Untamed (12 page)

“Leave it be. I shall be in shackles for the rest of my days.”
If I dinnae escape.
“There is naugh’ to be gained by your doin’ this.”

She sat beside him on her stool and met his gaze, a look of deep sadness in her eyes. “I cannot change what is to come, monsieur, but I can ease your suffering today.”

Her compassion—so pure and sincere—struck him silent. He was searching for the words to thank her, when she drew something from her skirts.

A key
.

It was the key to his shackles.

Blood rushed into Morgan’s head, new strength filling his limbs. If she would but unshackle even one wrist, he could wrest the key from her, free himself, and break away from this place. The surgeon and his lads offered no serious challenge. He could subdue them, steal a French uniform, and try to reach one of the gates before anyone was the wiser. Once he reached the forest…

If
he reached the forest, he’d face a perilous journey of three days and nights with no food or weapons, walking upon a wounded leg he was not sure could bear his weight.

You’ve survived worse, MacKinnon. You can do it!

And if he failed? What could they possibly do to him that would be worse than what they were already planning?

They could punish Miss Chauvenet.

Through the buzzing of his thoughts, he heard her speak.

“To clean your wounds I must remove the shackles one limb at a time.” She held up the key with a trembling hand. Was she still afraid of him? “There will be nothing to stop you from hurting me or forcing me to free you. I’m certain you could kill me with your bare hands if you chose. Therefore, I must ask for your word as a Catholic that you will not try to escape.”

So she would loose his bonds only to bind him with words.

Och, Satan’s hairy arse!

Morgan drew a deep breath, fighting back frustration. “Even were these chains to fall away, lass, you’d have no cause to fear me. I’ve told you I willna harm you.”

“Then I have your word?”

He hesitated, wondering how much of a sin it would be to break this promise if breaking it saved his life. “Aye, you have my word as a Catholic—and a MacKinnon.”

She reached toward his right wrist, seemed to falter. “The surgeon does not know I have this key. If I am discovered…”

And then Morgan understood. She was just as afraid of being caught as she was of him. “Then dinnae do this. Return the key. I wouldna see you risk yourself on my account, lass.”

But she did not heed him. She stuck the key in the lock, turned it. And his right wrist was free.

He tried to draw his arm down to his side—and found he could scarcely move it. Sharp pain shot through his shoulder, driving the breath from his lungs. “Och, Christ!”

And you were thinkin’ of escapin’, lad?

“Lie still.” Gently she took his arm, lifted it, and rested it across her lap. “You’ve been bound like this for so long your shoulder is…How do you say? It is locked. Frozen.”

But Morgan couldn’t open his mouth to answer for fear he’d curse again, as much from pain as from fury with his own weakness. He breathed deeply, willing the knotted muscles and locked joint to loosen.

Wait, lad. There will come another chance, and you’ll be stronger.

“I do not mean to hurt you.” She dipped a cloth in the warm water and began to bathe the flayed skin of his wrist.

He gritted his teeth. “Dinnae fret, lass.”

But as his shoulder began to loosen, Morgan was assailed by new feelings. The sting of soap. The scents of sage and cedar. The soft stroke of her fingers as she spread salve on his wrist, then bound it in a clean strip of linen.

“Try to move your arm now.”

Morgan made a fist, bent his elbow, then rolled his shoulder, the motion tugging at the healing wound in his chest. “ ’Tis much better now, lass. I thank you.”

She smiled, a sight so sweet that his heart seemed to trip.

Without thinking, he raised his hand to her face, traced the soft curve of her cheek with his thumb, his fingers catching in the dark silk of her hair. But rather than pulling his hand away, he delved deeper into her tresses, sliding his fingers slowly down their length, drawing a handful to his nose, breathing deep, the scent of lavender filling his head, desire for her lancing unexpected and fierce through his gut.

She isna yours to touch, lad.

Nay, she was not. Even had their nations not been at war, even had she not been promised to the Church, she was an officer’s daughter. She might as well have been a star—beyond his reach, untouchable.

Even so, Morgan wanted her.

