‘It limps?’
‘When I walk, I limp. You know that. Did you think I had a wooden leg?’ He had not thought his limp was that bad! Jamie risked cracking open one eye and found her staring not at his ruined left thigh, but at his manhood. It also brought him up short and had him hastily gathering up the sagging breeches and holding them in place. He had been so fixated on showing her the dreaded scars he had quite forgotten she might never have seen a man’s privates before.
‘And your...your...’ She waved her hand in the direction of his jewels and blushed as red as a beetroot. ‘That part of you still works?’
‘Perfectly well.’ She still wasn’t looking at his leg. Apparently her eyes were resolutely locked on his groin, something both strangely disconcerting and erotic at the same time when one considered the situation.
‘Oh, thank goodness!’ She started to giggle, her eyes never leaving that particular area between his legs, her lovely face as red as a face could be without the aid of paint. ‘I assumed...when you said you weren’t a whole man...well, I assumed that it had been shot off or damaged in some way as to render it...useless...but then I felt it this morning and it seemed to be functioning...as I am led to believe that part of a man’s anatomy should function.’
Thank goodness?
Not at all what he had expected her first words to be when at best he had hoped for a cursory it doesn’t matter, just kindly keep it covered up. A tiny part of him began to hope in earnest. A bigger part needed to hear her verdict on his deformity. ‘The scars are repulsive, aren’t they?’
Her eyes flicked to the covered damaged area, lingered, then slowly swept up his body to look incredulously into his. ‘You were ashamed to show me them?’
‘You’re so lovely and so perfect and I am—’
‘Brave and strong.’ Her interruption brought him up short. ‘Did you really think me so shallow that I would think less of you because of a few scars, Jamie? If I am completely honest, they humble me. To think that you have suffered all of the pain of those wounds and not only survived, but fully recovered leaves me in awe.’ Her eyes travelled back down his body again, reminding him of the fact aside from bunched fabric in his hand he was stood practically stark naked in front of her. Her fingers reached up to trace the shape of the scar on the front of his hip. ‘Does it still hurt?’
Jamie shook his head, transfixed on the peculiar sensation of being touched. There. And with affection. ‘Parts of it are numb. Other parts over-sensitive.’ The involuntary twinge as she found one of those places made her hesitate. ‘Is my touching it uncomfortable?’
Uncomfortable. An understatement. Despite himself, Jamie laughed. ‘My breeches were just around my knees, I am allowing you to scrutinise all of my imperfections and I inadvertently flashed you my...’ He flapped his hand in the vicinity of his crotch and felt himself blush like a virgin. ‘Why on earth would any of those things make me uncomfortable?’
‘I suppose it is a little awkward, but...’
‘But?’
‘As you have already seen me naked, I think it is only fair that I get to see you in all of your glory.’
There were no words. Jamie opened his mouth twice to speak and twice he closed it while he digested what he thought he had just heard. ‘Hardly glorious. My leg is a mess.’ He must have misheard or misinterpreted her words out of desperation. He wanted her approval so very much, clearly his poor, besotted heart was attributing false meaning to the tiniest things. Yet she appeared totally sincere. Not even the slightest bit repulsed.
He watched in frozen wonder as the flat of her hand pressed against his abdomen, smoothed up his chest and then one finger traced the line of hair all the way down to his navel. ‘To you perhaps it is a mess. My eyes find plenty of other bits of you to feast on which are much more interesting than a few insignificant scars.’
* * *
Cassie sucked in a breath of surprise and dropped her wandering hands firmly back into her lap. Gracious! Where had those words come from? She could hardly believe she had thought them, let alone said them out loud. But really, seeing him stood in all of his natural splendour in such intimately close proximity was making her giddy. Her palms itched to touch him again. All of him. Especially that part of him she had oh-so-briefly glimpsed and wished she were still able to see because it had not at all been what she had expecting and had held her momentarily transfixed.
