Taken by Storm (15 page)

Tomorrow.

“Sleep now, good doctor,” she whispered, as she felt the last stiffness fading from his body, until she felt him slipping away beneath her hands, until she knew she had brought him beyond pain and into sweet, peaceful slumber. She gently pulled his coat out from beneath him and spread it over his back. Then she gazed down at him, a huge lump filling the back of her throat as she put her lips beside his still cheek.

“Dr. Lord?”

Nothing.

She smiled then, listening to his quiet breathing, letting her hand rest on the side of his head. Then—very slowly, very carefully—she closed her eyes, leaned down, and buried her lips in his hair.

It was sweet-smelling and clean, like silk against her face.

She took a deep, shaky breath, and pressed the softest of kisses against his temple.

“Good night, my sweet friend.”

Blinding sunlight, glancing off the waiting guns, off the broad deck, off the waves that separated HMS Triton from the enemy battleship as she bore steadily down on them with deadly menace. They were vastly outnumbered, but beside him, Admiral Sir Graham Falconer—a man he would have followed to hell and back—stood with smiling confidence, despite the fact the odds were stacked heavily against them. And then the first salvos were exchanged, the decks trembling beneath the might of the flagship’s broadside, smoke pouring back in through the gunports. Within seconds, the sparkling sunlight dimmed beneath acrid smoke, and the world became nothing but the violence of sound, of spars and sails crashing down to the deck around them, of yelling men, shouted orders, metal flying, and controlled chaos. Around them men began to bleed, to fall, to die.
I want more speed out of the starboard gun crews!
Colin shouted to his first lieutenant, and was just turning to speak to Sir Graham when he was slammed hard to the deck, there to lay sprawled against a gun carriage. He tried to get up, but there was nothing but blinding agony somewhere below his kneecap. Tried again—and woke up on the surgeon’s table, the admiral’s anguished face above him, and all the while the deafening thunder of the flagship’s eighty guns booming around and above him, each one making the ship shudder deep in her bones as above, the fighting continued.

“The leg will have to come off, Sir Graham,” the surgeon said gravely, already picking up his saw. “The risk of it turning gangrenous is too great—“

“You take that damned saw to his leg, Ryder, and so help me God you’ll find yourself wishing you’d never met me. Now set it, damn your eyes!”

“But sir—”

“I said set it!”

Colin heard himself groaning, then there was nothing but Ryder, pouring rum down his throat until he was choking and dizzy . . . Ryder, pulling off his shoe and throwing it down . . . Ryder, grasping his ankle, bracing his own foot against the table and hauling on the fractured bone, the screams of his own agony ringing in his ears until he’d finally passed out. . . .

Colin came awake to the sound of rain tapping against the deckhead above. He lay there in the darkness, waiting for his servant to come in and tell him the ship’s position, its course, the direction and strength of the wind. Blinking, he sat up—and with the slipping away of the dream and the return of consciousness, felt the heavy plunge of his spirit at the cruel realization he was not in his cabin aboard HMS
Triton
, but was land-bound, and the sound he heard was nothing more than the dull tattoo of rain against a roof.

He wondered if he’d always come instantly awake at four in the morning, wondered if the memories would ever go away, wondered if he’d ever be able to get the sea out of his blood.

And suddenly realized just where he was—and whom he was with.

She
lay beside him, deeply asleep—as most people were, at four in the morning—her spine pressed intimately into his chest, her hand caught in his, her breathing soft and slow in the darkness. His blood ignited, bringing on an erection made all the more excruciating by the fact that it was already pressing into the softness of her backside. Taking a deep, unsteady breath, Colin carefully pulled his hand out of hers and eased away from her.

He stood up, trembling, aching, needing,
wanting
.

Dear God. Dear God, please give me strength. . . .

His head bent, the heel of his hand pressed to his forehead, he stumbled down the long, dark aisle, pulled the door open, and turned his hot face up to the cool, drenching rain that poured out of the night.