Amalie could scarcely breathe, her cheek still burning where he’d touched her. She watched him inhale the scent of her hair, his eyes drifting shut, his brow knotting as if with pain. Then he opened his eyes and looked at her once more, the heat in his gaze calling to something inside her, making her belly flutter and her heart beat faster.

“Forgi’e me.” He released her hair, a look of remorse on his face. “I have no right to touch you thus.”

Her pulse still racing, Amalie reached for the heavy iron shackle. “I…I am sorry, monsieur, but I must—”

There came a sound at the door.

Amalie froze.

Then she heard Monsieur Lambert’s voice, calling for someone to bring water.

“Do it. Be quick!” The Ranger stretched his arm over his head, offering her his wrist, when he just as easily might have grabbed her throat.

He was keeping his word. Hadn’t she known he would?

Hurrying lest she be discovered, she fit the shackle around his wrist and clamped it shut, the lock sliding into place with a click. But the moment passed, and the surgeon did not enter, his voice fading as he walked on by.

Amalie released the breath she hadn’t known she was holding. “Is that better?”

“Aye. My thanks. You’ve a healin’ touch.”

She stood, key in hand, and began to move all that she needed to the foot of the bed so that she could care for his ankles, determined to do all she could despite the risk to show him mercy before even mercy itself was taken from him.

She’d lain awake much of the night, the Ranger’s words—and Bourlamaque’s—running through her mind. She’d always believed France was the unassailable bastion of civilization, while the English were heretics, unrefined and prone to acts of cruelty. To hear Bourlamaque admit that French commanders also paid for scalps, that French soldiers and allies also slew women and children…

It was as if the ground had vanished from beneath her feet.

She’d gone to the chapel before first light to speak with Père François, hoping that he might be able to guide her, but he had simply reminded her that France was true to Rome and the pope, while the English were heretics who had turned away from the Church—as if religion alone, not actions, were the seat of a people’s honor.

“Is it less of a sin against God for a man to kill women and children because he is Catholic?” she’d asked the priest. “Should not we who live by the true religion demonstrate our faith through Christian compassion? What kind of Christians are we if we behave as heretics behave?”

He had merely smiled and patted the back of her hand. “You and I might wish it so, but life is far more complicated than that.”

When the sun had at last risen, it had seemed to shine on a changed world, one in which there were fewer true colors and many more shades of gray.

She wanted to apologize to the Ranger for the things she’d said yesterday. She’d all but accused him of lying when he’d been telling the truth. But how could she admit to him the disappointment she’d felt when Bourlamaque had admitted that his worst accusations were true?

She sat at the foot of the bed, pushed the blanket aside, and unlocked the iron that bound his ankle. “Try to bend your leg.”

He wiggled his foot, then bent his knee, the blanket sliding down his thigh, exposing his leg to the hip. Breath hissed from between clenched teeth, and she knew it was his injured thigh that pained him. “Satan!”

She could not help but notice yet again how big and well made he was, his thigh as big around as both her legs together. “Your wound has grown stiff.”

“Aye—och!” He squeezed his eyes shut and let go a few shuddering breaths as he straightened his leg and bent it a second and third time. By the time he’d stretched it out on the bed again, his face was pale, and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. “Dinnae expect to see me dancin’ a jig anytime soon.”

Amalie was not sure what he meant by
jig,
but she knew he would never dance again. She’d seen her cousins building a travois this afternoon and had realized at once what they purposed to do with it. When Bourlamaque was finished with the Ranger, her cousins would strap him to the travois, bind him by hand and foot, and drag him back to Oganak to feed the fires.

“If he is able to walk, it will keep him from escaping,” Tomas had told her, sharing a smile with Simon. “And if he cannot walk, it will enable us to move him swiftly back to the village.”

A desperate sadness swelling inside her, Amalie quickly tended the blistered, broken skin of Major MacKinnon’s right ankle, then shackled him again and moved to his left, repeating the routine, listening for the sound of approaching footsteps.

The Ranger was right, of course. In a few days, any good she could do for him would be undone many times over. And yet, if she could make this moment more bearable for him, then at least she would have done
something
.

