Pale Moon Rider (32 page)

She could see the narrowing of his eyes as another memory was jolted free. “You said I’ve been here three days? What is the date?”

“The ninth, m’sieur.”

“The ninth? Christ! And you are supposed to be getting married on the fourteenth? Why in blazes are you still here?”

The last binding around his ankle fell slack and she looked at him. “We did not have much choice, m’sieur. You could not be moved and we could not leave you here alone.”

“Well by God if you will just help me find my clothes—”

He started to push himself upright but the movement, along with any noble intentions, ended on an abruptly savage stab of pain. His right hand flew to cradle his ribs, an act that put him off balance and sent him arching back against the pillows with a second jolt. The stab in his side became a breathtaking flare of agony, one that stiffened his whole body and brought Renée rushing to his side.

“You must not move yet, m’sieur! You are not strong enough.”

Tyrone clenched his teeth against the sudden wave of nausea that rose in his throat and managed to gasp out a hoarse request for water.

Renée reached quickly for the pitcher and poured a glassful, then supported him firmly under the neck while he gulped the contents. His hand closed over hers again while she held the glass and did not let go, not even when his head fell back against the pillows and some of the tension around his lips started to relax.

“Take the bandages off,” he gasped.

“What?”

“Take the bandages off. I want t
o see how bad it is.”

“I do not think—”

His hand squeezed hers hard enough she feared the glass might break under the pressure. “Please.”

“Bien”
she whispered. “I will have to cut through the bindings and then rewrap them again.”

He nodded and pushed her hand away. Renée fetched the scissors and cut through the strips that held the wadded poultice in place, then carefully lifted the lot away until the wound was laid bare. This time Tyrone braced himself before he raised his head and with Renée’s help was able to angle himself forward enough to see the extent of the damage. He was relieved to see it was not the deep and mangled twist of lacerated flesh he half expected to see, although it was certainly ugly enough to draw a curse from his throat. The hole in his flesh had been sewn closed with thick black thread, then the raw edges seared with the red-hot blade of the knife. The surrounding flesh was blue and purple, with splotches of yellow spreading out from his ribs.

“It looks much better than it did three days ago,” she assured him. “And at least the bullet passed cleanly between two ribs. There were no pieces of bone or bullet to cut out.”

Tyrone offered up a snorted
hmphf
and laid his head back on the pillows. “You will have to forgive me if I sound less than deliriously grateful, but the last time I was flat on my back and incapable of tending myself, I was a child and my mother was holding my head while I puked my toes into a bucket.”

“Do you have to puke, m’sieur?”

“No, dammit.” He waited a moment before adding, “But I do have to do something else.”

She followed his gaze to the china thunderpot set in the corner. She retrieved it and removed the lid but when she would have lifted the edge of the blanket, his hand shot out yet again.

“I do not think I am that helpless yet, mam’selle.”

“You have been considerably more so these past few days,” she pointed out.

It was Tyrone’s turn to flush and when he did, it was with all the heat and magnificence of a male in his prime forced to acknowledge a basic weakness. He glowed from the bottom of his throat to the verge of his hairline and his eyes, normally so pale a pewter gray as to be almost colorless, burned with flecks of blue chagrin.

“Be that as it may, mam’selle,” he said tersely, “I was also oblivious.”

She handed him the pot. “Shall I wait outside?”

“Please,” he said through his teeth.

Renée was halfway to the door when a thought struck her. “You have a mother, m’sieur?”

“Had. She died when I was eight.” His head tilted on a wry angle. “You say that with such astonishment in your voice: did you think I was hatched from an egg?”

“No, of course not. I was merely inquiring in case she lived close by. You might be more comfortable being cared for by someone you know, like a mother or a— a …”

“Wife?” A frown supplemented the tilt. “I promise you, my status as an affirmed bachelor is well known throughout the parish.”

“I think it would be safe to say,
capitaine
, that you are not exactly what you appear to be to everyone in the parish. For all that you caper and mince about like a marionette, you might well have a wife and ten children hidden away somewhere.”

“I might,” he agreed with a belligerent scowl. “But I do not. Apart from my unchanging pleasure at being unfettered by hearth and home, a family would be somewhat more of a burden than a comfort to a man in my line of work. In fact, a commitment to anything or anyone who sought to rely on my being there every night to offer stability and succour would be rather selfish of me, would it not?”

Renée pondered this as she waited outside the room, giving him more than what she considered ample time to complete his task. He must have thought it overly generous as well, for she heard him clear his throat loudly several times before she finally obliged him by returning.

She replaced the lid on the pot and set it back in the corner, then went through the motions of straightening the blankets around his feet.

“Surely you must have cared for someone at some time,” she said from behind the shield of her lashes.

“Is that what you want to believe, mam’selle? That I am the result of some tragic affair gone awry? That instead of throwing myself off the nearest cliff in irreparable despondency over some lost love, I chose instead to avenge myself through a life of crime and dissolution?” He sighed and shook his head. “I am exceedingly sorry to have to disappoint you, Renée, but there was no woman involved in my fall from grace. There were no amorous tragedies in my past, no doomed love affairs to haunt me, no fists beating on the chest in despair, no injustices crying out for revenge.”

“Then why do you do what you do, m’sieur? Why do you kill and steal and taunt men like Colonel Roth until they become obsessed with catching you?”