“God help me,” he said aloud, his fists clenched, his body rigid, the water streaming down his cheeks. He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut, baring his teeth in pain. “I just can’t resist her much longer. I beg of you, help me, give me strength, take this temptation away . . .”

The rain came down harder, beating like shot against his upturned face, soaking his hair and plastering it to his scalp. Water ran down his neck, his nose, pummeled his brow and cheeks and eyelashes.

He began to walk, away from the stable, away from
her
. His breeches pressed against his arousal, making each step an exercise in discomfort. He heard the door creak behind him and little Bow came racing out, streaking ahead of him through the darkness after a barn cat.

Walk, and it won’t hurt as bad. Walk, and put her out of your mind. You cannot have her. She’s promised to another. It’s not to be, damn it, the wind blows from a different quarter.

He walked faster, head bent, the rain streaming down his cheeks, dripping off the tip of his nose, beating against his bare head and soaking the back of his neck. Gravel crunched, then mud squished, beneath his boots as he crossed the drive and headed up the footpath that traversed the hills, coming down heavily on his good leg and mercilessly abusing his bad one. The latter screamed in protest and he walked faster, damning the fates that had made him look up the other day and see
her
sitting so coolly astride that damned horse, the fates that had thrown the two of them together and would only rip them cruelly apart in the end.

You cannot have her.

She belongs to another.

And she would never want you, if she knew what you had done.

Oblivious to the pain in his leg, oblivious to the coming dawn, he pushed himself, hard. He didn’t see the dog racing off into a wet tangle of blackberry bushes after a hare, didn’t smell the musky fragrance of blossoming wildflowers and wet grass, didn’t hear the birds coming awake around him, nor notice the sky to the east lightening with the approach of dawn. He could only think of
her
back there, asleep, could only relive the sweet bliss of drifting away beneath her touch last night only to wake up with his rock-hard erection pressing into the softness of her backside.

Didn’t she know what she was
doing
to him?

He passed a field, gray and misty beneath the still-dark skies, where several cows stared at him as he passed. One of them raised its head, let out a long, lonely, call, and began to walk after him, separated only by the fence. Sure enough, the rest of the herd began to follow, all stumbling along placidly through the mud, swishing their tails, and trailing in his wake.

He kept walking, too full of anguish to notice them, his chest so tight with distress and emotion that it hurt just to breathe. He thought about leaving her, and returning to London. He thought about how many other women there were in the world, and lamented the fact that he’d never met anyone he’d desired as much as he did his copper-haired employer. For five years he’d been a recluse, throwing himself into his new career as emphatically as he had his old one; for five years, he’d felt his purpose in life was to ease suffering, a small atonement for the lives he had taken or destroyed in the name of war; for five years, he had avoided entanglements for fear that women would reject him as a ruined hero.

And then he had met Lady Ariadne St. Aubyn. Her charm, her bubbly playfulness, her carefree attention to him made him aware, in painful, striking clarity, of all that he had been denying himself.

You can’t have her,
he told himself with the stoic practicality that had saved him from crushing despair after the courts-martial.
She belongs to another, and there is no sense pining for her. There are other women out there. She has merely opened a door, shown you that there is more in life than just being the finest veterinarian you can be, that you need someone to love and be loved by as much as the next person . . .

Then why didn’t he tell her about the court-martial? Why did he hold back when she wanted to know about his old life? After all, he’d long since accepted and come to terms with what had happened to him—it was others, who could not.

He trudged along through the wet grass, the fragrance of clover and damp earth filling his senses. Oh, how he wanted to share with her the pain he’d felt when his former career had come to its abrupt and untimely end; how he wanted to tell her what had really happened, so she might know that once he’d been a hero, and worthy of her. But he couldn’t. Because she, like his peers, like his former friends, like the rest of the world, would only pity and despise him, and he couldn’t bear the thought of that bright smile fading away when he revealed what he had done. She was young. She was class-conscious. She had not yet learned, might not ever learn, given her privileged spot in the room of life, that it was the person inside that counted.

