Lost in Your Arms (5 page)

Chapter 5

The female stared at him, her startling blue eyes unblinking, her rosy lips slightly open as if she were surprised. She inhaled, long and slow, and in a measured tone repeated, “Who . . . am . . . I?”

If she were a man, he would have snapped her head off for such inanity, but he had a softness for women, all women, and this lass was a fetching piece. So fetching, in fact, he was surprised he didn’t remember her name. He’d seen her before, and he’d wanted nothing more than to touch her, but he’d contented himself with just looking because . . . because . . . why didn’t he remember her? He searched his memory. His excellent memory that had never failed him before. Why didn’t he remember her?

What had she done to him?

In a voice harsh with suspicion, he demanded, “Who
are
you? I remember you, glowing, your hair tumbling about your shoulders, but . . . I can’t recall . . . your name.”

“Praise be, he’s awake!” Another woman spoke from behind him.

He tried to fling himself around, to see who stood behind him at his unprotected back.

Pain struck at his joints, at his muscles, at his leg. With a vicious curse, he fell back on the bed.

The female kneeling beside the bed leaped to her feet and clutched his shoulders.

The other female grabbed at him. “Muscle cramps, sir, not surprising in yer condition,” she said.

The women, whoever they were, were all over him now, chirping, holding, easing him onto his back. His leg, the center of that lancinating pain, dragged until the second wench lifted it and placed it on a pillow. Then he fell backward, panting.

The other female was older, plump and sharp-eyed, to all appearances a proper English villager. No threat. Not now. He glanced about the room. Treetops waved outside the open windows, the ceiling had open rafters and sloped down . . . so they kept him in an attic room. For what purpose?

What was wrong with him? Where was he?

Who was he?

Panic rose in him. Panic, which he subdued at once, and fury, which he allowed to grow. For he didn’t know the answer to the most basic question of all. But he would get that answer, and now.

He looked again at the young woman. She watched him, eyes wide and shining. He knew her, damn it, but he couldn’t remember her name. He remembered hearing her gentle voice regaling him with tales of her day. He remembered seeing her heart-shaped face leaning over him when he woke. He remembered how her eyes
lit up when she smiled, how her tender hands smoothed his covers, how her rich, dark hair tumbled about her shoulders and brushed his cheek. He remembered the delightful curve of her breast peeking forth from her wrapper.

But he didn’t remember tumbling her onto the mattress, and why else would he have seen her in such dishabille? What was happening? What did he remember?

Nothing.
Nothing.

He struggled to raise up—
why wouldn’t his body work?
—and demanded, “Who the hell am I?”

The female exclaimed and slid an arm under his head.

Behind him, the other woman said, “Whoa, dear sir, ye’re in no shape fer wrestling,” and caught at his shoulders.

“I want to sit up.” His annoyance at his weakness could scarcely be expressed. This thought-blankness grew and grew until it filled his mind. No matter how he tried, no matter how he searched for memories, he found nothing.

He took command as he always did, giving orders in that clipped tone that got instant results.

But how did he know that?

“Women, you will tell me who I am and what I’m doing here right now.” He’d make their lives hell if they didn’t answer him, but how?

Who was he?

“Calmly. Move slowly.”

The sweet-faced woman, the one with those extraordinary blue eyes and the sprightly breasts, leaned over
him as he maneuvered on the bed, trying to find a comfortable position.

“You’ve been very ill,” she said.

“I deduced that, you silly wench.”

With a small offended huff, the female straightened hastily.

But he had no taste for tact. “I’m in bed. It’s daylight. I don’t lie about unless I’m ill. I’ve got too much to do.”

But what did he do?

The other female, the gray one with the motherly face—
he recognized her, too, but why?
—leaned down close to him. She looked him in the eyes, and in a tone of voice she must have perfected through countless scoldings, she said, “Ye had the look of trouble about ye even when ye were unconscious. Now ye listen to me, my lad. I’m Mrs. Brown. I’m going to get the master. He’ll explain everything to ye, but in the meantime this young lady will care for ye. Don’t ye do anything stupid. Don’t try and get up, ye’re not capable. Ye listen to me, and ye do exactly what this kind lady tells ye.”

Like a sulky boy, he said, “Why should I?”

“Because she’s the one who pulled you back from the brink of death, and I’m the one who’s been wiping yer bare bottom.”

He stared at her.

She stared at him.

He knew he was a warrior, and a warrior acknowledged when he’d been defeated. He nodded grudgingly, and with a shuffle of leather soles, the older female left.

The younger female laughed, one hand over her eyes.

“What’s so funny?” he snapped. As if he didn’t know.

She lifted her head. “We were so worried you would never wake up, and now that you have, you’re more boorish than you ever were.”

Two things caught his attention. She’d called him boorish, so she knew him. And her eyes were wet. She’d been laughing, but she’d been crying, too. A funny sort of a thing for a damsel to do.

But everything seemed odd today. His body, which usually performed as he required, throbbed with pain. His face hurt when he spoke. And his leg . . . what had he done to his leg to make it hurt like this? He could scarcely lift his hand, and when he did, he stared at it. Skeletal. Wasted. The precariousness of his physical condition became more and more clear, and it infuriated him. Infuriated him almost as much as this vast blankness. He turned his gaze on the lass and found her watching him, her eyes grave. “I’ve got little mind to wait for this master,” he said. “You know who I am. Tell me.”

Without hesitation, she told him, “You’re Stephen MacLean of the Isle of Mull.” She stopped there, waiting while he tasted the name on his tongue.

“Stephen MacLean.” Were the syllables familiar? Were the sounds a compilation of him? He shook his head. “I dinna ken.”

