Susan Johnson (51 page)

“Now show me your bedchamber, Countess,” he said, his voice brusque. “I’ve waited all evening for your favors.”

“Really, Brusisson,” Roxane murmured, attempting a placating smile, “you could observe a modicum more gallantry.”

“You tease, madam, as if I were an adolescent.” His tone was a low growl. “Acquit me of any further need for gallantry. I’ve dangled after you through a great number of revolting poems.”

“I think, sir, you must have misunderstood your invitation.” A touch of sharpness shaded her words. Taking a step backward, she attempted to pull away.

His grip tightened on her arms. “On the contrary, madam, perhaps you misunderstood my intent.”

“And if I did, surely you don’t intend to threaten me in my own house.” Her voice had risen, a warning to the men in her drawing room.

“Why would I threaten, Countess?” he serenely replied, his calm voice counterpoint to the menace in his eyes. “Consider my interest only an intense fascination, impatience for your enticing charms.”

“Perhaps when I know you better, Brusisson,” Roxane retorted, struggling against his grip. “I find you moving too fast on such short acquaintance. Would you please leave now?” she said, and jerked away.

Only to find herself recaptured a second later. “Not so fast, my puss. I find I don’t wish to leave yet.”

“You should listen to the lady,” a male voice said.

The Earl swiveled around to see the two guests no
longer sleeping but at attention in the doorway of the drawing room. “And you two can bid the Countess good night,” he ordered, “and be on your way.”

“The Sassenachs never did have any manners,” the dark-haired man drawled, his hand on his sword.

“Unhand her, Brusisson,” the other man ordered.

At that inopportune moment Roxane saw Robbie materialize out of the shadows of the corridor behind Harold Godfrey, at the far end of the hall where the servants’ staircase lay. Instantly placing her hand on Godfrey’s arm, she urged him toward the main staircase, a smile she hoped was sufficiently real considering her panic gracing her mouth. “I have a suggestion, Harold,” she cajoled, her voice husky, frantically concentrating his interest on her so he wouldn’t look around. “Perhaps you could return some other time when the ah”—her glance flicked toward the two men—“situation would allow us to become better acquainted. Come back tomorrow,” she added in a whisper, “when these young cubs are gone. They’re both too drunk to reason with. Please …”

He looked down at her for a brief moment, weighing her sudden reversal, the sincerity of her offer, against the possible problems arising from two inebriated Scotsmen with their hands on their swords.

“Tomorrow at five,” she murmured definitely. “I’ll make certain that we can visit … privately.”

His eyes held hers for a moment more, and then he released her. “Your servant, madam,” he curtly said, resentment still prominent in his tone. Not prone to bloody himself for her, he added, “Until tomorrow.”

Robbie was striding toward her before Godfrey had disappeared down the stairway. Casting a nervous glance down the carpeted stairs at the receding figure, she rushed to intercept him, pushing him backward, with a whispered warning. “He’s going, Robbie. Don’t do anything foolish. Think of Johnnie.”

His resistance lessened at the logic of her words, although his expression was still mutinous. But he relented
enough so she was able to propel him back into the shadows, where he stopped so suddenly, she ran up against him.

He steadied her against his body, his arms sliding down her back, an instinctive impulse. “He touched you,” he heatedly whispered. “I’ll kill him.”

“No, don’t say that,” she pleaded, covering his mouth with her fingers, her heart pounding against her ribs at the near calamity. “It’s over. He’s gone. Please …”

His gaze seemed to focus again, the violence vanished from his eyes. Whether because of her entreaty or some internal perception, his blind incaution was gone as suddenly as he’d appeared from out of the shadows. His hand came up to capture her fingers at his mouth and he kissed them briefly, a courtier’s mannered caress. “Thank you for keeping Godfrey occupied.” His voice was calm again. “It was absolutely critical. But we have to get Johnnie inside now.” His hand on her back slid away from her body, and he signaled for the two men who waited at the end of the corridor to follow him. “We have him safe,” he added, pulling Roxane along toward the back staircase. “But he’s unconscious and seriously hurt.”

