WindBeliever (34 page)

Instead of trying to drag his cambric shirt up over his head, making it necessary for him to lift his injured arm, she picked up her knife and slit the shirt up the front, then began to tear it away from his chest. She glanced up at his snort of humor.

“What do you find funny now?” she grumbled.

“How long have you been wanting to do that, Cat?” he quipped. He saw her blush and his giggle was almost child-like.

She spun around, her blush deepening. She picked up the bowl of antiseptic and walked back to him. She held the needle and thread out to him. “Hold this.”

His lips twitched as he took the bowl. “Yes, Ma’am.” He knew she hadn’t appreciated his acquiescence when her own lips turned down in a heavy pursing.

“You’d better hope his blade was clean,” she told him, uncorking a bottle of astringent and turning it up over a thick pad of cotton cloth.

“I did him far more damage than he’s done me,” he said softly, regretting having missed with his aim. Just as he had been marked for life by the whip in Kaileel Tohre’s hands, he had marked the man he had fought with even more of a handicap.

“If this wound gets infected, you will have something to regret,” she said, hearing the self-condemnation in his tone.

Conar gasped as she began to wipe away the seeping blood and cleanse the wound. He had to grit his teeth to keep from crying out for the astringent was stronger than he had expected. It brought tears to his eyes.

“Damn, woman,” he ground out. “What’s in that shit?”

“Here,” she told him, ignoring his childish outburst. “Put your hand up here and pinch the wound closed.”

He did what she asked.

“How good are you at suturing?” he asked, seeing another faint line where once long ago he had been sewn by trembling hands that had worked so carefully and slowly.

“I can do as well as whoever did this,” Catherine said as she tapped gently with the needle’s tip on the old wound. “What did you do, make someone else mad at you?”

“My lady-wife,” he answered without thinking. At Catherine’s arched brow, her look of surprise staring back at him, he squirmed in the chair. “It was an accident. She didn’t mean to do it.”

Catherine sighed. “If you annoyed Elizabeth McGregor like you annoy me, she meant to do it.”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 163

He flinched, surprised that she knew of Liza. When she glanced down at him, he could see condolence in her pretty face.

“Prince Guil told me of her.”

Conar scowled. “And what else did that mincing pog tell you?”

“I would venture to say there is little I don’t know about you now,” she answered.

Her first stitch was quick and so expertly done, he barely felt it. He marveled at how quickly she worked, her eyes intent on his wound, her lips slightly parted as she concentrated to make the stitches even and secure.

“How many men have you sewn up?” he asked, trying to break that heavy concentration.

She shrugged. “You’re the first, but it isn’t all that different from embroidery although the feel of the material is different.”

His brows shot up. “The material?”

Catherine smiled although she didn’t look at him. “Flesh is not as soft as cotton weave, milord Conar. There is a pull to it as the needle goes through.”

He grunted, thinking her perception of the situation somewhat unorthodox. Most women would find it unpleasant, even though necessary, to stitch up their menfolk’s wounds, but Catherine had found it ‘different’. When she had him hold the needle and thread, when she had finished, so she cut the thread, he whistled at her nonchalant attitude.

“You’d make a fine Healer, Cat,” he complimented her.

“If I stay around you much longer, I will probably get plenty of practice at being one, Conar,” she shot back.

She turned to put away the suturing material but found her hand in his light grip. She looked down at him. “Thank you,” he said, smiling at her in a way he never had before.

She squeezed his fingers then eased them from his grasp. “You are welcome, milord.”

“Cat?”

She arched an inquiring brow at him.

“Will you walk with me in the garden tonight?”

If she was surprised by his request, she didn’t show it. “Aye,” she said, liking the unfamiliar word on her tongue. “I suppose I will.”

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

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The moon skipped high overhead, flitting through the trees, playing peek-a-boo among the branches. There was a stillness to the garden, not even a cricket chirping, that made the atmosphere seem surreal. A faint scent of roses drifted in the soft current and the reflecting pool’s surface was as smooth as glass.

