An Unmistakable Rogue (9 page)

Matt shifted the gunny sack but made no comment.

“It wasn’t easy taking care of twelve children, keeping them safe. Sometimes I’d get so mad. Imagine four each of Luke, Mark and Bekah.”

Matt’s horror said it all. “Did your parents leave you behind with all of them?”

Reed thought his childhood had been bad, but Matt’s was worse. “The people who raised me were not my real parents,” he said. “Their children were not really my sisters and brothers, but I was still the oldest, though, unlike you, I did not get left with them.”

Matt stopped. “Where did your real parents go?”

“I never knew. I do not even know who they were. The people who raised me got me the day I was born.”

“Did you cry sometimes, when you were small?” Matt examined his face closely as he waited for Reed’s answer.

Reed needed to be honest for the boy’s sake, he knew, but when the anguish he had kept inside took hold, he nearly gasped. That Matt experienced the same stopped Reed in his tracks. He sat on his haunches to look the boy square in the eye. “Yes, Matt. I cried sometimes.”

Matt nodded his understanding, uprooted a blade of grass and chewed it as they walked. “We were with Mum most of the time, until she left us with Aunt Anna.”

“Then you were luckier than me, because I never lived with my real parents. How did your mother know your father was sick?”

“She got a letter then she went to get him.”

“Do you have the letter, or know where it is?”

Matt considered his answer carefully. “I never saw the letter, and I really don’t remember where she went.”

“Did she tell you?”

Matt’s eyes filled. “I don’t remember,” he said. “And it makes me mad at myself, and at Mum for going, and I’m worried about Bekah. She used to jabber and say silly things, words I thought would be real, someday, but I’d tell her to be quiet.” He looked up, pain in his big blue eyes. “Now she is.”

Matt would not want the same kind of comfort from him that Chastity would give, so Reed squeezed a small but heavily-burdened shoulder. “Bekah’s silence is not your fault.”

Matt forced a half-smile and turned away. “Did you feel bad if something terrible happened to your sisters and brothers after you wished they were never borned?”

“More often than I’d like to remember.”

“Are we gonna bag some rabbit like we ate yesterday?”

“You knew?”

Matt’s smile was real this time. “Kitty thought it was chicken. She’s nothin’ but a silly girl.”

Reed did not agree. Chastity was a warm, vibrant woman, though not his, he should
attempt
to remember. Never his.

Judging from her reaction to his kisses yesterday, she needed to remember as well. “Hungry?” Reed sat on a rock and pulled some oatcakes from his bag, because they had not as yet broken their fast. Matt grimaced and Reed grinned. “They’re not supposed to be this brown and hard are they?”

“Nah, but I wasn’t tellin’ Kitty.”

“How do you think she did milking this morning?”

“Mark probably helped. He knows how.”

Reed held an oat-cake half-way to his mouth. “If he knows how, then you did, too.”

The boy chuckled. “Yeah, but it was fun watchin’ Kitty get mad ‘cause I learned faster.”

“If she finds out, she’ll give you what for.”

They sat grinning, crunching oat-cakes, beside a mossy bank where fern fronds reached for the sun. A cuckoo sang boldly while two hares frolicked in the brush. Chastity was right; they were cuddly. Everything here seemed too beautiful to disturb with a gun. He did need to feed the children, but Chastity would be happier cooking something ugly.

That woman sat under his skin like a cocklebur, a burr who had taken vows. Damn.

Matt stretched out in the grass and closed his eyes.

Reed did the same and pictured Chastity, ready for her bath. He had prepared one for her nightly, which she appreciated and enjoyed, while, upstairs in his bed, his imagination kept him awake. Except last night when he dreamed he made love to her.

He had lifted her from the tub and sat her on his lap to dry her, inch by glorious inch, stroking each dusky nipple to erection. He took one into his mouth and she throbbed against his seeking hand, whimpering when he found her. He taught his innocent passion, entered her slowly, watched as she reached her first fulfillment, his own release imminent, so much so—

Reed opened his eyes on a curse and rose to walk off his frustration. He had never endured such a pervading need before, so fierce that it almost surpassed the physical. Not even as a raw lad had he felt as stimulated as when he was sparring with sweet Chastity Somers. None of the women who chased him, not even the ones he caught, had driven him this mad with lust.

His fascination with a nun was beginning to frighten the hell out of him. If his imagination made taking her that good, what would the reality be? Could he bear it?

