Enticing the Weary Warrior

by Tammy Jo Burns

  She smiled coyly as he approached her. He grabbed her upper arms and pulled her to him so that she had to stand on her toes to maintain her balance. She pushed herself against his hard frame and found herself opening to his insistent mouth. Megan slipped an arm about him, to caress his back, and felt line upon line of puckered skin. She traced one below his breeches. “Liam?” she asked, pulling back. Megan felt him reach around and grip her wrists, forcing them between the two of them.

  “I don’t like to be touched anymore. That’s why this will never work between us.”

  “But we’re married now.”

  “I’ll see what can be done about that. Good night.” She watched him turn and quietly slip from the room.

  Her legs felt limp and she slowly collapsed to a naked heap on the floor. She stared at the door that he had just disappeared through. He wouldn’t be able to leave her if they had a child. Already she had two ripped from her, she would not give up any future children she might have because her husband did not want to be touched. He thought to end their union, she would just have to convince him otherwise.

  * * *

  After Megan waved her parents off, she went to the stable and joined Hamrick and the jockey for the day’s training session. She watched Legend and the jockey for fifteen minutes before halting their practice.

  “Stop,” she called out.

  Henry, the jockey, trotted the horse over to her. “What is it, my lady?”

  “You’re not connecting to him. He’ll do more if you connect to him. You’re putting the whip to him too often.”

  “He’s a horse, m’lady. That’s how you get ‘em to perform.”

  “And how would you perform if someone put a whip to you?” She looked up to see the way Henry looked at her and snarled, “Get down.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You heard the lass,” Hamrick said.

  The man grumbled but did as he was told. Megan took his place and leaned over Legend’s neck and whispered in his ear. His ears flicked in excitement upon hearing Megan’s voice. “Time me, Hamrick,” Megan said before urging Legend into a gallop.

  Liam walked up and joined Hamrick and Henry at the fence. “Why is Megan riding Legend?”

  “Teaching Henry here a lesson,” Hamrick said as he watched his pocket watch.

  Megan passed the men and then slowed him to a cantor then a walk. She patted his neck as he came to a stop before the three men. “Well?” she asked breathlessly, but with excitement.

  “A full twenty seconds faster, lass.”

  “See what I mean, Henry? You have to connect with him. I want you to spend the rest of the morning walking with him and talking with him. You must earn his respect and then he’ll work harder for you. He’ll want to impress you. And no whip.”

  The man muttered under his breath, but did as he was told.

  “When is his first race?” Liam asked.

  “You care?”

  “Meg…” Liam started threateningly.

  “I’m just making certain, because last night you didn’t seem to want any part of me or this marriage.”

  “Marriage?” Hamrick asked, his brows rose to meet his hairline.

  “I’ll explain later,” Megan said.

  “There’s nothing to explain. We’re married,” Liam interjected.

  She turned back to Liam and crossed her arms, “I’m waiting for an answer.”

  “I registered Legend for the races. I have an investment in his winning.”

  “An investment? That’s all this is to you? If you want to ‘invest’ in him, place your money on him the day of the race.” She turned to walk away when she felt a steely grip on her upper arm. “Yes?” she challenged him.

  “How. Many. Days?”

  “What. Do. You. Care?” she mimicked him.

  “Don’t play games with me.”

  “Or what? You’ll disappear another five years? Well, guess what. I managed to survive the first time, I’m sure I’ll survive this time.”

  “Just answer the bloody question.”

  “We have two days until his first race. It’s not a major one, but it’s important. It’s at the Newmarket course.”

  “Will Henry and Legend be ready in two days?”

  “We can only hope.”

  “And if they aren’t?”

  “I search for a new jockey.”

  “You’re going to only give them one race?”

  “I suppose I could race him myself, but since they frowned on my being the owner, I can only imagine what they would do if I jockeyed my own horse.”

  “Megan,” he growled her name in warning.

  “Do you have a better idea?” she countered.

  “No.”

  “Have you any experience racing horses?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, Lord Brookdale, when I have need of your opinion I’ll seek it out. Otherwise, racing horses is my business, not yours.”

  “Yes, Lady Brookdale.” Liam bowed low, then turned and walked off.

  “Now, would ye’ like to explain these turn of events, Lady Brookdale?” Hamrick turned to Megan.

  “Oh, Hamrick, I’m not even certain where to begin myself.”

  * * *

  Megan walked upstairs after spending much of the day with Hamrick, Henry, and Legend. She still wasn’t completely pleased with Henry’s progress, but he was doing better. The man was reticent to fully trust Legend, and Megan feared how they would fare in the race. She entered her bedroom and collapsed on the bed, and threw her arm over her eyes. Her head pounded.

  “What’s wrong?” she heard a deep voice ask. Your husband’s voice, she reminded herself.

  “Nothing,” she muttered.

  “You aren’t one to nap.”

  “And please remind me how you’d know that?” she asked, lifting her arm and glaring at him. “What do you want?” she queried when he remained silent and covered her eyes once more.

