A Rose in Winter (63 page)

Christopher wandered in and out through the depths of sleep as the day aged into night and the sun dawned afresh the next morning. He roused to awareness after the morning star had taken a place of dominance in the eastern heavens. Aggie came with a thick broth for the invalid and fluffed the pillows, bracing his back with their feather softness. When he refused to be fed, she provided a way for him to feed himself without undue stress, then set about to tidy the room. He sipped the soup from a mug while his gaze followed Erienne, who had remained to help the woman. He made no attempt to conceal his interest, giving cause for Erienne to worry at his lack of discretion. She did not lightly dismiss the fact that Aggie was fond of her master and had great hopes for the continuance of the family.

Christopher slept through most of the day and into the night, waking at intervals to take liquids and broth that either Aggie or Erienne pressed upon him. On the third day, a fever came upon him, and with it Erienne's fears mounted, but Aggie was quick to assure her that it was not an uncommon occurrence with a wounded man. The housekeeper bade her to bathe his skin with tepid water to reduce the fever and left her mistress to the chore, seeming undismayed that she had requested the lady of the manor to be that familiar with a man who was not her husband. While he slept Erienne found the task genuinely unsettling. With the freedom to peruse and touch his near-naked form, she became aghast at the frequency with which her gaze caressed the wide shoulders, the tapering, furred chest, the lean, hard waist, and the flat belly. She could not bring herself to uncover him below the hips, and the merest thought of doing so brought a livid blush to her cheeks, even in the privacy of the room.

Retaining a semblance of composure while he was awake was another ordeal, even though he was not quite lucid. His cheeks were flushed with the fever and his eyes somewhat glazed and overwarm as they rested on her. Still, she became excruciatingly aware of the effect of her ministering when her glance innocently strayed to where the sheet covered his loins. Of a sudden her own cheeks were flooded with color, but when her eyes flew upward, he met her stare calmly and without chagrin.

She fled the room in haste, and once in her chamber, she flung open a window and attempted to cool her burning cheeks in the crisp air. She struggled with a feeling of her own guilt, for in the last days she had been so painfully aware of him as a man, of his blatant sensuality, and of the wild, flowing current of excitement that lay just beneath the surface of every glance they exchanged, every touch, every spoken word.

Once she had hated him for causes she had thought were justified, but the sting had been taken out of her ire in slow degrees. It could not be lightly discounted that he had risked his life to save Farrell and the Becker girl. The stabilizing force of hatred had flown, leaving her prey to the softer emotions, and love, that fearsome, dangerous, overpowering emotion, was nestling in like a tiger of the wilds, securing its lair deep in her mind and heart, where it would ever threaten her resolve.

She stayed away from the master's chambers for the rest of the day, letting Bundy and Aggie carry on without her. Between the two of them, they provided assurances that the wound was knitting amazingly well and that the fever had left. By nightfall, her mind was so frayed by the battle that raged within it, she numbly sought out her bed and prayed that her husband would soon return and establish himself even more firmly in her thoughts, rooting out the Yankee once and for all.

Lulled by the warming fire, she dallied through memories, clear and vague. A vision of a cloaked form and a prancing black steed was conjured from the events of the past few days, and then the darkly garbed figure became her husband bending down to lift her from the icy water of the creek. Behind him was the same black stallion, and of a sudden the leather mask was transformed into a deep cowl.

With a gasp, Erienne rolled back upon the bed and stared with widened eyes at the canopy, her mind caught in a sudden turmoil. Was this another madness? Had her passion put a face to that which before had no face at all? Was this a dream? A wish born out of desire?

Her thoughts strained for clarity amid her confused memory. She could not pick a definite image or shape that identified the one who had taken her from the stream. The impression of a dark winged rider soaring from his rearing mount had stayed with her, but as she thought about it, she realized she had never seen Stuart on a horse. The suspicion that it was Christopher brought another question to mind. What had she seen by firelight that same evening? A misshapen form of a crippled man? Or just the distorted shape of a normal man? If Christopher proved to be the night rider as well as the one who had rescued her, then what else was he? Surely something more than the rutting roue he had always seemed to be.