Devil take it, he wanted to find out.

Except that she was not free, and he did not want to be tied to a family. With or without a veil, Chastity spelled family, which spelled noise, chaos, the opposite of peace. She was not one to accept release and go her merry way. She probably thought she would go to hell if she did. He, too, had been warned about hell, and with lusting after a nun, he guessed it was now a fairly certain destination.

One thing for certain; he’d had enough of standing around here thinking about it. He touched Matt’s shoulder to wake him. “Let’s do us some hard hunting.”

The boy’s smile brought his own. He taught Matt to sight down a barrel, and while he gave step-by-step directions, the boy shot ... a tree limb, dead.

Half an hour later, Matt pointed toward the underbrush. “Look, Reed.”

“It’s a fallow deer,” Reed whispered. “Want to give it a try?”

Matt shook his head. “I’d feel awful if I missed.”

Reed nodded and took aim, the buck foraging far away, blissfully unaware of his possible doom, when a loud
thwack
came from nowhere. Something whizzed by Reed and passed a hair’s breadth by Matt, before it came to a thrumming stop in a tree trunk. An arrow! Reed knocked Matt down, and covered him with his body, shouting for the archer to stop. A second arrow hit the same tree. In a vague and rusty litany, Reed prayed for Matt’s safety, while trying to keep him safe. He raised his head, gauged distances, and thought perhaps—

Pain stabbed into his side, caught fire. A whirring filled his head. Matt screamed from afar. Reed tried to rise, but the earth below him and the trees above him dipped and tilted. His side flamed and bile rose in his throat.

He’d set off a hunter, and ended the hunted.

Had he? Ended? Had his time finally run out?

The notion that he would never see Chastity again, stung more than his possible demise. “Chastity,” Reed whispered as the world turned to blue smoke and he wished darkness would hurry. “Matt? You crying?” Reed tried to focus.

Matt wept. “There’s blood all over you.”

Reed touched Matt’s face. “You all right?”

The boy threw himself at Reed, the pain of his landing damned near dragging Reed under. The best he could manage was to stroke the lad’s hair. Greening branches shifted in the wind above him. When had he hit the ground? The day grew bright then dark; light swirled near and away. “Get ... Chastity.”

“I love you ... love you.”

Reed heard Matt but couldn’t see him anymore. A thumping invaded his brain. Running feet. Matt was leaving. “Be ... safe.” Reed closed his eyes.

* * *

Laughter—a loud, coarse, cackle, inhuman, almost on top of him, woke Reed some time, later.  He found a narrow-eyed crone looking down on him. Gray hair, kohl-lined eyes, bright red cheeks, a wild caricature, she raised a hand like a zealot on a pulpit. “The sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons!”

She stroked his cheek, ran her fingers through his hair, caressed him ... boldly. “Do you remember, Edward?”

Reed tried to escape her vile touch, but he could not move for the pain, the dizziness.

She touched her lips to his, and he turned his head as his stomach heaved.

“Dearest Edward,” she said. Then her eyes narrowed, and all semblance of sanity slipped away, leaving her eyes empty and terrifying. “Sleep, my puppet,” she said on a laugh, and Reed welcomed oblivion.

* * *

Rebekah stood on a chair, while Chastity adjusted the child’s new blue muslin pinafore. “Stand still, while I take a stitch to raise the straps. You’re tinier than I thought.”

Bekah wound her arms around Chastity’s neck and kissed her cheek, and Chastity closed her arms around the child, aware that she might have lived her entire life without such heart-swelling affection. Had she known it existed, she might have felt she was dying without it.

When Bekah pulled from the embrace, Chastity marveled at her pink cheeks and shiny gold ringlets. “You look like a princess.”

Bekah spread the skirt and curtseyed while Chastity took a last stitch and broke the thread. “All done.”

Bekah leapt to the bed to jump up and down, humming.

If only she would smile.

Chastity heard the boys on the stairs before she saw them. “Butter’s ready, Kitty.”

“I said I’d tell her; I’m in charge.” Mark, for once, acting like a child.  Good.

“You milked,” Luke said. “Making butter is my job.”

“Well, you aren’t as strong as—”

“That’ll be enough. What a mess. Not an hour after your baths and— How did you get hay in your hair?”

“We found a loft.”

“With a lot of hay.”

The kitchen door slammed. “Kitty? Kitty, where are you?”