She chuckled, but her laughter wobbled with emotion. “You
have
been sick, if you’re speaking a bit of the Scot. You had nothing but scorn for Scotland before.”

“The best place on earth,” he said, and frowned. He had no memory of ever saying those words before, but he spoke them with involuntary fervor. “Who are you?”

She stared at him as if weighing his strength.

How dare she even consider that she had the right to make decisions about his well-being? He, who was the . . . who was he? Spacing the words like a slow, measured threat, he said, “You will tell me who you are at once.”

With a scornful smile and a toss of her pretty head, she announced, “I am your wife.”

Never taking his gaze off the woman, MacLean ignored the pain in his body and gradually lifted himself onto his elbows. “Liar.”

Her eyebrows lifted. Her mouth opened slightly. She stared at him, then threw back her head and burst into laughter.

If he could have stood, he would have strangled her.

But she stopped laughing almost at once. “Well, I’ve imagined this scene many a time, but I never imagined that response.” Drawing nearer in a slow, cautious pace, she asked, “Why do you think I’m a liar?”

“I don’t remember you.”

“You claim you don’t remember anything at all.”

This woman, this female, this liar did not believe his assertion that he had lost his memory. No one ever doubted his word, because . . . he didn’t know why, but he knew he was the pillar of honesty and integrity. He
was
.

White with fury, he demanded, “You dare . . . doubt me?”

“So we’re even.”

His gaze measured her from top to toe. She wore a dark green cotton gown almost military in its severity and buttoned up to the neck. Her waist was trim, and if her petticoats hid the curve of her hips, well, he had an imagination and he used it now. A fine-looking woman. A little too thin, but she’d done something right in her childhood to grow into such a fine lass.

If his appraisal perturbed her, she showed no sign. Nor did she show earthy enthusiasm or spicy interest. She stood with her hands clasped at her waist, looking at him with calm interest, waiting for his verdict.

His wife? Not likely. His wife, if he looked her over with frankly carnal attention, would damned well respond with a smile and a flutter of sooty eyelashes.

He sank back on the pillows. Married. No. Not to her.

Without a qualm, he said, “You’re not my wife. No man would forget making love to you.”

She didn’t blush or stir, and her voice contained all of the chill of the wind off the North Sea. “Apparently
you
have.”

So they were at quits, and at odds.

Why did she lie to him? Why was he here? A faint unease crawled up his spine as he tried once more to remember . . . remember . . . what? Something bad, something perilous. His instincts warned him of danger, and he always trusted his instincts.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

“Enid MacLean.”

“Enid.” A good name. He liked it, even as he wondered if she lied about that, too. “Where am I?”

“In Suffolk, in England.”

She answered him readily enough. “What happened to me?”

“You were visiting the Crimea.”

In his most neutral voice, he questioned, “Without you?” He detected a moment of hesitation in her.

Then, “Yes. There was an explosion. You were hurt, another man killed.”

The Crimea. He didn’t remember such a trip, although he well knew the Crimea was a bit of soil and sand sticking out into the Black Sea.

Why did he remember that?

An explosion. He tried to sit up and look down at himself, but he had exhausted his strength in his earlier, feeble struggles. And that enraged him yet again. “Are all my parts intact?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

He didn’t believe her. He wiggled his toes. Painfully moved his legs and his arms. Told her, “Turn your back if you have any modesty.”

She did, but when he’d got done groping himself, finding the important parts were indeed still there, he noted a fiery blush climbing the back of her neck. “I can’t believe you’re embarrassed, lass. You’ve got me in nothing but a pair of trousers cut off at the knee, and drafty it is.”

“It was easier for us to tend your wounds,” she defended herself stiffly.

“You can turn around now.”

Cautiously she peeked around, and when she saw his hands on top of the covers, she faced him again.

“If you were really my wife, you would be glad I still possess the wherewithal to bring you to bliss.”

“If you were much of a husband, I would be.”

“If I could rise from this bed, you wouldn’t say that to my face.”

“You don’t know me at all.” If she had any affection for him, any feeling at all, she hid it behind those expressionless features, schooling herself like some military sergeant in charge of supplies.

More proof she was not his wife. “When was the explosion?”

“Six, almost seven weeks ago.”

He snorted. “Come, miss, you don’t expect me to believe that. In six weeks, I’d be dead.”

“You should be dead.”

She didn’t look deceitful, but he’d met beautiful liars before . . .
where?
And suspicion haunted him because . . .
why?
What made him watch her so cynically, when everything about her shouted sincerity?

“You want something to drink.” Hurrying to the pitcher, she poured him a mug of water.

“Aye, that I do.” His stomach rumbled, and he realized the demands of his body had overridden the demands of his mind. “And eat!” Craftily, he inquired, “Have I been in prison? Was I starved?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Coming to his side, she eased her hip onto the bed and slid her arm behind his shoulders to lift him. He tried to take the mug; she held it up out of his reach. “You’ll drop it.”

“A mug?”

“What do you think?”

He thought he liked snuggling up against her bosom. He thought he’d been here before. He recognized the faint scent of gardenias that clung to her. Intimacy . . . familiar intimacy.

Letting her bring the mug to his lips, he drank greedily, the taste pristine in its purity.

Was it possible that he was wrong? That he had forgotten making love to her, that she was his wife?

No. By God, he couldn’t have forgotten that.

“Mr. Throckmorton has had water brought in for you from a spring in Yorkshire,” she told him. “You’ve come to consciousness occasionally, long enough to let us fill you with water and broth, but you didn’t talk and you didn’t seem to hear us.” Her hand shook, and the mug clattered against his teeth. “Do you remember now? Are the memories coming back?”