Her clothes…Roane had seen her naked. Had held her naked in his arms.
Her face heated, and of course he chose that moment to duck into the makeshift shelter, a tin kettle in his hands.
He frowned when he saw her. “Do you feel feverish? Your face is flushed.” He placed the kettle on the outer edge of the fire and stood back to scrutinize her. The roof was just high enough that he didn’t need to stoop.
“You—” She cleared her throat, but her words grew quieter and quieter regardless. “I am wearing your clothes. And you, erm, saw me naked.”
His gaze flicked downward. “I saw parts of you naked, yes. Very interesting parts.” A grin spread across his face as if he could see through the wool blanket to those very interesting parts.
The man was impossibly impossible. Here they were, running for their lives and fighting for survival, and he was flirting with her. “A gentlemen wouldn’t have peeked.”
“Any man would peek, buttercup. You’d make the Pope himself weep with longing.”
She frowned at him, too exhausted to gather her muddled thoughts. All his blond gorgeousness was distracting. He was wet. And muscly. His hair fell back in dripping ringlets, his cloak opened to reveal his bare chest, and his powerful thighs were wrapped in tight wool, the matching bottoms to the shirt she wore.
He looked so warm and virile.
A few hours ago, she’d thought he was dead.
The foaming waves had closed over his head.
The river had flowed and flowed with him under it.
No breath. No heartbeat.
She clutched the warm canteen, cold everywhere.
A worry line deepened between Roane’s brows and he stepped toward her. “Now you are pale.”
“I am not pale,” she snapped as if he’d said she had spots, but she was too wrung out to care. “And can you please be serious for once? You almost died.”
She’d watched him fight for his life and had been helpless to do anything about it. Helpless. It was just like James all over again. Oh, James’s form of drowning had been much slower and much more self-indulgent. But her world had been ripped apart all the same. He’d been so pale and…monstrous… the morning they returned his broken body to the townhouse.
And Roane…for an agonizing few minutes, he’d been lost as well. The river had broken his body and taken him.
She dropped her head onto her knees, wishing she could wash the images from her mind.
Hollow as a cave, and cold, too, that was her chest. That thing that hurt, that was her heart.
“Are you cold, buttercup?” Roane’s feet shuffled on the pine needles as he approached.
She wanted to bury her face in his neck and hold him tight. “You almost drowned,” she muttered, lifting her chin as he leaned over her.
“And this makes you angry?” He tightened the blankets around her shoulders. The back of his hand brushed the sensitive skin beneath her earlobe. It was a perfunctory touch, one a father would give a child, but it sent happiness coursing through her.
What a disaster.
She didn’t want to care for Roane.
She didn’t want to care for any man intent on causing himself harm. And whoever Roane was, wherever he’d been, whatever he’d done, there was no doubt he was a man bent on trouble.
“Apparently it does make me angry.” She jerked away from him and yanked apart the bundle of blankets. For years she’d successfully avoided rogues, rakes, and rascals of all kinds. But here, in the wilderness, she’d lost her mind. “Apparently being held captive, shot at, drenched to the bone, and forced to watch you half drown does not agree with my mood.”
She was barking at him now. Giving vent to the terror that had gripped her at the river’s edge. And it felt good.
Roane stepped back with a wary expression, then dug into his pocket and offered her a handful of red berries. Rosehips. “Eat some. I’m boiling the others. They should help you stay strong.”
She frowned her thanks, popped one in her mouth, and ground it between her teeth. It tasted sweet and tangy and familiar, calling forth distant memories of her childhood. Of playing in the fields with Harry and James, the three of them wild and free and happy. When had that changed? When had they gotten so lost?
“I’m sorry you were pulled from your life, princess. The night James and I buried the gold, it seemed the sensible thing to do. Now, I think we were just sodden fools.” Roane poked at the fire with a long stick. Sparks sputtered and popped and cast themselves into a suicide battle with the rain.
