly lack of gallantry?” he asked her. “I do beg your pardon. I am still not convinced that I have not died and gone to heaven and been assigned my very own guardian angel. If I am wrong, you could try kissing me to wake me up.”
She laughed softly enough not to jar his headache, but she did not, alas, accept his invitation.
Someone else came into the room at that point—the black-haired, bold-eyed Latin charmer he had seen the first time he regained consciousness. She set down a fresh bowl of water, set her hands on her shapely hips, struck a pose that displayed both hips and bosom to best advantage, and looked him up and down slowly—it seemed to Alleyne that her eyes stripped away bedcovers as she did so.
“Well, you are a handsome devil now that your eyes are open and there is some color in your cheeks,” she said, “though I daresay you will look even more gorgeous once you have shed the white bonnet. Gone to heaven and discovered that it is a brothel, indeed—you should be so lucky! It’s time you went to bed, Rache, and got some beauty rest. Bridget says you have been up all night again. I’ll take over in here. Does his thigh need rebandaging, by any happy chance?”
Her eyes met Alleyne’s with frank appreciation and she pursed her lips. She was not wearing cosmetics this morning, but there was a raw sensuality about her that proclaimed her profession.
He chuckled and then winced and wished he had not acknowledged her bold flirtation by committing such violence to his own head.
“I’ll just bathe his face once more to reduce the fever, Geraldine,” the golden angel said. She was Rache—Rachel? “And then I will lie down. I am tired, I must confess. But so must you be.”
The dark-haired beauty—Geraldine—shrugged, winked boldly at Alleyne, and withdrew with the bowl of stale water.
“Is this a brothel?” Alleyne asked. It must be, but he ought not to have asked the question aloud, he realized as Rachel flushed.
“We will not charge you for the use of the bed,” she told him, a slight edge to her voice.
It was her way of saying yes, he supposed. Which fact made her . . .
His eyes swiveled about the room. It was pleasantly, respectably decorated and furnished in various shades of fawn and gold—not a sign of scarlet anywhere. The bed was relatively narrow—but then it was quite wide enough, he supposed, to serve its appointed function. The room was normally inhabited by a woman. There were brushes and bottles and a book on the dressing table.
“Is this your room?” he asked her.
“Not while you are in it.” She raised her eyebrows and looked very directly at him. Was she angry? “And, yes, I do live here.”
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I have taken your bed.”
“You need not apologize,” she told him. “You did not demand it, did you? Or even ask for it. I had you brought here after I found you in the forest. The sergeant who helped me—and you—is here too, in a bed in the attic. He lost an eye in the battle and is suffering a great deal more than he will admit to. The loss of his eye is particularly unfortunate because he has been summarily discharged from the army. Yet he has known no other life since he was thirteen years old.”
“You found me in the forest? The Forest of Soignés?” What the devil had he been doing there? He had a confused memory of the sound of heavy guns, but try as he would he could not recall any other detail of the battle. It had been against Napoléon Bonaparte and had been brewing for months—he knew that much. He must have been fighting in it. But why had he ridden into the forest? And why had his men abandoned him there? Or had he been alone? But if he had been wounded in battle, why had he not sought medical attention on the field?
“I thought you were dead,” she said, dipping the cloth in the fresh water and pressing its blessed coolness to his brow. “If I had not stooped down to touch you, I would not have realized that you still lived. You would indeed have died out there.”
“Then I am eternally in your debt,” he said, “and in that of the sergeant, whom I must thank in person as soon as I am able.” He thought of something suddenly and felt a flood of relief considering the fact that there was a detail far more important than the battle itself that he could not recall. “What did you do with my belongings?”
He watched her squeeze out the cloth and dip and squeeze it again before answering.
“You had been robbed,” she said. “Of everything.”
“Of . . .” He stared at her, aghast. “Of everything? All my clothes too?”
She nodded.
