Pale Moon Rider (31 page)

Her gaze drifted back to Tyrone’s face. It seemed strange to see him without some protective mask of cosmetics or shadow. Each time she came she wanted to bring the light closer, to study the features of the man who knew her so intimately yet had never fully revealed himself. Each time she did, it was surprising and unsettling to see how truly beautiful he was. He had fine, high cheekbones and a well-defined brow. His lips were full and cast with careless sensuality, his jaw was lean and square, his eyes cloaked behind long, dark lashes. She was already shockingly aware of the strength molded into those arms and shoulders, but to see the power in the sinews that shaped the hard, flat belly and long legs was to acknowledge the sheer splendor of a body created under the exacting eye of a master sculptor—a sculptor who surely would not have wasted such a masterpiece on a man destined to hang as a mere road thief and murderer.

There had to be more to Captain Starlight than an intimate knowledge of the back roads and gutters. Those fine, tapered fingers had not learned to play the piano with such skill and emotion in a common taproom, nor had the manners, the bearing, the inherent qualities of an aristocrat been acquired merely through mimicking his betters. His French was flawless, and his back, beneath the sears of punishment and hard labor, was straight and strong and proud.

The overall impression he gave, in fact, was one of nobility gone awry. A blending of blue blood with that of a heathen gypsy, the courtly bearing of a gentleman with the wild sensuality of a barefooted Romany.

A fine sheen of moisture glistened at his temples, and Renée first touched the backs of her fingers to the soft prickle of three days’ beard stubble, then gently rested the flat of her hand across his forehead. There was no sign of fever. The dreadful, dry heat was gone, taking with it the unnatural flush that had burned through his complexion and cracked the skin across his lips.

There was a folded cloth on the table and she dampened it in clean water, wringing it nearly dry before she blotted his brow and cheeks and throat. Deciding it would be remiss of her not to check the bandaging on his wound, Renée set the cloth aside, freeing both hands to peel back the layers of bedding. His chest, from just below his breasts, was bandaged in strips of linen, and, leaning slightly forward across his body, she searched for any signs of weepage through the poultice. But the bandages were clean and dry and smelled of nothing more sinister than the moist, mealy mass used to make the dressing.

She straightened and started to draw the covers up again, but paused. She had been to
Rome
once and been transfixed by a statue carved by
Michelangelo
. The biblical David had possessed the same latent virility, the same breathtaking blend of power and beauty as the man before her, but while
Michelangelo's
creation had been made of cold and inflexible marble, Tyrone Hart’s flesh was warm and satiny. When she touched it, as she did now, it lured the fingers to explore further, to trail into the tangle of dark fur on his chest and feel where his heart beat strongly beneath.

The curious pads of her fingertips skimmed over the strip of bandages and picked up the swirl of dark hairs where they thinned to a fine line over the flat, washboard belly. She remembered, with shocking clarity, following that same taunting line with her lips, exploring every curve and plane as thoroughly as he had explored each of hers. With delicious impudence, she had discovered his nipples reacted much the same way hers did and she had teased them with a similar mercilessness until they grew as dark and taut as they were now.

As they were now!

Startled, she looked up at his face and saw that his eyes were open. Clear and remarkably direct, they met hers over a devastatingly charming smile.

“Please mam’selle,” he murmured, “do not stop on my account.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

R
enée’s lips parted around a small gasp as she snatched her hand away. “You are awake, m’sieur.”

“And a more pleasant method of being roused, I could not imagine.”

She opened her mouth, but closed it again on the next breath for there was certainly no excuse she could give— or any that he would believe—to explain why she had been running her fingers across his belly.

For Tyrone’s part, it had taken every ounce of willpower he could muster to remain as still as he had as long as he had, although he doubted he could have borne one more soft stroke of her fingertips without giving rise to something that would have shocked her beyond the warm flush that was flooding her cheeks now.

She was a welcome sight to his muddled senses, for it was a certainty she would not be in a gaol cell hovering over him like a guardian angel. She looked clean and cool in a simple white muslin gown. Her hair was loose, held back off her face by a narrow silk ribbon that was successful for the most part, save for the tiny spray of fine blond curls that clung to her temples. Having been inspected so closely himself, Tyrone had no qualms about doing likewise, retracing the soft line of her jaw, the smooth arch of her throat.

His gaze came to rest on the enticing mole that rode high over her left breast, and it took a moment or two for him to realize she was speaking.

“… said you should have died.”

“Who said that?”

“Finn and Maggie Smallwood were both of the opinion you should have bled
to death on my bedroom floor.”

“Maggie is here?”

“Was, m’sieur. I sent her home, mmm, yesterday. Yes. It was yesterday. We agreed she was in too delicate of a condition to be sitting here in the cold tending a sick man.”

“If it is not too ungracious of me to ask: where exactly is
here?”

“The ghost tower … or at least that is what Antoine calls it.”

His eyes narrowed through a guarded frown. “So I haven’t been flung back through time? There are no fire-breathing dragons waiting outside the door to be slain?”

Renée followed his glance up to the cobwebs. “It was the only place we could think of to hide you, m’sieur. And at least you
have
wakened, something I was beginning to believe would not happen.”

His brows crushed together in a frown. “How long have I been here?”

“You were shot three nights ago. Do you remember nothing at all?”

“Nothing,” he said honestly. “Pain, maybe. Like someone was holding a torch to my side.”