“Men are often fools, those in my family more than most.”
Roane glanced over at her. The firelight danced across the left side of his face, playing with the hard lines of his cheekbone and jaw. “James wasn’t that bad.”
“James wasn’t that bad?” she scoffed. “He drank himself to an early grave. He chose death, Roane. And games. Look at me.” She held her arms out, tears burning behind her eyes. “Do you think he cared what became of his baby sister? And it wasn’t just James. It’s all of the men in my family.” She ticked off her fingers. “I assume my great-grandfather, though no one will confirm the rumors. My grandfather, to be certain, and my father and his brother, then my brothers, both of them, and my cousin.” She wiggled seven fingers in his direction. She was being snippy, but she’d used up the last of her self-control crossing that river of death. And, somehow, it seemed like Roane shared the blame with the rest of them. “They paupered the earldom with their indulgence. Lost everything that is not entailed at the gaming tables, or clothing their mistresses, or buying horseflesh. Whatever it is men waste their money on.”
“Horseflesh is not a waste of money.”
She ignored his grumbling and pressed to her knees. Pine needles and sticks dug into her flesh through the blanket, but she barely noticed. “Now, it has come down to the tenants. The planting was a dismal affair, the rains not helping. The harvest will hardly be enough to feed everyone. The cottages are in great need of repair—never mind the state of Slipstream Hall.” She huffed for breath. “And here I am, on the side of a treacherous mountain in the godforsaken rain. As usual, the men make a muck of things, and the women must fix it.”
“I would have…” he must have seen the anger in her expression, for he quickly stopped talking.
“Who else shall care for the world when it ends?” she rallied. “Who shall feed the babies and pay the coal tender? Women. It falls to us. We are told to be quiet, to be good, and we are made powerless. Yet we rise anyway.”
She was shaking now, kneeling half-naked beneath a makeshift shelter. Around her, water dripped from every surface, off the feathered fingers of the pine, the tips of the bent ferns, even the from the curls of Roane’s hair. She brushed a hand over her cheek, brushed away rain and tears from her skin.
“It is true, what you say.” Roane was quiet, his voice blending in with the dripping, sodden world around them. “I’ve seen it with the women in my family.”
“Women in every family.” She came to her feet and yanked the blankets around her, warding off the chill. “I am done with men and their troubles. Done. If I ever marry, my husband is going to be an exceptional man.”
Roane stepped toward her, his hands outstretched. “You’ve been through a shock, sweetheart. Let me—”
She flinched back, and he stopped in place.
“Don’t touch me,” she fairly yelled. She felt cold and alone and just plain horrible. She wished she could fall into his arms, wished she could let him comfort her. Which made her feel even more horrible, for she was a woman who did not need a man to make her life better. Men wrought nothing but heartache. Especially men like Roane.
“Do you know that I saw James? I was home when they returned his body. He’d not been seen for days. I have no idea where he’d been, and still no one will tell me. But he was…they say he fell down a flight of stairs. Already he was…grey. His arm was twisted and he was bloody.
There was a gash on his head and someone had wound a neck cloth around it. I don’t know if he fell or if he was pushed or if something else altogether happened. He smelled like gin and horrid perfume.”
“Christ.” Roane looked tense, like it took effort to keep himself from coming to her. “You should not have—”
“Should not have what? Seen his corpse? Learned the truth?” Her hands ached from clutching the blanket. “I am his sister, Roane. I tried to help him. I tried to talk to him—” A sob escaped her and she pressed her blanketed fist to her mouth. The wool was rough and damp and real. “He’d always had a fondness for drink, but he’d be silly and playful and kind. Something…sometime after Michaelmas he became angry. He would say the most awful things. He hardly ever ate or slept, and he began to have tremors in his hands. I heard that he’d taken to gambling on the horse races and lost an obscene amount of money.”
Roane stepped toward her. “I am so sorry, sweetheart.”