Good Lord! She had found him naked? But it was not embarrassment that caused him to shut his eyes tightly and clench his teeth, heedless for the moment of the pain the tension caused him. He could feel panic welling up inside him and threatening to burst forth. He wanted to throw back the bedcovers, leap from the bed, and run from the room. But where would he go? And for what purpose?
In search of his identity?
There was nothing left to help him remember.
Calm down, he told himself. Calm down. He had fallen from his horse and banged his head hard enough to give himself a concussion. He had the headache to prove it. He was fortunate to be alive. There probably really was a lump the size of a cricket ball on the side of his head. He must give his brain a chance to reorganize itself. He must give the swelling time to go down and his head wounds time to heal. He must give his fever time to recede completely. There was no hurry. Later today or tomorrow or the next day he would remember.
“What is your name?” she asked him as she pressed the cloth to one warm cheek.
“Go to the devil!” he exclaimed, and then snapped his eyes open to gaze up at her in instant remorse. Her teeth were sunk into her lower lip, and her eyes were wide with dismay.
“I am so sorry . . .”
“I do beg your pardon . . .”
They spoke simultaneously.
“I cannot remember,” he admitted curtly, deliberately quelling the panic he felt.
“You must not worry about it.” She smiled at him. “You will remember soon.”
“Deuce take it, I do not even know my own name.”
The horror of it grabbed at his stomach like a giant hand squeezing tightly. He fought a wave of nausea as he grasped her wrist with one hand and her other arm with the other. He was aware of pain in both his arms. He could see black and purple bruises all along his right arm.
“You are alive,” she said, leaning a little closer, “and you are conscious again. Your fever seems to have gone down considerably. By some miracle you did not break any bones in your fall. Bridget says you are going to live, and I trust her judgment. Just give yourself some time. Everything will come back to you. Until it does, let your mind rest along with your body.”
If he drew her any closer, he thought, he would be able to kiss her after all. What a stupid thought when there was not a bone in his body that did not feel sorely abused! Probably he would discover if he did kiss her that even his lips hurt.
“I owe you my life,” he said. “Thank you. And how inadequate words can be sometimes.”
She drew gently away from his grasp and swilled out the cloth again.
“Are you one of them?” he asked abruptly, closing his eyes and fighting nausea again. “Are you a . . . Do you work here?”
For a few moments all he heard was the trickling of water. He wished he could recall the question.
“I am here, am I not?” she said, the edge back in her voice.
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��You do not look . . . You look different from the others,” he said.
“Meaning that they look like whores and I do not?” she asked him. He could tell from the tone of her voice that he had offended her.
“I suppose so,” he said. “I beg your pardon. I ought not to have asked. It is none of my business.”
She laughed softly—it was somehow not a pleasant sound.
“That is my main appeal,” she said, “that I look like an innocent, like a lady, like an angel, as you remarked earlier. It takes all types to run a successful brothel. Men have vastly different tastes when it comes to the women for whose favors they will pay. I cater to the taste for refinement and the illusion of innocence. I do innocence very well, would you not agree?”
Very well.
He opened his eyes to find her smiling at him as she dried her hands on a towel. It was a smile that matched the voice she was using—not quite pleasant.
“I do beg your pardon—again,” he said. “I seem to have done nothing but insult you ever since I regained consciousness. I hope such unmannerly behavior is not habitual with me. Forgive me, please?”
His head was feeling like a balloon that was expanding to the point of bursting. His leg was throbbing like a giant drumbeat. There were other assorted ills clamoring only slightly less insistently for his attention too.
“Of course,” she told him. “But I do not find this profession shameful or degrading or my fellow . . . whores less human or less precious than other women of my acquaintance. I will see you later. Geraldine will look after you in the meanwhile. Are you hungry?”
“Not really,” he said.
He had offended her, he thought after she had gone. And she had every right to be annoyed with him. If it were not for her, he would probably be dead by now. And she and her friends had opened their home to him. She had given up her room for him. They were giving him twenty-four-hour care. He might have fared a great deal worse if he had been found by a respectable lady. Indeed, any lady would probably have screamed and run and then swooned after seeing his naked body and left him to die.