He might have fallen from glory, but he was still the same man he had been.

A better one, probably.

The rain began to let up, the droplets fading to cool mist against his face. A flock of geese winged overhead, and still, he pressed on. He thought of Orla, and tried to recall her dark hair and wise eyes that had seen too much, but her face was lost to time and all he could remember was the little pirate ship, the all-women crew of which she had been a part, and their lady-captain, his cousin Maeve, who’d found her own true love in the arms of Sir Graham himself.

They were painful memories. Especially when he considered what had happened after he, Colin, had brought them all back to the Caribbean . . . and the storm had hit, changing his life forever.

Now, Orla was an ocean away, far beyond his reach. But even the brief flame he had felt for the Irish girl was nothing compared to the raging fire that burned in his heart and blood at the mere thought of Lady Ariadne St. Aubyn.

He ought to leave her. He ought to run, to flee, while he still had a heart beating within his breast.

Has anyone ever told you that you have very beautiful eyes, Dr. Lord?

He raked a hand over his wet face.

You’re a very handsome man, you know.

He ought to get as far away from her as he could, and as quickly as possible.

You have a very nice smile, too.

Yes, far away . . . and fast.

He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, pressing hard. He couldn’t leave her, of course. He was a man of honor, had given his word to stay by her side, to protect her and safeguard the well-being of the stallion. He could last just a few more days, couldn’t he? Besides, what he felt for the lovely heiress was nothing more than infatuation borne out of his own loneliness. It would go away, as soon as he saw her safely to Burnham and returned to London.

It had to.

Soaked to the skin, he walked until grey light revealed the patchwork-fields and hills, the fences and hedgerows and the muddy, rutted path on which he walked. He whistled for Bow, and turning, strode back the way he’d come, resolved to be strong where
she
was concerned, resolved to put some distance between them for the sake of his own heart, resolved to be practical about the matter, as he was about everything else in his life, and not let a bit of whimsy fill him so full of anguish.

The world had awakened during his absence. He heard the old sheepdog barking in the drive long before he came down the last hill and saw the coaching inn in the distance, people already moving in and out of the barn, travelers coming and going, and Meg hauling twin buckets from the well and carrying them into the inn. A curl of smoke rose from the chimney, and his stomach growled at the thought of breakfast.

His employer was nowhere in sight.

A pair of matched grays hitched to a fine carriage stood in the drive, their coats streaked with rain, their eyes on Colin. As he passed they, like the cows, tried to follow him. A groom pulled them back. With Bow at his heels he slipped into the barn, his gaze helplessly drawn to that place where he and Ariadne had spent the night. But there were people up and about the stable now, horses being led in and out, and the place where he had slept and dreamed and ached for a woman he could never have was marked by nothing more than a flattened patch of straw.

Passing their chaise, which had been pulled over to the side of the aisle, Colin peered into Shareb-er-rehh’s stall.

The stallion was gone.

A rush of fear and alarm swept through him and he whirled, only to collide with Meg.

“Ah, Mr. Lord! Your little brother asked me t’ give ye a message—said the horse needed exercise and he was going t’ take him out for a gallop. Said he’d be back in an hour.”

“Oh.” Colin sighed with relief. “Thank you.”

Touching his arm, Meg tilted her face up at him. “An hour ain’t so long, you know.” She winked. “But long enough to take a little
ride
of our own. What do ye say, handsome?”

Colin smiled, his mind groping for a suitable but polite excuse to decline. Though it would probably do him a world of good to take a tumble with Meg, he just couldn’t do it. Didn’t
want
to do it. He shook his head, and made some excuse that sounded implausible to even his own ears, leaving Meg to stare at him as though he’d grown a third eye, the corner of her mouth twitching with good humor.

“Ah, Mr. Lord. ‘Tis heartier fare I’m offering ye, but maybe there’s some truth that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Maybe next time, hmm? Come, follow me. Uncle Rodney’s serving breakfast, and that’s the least I can give ye.”