Within the hour Johnnie was washed, medicated, fed, and sleeping peacefully in a clean, soft bed. But Roxane’s housekeeper who’d cared for his back had shaken her head in dismay. “It’s putrid, my Lady,” she’d said, “and I don’t rightly know if the poultices will save him.”

A message had been sent to the
Trondheim
so Elizabeth would know Johnnie was free. And the rescue party gathered in Johnnie’s bedchamber, anxiously keeping vigil, concerned with his condition. The process of cleaning his wounds had been a gut-wrenching experience. Even familiar with battle wounds as all of them were—Roxane had seen her husband Jamie die after Namur—the mutilation and suppuration of Johnnie’s flesh, the taint of decay in the open, oozing flesh had alarmed them all. An
apothecary who could be trusted had been sent for, an authority to prescribe the proper regimen.

“Do you think Elizabeth will come tonight?” Adam asked.

“Do you think Redmond can stop her?” Robbie quietly replied. “Even though the streets must be swarming with patrols by now.”

“
I
wouldn’t stay on the ship not knowing my husband’s condition,” Roxane declared, a disturbing solemnity in her voice.

Robbie gazed at her, the firelight bathing his face in flickering iridescence and shadow, his eyes veiled in shade, their expression obscured. “You went to Jamie at Namur, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, those long-ago events, the overwhelming sorrow, vividly recalled in this sickroom with a man half-dead as Jamie had been.

Her grief was obvious, and without speaking Robbie rose and went to sit by her on the settee. Taking her hand, he enclosed it gently in his. “I wish I could have been there to help,” he murmured, his voice low, grave, inaudible to the others.

She leaned into him, and he put his arm around her, the half-forgotten memories fresh again, graphic, and she needed him for comfort against the sudden aching emptiness.

Munro diplomatically talked of other things then—of the plans for Holland, of the apothecary’s return, of Redmond’s competence to see Elizabeth safely to Roxane’s. He handled the conversation so there was no need in the shrouded firelit room for Roxane to exert herself to be sociable or act as hostess to her guests. She appreciated his kindness; she wasn’t capable at the moment of the least politesse.

The apothecary arrived first bringing a satchel of drugs and potions, salves and ointments. He was deeply engaged in his diagnosis, with everyone standing about him, carefully listening to his discourse, when a flurry of sound in the corridor alerted them to Elizabeth’s arrival.

She was running, as were her guards, and the door swung open before a servant could reach it; Elizabeth
stood framed for a moment on the threshold, her face haunted with fear.

Under the circumstances no one had the inclination for polite salutations, or the heart to acquaint her with the grim truth. And she didn’t ask or stop or deflect her gaze from the man on the bed as she crossed the large room in a swift direct course.

She stood by the bed for an affected moment, utterly thankful to see her husband alive; without reservation, grateful. Her eyes blurred with tears. Then she touched Johnnie’s hand gently, as if to reassure herself he was real, and her hand moved after a time to his head, careful not to wake him, her fingers light on his dark, ruffled hair. Her face was wet with tears, her heart tormented with anguish; she thought of how terribly he’d suffered, how much pain he’d endured.

No one dared intrude until she turned from the bed. “Thank you all for putting your lives at risk, she said quietly, “and for bringing Johnnie out in time.” His wounds weren’t bandaged, for any pressure caused new bleeding, so the extent of his injuries was grimly apparent. “He’s going to live,” Elizabeth softly murmured, a tentative smile transforming her tear-streaked face. “I’m going to see to it.”

She moved to hug Robbie first and next Roxane, who stood at his side, and then Munro, Adam, and Kinmont. Even the housekeeper and apothecary were included in her joyous gratitude, although they weren’t quite certain how to respond to such democratic behavior. After embracing everyone, her relief tangible, vital, as if nothing were unattainable now that she had her husband back, she turned to the apothecary. “Now tell me what we have to do,” she briskly said, this woman who thought nothing of taking on five-year building projects and an abusive father, who had survived eight years in the Graham household. Untying her cloak and tossing it on a chair, she added, “I intend to learn how to nurse a fever. Although,” she went on in warning, “I also intend to feed him well and forbid cupping. Just so we all understand each other.”