“In the first place, I have only killed two men deliberately, and both were in the process of doing their best to kill me.” He watched her adjust the blanket for the tenth time and waited for her gaze to come to him. “Secondly, I do what I do … because I find it exciting. And because I am good at it. And, odd as it may sound, because it suits my bourgeois sense of humor to watch dolts like Bertrand Roth chase their tails in circles. What about you?”

“Me?”

“I should think marriage—not to a bastard like Vincent, of course—would solve a good many of your problems. Have you no wifely urges? No desire to have the security of a husband and protector? No pressing need to go to nest and produce a houseful of your own little goslings?”

“I used to think that was what I wanted, yes.”

“And now?”

“Now?” Her voice softened and her eyes seemed to lose their focus. “Now I would just like to feel warm again. I would like to find a place where I belong, where Antoine could learn to laugh and Finn could let us take care of him for a change.” A distinctly moist shiver reminded her of where she was and whose pale eyes were watching every change in her expression. To cover her uneasiness, she took up a roll of clean bandaging. “We should replace the poultice;
capitaine.
Do you think you can sit up or shall I fetch Finn to lift you?”

“I can sit up,” he said grimly and stretched out his right arm. “If you will help me.”

With his arm slung around her shoulder and Renée supporting him, he was able to sit upright and to his credit, there was only relief in the hiss of air he let out between his teeth.

“It gets easier every time,” he said, panting slightly into the crook of her neck.

“You speak from experience, m’sieur?”

A grunt was her only answer and, working as quickly as she could, she wound the roll of bandaging around his ribs to hold the poultice in place. He was leaning awkwardly against her and it was not easy to balance while her hands went round and round with the roll of linen. His face was pressed into the curve of her shoulder, and while she suspected he was, perhaps, just a little too dependent on her for support, there was not much she could do to lessen the intimacy.

“Speaking purely as a cad and a rogue,” he murmured, “I have to say I thought you were exceptionally warm the other night. Any warmer, in fact, and I would have had to douse us both in cold water.”

The roll slipped out of her hand and she had to fumble a moment in the blankets to keep it from unraveling over the side of the bed.

“I—I thought you said your memory was in a blur, m’sieur.”

“After Roth shot me. Before, however”—his fingers curled around a silky crush of blond hair and pushed it to one side, baring her nape—“everything is quite clear.”

She turned her head, intending to censure him, but that was a mistake. Their eyes, their mouths were level; strands of his dark hair had become tangled with hers to fashion a veil of gold and black threads between them.

“I even remember you kissing me by the coach,” he murmured.

“You remember it wrong, m’sieur.
You
were kissing
me!”

“You invited it.”

“I was … merely attempting to express my gratitude. For the brooch. It is the custom in
France
,” she added, hastily turning her attention back to the bandages, “to thank someone in this way for a kindness.”

“Really?” His thumb stroked the downy softness along her hairline. “Then I would, indeed, be remiss if I did not thank you properly for all you have done for me.”

Renée froze as she felt his lips press into the sensitive hollow just below her ear. Her eyes quivered shut under the immediate rash of cool, tingling goose bumps that rippled down her arms and legs and it was all she could do to keep her knees from buckling beneath her.

“Please, m’sieur …”

“I am only trying to express my gratitude, mam’selle, as feeble an effort as it may be.”

The murmured words vibrated against her skin. His lips, dry and rough though they were, were also bold enough to shock her into twisting free. He remained sitting upright for a long moment, a lopsided grin on his face—a grin that rapidly turned to panic when he realized he no longer had her support. Renée was able to catch him as he fell back, saving him from the worst of the jolt, but the amorous bravado had cost him. His mouth went white and beads of moisture broke out across his lip and brow, and he did not move or speak again until she was finished tying off the ends of bandage.

“And so you have proved what,
capitaine?”
She reached for the washcloth with brisk efficiency and plunged it in the basin again. “That you would make love to me now and kill yourself in the process, just to demonstrate your
virilité?”

“An interesting proposition, mam’selle,” he rasped. “You would naturally have to allow for some minor adjustments in technique.”

“Imbécile”
she muttered. She wrung out the cloth and laid it across his forehead, then, fearful of the fever returning, drew the blankets high under his chin and forced him to drink another glass of water, this one laced with a healthy dose of laudanum.

For the hundredth time—the thousandth—she found herself wondering what manner of senseless whim had prompted her to hide the wounded highwayman in the tower room. To hide him anywhere, for that matter. She had the brooch and her miserable hoard of money. She could have been hundreds of miles away from
Coventry
by now. Perhaps even on board a ship bound for
America
.
Capi
taine
d’Etoile
was enterprising and resourceful and as she had suspected earlier, just too damned stubborn to die. Given no other choice, Robert Dudley could have found a way to carry him home. She should have insisted on it, but no. She was here, nursing a hunted man, threatening to melt into helpless little puddles every time he looked at her. Or touched her.

“I will have Finn bring you some broth. You must try to get your strength back, m’sieur, and then you must leave this place as quickly as possible.”

“Believe me, mam’selle, I have no more wish to remain trapped here than you do. As soon as Robbie returns, I will be off your hands.”

Renée said nothing and when he saw the dubious look on her face he scowled. “In the meantime, I would appreciate some clothes. And my guns. Where the devil are my guns?”

“They are here, m’sieur. Directly beside you on the floor.”

She leaned over, intending to produce one to set his mind at ease, but the motion was halted when his hand closed around a bunch of golden curls and pushed it back off her shoulder, baring the faded blue bruise that marked her jaw.

“How did that happen?”