“Matt?” Chastity ran down the stairs in reaction to the panic in Matt’s voice. They met in the foyer, and when she saw his tear-stained face, the blood on his hands, her heartbeat trebled, and she began to examine him for wounds.

He swiped at his eyes. “No. This is Reed’s blood. Not mine.”

“What?”

“Kitty, Reed’s dying.”

CHAPTER NINE

Chastity regarded the blood on Matt’s hands and sat on the bottom stair, willing her head and stomach to calm. She’d worked as William’s nurse. She was not fainthearted, but Reed’s blood? All the training, the rules, meant nothing in the face of Reed Gilbride’s life.

“He called your name, Kitty. He said to come and get you.” Matt began to cry.

He’d called her name? Chastity rose to embrace Matt, wipe his tears, and take his hands in hers. “Calm down and tell me what happened.” The blood from Matt’s hands now covered hers—Reed’s blood.

Matt pulled on her arm. “C’mon. We gotta go.”

Chastity raised her head, anguish discarded. “Tell me how you left him.”

“With an arrow in his side.”

Chastity gathered her wits and straightened. “Mark, stay with Luke and Bekah. We’ll need you when we return. Matt, get Stealth.” She would need to keep Reed warm. “Mark run upstairs, fetch blankets, and bring them to the stable.”

“Wait,” Matt grabbed her hand as she made to leave the house.

“What is it?”

“Shouldn’t we bring bandages?”

Good Lord. She was losing her mind. She kissed Matt’s head. “Remind me to thank you later.”

“I’ll get the horse.” He ran.

“Mark,” Chastity yelled up the stairs. “Bring a length of bleached muslin from the fabric chest.” She fetched William’s medical bag, a jar of water, and some spirits, and continued to the stable. There, she stood before Stealth at a loss. “Do you know how to put those strap things on him?”

Matt nodded. “Reed showed me.”

“Thank goodness.”

“Matt repeated his lesson as he saddled Reed’s horse. “There,” he said when he finished. “He’s a right one, is old Stealth.” He spoke and even patted the horse in an imitation of Reed, and Chastity’s eyes filled.

“Here’s everything,” Mark said, winded, pushing blankets and muslin her way.

Matt led the horse from the stable, and Chastity turned to the waiting children. “Stay in the kitchen. No matter how long we’re gone, do not leave that room. Mark, you’re still in charge. Luke, Rebekah, do as your brother says.”

When all three nodded, she sighed. “Good. We’ll be back soon. I promise. Take good care of them, Mark.”

They had walked a goodly distance when Chastity stopped. “Do you remember where you left him?”

Matt regarded her as if she were daft. “I wouldn’t forget where I left him, Kitty.”

“I thought you might have trouble finding your way back, but I should know better. I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“You’re worried. So am I. But he’ll be fine.”

“Poor Matt—ten years old going on forty. I hope someday you’ll have time to be a child.”

“Aw, Kitty.” Matt pulled from her hold, embarrassed by her praise, and by the tears in his eyes. His responsibilities must often be difficult to bear yet he did so with such strength of character. Now with Reed’s accident sharp in his mind, Chastity could see that Matt’s strength was wavering.

For his sake, she put her own trepidation aside. “Tell me exactly how it happened, every detail.”

“I don’t know.” Matt wiped his eyes with a quick, angry hand. “An arrow missed us, and when Reed pushed me down to protect me, he got hit. He was hurting, Kitty.”

Chastity could do nothing but will herself to take one step after another. “Tell me about the blood.”

“There was lots.”

Prickles assaulted her, fanning inward from her arms and legs, tightening her chest, weakening her, forcing her to face the truth. Like it or not, Reed Gilbride owned a piece of her heart, a place no one had ever breached, not even William. If anything happened to Reed, she would remain empty forever. Reed Gilbride, her destiny; what a frightening thought. “Where was the blood coming from?”

“His side. Didn’t I tell you? The arrow’s sticking out of his side.”

Oh yes. One foot in front of the other.
Please keep him safe.

Chastity felt as if she had been walking forever, but when she saw, from a distance, Reed lying there, unmoving, her energy returned tenfold, and she ran. Kneeling beside him, blood soaking his shirt, she wanted to rage at heaven, but she wouldn’t let Matt see her fury or her crippling fear. “Reed, can you hear me?”