  “I came to gather the rest of my clothes.”

  “Allow me to help you,” she pushed herself up.

  “I can manage.”

  “No, I insist,” she held up her hand to halt his progress. She went to the wardrobe and jerked open the doors. Megan gathered an armful of clothes and threw them at him as he approached her. “Here,” she yelled at him. “You want your bloody clothes? Well, that’s bloody wonderful! I wouldn’t have you share my room or my bed if you were the last man alive!” She gathered more clothes and threw them at him, causing him to either drop the clothes in his arms or be hit in the face with more of them. She took a boot and hurled it toward his head.

  Liam saw it coming and quickly ducked. It did him no good, however, because another boot caught him on the side of his head. “Dammit, Megan, stop,” he ordered.

  “Stop? You want me to stop? Just like that? Damn you, life just doesn’t stop.”

  “Megan, you aren’t making any sense.”

  “Get out! Get out! Get out!” She knew she sounded like a petulant child, but couldn’t help it. “Just get out.” She crumpled to the floor, defeat tinging her voice.

  Refusing to follow her order, Liam quietly shut the door and rounded the end of the bed. He lowered himself to the floor and took his wife into his arms. He was shocked to see tears running down her cheeks. “What’s this? The girl I used to know never cried.”

  “The girl you knew no longer exists. What are you doing in here? Shouldn’t you be taking your clothes to your room and getting ready to terminate our marriage?”

  “Megan, it won’t work. We’re too different now. Too many things have happened—”

  “What, Liam? What’s happened? I’ve told you everything. I’ve told you about losing the bairn, about marrying, and then about having another child ripped from my arms. Yet you’ve said nothing. You refuse to share anything with me. So this is on you, Liam. You must decide if I’m important enough to you to share your secrets with. Do you want to try and have a normal life, or are you going to let the
past five years rule the rest of your life? If you want to live in the past, then go.”

  She watched him slowly get to his feet.

  “Meg…”

  “Don’t say anything, Liam. If you’re going to leave, just go.”

  He stood and walked around the bed once more. When he reached the door, he rested his forehead against it, fighting with himself. Just walk out, he silently ordered himself. His hand drifted to the doorknob but instead turned the key. “It isn’t a romantic tale by any means,” Liam said.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “You want to know what happened, but I warn you, it’s bloody and unpleasant.”

  “I don’t care,” Megan replied. She crawled up onto the bed and sat cross-legged.

  He could feel her eyes on him as he paced the room. The words wouldn’t come to him no matter how hard he tried.

  “You used to tell me everything.”

  “I can’t do this,” he walked by the bed and she jumped to her knees, grabbed his arm, and halted his progress.

  “There’s something you need to understand. Yes, I was very angry and hurt that you chose the life of espionage over me. In some ways I even understand. But you need to know that I am not allowing you to walk away from me a second time.” She pulled him close and twined her arms about his neck. “I’ve had time to think. Now that we are married, I want to start over,” she whispered against his lips. Megan teased his firm, pliable lips while she tunneled her fingers through his thick, dark hair. “I want us to have a family like we always talked about.”

  Liam attempted to pull away, and his heart pounded for so many reasons.

  “No.” She held him closer. “You used to be unable to keep your hands off me.”

  “Megan, stop,” Liam ordered. He removed her hands and pinned them to her sides.

  “Why should I stop?”

  “I can’t give you that family.”

  “Because you don’t care for me anymore? You found someone else, didn’t you? Just tell me, and if that’s the case I won’t hold you. You should be hap—”

  “Dammit, Megan, I’m impotent!”

  Chapter 13

  “I know.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I know. I eavesdropped on the conversation you had with Hamrick.”

  “I can’t believe you.”

  “How else am I to find out anything about you? You hardly speak to me. Besides, I don’t believe you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because earlier I felt…” she broke off and waved toward his groin.

  “I did, too, but…”

  “What?”

  “It’s a gamble.”

  “Please, sit down,” she invited. When he made to move to one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, her next words halted his progress, “No, here.” She patted the edge of the bed and watched him reluctantly join her. “What happened?” she asked so softly, he strained to hear the words even though they sat inches apart.

  “You heard.”

  “Not everything,” she lied, desperate to get him to talk to her.

  “The bloody French and their beatings. When you are taken hostage and you have knowledge of valuable information, your enemy will do whatever it takes to extract it from you. They will use any means necessary. If they are able to find a weakness, you might as well consider your life forfeit. And you never, under any circumstance, never, let them know that you have anyone that you care about.”

  “How long?”

  “Almost a year.”

  “Why didn’t they just…”

  “Kill me?” He stopped and looked for Megan to nod her head that that was what she had been thinking. When she didn’t do as he thought she would, he continued, “I guess they thought I was too valuable.”

  “But how were you caught?”

  “Carelessness. Overconfidence. Perhaps I said or did something that raised an alarm.”

  “Could there have been a traitor or double-agent that knew who you were?”

  “Anything is possible,” he shrugged.