Her voice—its competent tone, its unhesitating
certainty and brisk optimism—must have touched some part of Johnnie’s brain because his eyes half opened even in his sedated state and his lips moved. And he whispered, “Bitsy,” with a faint smile.

Spinning around at the sound of his voice, she flew to the bed and, placing her face close to his, she looked into his half-lidded gaze. “I’m here,” she whispered, fresh tears in her eyes.

His eyelids drifted shut again, in his drugged state the effort to hold them open as arduous as moving mountains. “Don’t go,” he murmured, his hand moving toward her fractionally.

Her fingers laced through his, she squeezed his hand. “I’m never leaving,” she whispered.

His fingers tightened infinitesimally on hers, and he drifted back to sleep.

In the next half hour everyone gradually took their leave as Elizabeth settled into the sickroom with the nursing help and a full complement of servants.

It was almost three in the morning when Robbie walked Roxane down two flights of stairs to her bedchamber. As they stood outside her door, a small silence fell between them, the events of the evening wrenchingly emotional, their feelings sensitized by all the reminders of the fugitive quality of life. “Thank you for your kindness tonight,” Roxane softly said. “I’d thought those memories long buried.”

Robbie shrugged, a negligent acquittal. “The circumstances were too similar. Of course you’d remember.” Then his smile flashed in the dimly lit hallway. “At least Elizabeth’s uncompromising in her optimism and prepared to take charge of the sickroom. She and the apothecary were heatedly discussing whether they should wake Johnnie with a new poultice when we left.”

“They make a good pair, she and Johnnie,” Roxane
noted. “They’re both prompt to take action, they have a way of dealing—”

“May I come in?” he softly interrupted, his gaze on her face, his interest at variance with their conversation.

She stopped in midsentence, a half-formed word on her tongue, her breath in temporary suspension. She looked up at him for a trembling moment, her heart in her eyes, and then said, “No,” in a breathless rush. The temptation to say yes was powerful in the darkened hallway, with her emotions in disarray, with his lean young body so close, with the unsubstantial specter of Jamie’s death haunting her.

Robbie drew in a deep breath of restraint and courtesy, his desire sharp-set. “Good night, then,” he murmured, touching her hand lightly with his fingertips. He didn’t dare kiss her; there were limits to his self-discipline.

“I’ll see you in the morning.” Her voice sounded unnatural, constrained.

He nodded, not capable of casual speech. And watched her turn and enter her bedroom, the door softly closing behind her.

Quiet settled on the large house off the Canongate, on a night crowned with success, the Laird of Ravensby and his lady free from their captors, the Carres in safe refuge, secure from the hue and cry raised at their escape.

Candles burned in a small number of rooms in the Countess’s house, but their radiance was shrouded from the outside by heavy draperies. Those few occupants still awake, Roxane among them, found sleep elusive.

She was curled up in a soft chair near the fire, contemplating the rich color of the claret in her glass. She’d thought the wine would help her sleep, but she’d hardly drunk it, she realized, turning the glass in her hands, her thoughts too much in tumult, too restless. She set the glass aside and rose from the chair, turning away from the grate.

In midrotation, she stood arrested, her hand on her
mouth, her eyes wide with shock, the firelight shimmering off her yellow silk gown.

“I couldn’t stay away,” Robbie said, leaning against the door, still dressed as she’d left him or rather half-undressed, as he’d been since returning from his deliverance of Johnnie. His potent virility struck her like a blow. As he’d given up his shirt to bind Johnnie’s wounds on the journey from the prison, his upper body was nude, except for his unbuckled leather jack. His muscled arms and broad chest gleamed in the candlelight.