Lydia nodded. “At Wheaton Abbey you said he saved your life.”
“Aye, he did.”
“Would you tell me about it?”
He shrugged. “There’s not much to tell.”
“If he saved your life I should think there is a great deal to tell.”
For a moment Brian was silent, pausing to massage the ache behind his left temple. “I was injured during a scouting mission.” What a miserable affair that debacle had turned out to be. “Your father assigned his personal surgeon to operate. I’d most certainly have died otherwise.”
“And it was the same with the man Roark from the stables?”
“Yes.” He glanced back at her. “Does your throat hurt after rattling on so incessantly?”
She tilted her head, and fluttered her lashes mockingly. “Not at all,” she crooned.
“Why did you not talk this much the other day?”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “The state of shock and exhaustion after being abducted could have been a factor.” She smiled a bit too sweetly. “Is my conversation bothering you, Mr. Donnelly?”
“If not for a splittin’ headache I shouldn’t mind it at all.”
“That’s what you get for overindulging in spirits.”
“Thank you, Mother.” He chanced a glance toward the heavens mentally cringing. A gathering of ominous gray clouds sat directly above their heads, weighty with unshed showers. It would have been too much to hope for dry weather trekking across the wilds of England. “Looks like rain.”
Lydia shielded her eyes. “Cumulonimbus clouds, it comes from the Latin word cumulus meaning heap or pile.”
“Is there no end to the useless trivia clatterin’ about yer brain?”
She speared him with an arch stare. “Knowledge is never useless, Brian.”
“It is when there is no useful daily purpose.” He shifted the leather satchel Harvey had provided him with to the other shoulder. Lifting the flap he rifled through the meager stash of supplies—a parcel of bread, cheese, and dried meat enough to see them to Sharpsburg, a bar of soap, and a tin of tooth powder—until he located the ancient compass and frayed map.
“Tell me, Brian, would it be useful to know the type of clouds directly above us typically precede a nasty thunderstorm?”
On cue a gust of chilling wind rustled the tree leaves threatening to shred the paper thin remnants of the decrepit map. “Damn it,” he muttered, as a fat droplet of rainwater splattered across the back of his hand. “I believe that much is obvious simply lookin’ at the clouds. I have no desire to know the Latin specifics. Can ye navigate a map, Miss Lydia?”
She scrunched her face away from the slow trickle of rain drizzling around them. “Unfortunately no.”
“Land navigation is a much more worthwhile bit of knowledge.” He hunched his body against the wind scanning the map with a trained eye to ascertain the distance to Sharpsburg.
“Yes, well, it will be my very next subject to study on. In the meantime,” she inched closer to him, shivering with arms clamped over her chest, “could you navigate us to the next village before we get soaked.”
“Bloody hell.” He resisted the urge to wad the map in a fist. “We’re a good two hours from Sharpsburg. We’ll have to find other shelter for the duration of the storm.”
“Blast it all!” she swore with an impatient stamp of her foot. He swallowed back a grin. She looked absolutely adorable. “Let’s go.”
As if on cue the heaven’s unleashed a torrential downpour.
“Oh!” Lydia shrieked, turning her face to the ground. Water streamed down her forehead and braid. “We are going to drown in the middle of the forest.”
Brian grasped her upper arm, yanking her forward. “Get a move on, lass. I’ve no desire to stand here and drown with ye.”
For the next forty-five minutes Brian ushered her beneath the thickest tree cover in hopes of providing some meager shelter. To no avail, both of them were drenched, and the chill could have him mistaking the June afternoon for December. “Keep movin’, love, it’ll keep ye warm.”
“Ov-v-v-er th-th-ther-r-re,” Lydia extended a shaky finger, pointing through the trees.
Brian’s gaze fell to an old cottage nestled between the trees. It appeared to be abandoned. Relief flooded his senses, it was about bloody time they caught a break. “I see it, lass.” In one swift motion he slipped an arm beneath her knees and swept her into his arms, silently berating himself for neglecting to see how feeble her steps had become. Cradling her against his chest he noted the ghastly white hue of her fingertips and the sharp contrast of the dark tendrils plastered against her sallow forehead. She was so light, so small and fragile beneath his hands he cursed himself a bastard seven ways from Sunday, and strode toward the antediluvian cottage.
