Wordlessly he got up, went to his sea chest, and got his surgical instruments and spectacles. With precise orderliness, he lit the lantern, and laid out forceps, tweezers, a scalpel, bandages, and a small bottle of rum.
He had never performed surgery on a human before, but he shoved aside his misgivings and concentrated on the task at hand. Lifting her tiny wrist, he pressed his index finger to her pulse and found it to be steady and strong. Then he pulled the lantern close, rolled her gently onto her side to expose the injured arm, and with two quick, steady slices, slit the sleeve from wrist to elbow, then elbow to shoulder.
His patient moaned and gave a little sob, and he gently laid his hand against her cheek, smoothing the fragile, dewy skin and feeling something thick and burning rising up in his chest.
Please God, help me to help her. . . .
He leaned down and tenderly kissed her damp, tangled hair.
“Colin,” she whispered, opening her eyes and looking dazedly up at him. “I’m so scared. . . .”
“You’re going to be all right,” he murmured, close to her ear. “Just lie still and think of happy things. Clouds floating over the sky. Birds singing on a sunny morning. Kittens, sleeping in the sunshine.”
He pulled back, peeled the wet, bloody fabric from her arm, and with gentle fingers, examined the injury.
Given his former profession, Colin had seen enough gunshot wounds in his life to recognize what he saw now, and hot rage pounded against his temples with such force that he had to sit back and press his fingertips against them to quell it. He shut his eyes, briefly, until his emotions were once again under control. Then, he peered down through his glasses, pulled Ariadne up and into his lap, and with businesslike efficiency, went to work.
The wound was an open, gaping hole, still trailing a bloody thread of crimson. He put his fingers against its perimeter and pushed, hard. Blood bubbled out and trickled down the white flesh of her arm, and the girl made a sobbing, wrenching noise deep in her throat.
Instantly, Bow was there, licking her face.
“Be brave, my little Ariadne,” he murmured, wishing desperately that he wouldn’t have to cause her further pain, wishing he could take it on himself and thus spare her the agony of what he had to do. “It’s going to hurt.”
“A lot?”
“Maybe, sweetheart. Just . . . hold onto me, alright?”
She whimpered, terrified and dazed, one hand reaching out to grasp a handful of his shirt like a child with a toy. “Am I going to die, Colin?”
His skilled fingers pushed against the wound, forcing more blood out of it to cleanse it, and dimly, it occurred to him that what he was doing was probably the closest he would ever come to phlebotomy. He moved his fingers a fraction of a inch, and sure enough, he felt it—something hard just beneath the skin and buried in the superficial fibers of her bicep.
“No, my love, you’re not going to die,” he said, trying to sound cheerful and chiding in the hope of calming her. “Besides, who would pay me the twelve thousand pounds if I were to lose you?”
“Oh, Colin—” Bravely, she tried to laugh, but the sound came out as a hitching sob of fear, and he enfolded her tiny hand within his own large one, his fingers gently stroking her forearm until she stopped trembling. Then he pressed her hand to his lips, not noticing the way her eyes fastened on his in wonder, trust, and . . . something else.
My love, he had said. Maybe he had not been aware of his own words, but Ariadne was.
He rambled on about sunshine and kittens, detaching that part of his mind from the part belonging to the professional, competent surgeon she had first seen on his knees in the street. But Ariadne wasn’t thinking about kittens. She was looking at his face; the hair tumbling over his brow, the planes of his cheeks, the glint of moonlight off his spectacles, the intensity of his gaze. She thought that maybe if she concentrated on him, she wouldn’t feel the pain as much. But feel it she did, and when she cried out at the first touch of the scalpel, she saw the muscle twitch in his jaw, the flash of anguish in his beautiful eyes.
My love, he had said.
She closed her eyes and drifted off, feeling herself floating . . . sinking down beneath dark, gentle blankets. . . .
“Colin?” she murmured.
His hand was warm and gentle against her cheek, smoothing the wet hair away and stroking her skin to soothe her. “It’s only a flesh wound, with the musket ball still caught inside. If you can just hold on for a few minutes longer, we’ll be all through.”