“What is the garden at Boreas like?” Catherine asked.

She was walking at his side, her hand tucked into the crease of his elbow. She felt his fingers tighten on that hand for he had been holding it to his arm since they had stepped from the stone patio.

“It’s smaller than this,” he answered. “Not so formal. We have no mazes or pools although there is a fountain. My mother wanted it small so she could tend it herself.”

“Was there no garden before your father took the throne?”

“Aye, but it wasn’t like it is now. Mama took such good care of it, adding a bush here, a shrub there. And Liza loved it just as much. She used to ....” he stopped.

Catherine could feel his pain. She eased her hand from him and sat down on a stone bench, looking up at him in the soft moonlight, seeing the loss easing over his face.

“You miss her very much, don’t you?”

He seemed to mentally shake himself. “I don’t want to talk about her, Catherine.” He sat down beside her but might as well have been a thousand miles away for all the nearness she felt.

“I wasn’t prying, Conar,” she told him.

He nodded. “I know.” He stretched out his long legs and stared out into the garden where a wall of dark greenery caught his attention. “Has anyone ever got lost in that maze of shrubbery?”

he asked.

“I would imagine so,” she said. “When I was little, I use to hide from my nanny in there.”

He turned to look at her. “Did you never get lost?”

She shook her head. “Not me.”

He smiled. “No, I would think not.” He looked back at the shrubbery.

“Do you still want to leave us, Conar?”

Her question took him by surprise and he faced her, a puzzled look on his face. “What do you mean?”

“Mikel said you had asked for a ship to take you back to the Outland. He said you were anxious to go home.”

He looked away. “Things change,” he said.

There was a long moment of silence before Catherine commented on his enigmatic answer.

“Like between us?”

He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “Have things changed between us, Cat?”

“You know they have.” She watched him frown. “And you know the moment they did.”

He let out a harsh breath through his nostrils and craned his head back to stare up through the trees overhead. He seemed to be searching the dark heavens for his words.

“Is it pity you feel for me, Cat?” he asked in a grating tone.

She was quick to counter. “Pity for what?”

He lowered his head and stared at her. “For what you saw. For what was done to me. Does it make me less dangerous in your eyes. Less capable?”

She fused her gaze with his. “I don’t pity you, Conar. I am sorry you have been forced to endure such torment in your life, but you are not a man to inspire pity in any one. Compassion, WINDBELIEVER

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yes. Empathy, most assuredly. But pity? No. Pity has never been an emotion I have felt for you.”

“Just compassion and empathy,” he growled, turning away.

“And anger and rage and fury and exasperation and provocation and irritation and annoyance and resentment and impatience and ....”

She found herself in his arms, his mouth slanted tightly across her own to cut off the flow of words, his hands in her hair to hold her head still beneath the onslaught of his tongue that slipped so expertly, so unexpectedly between her lips, she felt as though she would faint.

Her body was sweetly pressed closely to his own. His nostrils filled with the tangy scent of lemon verbena that seemed to be a part of her flesh. Her short cap of dark curls was like silk beneath his calloused fingers and was as soft as a butterfly’s wings.

Catherine felt the heady play of his desire calling out to her and with all her heart she wanted to succumb to that sorcerer’s spell. Her entire being wanted to sink to the carpet of dewy grass at their feet, her body aching for his, her soul reaching out for the nameless need that was flooding her lower body with a heat and moisture that made her head spin.

“Cat,” he whispered against her lips, pulling his own rich fullness away, making her groan with the loss. “I don’t know what I’m doing when I’m around you,” he confessed, his lips plying kisses along her cheek and at her temple. “I am not me when I am with you.”

She had to say something or else she would explode with wanting him, but what came out of her sounded stupid, and she winced although the words seemed to incite him even more.

“Pray tell who are you, then, Conar?”

“A man lost, milady. Doomed.” He cupped her face in his hands and stared into her eyes. “A man who should not be in love with you, but who is.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “Love?” she whispered, but she knew he hadn’t heard her. He laid his forehead against her own. “I have no right to love you, Catherine.”

