Naughty in Nottinghamshire 02 - The Rogue Returns (17 page)

She stared at his chest.

“You were chilled to the bone,” he explained. His right arm was still looped over her hip, his hand resting on the crest of her arse, and he didn’t move it.

She placed her hand on his bare chest. Her fingers were still cold. “You’re not chilled.”

“No.” He was on fire. Her small touch had his blood leaping and bounding.

She stared at her hand. Her breaths quickened, became almost little pants that brushed hot little exhales across his chest.

She was killing him.

God help him, Roane let her go and rolled to his feet in a swift motion that left his head spinning. All the blood had gone to his cock. “I need to make a fire.”

He couldn’t look at her. He scrubbed both hands through his hair, trying to calm himself down, then set to laying out the fire. He needed to get a source of heat and set water to boiling. Then he would give her something hot to drink.

He always carried flint and a bit of dry bark in his saddlebag, so, with patience, he managed to start the damp fire. He pulled on his wet cloak—even wet the wool would warm him—and filled the kettle at the river.

When he returned, the fire was blazing, heat rolling off it in near visible waves. Helen was a lump hidden in the blankets. He passed her the woolen shirt, and she grabbed it from him, not uttering a sound.

Using a padded cloth, he pulled the kettle out of the fire and poured some hot water into the cup. The rest he poured into the canteen.

He placed the canteen on Helen’s belly, atop the blankets so it wouldn’t scald her skin, and held the cup to her lips. “Drink this.”

“I can do it—” She sputtered as he poured the hot liquid down her throat, but swallowed. He did not stop until the warmth filled her belly.

“I feel awful,” she mumbled.

Roane pressed his lips into something like a smile. They had gotten through the worst of it. “You’ll feel better soon.” He hoped, anyway. There was no telling if the cold would get into her lungs, or if she would develop a fever.

He placed Mittens at her feet—the kitten had curled up close to the fire and was warm to the touch. Then he grabbed the kettle and once again headed to the river. This time, he kept his eyes trained for signs of the men following them. He saw nothing—it would be impossible for them to cross the river now.

On his way back to camp, he looked for rose hips. His Aunt Pearl had always made him rose hip tea when he was ill. To his luck, he found a small cluster of bushes and gathered a handful of the fruit.

But stomping through the wet woods did little to cool his longing. All he could see was Helen naked. Helen’s nipples. Helen’s belly. Helen’s thighs. Then, naturally following such thoughts—his mouth on her nipples. His fingertips tracing her navel. His knees between her thighs, pressing her open.

Torture.

He wasn’t going to touch her. He was going to stay in these damn woods until he had himself under control.

H
ELEN FELT LIKE SHE’D BEEN TRAMPLED BY HORSES.

Her every muscle was stiff and sore, and she could barely move. She sat huddled in a ball, her arms clutching the warm object Roane had given her.

Canteen. It was a canteen. She needed to clear the cobwebs from her head and get herself oriented. She brushed the tangled hair from her eyes and peered around. She sat beneath a structure of some sort and a fire burned just feet away.

Apparently, while she’d been sleeping and utterly useless, Roane had been a veritable font of ingenuity.

The man had somehow found a small, flat clearing on the side of this Godforsaken mountain and erected a shelter against the storm. He’d woven pine boughs into the branches over her head, effectively warding off the rain and dripping water. He’d also coaxed a fire to life amidst the torrential downpour and was drying her clothes over the flames.

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?”