“Shareb-er-rehh—”
“Has led your pursuers a merry chase, and I have complete confidence in his ability to lose them. Now be still, love, and think of all the little foals he shall some day sire. . . .”
“Yes, little foals. . . .”
Colin reached for his tweezers and gently palpated the muscle, trying to pin down the exact location of the lead fragment. There. Right . . . there.
Balancing her in his lap, he pulled the lantern close to her arm, bent his head, and knitting his brow in intense concentration, put the tweezers against the wound.
The girl’s eyes flew open, her teeth catching her bottom lip hard enough to raise blood.
“Little foals,” he repeated softly, in a low, soothing tone. “Little foals, kicking up their heels and running alongside their mamas—” he touched the tweezers to the lead ball once more, trying to see what he was doing in the lantern’s meager light—“little foals, with little feet and little faces, little foals with fuzzy little whiskers and long, long, legs like their papa’s. . . .”
So intent was he on his work that he didn’t quite notice the moment she lost consciousness, and it was only the distant thunder of galloping hoofbeats that brought him back to awareness of the present.
His head jerked up in alarm, and he was seized by an impulse to sweep up the girl and make a run for it—but as the hoofbeats grew louder and louder, he realized it was no threat at all, but Shareb-er-rehh.
The stallion burst over the furthest rise and silhouetted against the moonlit sky, charged along the rim of the hill before plunging down it and toward them. He lurched to a stop, tossed his head, and prancing with triumphant fire, came forward, his nostrils flaring and the breath rushing through his lungs.
“Did you lose them, boy?”
Shareb tossed his head as though to respond, and stepping forward, lowered his nose to his mistress’ still body, his nostrils flaring at the pungent scent of blood.
“She’s going to be fine,” Colin said. Tweezers in hand, he raised his arm and pointed to a spot several feet away. “Now off with you, and let me work. Go chew on some grass or something.”
Shareb put his ears back and eyed him flatly.
“Go!” Colin said, waving his hand.
The stallion squealed, trotted a short distance away, and stood staring.
Once more, Colin bent his head, the hair falling over his brow. He pushed it back with his wrist and hurriedly found the place where the lead ball was. Behind him he heard slow, hesitant hoofbeats approaching. They came to a stop, and heavy, hot breathing blasted the back of his neck.
“Go away, Shareb.”
The breathing grew hotter.
“Go away, Shareb, I will not hurt her!”
But the stallion refused to move, and trying to ignore him, Colin slid the tweezers beneath the ragged edges of torn skin and skillfully retrieved the lead fragment.
The girl never stirred. Shareb’s head hung protectively over Colin’s shoulder, and twice, he had to elbow the stallion away so that he could work. He squeezed more blood from the wound, pinched and stitched the edges shut, and cleaned the blood away with a piece of linen soaked in rum. Then he wound a bandage around the arm, tied it in a snug knot, and began to get up. His feet and legs had fallen asleep, and he stumbled as he set Ariadne down on the blanket, stood up, and passed a weary hand over his brow. His body aching with fatigue, he moved a little distance away and there, stood leaning against a tree.
Thinking.
Moments later, when he returned to the little group, he saw the rum bottle lying empty on the grass, and Shareb eyeing him innocently.
Colin was too weary to scold him. He looked at Thunder, dozing with one hind leg cocked beneath him, and the two dogs, both curled up on the blanket with Bow nestled against Ariadne’s calves. Only Shareb-er-rehh was awake, the lantern light glowing in his dark eyes, and Colin wondered what was going through that canny, equine mind.
Mentally dismissing the horse, he sat down beside the girl, slid his arms beneath her, and wrapping her in the blanket against the cool night air, pulled her protectively up against his chest. Shareb eyed him for a long, decisive moment; then, he gave a great sigh, walked a few feet away, folded his long legs beneath him, and lay down. His tail flicked once, his sides heaved, and then he was asleep.