Shocking thoughts which a proper young lady would never dream of thinking, but Cassie could not help because her passions were just too exuberant and always too close to the surface. With Jamie, it was impossible to control them—and with this morning’s enlightening interlude still so fresh in her mind, knowing what those clever hands and mouth could do to her body—those passions had never been so close to the surface. She was practically vibrating from the force of them.
He caught her staring longingly at the arrow of dark hair on his abdomen which pointed down to that part—she supposed she was being rather blatant about it—and for a moment his dark brows drew together in a frown. Instantly, guilt and shame at her uncontrollable wantonness had her staring at her hands. She did not want to disgust him. ‘I am so very sorry. I do try to control my passions—I really do—it’s just that...’ Her voice trailed off miserably and she buried her flaming face in her hands. She was hardly controlling her wanton tendencies if she was about to confess that the sight of him stood before her was making her think the most impure of thoughts.
Cassie felt the mattress depress beside her as he sat. Then she heard his breathing. Slightly erratic. More than a little heavy. Much like her own. ‘Am I to understand the sight of me...naked...pleases you in some way?’ His voice was gruff.
Hesitant.
Cassie risked glancing at him through her fingers and was surprised to see blatant longing in his deep blue eyes as if the idea of it was so preposterous, yet not unwelcome by any stretch. He was staring at her so intently. Waiting for her answer. It compelled her to be honest.
‘Naked you are quite...splendid.’
He stood jerkily, still clutching the waistband of his breeches, and appeared bemused for a second. Relieved. Then in an instant he was all seriousness again. ‘There is more, Cassie.’
‘More scars?’
‘Sort of—but not scars you can see... I am broken on the inside, too. Horribly broken and I cannot seem to fix it no matter what I do. The truth is, I have a morbid fear of the dark.’ Not quite what she had expected his next words to be and unsure of how to react to them, Cassie merely blinked. ‘I tell you this because if you marry me we can never sleep in the same room.’ Not what she wanted to hear, but as he was speaking in such a rush now there was no time to interrupt. She had the feeling that whatever it was which was troubling him needed to come out; she suddenly understood he had held it all inside for so long, festering, because he could never say the words. Interrupting him in mid-flow now that he had finally found them was probably not the best idea. Especially when the poor man appeared completely mortified to be confessing it all to her in the first place.
‘I am unsafe, Cassie. Dangerous. I have a tendency to lash out at anyone who comes near me. I killed a man once. Snapped his neck. His name was Capitaine DuFour and he was my gaoler in France. He used to come in the night and beat and torture his prisoners. That night I was exhausted—he had been interrogating me all day. He woke me from a deep sleep and I lost control. The savage inside me took over and I lost all reason. I was crazed, Cassie. It was as if I had the strength of ten men yet the sense of none. I wish I could say it was an isolated incident, one created by an extreme set of circumstances but it wasn’t. I almost strangled my father for doing the same when I was barely fifteen. I wrapped his belt around his neck and watched him turn purple as he fought for life. When he fell to the floor I thought he was dead. I didn’t feel any remorse, merely relief that I had killed him. I
hadn’t, as it turned out, but at the time I wanted him to be dead so very much. I tried to attack the surgeons who wanted to amputate my leg. They had to resort to tying me to the bed to stop me from lashing out. I even tried to kill my own brother when he woke me up to give me some laudanum. It took the other two of them to restrain me else he would be dead, too. So you see, you can never spend the night with me. I need you to understand that—really understand that and the dangerous implications before I dare take this further. I care too much about you...’ His anguished voiced caught and he seemed to sag with exhaustion at the confession.
‘But I have spent the night with you.’
It was almost too much information to take in and her brain was whirring, trying to make sense of what he was telling her and link it to what she already knew about him. Loved about him. ‘I came to no harm.’