She reached up to cover his fingers with her own. “Why not?”

“Liza is not ....”

Catherine heard the sorrow in his voice, could feel the sense of betrayal he was feeling. His guilt was there in the dampness surrounding his dark blue eyes and his voice was ragged and filled with hopelessness.

“Would she want you to spend the rest of your life alone, milord?” she asked him, her hands tightening on his as he shook his head in denial. “Then why do you think she would disapprove of what you are feeling?”

“I should not feel this way, Catherine. It isn’t right.”

“What isn’t right?” she echoed. “Your wanting a little happiness in your life? You needing someone to spend your life with? What isn’t right, Conar? Tell me. Tell me what you think is wrong with the way we feel about one another!”

He looked at her, taking in the militant gleam, the look of expectation, of hope on her face.

Her heart was in her gaze and he knew at that moment she cared as much for him as he cared for her. And the knowledge cut through his own heart as the unknown man’s blade had cut through his flesh.

Before he could say something primarily male, and to her way of thinking stupid, Catherine shushed him with her fingertips.

“It has been two years since her death, hasn’t it?” When he didn’t answer, she asked him again. “Hasn’t it, Conar?”

He could barely breathe. “Aye. It has.”

“And how much longer do you wait? Another six months? Another year? Two? Three? How WINDBELIEVER

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many nights do you leave your bed and go up on the battlements of this keep or your own to walk until the morning light creeps over the horizon? How many laughs and tears and hopes and dreams will you keep to yourself? How many people will you keep at bay so they will not see the pain you try to hide so carefully?”

He lowered his head, stung by her words, knowing them for truth, but hurting from them nevertheless.

She heard him sniff and knew he was trying to keep the tears from coming. “Is it a weakness that makes you cry?” she asked and wasn’t surprised when he looked up quickly, his face a study of confusion. “Is it helplessness? Is it a bid for sympathy?”

“No!” he grated.

“Is it loneliness?” When he would not answer, she pressed the point of her weapon to his jugular. “Is it guilt for having survived when Elizabeth died?”

“Don’t,” he answered. The moisture crept unbidden down his scarred cheek. “Don’t.”

She reached down and took his hands in hers, refused to let him pull away. “I am offering you something I have never offered another man in my lifetime. Will you reject it because you feel unworthy to accept it? Will you turn me away because you feel you will betray Elizabeth?”

He stared at her for a very long time. He wanted to take her in his arms again, to tell her he wanted her, that he needed her, that he wanted to take her home with him to Boreas, to spend the rest of his life with her.

“What’s stopping you?” she asked, reading his thoughts as easily as she could feel his hands gripping her own.

“I’m afraid,” he answered at last. His body was quivering with emotion.

“Of what, milord?” she asked.

His breath caught on a hitch. His mouth trembled. “Of losing you, too.”

She reached out and gathered him to her, understanding at last his reluctance to claim her.

How much this man has been hurt, she thought, thinking of all Prince Guil had unwittingly relayed to her of Conar McGregor’s past. How much he had lost? How many loved ones had he forfeited over the years to the enemies who had tried to destroy him? Such pain would have broken a lesser man, she knew, but it had only strengthened this one.

“You can not live your life expecting to lose those you love,” she told him as she felt his tears warm and wet on the bodice of her gown. “We are born to die, milord. None of us live forever.”

“It hurts too much to lose someone you love, Catherine,” he sobbed against her.

“Yes, I would imagine it does, sweetheart, but is it not better to love and lose than to have never loved at all?”

“I don’t think I could survive another loss,” he admitted.

“So you will deny yourself instead,” she admonished. “That is not life, milord, that is existence.”

“You don’t understand, Catherine,” he whispered. “You don’t know what horrible things the people I love have suffered because of me.” He pulled away from her and fused his gaze with her compassionate one. “I can not allow the same fate to touch you.”

“So what do you do, then?” she asked, her voice filling with anger. “Do you walk away? Do you sail home to Boreas and take a mistress there? Someone safe and expendable?”