Around them, the night breathed, deep and silent at last. There were no hounds, no reward-hunters in hot pursuit, nothing but a clear sky, the distant hoot of an owl, and there, just above the treetops, a bat winging its way through the darkness.
His precious burden sheltered in his arms and held protectively close to his heart, Colin leaned back against the wheel of the chaise, and put his lips against her damp hair.
For a long, long, time he remained awake, staring bleakly into the night and aching for the woman he held so tenderly in his arms. Sometime between midnight and the wee hours, his head lolled against the wheel spokes, the spectacles slid from his nose, and the veterinarian joined his companions in exhausted slumber.
CHAPTER 17
Ariadne became slowly aware of several things at once. A burning ache in her arm that throbbed in time with her pulse. Damp, itchy clothes that clung to her skin. The lingering scent of a spent wick, a soft linen shirt against her cheek, the sound of deep, rhythmic breathing and a heartbeat thudding beneath her ear.
And warmth. Hard, encompassing warmth, beneath her face and surrounding her back and shoulders.
Enclosing her.
Protecting her.
She opened her eyes, and there, so close she had to adjust her vision to focus on it, was the pale, moonlit wedge of the veterinarian’s chest.
Full awareness came quickly back to her, and bits and pieces of things she couldn’t fully remember. Those horrible men, she remembered them, and the gunshot that had cracked the night the same moment she’d been hit. Shareb-er-rehh, calling on his extraordinary speed to bring her to safety; how she’d remained aboard him she didn’t know, but she had a hazy memory of tumbling from his back and into the doctor’s arms, and then, later, his soothing voice and comforting touch as he’d made her arm hurt more and told her to be brave.
And yes, his eyes. . . . She remembered his eyes, those beautiful, gentle eyes, the intense concentration behind his spectacles as he’d stared down at her arm and dug at her flesh with the same fixed purpose he had demonstrated when he had saved that poor, dying dog from bloat.
Colin . . .
She gazed at all she could see of him; the base of his throat, and the wedge of skin just beneath her lips, where soft, wiry hair lay and a pulse beat rhythmically. She moved her head just enough to nuzzle his shirt aside and put her mouth against it. He smelled clean, of English wind and English pastures, hay, clover, and wild grasses.
Colin. . . .
She kissed that warm, beating pulse.
He did not stir, and gingerly, Ariadne tried to push herself out of his protective embrace. It was no easy task, with his arms locked loosely around her, but she felt the call of nature and had no choice but to answer it. Holding her breath, she moved back another inch, and the arm that weighed down her shoulders slid off and thumped heavily to the blanket.
She froze. He made a soft, unintelligible noise, but did not wake.
She stood and looked down at him. He lay with his back propped against the hard spokes of the chaise’s left wheel, his head at an uncomfortable-looking angle to his body and his lashes making long, sweeping crescents atop his cheeks. Moonlight gilded his hair and turned it silver.
He had not abandoned or forgotten her after all, but had come for her.
He had saved her.
He had saved all of them.
“You are beautiful,” she whispered, her heart in her throat. “I think . . . I could love you.”
His spectacles lay upside-down on the grass beside his hip, and carefully picking them up and folding them, she put them on the seat of the chaise. The movement sent pain winging the length of her arm and wincing, she hesitantly touched the area. A bandage bound the wound, tight enough that it felt snug and secure. Her eyes filled with tears of adoration, and as she gazed down at her handsome, gentle savior, sleeping like a babe in the starlight, she felt her heart constrict, then overflow with something so powerful it did not even have a name.
In that moment, she knew that she loved him.
Knew that she’d loved him from the moment she’d seen him bending over that dying dog.
“Dear, dear, Colin . . .” she whispered, kneeling down beside him and placing her lips against his forehead. She leaned back, just looking at him, and feeling the tears gathering in her eyes. “God help me, but I have fallen in love with you.”
And then, suddenly, Maxwell, her betrothal, and the plight of the Norfolk Thoroughbred swept over her like a dark cloud.