His eyelids fluttered but remained closed. She was so relieved, she was giddy, but she could not faint now.

She unbuttoned his bloody shirt and laid it open. The arrow had gone in at a reasonably forgiving angle, above his waist, yet close enough to his heart to make her dizzy. “Matt, give me that jar of water.” Keeping herself from giving in to hysteria, Chastity washed Reed’s side to survey the damage. Her first flash of hope came when she saw that the bleeding had slowed. “Now give me the shears.” She opened her hand.

“Kitty?”

“I’m going to cut off the shaft, so the end doesn’t get caught and tear the wound any further. I’ll leave just enough to grasp when I have to remove it later.”

When she accidentally touched the shaft with the shears, Reed moaned. When she clamped the blades tight against it, his moan became guttural.

The strength she needed to cut the arrow was more than Chastity expected. She screamed in frustration, and strength came, enabling her to sever the shaft, finally, though her scream became silent beneath Reed’s. The broken end flew up, glanced off a branch and showered them with desiccated leaves. Would that Reed’s strength were as great as those leaves, clinging against all odds.

Matt dusted her off, picking bits from Chastity’s hair, the simple act soothing her.

She poured whiskey on Reed’s wound and he cursed, and because she had caused the pain, she forgave the profanity. “If I thought it would help, I’d swear too,” she told Matt.

She needed to stem the blood-flow, while keeping the shaft as immobile as possible, so she wrapped the bandage in a loose figure eight, over his stomach to his back, and around the shaft, again and again.

Reed groaned through the process and Matt wiped the perspiration from his brow.

“How are we going to get him on Stealth?”

Chastity wished to God she knew. “He’ll have to help.” She bathed Reed’s face with a cool wet cloth to rouse him and held brandy to his lips. “Not too much,” she cautioned. “We want to dull the pain, not make you sick.”

She could have sworn, he smiled.

Barely able to grasp the reality of his injury, his blood everywhere, she kissed his hand. “We need to get you home.”

“Pretty Kitty, take me home.”

Matt smiled through his tears. “He’s drunk.”

Reed clutched the boy’s hand, his grip bruising. “You all right? Didn’t get ... hit?”

“I’m fine, Reed.”

“Thank God.” He closed his eyes.

“No, Reed,” Chastity said. “Stay awake. We need your help.”

He licked his lips, tried to move, fell back. “In a minute.”

“We need you on Stealth, but we cannot get you up there, alone. You have to stand. We’ll help.”

Reed nodded but didn’t open his eyes. “Have a care. Arrows.”

They rolled him to his good side and lifted him to his hands and knees. Breathing hard, he looked at her through pain-glazed eyes, and she allowed him to see how much she cared. His own eyes widened and he cursed the more.

“We’ll help you,” Chastity said, “and when I tell you, straighten your knees to stand.”

Reed nodded again.

They did get him standing—more or less—while Reed cursed a streak of expletives that warmed Chastity as much as it entertained Matt.

“This will be the hardest,” Chastity told Reed. “You need to mount Stealth.”

He looked at her as if she were the devil incarnate. “Bedlamites.” He swayed toward her. “Kiss me first.”

Matt all out giggled.

“Reed Gilbride. Just when I’m worried you might die, you inspire this urge in me to drop you on your head.” Chastity rested her tear-stained cheek against his.

“Part of m’charm.” He swooned.

“Catch him, Matt.”

They caught him together.

“Sorry.” Reed labored to pull in air. “Can’t play right now.”

Chastity bit her lip until she tasted blood, and she and Matt regarded each other, two hearts aching.

“Wait,” Matt said. I have an idea.” He pushed against Stealth’s forelegs. “Down, boy, down.”

Chastity held Reed upright, expecting it was useless, but Stealth responded to the imprecise command by kneeling, lowering himself for Reed, who gazed at Matt with new respect.

With Chastity’s help, Reed tried, God help him, his perspiration soaking her gown, his shuddering chills rocking her body. But he could not raise a leg even that high.

Matt dragged a rotted tree trunk over. “Step on this, then mount.” He sat on the log to brace it while helping to steady Reed’s legs.

Reed mounted the log, and in a difficult, ungainly move, he managed to mount Stealth as well, cursing the archer to perdition before blacking out.

Chastity threw the blankets over him. “It’s just as well he’s out,” she said. “The ride will be easier on him. Take the reins, Matt, and lead us while I keep him from falling.”