  “I don’t even know what to ask next.” Megan shifted closer to him and rested her forehead against his right shoulder-blade. They sat in silence for several minutes, each lost in thought. Megan pulled back and shifted so she could observe his face. “How often were you beaten?”

  “Depended. They never settled into a pattern. That would’ve made it too easy to fight against them. It’s much harder to survive mentally when you’re randomly punished. There’s no way to prepare.”

  “Yet you survived. How?”

  “You,” he said, giving her that half grin that had always melted her heart. He ran the backs of his fingers down her cheek.

  “Me?”

  “Yes. I would escape into my mind and go back to those last months we were together. Then they’d leave and I’d come back to myself and call myself every sort of fool for walking away from you. For choosing the life I had instead of you. Some adventure it had turned out to be with me locked away wondering every time the door opened if it was going to be my last day.”

  “And afterwards?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After your imprisonment.”

  “Oh. I escaped when our soldiers attacked the place where I was being held. Wellington considered me to be a liability at that point. I can’t blame him, really. My identity was well-known and I would have been little good to them as an agent. He gave me enough time to heal from my wounds and to fatten me back up, and then he shipped me to America.”

  “What happened there?”

  “I assisted with some strategizing, and did some reconnoissance work.”

  “What is that?”

  “I would scout areas before the troops went in and report back to the commander. I would tell them what the land looked like and if I had seen any enemy movement. I finished my time in New Orleans.”

  “Go ahead,” she encouraged him, seeing that he was holding back, but needed to talk.

  “What can I say? It was the bloodiest, one-sided battle I’ve ever lived through. Jackson, their commander, wasn’t just out to win a battle; he had a vendetta to fulfill. I’ve never seen anything like it. Thousands of our men fell. Packenham was killed and then Gibbs. We lost so many leaders in that one bloody day. Less than a fourth of the Highland regiment survived, our kinsman, Meg.” Silence hung in the air for several moments. “And you want to know the hell of it?”

  “What?” she asked softly, afraid that if she spoke too loudly he would quit talking, quit confiding in her. Even though she had eavesdropped on his talk to the recruits, she wanted him to trust her with his secrets. She wanted to share in his pain. She wanted to heal him.

  “It didn’t even matter. The war had been over for days, and we didn’t receive notice until afterwards. All that blood and death for what amounted to nothing, because we didn’t even get anything out of it. Good men died because they were fighting for our country and there was no reward. No land was won. No money or treasure received. Nothing. Just death and destruction. And those that survived are coming back to what? Cities and villages that are overcrowded. Some of these men only know how to fight. What are they going to do? Bloody hell, Megan, I’m one of those men. What am I going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Megan said honestly, laying her hand on his back. He tried to flinch away from her touch, but she wouldn’t allow it. She sat on her knees behind him and instead began to knead the knots in his neck and back. Megan gave a small, wistful smile when instead of holding himself stiff, he relaxed and let his head drop forward at her ministrations. She was working viciously on one especially difficult knot when a thought occurred to her. “Liam, you’re now the Earl of Brookdale.”

  “Aye,” he mumbled.

  She smirked because he sounded as if he were half asleep. She continued on, undeterred, knowing she might have to repeat the idea at a later date. “You’re now a Member of Parliament. You’ll be busy, but think of all you can do. Yo
u can change and create laws. You do have the power to help your brothers in arms.”

  He lifted his head and turned to look at her. “Member of Parliament?”

  “Yes,” she said, excitement in her voice.

  “Bloody hell,” he countered, dread in his.

  “But look at all the good you can do.”

  “I think Prinny set us up as a royal joke.”

  “I doubt that, but if he did, prove him wrong. You now have five friends that are MPs as well, plus my father. And those that have been MPs for years have friends and they have friends. Before long, you will have influence that is far reaching and you can affect a great many changes.”

  “When did you become so knowledgeable about the goings on of government?”

  “I told you that I had changed a lot in five years. And these men have wives, don’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know how many times something gets passed because someone was influenced by his wife?”

  “You would do that for me?” He shifted so they were now looking at one another.

  “I’m your wife now, and this is important to you. But there can be no divorce. That would leave a stigma that you could never overcome, and you would never be able to make the changes you so desperately want to.”

  “But you want children.”

  “And we’ll have them. There are plenty of foundlings that need good homes.”

  “But what about the other?”

  “I have faith that we shall overcome that as well,” she gave him a soft smile.

  “Meg, I…”

  She quickly placed the fingers of her right hand over his lips, halting his words. “Please, don’t say anything you aren’t ready to. It’s enough that you’re staying. I know you still have your doubts. I would be lying if I said I didn’t have any myself, but I lost you once, and it almost killed me. I’m not going to lose you again. So, whether or not we are ever intimate again, Liam McTavish, is a moot point. It will be enough for me to fall asleep in your arms every night and wake up in them each morning.”

  “The nightmares…”

  “Will fade with time. We’ll fight them together. No argument you might have is going to make me walk away from you. I care for you and I’m staying by your side.”