“I just don’t understand.” The cold air felt like medicine to her aching throat. “I lie awake and I think about it…Why didn’t he come for the gold, if he was in trouble? Why would he move the money, rather than pay off his debts, or, heavens, the bills?”
Roane took another step. “I cannot say.”
“It just… I can’t…Aaaahhhhh!” Bending over at the waist, she screamed into the rain. “I am just so bloody angry!”
“I know, sweetheart.” Roane closed the space between them and pulled her into his arms. “Shhh, we need not speak of it anymore.”
She stood rigid, though she only wanted to melt into his embrace. “If I can’t understand, how can I help Harry? He is doing all the same th-things and I am just so afraid for h-him.”
Roane ran his hands up and down her spine, encouraging her to soften. “There is no way to save a man who doesn’t want to be saved. No matter how hard you try.”
Helen turned her head into the bare skin of his shoulder and accepted his comfort. He was warm and solid, and he’d known James. Like the rain-swollen river, her grief and fear and anger poured through her. Poured out of her like a terrible illness. All that was left was knee-buckling, gut wrenching sorrow and hideous, gulping pain.
She could control nothing in this life. Not death. Not love.
Roane stroked her hair, murmuring things she could barely understand as her shoulders shook and her breaths hitched. Saying things about how brave she was, how he wished he’d been there for James, how he admired her. Raspy sobs escaped her and she pressed her face deeper into the bare, salty skin of Roane’s neck and shoulder. And still he talked, like he did to his horses, murmuring a song of praise and comfort.
She cried for James. For Harry. For everyone, all the mothers and daughters and sisters and wives, who had lost a man they loved. For death itself, and life, and this broken-open world where nothing is safe and everything is taken away at the end.
She cried until the river of grief had run its course.
Slowly, her anguish faded, and she became aware of warm arms. Of salty musk, heavy muscle and a rhythm of breath that was not her own. Desire spiked through her, hot and demanding, and she pulled back.
“How ho-horrible.” She tried to laugh as she mopped her face with the blanket. “That was the most in-inelegant crying.”
Roane stroked a hand down her messy braid, sending tingles across her scalp. “You can cry on my shoulder anytime, love.”
She half-laughed, half-sobbed. Her blood was thick with him, with want for him. She looked into his warm eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Hmm?”
His other hand worked its way inside her blanket and slid up her bare thigh. She tried to scoot to the side but only managed to smash herself up against him. He had her trapped there, between his hard chest and the wet tree behind her.
“You are still chilled, buttercup.”
She was? She didn’t feel cold. She felt feverish. And nervous. And totally unsettled. Heat filled the slim space between them, tinged with the scent of smoke and pine. Rain pattered all around, a curtain of sound that encircled their small world.
She was too broken open and vulnerable for this. For him. She placed her palm on Roane’s chest, as if to give him a shove. His muscles were hard, hot beneath her palms, and she snatched her hand away. Fear, or something like it, snaked up her arms and sent her heartbeat banging against her ribs.
She wanted him. Too much.
“What are you doing?” she asked again, breathless.
“Touching you.” His hand inched up her thigh.
“Why?”
“Because I want to.”
He had a small scar above his left eyebrow, and another across the bridge of his nose. He’d probably acquired them in a fight. He was trouble, but she wanted him anyway. “And do you always get what you want?”
“The question is do you allow yourself to get what you want.”
She closed her eyes. “Of course I do. I’m spoiled.”
“I’m not talking about things, Helen. I’m talking about your heart. Your body.”
She couldn’t think about that right now. “I came on this journey.”
“Do you want me?” His breath feathered across her neck. “Do you want me to keep touching you? Will you let yourself enjoy it?”
Yes. God, yes.
No, the broken part of her screamed. Not him.
She shook her head and pushed his hand away. “You ask too much.”
He planted a kiss on the corner of her lip, then dropped his hands and stepped away. “Think about it.”