‘A fluke. I could have killed you. This thing within me...’ he clenched his fist and pressed it to his abdomen ‘...it feeds off the dark and kills all of my reason. When it possesses me it is as if I am outside of my body, watching myself. All that I feel is the urge to destroy. To kill. You have seen it for yourself. I wanted to kill your father when I discovered what he had done to you. I am a menace. I cannot control what I do.’
‘Yes. You can. I watched you do it.’ He had not been outside of himself when he had gone at her father. Jamie had been totally in control. And he had stopped because of her. Their eyes had locked and he had tossed her father to the floor. Stepped back. Centred himself. He had not been a crazed beast, merely her rescuer. Her knight in shining armour. A man who painted every detail of the delicate wings of a bee on a beautiful flower was not a man who would willingly harm anything—unless he had great cause to.
She remembered what he had said about his own father, of how the man had sought to beat the urge to paint out of him and pictured the little boy he had been, terrified and vulnerable at the hands of someone so much bigger, suffering for years and years at the hands of a sadist, and understood why he had eventually fought back so ferociously. If this Frenchman who haunted him had tortured Jamie repeatedly, then she hated the man with a vengeance just as much as she hated his dead father and certainly without needing to know any more. ‘Your father and this DuFour were evil men who had come to harm you. Repeatedly. It is hardly surprising that you snapped eventually and fought back.’ Cassie could find no sympathy for those vile men. ‘Although extreme, they are wholly natural reactions. When your life is in danger you fight back. And you do the same for those you care about.’ She had witnessed his loyalty to his family and now to her.
He cared about her.
How wonderful was that?
‘I have spent my life cowering before my father in the hope it might make things better, yet it only made it worse. The more subservient I became, the more irrational and cruel his punishments. I fought my father when he tried to harm me and I will not feel bad for doing so. I am glad his face is covered with the scratches I gave him. His arms are covered in my teeth marks, too. If I had had a weapon to hand, I would have gratefully used it against him yesterday even if that action would have resulted in his death.’ Cassie touched his arm gently. ‘Tell me about the surgeons.’
He swallowed hard and tried to calm his breathing. Clearly that memory was also a painful one to recall. ‘They wanted to cut off my leg when I first arrived. They said it couldn’t be saved, but I wouldn’t let them. When the infection set in they were adamant it needed to go, when I refused they restrained me. Tied me to the bed. It was too dark to perform the operation so they decided to leave it till morning. They left me strapped to the bed all night, but I managed to escape. Found a pistol. After that if any of them came near me I threatened to shoot them. They washed their hands of me. Said I was mad. Sent me home to die.’
‘But you didn’t die.’
‘No. My brother Joe has been studying medical books since he was a boy. He made medicines and ointments to treat the infection. Even then it took months.’
‘You were still ill then, when you attacked your brother, and drugged with laudanum.’
‘I won’t excuse it, Cassie. I cannot be trusted. I am not rational. I still sleep with a pistol because the darkness terrifies me.’
Aching with pity for him, Cassie went to him and wrapped her arms around him. No matter what he said, no matter what he had done, she knew he had a gentle soul and would never hurt her. ‘Oh, my poor darling! After months of incarceration and torture, to then have to fight for your own life as well—it is hardly surprising you came home fragile and a little confused. Does your brother blame you for your outburst?’ She had yet to meet Jacob Warriner, but if he was anything like the other three she suspected he was cut from the same cloth and would remain loyal to the end.
‘No. He felt dreadful for creeping up on me and trying to drip the laudanum in while I slept. But Jake is my brother, Cassie!’ His eyes were pleading now, desperate to convince her of his unworthiness. ‘I attacked my own brother!’
‘Almost a year ago, when on the cusp of death and still traumatised from your ordeal, and you are still flagellating yourself for it. Tell me, does Jake fear you now?’
This appeared to flummox him for a moment. ‘He should—but, no, he doesn’t. He’s just the same as he always was around me and still does not knock before he enters my bedchamber when I have warned him a thousand times.’