She moved stiffly away and attended to her needs. The brook babbled quietly in the darkness, and kneeling on its bank, she splashed water on her face and tried to make sense of things. The stars reflected on the flat parts of the water, refracted into millions of bright sparkles on those broken areas where the brook tumbled over rocks and rises. She stared down into the depths, her heart aching with longing and despair and something she couldn’t quite grasp, couldn’t quite understand.
Colin . . .
Bits and pieces of scenes came back to her. That hot kiss on the muddy slope, promising further, untold delights. His hand on her breast, sweeping up her thigh on a trail of fire. The long gazes, the accidental touches, the silent glances when the other wasn’t supposed to be looking, and always, the constant awareness and underlying attraction they each had for the other. She thought of the sound of his voice, the taste of his kiss, that crooked grin and his helpless laughter when she said something outrageous. She was lost. But then, she had been, from the moment she’d first seen him and he’d glanced up and caught her with those striking, oddly beautiful eyes.
Just thinking of his kisses, the gentleness of his strong, warm hands—and the idea of them touching her here, there, and all over—was enough to melt her from the inside out and reduce her to a state of mindless need and want.
Lady Ariadne St. Aubyn got to her feet and stared resolutely across the darkened pastures that stretched away toward the pink rim of the coming dawn.
There was nothing to do but face the truth.
She loved Colin Lord, veterinarian.
Wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything in her entire life.
Head high, she turned and went back the way she’d come.
# # #
“Blowing a good one, sir,” said his first lieutenant, as Colin, with difficulty, came up on the steeply heeling deck and noted the waves roiling, thrashing and building all around. He glanced up at the pennants, noting the strength and direction of the wind, and braced himself against the crutches, keenly aware that the officer had moved a bit closer to him, protectively, though he was trying to be discreet about it.
“Time to take in the courses,” Colin said. “Get some cloth off her and let her fall off a few points so the seas are running under her counter. ‘Twill make it more comfortable for those who are below, recovering from their injuries.”
The order was conveyed, and men ran to the shrouds, others to the lines and braces. Above, the sky was turning a deep, ugly charcoal, almost green, and a gust of wind hit the mighty man o’ war, heeling her over even farther, still. Desperately, Colin braced himself against his left crutch,
the pain in his shattered leg radiating up past his kneecap, his thigh, and into his groin. Nausea flared in his stomach, and he bit it back, determined not to show weakness, determined to prove that he could still do this.
He lifted his gaze to the horizon, at the parade of building swells marching toward them, and there, he saw it, a sailor’s nemesis, a rogue wave, huge, towering, and heading mercilessly toward them.
He shouted a warning, and felt the thing slam into the starboard hull and burst high, the giant spray of towering foam hanging suspended against that black cloud before the monster wave broke and fell streaming over the deck. The sheet of gray-green water came sluicing toward him, bursting through scuppers and crashing up against the boats in the waist, washing over men who, like himself, had seen it coming and grabbed onto anything they could hold. Colin had seen and survived many a rogue wave in his years at sea, but never on crutches.
The water slammed against him, and he never had a chance, no matter how great the strength in his arms, no matter how prepared he was for it. It swept the crutches right out from under him and he fell, hard, to the deck, there to lay gasping, helpless and humiliated, as the water rushed past him and poured out of the larboard scuppers, carrying him with it; then Lieutenant Pearson, his face pale, was there, grabbing his wrist before he could be swept over the side, and Colin knew then, that he was never again going to be able to inspire confidence amongst those who looked to him to lead them, if he could not even stand up. . . .
# # #
He lay sleeping where she had left him, a golden angel lacking only the wings and the halo. In the starlight, his hair was almost silver, and the effect was enough to lend him a sort of ethereal mystique that held her breathless and spellbound.
Ariadne knelt down before him.
It has been said that if you stare at a sleeper for long enough, he will waken. Squatting, she propped her elbows on her knees, her chin in her palms, and focused her gaze on his closed eyelids. But after five minutes of this, he still had not moved.
Growing impatient, she reached out and carefully touched his hair.
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