Oh, she would. She could hardly think about anything else.
Roane tinkered around their small campsite, thrust a hot cup of tea in her hands then disappeared to see to the horses.
Helen ate a soggy dinner of bread and ham, then snuggled down in her bedroll. The low light of the fire outlined Roane’s shirt and breeches hanging from a tree limb to dry. Her ruined dress and chemise were also there, and it gave her an odd thrill to see their things mingled together.
She flopped around on her uncomfortable pallet and tried to sleep. But boredom overcame her, and she did something she’d wanted to do for days. She snooped into Roane’s bag and pulled out his journal.
Torn between guilt and curiosity, she flipped open the pages and sat back on her bedroll.
Drawings filled the pages. Beautiful, skilled drawings of horses and arid hillside, of ragged looking men and strange plants. One was of a beach, something tropical and far away. Another was of a desert, flat and filled with scrub brush. He’d used some kind of red die to color the sand.
Had he drawn these? Where?
And how had he come by such skill? The drawings were more than a quick sketch of a place. They captured the feel of it, the smell of the air and the touch of the sun.
She turned page after page and the subject changed. Instead or horses and landscapes, he drew men. Ragged, rough looking men. Men crowded together in the hull of a boat. Men in chains wielding picks and chipping at huge rocks. Men in odd block-colored uniforms tied behind wagons.
A chill crawled up her spine, and she quickly flipped to the back pages. There were a number of drawings of her. Her face. Her seated atop Starlight looking ridiculous in her bonnet and skirts hiked up to her knees. The curve of her neck and shoulder. Her playing with Mittens.
She turned back to the beginning pages.
Roane had been somewhere strange, somewhere violent. He’d been whipped, perhaps worse. Her heart lurched into her throat, and she closed the journal with shaking hands. She didn’t know if she should feel compassion for him—or fear. What had taken him to these strange lands? Had he done something horribly evil?
She heard Roane’s voice through the trees and froze, then quickly stuffed his journal beneath her blankets. She rolled over and pretended to be asleep.
“The world is a tough place for a kitten without his mama.”
Helen bit her lip
. He was talking to Mittens.
“Despite the basket, you are lucky Lady Helen took a liking to you. Not every orphan is so fortunate.”
Helen listened to the thump of his footsteps as he drew closer to her makeshift bed. She felt Mittens scamper across the covers, then heard the clatter of Roane’s boots hitting the earth.
“Don’t yell at me again, princess, but we’ll have to put our palates side by side and share the blankets tonight. I can’t have you catching a chill.”
She couldn’t possibly pretend to sleep through that pronouncement. Helen opened her eyes and sat up. The fire had died down, and Roane was nearly lost in the shadows. She couldn’t look at him—she’d never known she could feel guilty and worried and curious all at once.
He added a log to the fire and stirred the hot ashes until they flamed. “My body heat will help keep you warm.”
Helen felt warm already. All he need do was talk of such things and she was plenty hot. Burning, in fact.
But she shouldn’t feel flushed. Not after what she’d seen in his journal. Then again, he had saved her. And held her while she cried… Oh, what a mess.
Roane tromped around the campfire, ignorant of the war occurring within her. “I’ll place warm stones beneath your palate as well. We need to take every precaution.”
“Are the horses well?” she asked, changing the subject.
From the corner of her eye, she watched him turn in her direction. “Starlight came through a fighter. It is pure luck that she is unharmed. A bit spooked, but I took her out for a walk and she is not injured.”
“And the men?”
“The river is impassible for a good ten miles.” Roane made an ‘up’ motion with his hands, and Helen struggled to her feet. She kept the blanket wrapped around her, clutching the journal.
But she struggled with the layers of wool and the journal fell to her feet.
Roane looked down. Three heartbeats passed in complete silence as they both stared at the stolen book. “The lady likes to pry.”
The Rogue Returns.smashwords Page 13