“Please forget everything you heard,” she called a few minutes later.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Her words had been part order, part request, and foolish, she supposed, but she and Matt needed something ordinary to think about. “Reed will be fine,” she added.

“Yes Ma’am.”

Chastity tried to equate the unconscious man with the brute who’d stolen her breath just yesterday. His first parting kiss had been quick and soft. The second carried more strength and lasted a good deal longer, and before he was done, he had stamped her with some invisible brand, as if she belonged to him, now, because of it. Did she?

Chastity admitted during the second hour that she would be proud to belong to Reed Gilbride, no matter how foolish the notion, except that no one could, for he liked being alone.

It was just that he had kissed her with such ... enthusiasm.

Had he experienced then the kind of hard
wanting
that was a man’s lot? The nuns were vague about that, except to say she shouldn’t allow it. Men were beasts where
it
was concerned. Their need was strong, sometimes brutal. A woman was never the same after. Ruined.

Did the nuns even know what they were talking about? Was she ruined for being kissed?

Perhaps, somewhat, for there now existed a new yearning in her, though she might not be ruined in the precise way the sisters meant. Not yet at any rate. If she were, she suspected she would know it, though for the life of her, she could not fathom the process by which ruination came about.

Since the nuns who raised her were also the ones who taught her nursing, there’d been no one to ask. To make matters worse, they ran a children’s hospital. No other women. No men—except Doctor William Somers, who failed to enlighten her, even after he married her.

She knew only that she had not been the same since Reed’s kisses. If she were ruined, she had enjoyed it. If she had not yet fallen, she was likely beginning the tumble, and what a ride. She wondered if Mark had noticed any indication of ruin on her face, but he seemed oblivious.

Nothing could come of a relationship between her and Reed, she knew, though they had never, in actual fact, discussed it. He thought she was a nun—untouchable—though his actions would indicate that her calling mattered little.

There were other reasons. He hated children; she was responsible for several and wanted more. He knew she stole them, and could destroy her with the knowledge. Chastity sighed. So many reasons to stay away from him, yet being kissed, touched by Reed was like a banquet for her starving soul. She could no more stop accepting his attention than she could stop one of those new locomotives on a downhill track.

Shaken by the realization, Chastity turned her thoughts to Reed’s care, reminding herself that he was now her patient. A human being in need of healing. She would tend his wounds, and when he was healed, she would release him from her care.

But could she ever release him from her heart?

With no answers forthcoming, she kept Stealth at a sedate pace, to keep jarring at a minimum, and re-tucked Reed’s blankets when the wind uncovered him. She wiped his brow and soothed him with tender words.

The sky graced them with its first silent droplets at around mid-afternoon. The wind picked up, the temperature dropped. Stealth walked on, undaunted by the lightening, which surprised Chastity, until she remembered that he had been a war horse, trained to continue through a barrage of cannon fire. Chastity and Matt changed places, to rest sore muscles and use others. The boy held Reed steady then, as she held Stealth’s reins. To keep Reed’s pain at a minimum, the going was slow and tedious.

“Make certain he’s well covered, Matt, or he’ll take an inflammation of the lungs.”

“He was trying to protect me.” Matt’s voice cracked.

“That makes Reed a man of valor, but it does not make his injury your fault,” Chastity said. “Do not blame yourself or he will give you what-for when he’s better.”

Matt chuckled. “He warned me earlier that you would give what-for over something else. You sound like Mum and Da.”

“And why might I be expected to reprimand you?”

“No reason.”

It was late when they approached the house. Chastity was glad they were back before full dark.

When she and Matt cleared the rise, Mark, Luke and Bekah came running, despite the drizzle. “What are you doing outdoors? I told you to stay inside. You’ll be sick.”

“A lady told us you were coming,” Luke said.

“What lady?”

“She said she lives there,” Mark pointed. “Near the chapel. She said she cared for the horses until we got here.”

Chastity’s unease vanished. The woman must have seen them from the upper floor of the vicarage. She should visit her later just to thank her.

“Run up to the bedchambers, boys, and drag two mattresses down to the kitchen. Pile them one atop the other beside the stove. Bring sheets and blankets too.” She would put oilcloth beneath the sheets to keep the bed from getting soaked with blood.”

Bekah began to weep silently when saw Reed doubled over on Stealth. She took his hand, the one hanging limp against the horse’s side, and held it all the way back to the house.