“Somethin’ troubles you, lass. Aye, I can see it on your face.”

Could she admit the truth to him? “I…I spoke with Bourlamaque.”

“Did you tell him about Lieutenant Rillieux?”

“Lieutenant Rillieux had already confessed, and Bourlamaque told me that many women enjoy stolen kisses.” Amalie still could not fathom that and wondered, not for the first time, whether she wasn’t better suited to become a nun than a wife.

“That wasna a stolen kiss! The bastard hurt you!”

For some reason, the Ranger’s angry protectiveness felt gratifying to Amalie. But it wasn’t Bourlamaque’s words about Lieutenant Rillieux that had kept her up all night. “I also spoke with him of the things you told me about Oganak.”

Finally, she’d said it.

“Then you ken that I spoke truly.”

She nodded. “He said he does not wish to buy scalps, but has no choice, as the British do it openly. We did not start this war, Monsieur MacKinnon. Our soldiers fight only to finish it.”

“I dinnae think such fine reasons matter to the six hundred souls whose scalps were a-flutterin’ in the wind at Oganak.” He spoke the words gently, without a trace of anger or scorn or smugness.

But what he’d said struck her hard just the same, for it was the truth, and it showed her words for what they were—excuses.

“I have always believed that France is the light of the world, but now…” How could she explain it in his language when she struggled to understand it in her own? “You make me doubt all I once knew, monsieur.”

“Nations are made of men, Miss Chauvenet, and war turns men into animals.”

Some men became animals, it seemed. But clearly not all men.

“This war has not made you into an animal.”

He raised a dark eyebrow. “You’re certain of that, are you, lass?”

She closed the shackle around his wrist and locked it, slipping the key that he might have stolen from her into her apron pocket. “Yes, Monsieur MacKinnon, I am.”

M
organ watched and listened while Amalie read aloud to him—something by a philosopher lad named Rousseau. Her eyes were downcast, her lashes dark on her cheeks, her hair spilling over one shoulder to the floor. The sight of her and the sweet sound of her voice were almost enough to make him forget that his days were running out. She could read well—better than well, given that she was reading French words but speaking En-
glish ones. Her mind was quick, her thoughts agile, her wit sharp.

And it only made him want her more.

She’d already read through the philosopher’s notions of original man, explaining to him that Rousseau believed men were creatures of nature whom society and civilization made weak. Morgan thought he agreed, at least in part. He’d seen Indian villages that had once been strong destroyed by the trappings of civilization—rum that enslaved minds, muskets that made men lazy so that they forgot how to use bow and arrow, copper pots and kettles and steel knives that made people dependent on trade with Europeans.

But when it came to notions of love and desire, ’twas clear that Rousseau was a blethering idiot.

“ ‘It is easy to see that the moral part of love is a contrived feeling, born of social habit and enhanced by women with much care and cunning in order to build their empire and put in power the sex which ought to obey. This feeling, being founded on notions of beauty and merit that a savage does not know, and on comparisons he cannot make, must not exist for him.’ ” She paused for a moment, and a blush stole over her cheeks. “ ‘He follows only the character nature has given him and not tastes that he could never have acquired, so that every woman equally answers his purpose.’ ”

Morgan couldn’t help but laugh, amused by her shyness and humored by the ridiculousness of Rousseau’s thinking. “ ’Tis clear this Rousseau spends too much time wi’ his books and no’ enough time wi’ women. Surely, the poor man has never been in love.”

She lifted her gaze from the page, her cheeks still pink. “You do not agree?”

“Nay, lassie.” He looked straight into her eyes. “I think even the most savage man can tell a beautiful woman when he sees her.”

She drew a quick breath, looked away, then met his gaze again, her blush deepening to a glow. “You say war makes men into animals, but the
mère supérieure
would say the same of passion.”

Morgan considered this for a moment, thinking of all he had done out of lust, his mind coming to rest on Iain and what he had endured out of love for Annie. “Aye, unbridled lust might turn a man into an animal if he allows it to rule him, but desire tempered by love can make him a saint.”