A fear began to insinuate itself, but she cast off the idea as preposterous. Though Stuart had always come to her in darkness, she had nonetheless formed a vision of him, perhaps indistinct where her knowledge did not extend, but otherwise familiar to her. A twisted leg, a scarred back, a rasping voice were very much a part of that image and did not match the handsomer appearance of Christopher Seton.

The jumbled pieces of the puzzle turned over in her mind, but no fragment fit to another to provide a broader glimpse of the truth. The endless boredom of their passage allied with her fatigue, and she sank into an exhausted slumber. No nightmares lurked within her dreams, only the endless roiling of questions, fears, and doubts.

Chapter Twenty

MORNING came as was its habit of many a year, bursting forth this day in the guise of a blustery spring day slashed with stinging spits of rain. The icy droplets beat against the crystal panes with the force of the wind, speckling the glass with tiny jewels of moisture, while on the roof, the tiles rattled and the eaves moaned as the playful gusts ran rampant.

Erienne rose refreshed and blithely went about her toilet until in the brushing of her hair, her thoughts came rushing back full force. Her hand halted halfway through a stroke as confusion sank its sharp, persistent talons into her mind, quickly setting the mood for her day.

A determination to get to the heart of the matter grew within her, and leaving her chambers, she set her direction toward the master's bedroom, where she intended to confront Christopher on the issue of her rescue from the stream. She had neared the door when she paused in brief bewilderment, hearing Aggie's voice through the thick panels. The woman's tone was low and indistinct, but urgent, half arguing, half pleading. Erienne was at once beset that she was cast in the role of eavesdropper and quickly put her hand to the door, rattling the latch loudly as she turned it.

When the portal swung wide, displaying the occupants of the chamber, she found Christopher propped up against the pillows with a trace of an amused smile on his lips, obviously much better than on the prior day, and Aggie standing at the foot of the bed, red of face and with her arms akimbo. At the sight of her, Christopher coughed lightly behind his hand, and the housekeeper busied herself removing the breakfast tray, though her lips remained tightly compressed and her cheeks oddly flushed. Erienne readily dismissed the matter from mind, for she could well imagine the woman berating the man for not taking proper care of himself or engaging in some unauthorized activity, which at least in Aggie's eyes would be unforgivable.

"I'll be goin' down now ter fetch some hot water from the kitchen ter tend the wound, Lady Saxton." The housekeeper stressed the title as she cast an imperious glance toward the man. "Will ye do me a favor and remove the old bandage while I'm gone?"

Erienne nodded in rising confusion. The woman's usual effervescence was most apparently in absence, and the cause could not be explained in any manner that courted rationality. If it was jealousy for Lord Saxton's sake, then why, Erienne mused, would she have laid such a task to her?

Aggie handed her a pair of small sewing scissors and, with a last smug nod of her head toward the invalid, was quickly gone. Even before the door closed behind her, Erienne felt Christopher's stare, and when she glanced around, she found a hunger in his eyes that had naught to do with the stomach. It touched off a quickness in her own pulse, one she strived hard to hide with a proper scolding.

"If you wish me to attend you, Mr. Seton, I insist that you exercise a finer degree of self-control, at least in the presence of others. Poor Aggie is fiercely loyal to Stuart and will not long abide your uninvited pandering."

Unmoved by her chiding, he plucked at the bandage. "Are you sure you have the stomach for this?"

Erienne seated herself on the edge of the bed near his left side. "I tended Farrell's arm long enough. I'll warrant I can handle this as well." A rueful smile brought up the corners of her lips. "However, I should warn you to hold yourself still, or I might be tempted to take some portion of your hide away as recompense."