He shouldered into the cabin. The interior smelled musty, but dry, he sighed with relief. The one room building obviously hadn’t been occupied in some time—likely a decade—but a few miscellaneous pieces of furniture had been left behind; a small table, three scarred wooden chairs, and a bed complete with straw mattress. He kicked the door closed and strode across the room, gently settling Lydia on the bed. “I’ll get ye warm, love.” He tipped her chin, punching down the pain clinching his chest. Her eyes, usually so sparkling and bright, gazed back at him… flat.
His eyes flicked about the cottage in quick assessment. His first priority was to start a fire. The only available dry wood was the table and chairs. He grabbed a chair, tilted it back and stomped on the legs, successfully breaking the chair. Brian chucked the wood pieces into the fireplace. Rifling through the leather satchel he grasped the flint and tinderbox, nimbly tossing sparks into the old stone hearth. For once luck smiled upon him and within moments the meager flames leapt to life.
Instantly his attention turned back to Lydia huddled and trembling on the mattress. The chattering of her teeth was audible and she’d pulled her knees to her chest. Exhaustion laced every feature, emanating from her slumped shoulders. His heart ached. “Come here love,” he slid an arm around the small of her back, encouraging her to stand. When she didn’t he scooped her into his arms again. “Let’s get you by the fire.”
Deftly he stripped the wet blue flannel from her body, leaving her clad in the thin white shift alone.
“Wha-at a-a-ar-re y-you d-doing?” she rattled.
“Gettin’ you out of these wet clothes before ye catch yer death.” He’d like to have wrapped her in a fresh blanket but the quilt lashed to the bottom of his satchel was soaked through.
Without argument she stepped wearily from the gown pooled at her feet and crumpled to the floor before the fire. Brian shrugged the dripping shirt from his shoulders and knelt behind her, pressing his chest to her back, rubbing his palms across her bare arms attempting to warm her with friction.
“I f-feel lik-ke a drowned r-rat.” Her head lolled against his shoulder, eyes fluttering closed.
He wrapped an arm around her upper body, nestling her chin in the crook of his arm before she teetered onto the floor. “Aye, and you look a bit like one as well. I could remind ye this is all yer fault.”
One eyelid lifted slightly. “Sh-shut up.”
“Sorry, love. Only teasin’.” He shifted to sit on the floor, drawing her across his lap. “Go to sleep, love, I’ve got ye.”
“Mmm,” she murmured, rolling her face into the crook of his neck, her icy fingers landed in the middle of his bare chest. The ring he’d placed on her hand glinted in the firelight.
On impulse he reached up and closed his hand around hers, stroking his thumb absently across her fingers. Fingers that looked so tiny and fine beside his thicker calloused hands. A crescent shaped scar, no bigger than his thumbnail, marked the back of her wrist, and he knew the most intense desire to learn how she’d come by the injury. The fire cast a warm glow across her features enhancing the red in her warming skin and drying hair. Visually he caressed the tantalizing curve of her face, traveling along her neck, to the
pale pink flesh peeking from beneath the loose front of her shift.
Brian swallowed, hard. She fit so perfectly within his arms; as though holding her was the most natural thing in this world. He could feel every luscious swell of her body, and relished the gentle rise and fall of her chest. It was enough simply to see her breathing.
Perhaps he was a fool, or perhaps he was a romantic, or perhaps he’d never had anyone to right and properly love? But for whatever reason his heart ached, his skin tingled, and he knew the heady sense of falling in love with her. Again.
It couldn’t be real, was nothing more than an illusion, but…
His gaze fell to the perfection of her heart shaped lips. For a moment he warred internally. What was one last taste? Lydia slept so soundly, she would never know…
Just one last stolen kiss.
Silent as a whisper he leaned in to graze his lips across hers.
Chapter Six
Toasty warm at last, Lydia wiggled her toes and snuggled into the extremely warm, firm, and undoubtedly comfortable nest she was tangled in. If she never moved again it would be too soon. Never in all her existence had she known such cold as yesterday afternoon. Even in the dead of winter she’d never been far from a safe roof or blazing fire. After yesterday she had newfound respect for soldiers such as Brian and her father who spent weeks or months on end bivouacking in such deplorable conditions as she had survived the day before.