“Someone did,” she admitted with a hesitant smile. “Maggie feared the stitches alone would not stop the bleeding so she—she heated up a knife and …” Renée finished the explanation by gesturing lamely toward the brazier. “But she assured M’sieur Dudley, if you survived the fever, the wound would heal much faster.”

“Robbie—?”

“Finn fetched him as soon as we thought it was safe to do so. He stayed through the first day, hoping you might improve enough to withstand being carried down to the canal, but then you became feverish and—and he agreed he had no choice but to leave you here. Maggie sent him back for more medicines and herbs, and by then the storm was much worse. He said there were already several angry notes at your house summoning you to help with flooded roads.
”

“Christ—”

“It was M’sieur Dudley’s intention to go in your place, and if someone asked where you were, he would tell them you were somewhere else tending to another emergency. Then, of course, he would go to the second place and tell them you were at a third.”

Tyrone swore again and went to lift his hand but found the action cut short by the linen cords. “Are these absolutely necessary?”

She flushed again. “You were very … active … m’sieur, in your fever. We were afraid you would hurt yourself further.”

“And if I promise to behave?”

“We can remove them, of course,” she said, setting her fingers nervously to the task.

He watched her, his eyes intent upon the small dimple in her cheek caused by her efforts to concentrate on the strips of linen. It felt strange being told so much had happened when he could remember so little.

“I think I recall waking once,” he said slowly. “I saw a face—yours, but not yours. Big blue eyes and short yellow curls, like a cherub.”

“That was Antoine,” she told him with a smile. “He said you stared at him a moment then started shouting and cursing at the devil.”

“I must have thought I had been sent to the wrong place. Everything else, however, seems to be a blur.”

“You do not remember being shot?”

“I remember thinking I’d had too much of Lord Wooleridge’s fine claret at dinner.”

“You must have had a great deal of Lord Wooleridge’s claret,” she corrected as she circled the bed to untie his other wrist, “for you came here afterward, waving your guns, threatening to shoot me for betraying you.”

He blinked once to help focus his thoughts. “I threatened to shoot you?”

“Finn and I both. You thought—or assumed—we knew about Colonel Roth taking Finn’s place in the coach.”

There was a tightness in her voice that suggested some lingering resentment and when the binding was loose enough, he twisted his hand and caught hers gently by the wrist. “Renée, if I said or did anything—”

“You were very angry,” she murmured. “But of course, you were wounded.”

She was staring at his hand but did nothing to attempt to pull free and seeing this, he slid his hand down until he was no longer holding her wrist, but had twined his fingers through hers. “Has no one ever told you wounded animals are at their most dangerous when they feel trapped—or betrayed.”

Huge, solemn blue eyes met and held his for a long moment. “The circumstances are dangerous for all of us, m’sieur. We have been exceedingly lucky so far, but when the storm ends the servants will put aside their fear of the tower ghost and—”

“Tower ghost?”

She flushed even darker and Tyrone wondered that he had never noticed how many shades of pink a blush entailed. He stroked his thumb across the back of her hand and was fascinated to see an almost instantaneous, deeper rose warm the roundest part of her cheeks.

“You were very loud in your fever,” she was saying. “And since there is already the rumor of a ghost haunting the old battlements, Finn went up to the roof in a white sheet and rattled chains.”

“Stalwart Mr. Finn?”

“He is not without a sense of humor, m’sieur.”

A slow, sinfully handsome smile crept across his face, and Renée felt a corresponding tightness in her belly, warming her in a way that made her aware of subtle changes taking place elsewhere in her body. Her breasts grew exquisitely taut, chafing against the linen of her chemise on every breath. The gentle strokes of his thumb were causing tremors of sensation to coil through her limbs, between her thighs, and she was afraid to move in case she dissolved beside him.

“It … was quite a dreadful sound,” she added haltingly. “It sent Jenny running belowstairs, where she has remained ever since. None of the other servants have dared to venture too far from their beds either, not even Mrs. Pigeon.”

“I shall have to remember to compliment Mr. Finn on his ingenuity.”

“It was Antoine’s idea, actually.” She curled her lower lip between her teeth and tried to casually extricate her hand. “I remember him playing a similar prank on our cousin when—when we were all younger.”

“Does anyone
else
know I am here?”

She looked up and frowned. “Neither Finn nor Antoine would betray your presence, m’sieur. And if you still believe I am doing this only to collect the reward—”

Tyrone laced his fingers more possessively through hers. “No. No, I do not believe that at all. It’s just that your brother is young, he might inadvertently say something—”

“If he did, it would indeed be a miracle, m’sieur,” she whispered, “for he has said nothing for over a year.”

He felt himself drawn into the haunting blue of her eyes and did not fight it through a long moment of silence. “Nothing at all?”

“Rien”
she breathed. “He … we both saw my mother beaten to death by the soldiers outside the gates of
Temple
Prison
in
Paris
. She had just found out my father had been executed and …” She shook her head, unable to continue. “I’m sorry. I did not know.”

“How could you, m’sieur? How could anyone know how terrible it was to see the men, the women, the
children
taken away in carts like animals, crying and holding each other, holding strangers for courage, knowing there was no hope, not even knowing what crime they had committed to deserve such a dreadful punishment.”

This time, when she twisted her hand free, he did not try to stop her, and she walked around to the foot of the bed, embarrassed and bewildered as to why she would have shared such a private pain.

“I am sorry, Renée. Roth never said anything and I thought the boy was simply shy—or overwhelmed—at the breakfast table the other day.”

“He was not just overwhelmed, m’sieur, he was frightened half to death. For this reason as much as any other, you must see why you have to leave this place as soon as possible.”