‘Perhaps because he trusts you and loves you.’ Jamie clearly hated himself and did not think he was worthy of those things. ‘Just as I trust you. And I love you, Jamie. With all of my heart.’
He stopped breathing and blinked. Swallowed hard, those fathomless bright blue eyes disbelieving. So she leaned close and kissed him, a soft brush of her lips over his, and took his hand. ‘I don’t think you are afraid of the dark, Jamie. I think you are afraid of yourself. Did you leave me this morning because you feared I wouldn’t understand?’
She felt his head nod next to hers, felt his fingers lace with hers tightly. ‘You love me?’
‘Hopelessly. I have done pretty much since the moment you rescued me out of that stupid tree.’
‘That’s funny,’ he said, not laughing at all, ‘I think I fell in love with you at exactly the same time. Just after you flattened me. I remember opening my eyes and there was this beautiful creature staring down at me. Big brown eyes. Freckles. The most amazing hair filled with twigs and leaves. I never wanted a woman as much as I wanted you then. I painted you.’
The image of that lovely picture sprang into her head and Cassie realised that was exactly how he saw her. ‘The orchard picture. And you want me?’ He nodded again, perhaps a little uncertainly, and her heart soared. As he clung to her, Cassie choked out a laugh of relief. ‘I thought you were disgusted by my wantonness.’
He held her out at arm’s length and stared at her in shock. ‘Are you mad? What would give you such a preposterous idea?’
‘My father has always told me that desire and passion were a sign of wickedness. My mother left him for another man, you see. He was worried I had inherited her tendencies. Such things, he was adamant, were unwelcome in a marriage.’
To begin with he merely blinked at her, then he shook his head incredulously. ‘As I said before, your father is a lunatic to have filled your head with such nonsense. I bet he had a number of convenient biblical quotes to prove his point. Sins of the flesh and all that. However, as I understand it, marriage was created to allow two people to enjoy one another without sin.’
‘Enjoy? My father taught me that the only purpose of fornication is procreation.’
‘But the marriage vows state “with my body I thee honour”—why would they say that unless they were acknowledging the physical manifestation of love between two people? If the act is solely for the procreation, then why did he design our bodies to find the experience pleasurable? In fact, the creator made a very specif
ic part of the female body for no other purpose than to feel pleasure.’
‘He did?’ How shocking and wonderful was it to have a conversation like this with a man, although his claim baffled her. Every part she could think of had another, more important purpose. Giving birth. Feeding children. He saw her confusion and grinned. His hands let go of her arms and slid around her waist.
‘It’s very small. Very hard to find. Would you like to know where it is?’
The air became charged with an odd sort of tension. Of expectation. Cassie’s own clothes suddenly felt tight and constricting. She became very aware of her breasts, her womb and all of the tingling flesh in between. ‘Yes.’ It came out in a whisper because he was pulling her to stand flush against him and she could feel his desire through her clothes. Felt it grow. Harden.
‘I am afraid you are going to have to be quite naked again.’
‘Will you be, too?’
She saw the trepidation, but he nodded. ‘If you would like me to be.’
She licked her lips, she couldn’t help it, and let her gaze drop to his magnificent chest.
‘Yes, please.’
Was that really her voice? Urgent, breathy, laced with need, but she was hypnotised by the intense way he was gazing at her and the way all logic appeared to vanish when he was so near. When he bent his head and kissed her, she could taste his passion and happily gave herself over to it and to him. This man she loved and who loved her in return, despite all of her many faults and peculiarities.
He stood and walked to the door. Turned the key in the lock. Cassie’s heart began to beat in panic, but when he came back towards her he pressed the key into her hand and she loved him for that thoughtful gesture which only he would understand. Cassie smiled and lifted the pillow, placed the key next to his pistol and carefully replaced the bedding to hide them. They both had their irrational fears and foibles. Perhaps together they would find the courage to overcome them. And perhaps they wouldn’t. It didn’t matter.
A Warriner to Rescue Her Page 22