"As you command, my lady." He spread his arms, completely surrendering himself to her ministering, and let his left hand fall casually upon her hip as she leaned forward to snip the strap that crossed his shoulder and held the bandage high. Feeling his fingers brush her backside, she paused and purposefully lifted his hand by the wrist, moving it to where it could rest harmlessly on the mattress.

"I will not stand for your shenanigans either, Mr. Seton," she admonished.

A slow smile curved his lips. "You're being terribly formal, my lady. Have you grown averse to my name of a sudden?"

"I don't wish to encourage you in your blatant disregard of my status as a married woman, that is all," she explained pertly. "You are being very forward in Aggie's presence, and 'tis obvious that she is peeved with you."

"Do you think calling me 'Mr. Seton' is going to stop me from wanting you?" he asked as his eyes caressed her. "You know very little about me... or men... if you think mere words can quench what I feel for you. 'Tis no simple lust that gnaws at me, Erienne, but an ever-raging desire to have you with me every moment, to feel your softness beneath my searching hand, and to claim you as my own. Nay, no stilted title can cool what burns in me."

She stared at him in speechless wonder. He had played the rutting stag so well, she had to consider his words as another ploy to break down the barrier between them and to add her to his list of conquests. Still, they were effective in bringing to mind a similar awareness of her own desires. He was there whenever she closed her eyelids, haunting her with his presence, and she yearned to have him hold her and kiss her without the restrictions between them.

His gaze now met hers without wavering, promising more than she, in good conscience, could accept. Despite her outward calm, her thoughts were put to rout, and she completely forgot what it was that she wanted to discuss with him. Her hands trembled as she bent her attention to her chore, and she had to use all her concentration to steady them as she inserted the tip of the scissors into the top of the wrappings. She snipped downward until the bandage was parted, and she carefully raised the cloth away. A mild shudder went through her as she found a cloying black and greenish matter bonding wound and cloth together. The fabric had to be painstakingly eased away from the skin lest the bleeding be started anew. Though she worked diligently and with caring patience to pry it from the pink, healthy flesh, she was aware that all the prodding and pulling were painful, yet he never twitched a muscle and whenever she glanced up, there was always that odd, inscrutable gaze that seemed to probe into her mind and an enigmatic smile playing about his lips.

"Roll toward me," she directed and leaned close to reach around him as he complied. Easing the bandage away from the wound on his back, she pushed it as far beneath him as she could before sponging the dried blood from his back. The basin of tepid water had been placed on the bed beside him, and as he lay flat she reached across to wring the cloth out. In the next moment his left hand rose and pressed lightly between her shoulders, causing her to fall toward him until he could capture her lips with his own. Off balance, she could not immediately withdraw and was held snared by a torrid kiss that torched her cool-minded resolve and cindered it beneath the heat of his demand. His open mouth moved upon hers with a hunger that greedily sought for a like response. The stirring rush of excitement flared through her, and the need was there to answer him, but the sudden intrusion of a black, staring mask into her mind made her push away with a sudden gasp. She came to her feet, her cheeks ablaze with the shame of her own ardor.

Christopher challenged her with a mocking grin. "You must have read my mind, madam. 'Twas the very gift I desired."

"You have your nerve taking such liberties in my husband's house," she panted breathlessly. "You will certainly destroy yourself if you continue to indulge in such foolery." Her rebuke only seemed to amuse him, for his grin deepened, making her doubt that she would ever be effective in discouraging his rutting tendencies. Regaining some measure of control, she gestured with a hand that still trembled. "Sir, if you will be so kind as to raise yourself on the other side, I will take away the bandage."

Christopher pressed his left palm against the mattress and lifted himself until she could reach beneath him. Even then, she was hard driven to ignore his nearness and the uneven beat of her heart. After a moment's fumbling she found the noisome bandage and withdrew it. As she deposited the rag in the basin for removal, a light rap came upon the door, and at her summons Bundy entered.