Becoming ever more wakeful she wiggled and may have rolled to her back except that she seemed to be quite stuck. Even before she managed to open her eyes the reality of her sleeping arrangements dawned. She was curled on her side, trapped as it were, wrapped extremity for extremity alongside Brian’s body. His chest pressed the full length of her scarcely clad back, his chin on top of her head, naked arms curled around her, his left leg—also devoid of clothing—draped across both of hers. The position was so warm and intimate that while she knew she should move, she did not immediately do so, not even when his left hand curved around her right breast inside of her shift!
Lydia hardly dared breathe as she contemplated her next move. She supposed a proper young lady would hit the ceiling, but she rather enjoyed the intimacy, the physical contact of the pose; in all she was rather tired of being a proper young lady. Moreover curled in Brian’s arms she was more than warm… she was perfect. Tentatively her fingers lifted to dance across the soft flesh of his forearm. Ripples of delight flickered in her belly as he responded to her touch, the tight cords of his muscles bunching beneath her fingertips.
“Lydia,” he murmured, sliding his hands and arms along her body. One of his large hands splayed across her abdomen as he shifted to nuzzle her neck and press his lips to her shoulder. Flutters erupted in her stomach fraying every nerve to the root. His knuckles ran up the back of her arm, and the flat of his palm curled around her other shoulder as he rolled to press the length of his body atop hers. She whimpered, lost, drowning in sensations that she could no more describe than identify. Brian reached down, sliding a hand up the length of her inner thigh. In that instant she realized the shift was up around her waist, and his hips—covered by what felt like a scrap of wool blanket—were delving ever deeper between her thighs. Proof of his arousal pressed long and hot against her leg, snapping her back to reality. Dear God! She wasn’t ready for… that.
Brian,” she murmured, pressing restraining hands against his shoulders, “please, wait.” He did not immediately respond and Lydia panicked. “Please,” she pleaded again. “This is too much. Too fast.” She shoved against his chest, effectively removing his hands from her womanly parts, and heaving to her feet. Teetering on the straw mattress she used the wall for balance and speared Brian with an accusatory glare.
He blinked a mixture of confusion and sleep from his eyes as she stepped over him to hop in a less than ladylike fashion to the packed dirt floor. “For the love of Christ, Lydia, it’s not the first time ye’ve slept in me arms, or let me kiss ye fer that matter.”
“Why didn’t you stop when I asked?” Her eyes darted about the measly cabin, honing in on their clothes stretched before the fire. “And you did not have my permission to–to—” At a loss for words she gestured to her scarcely clad figure.
“Forgive me seein’ after yer good health,” he said sarcastically, rolling to sit at the edge of the bed. She flushed hotly as a glimpse of his more manly parts was revealed in the transition. Dear God, he wore nothing beneath the makeshift kilt! “The next time I’ll let ye freeze to death.”
“And in what way did sliding a hand up my shift aide in your life saving efforts?”
Absently his hand flexed, an expression of supreme amusement dancing across his features as he dropped an assessing eye to her breasts. At last he shrugged. “I’ve seen better.”
“Oh!” Indignation afresh flared to life. However improper it may have been for him to take such liberties with her person, it was infinitely more deplorable to insult her after having done so. She clamped an arm across her torso, the flush creeping up her neck flaming to life. At the very least he could have lied. It hurt to know her body was wanting, worse he—Apollo incarnate—found her less than worthy. “Are you intentionally trying to upset me?” Memories of their stolen kisses, and her hypothesis from the final night at the Baker’s farm tickled her brain. Was he intentionally pushing her away? Even now something forbidden lurked in the depths of his eyes, something that left her unsettled and burning deep in her soul.
He grinned, leaning back on his elbows. She gulped as a ripple flexed across his bare chest, the incarnation of Apollo indeed. “It doesn’t seem to take much to rile yer temper, Lydia. Of course ye are rather fetchin’ when ye’re mad. Those perfect little cheeks of yers turn a most becoming shade of pink, and ye have the most bewitching eyes—
His voice, smooth and melodically low as a base cello, washed seductively over her. What about my eyes? she wanted to scream, hungry for his words. His smoldering gaze bore straight into her, heating her spirit. No man had ever paid compliment to her eyes or any part of her person for that matter.
“—yer eyes glow as the sun in the dawn, like pools of amber in the lighting sky.”
There was a moment of dead silence. His words robbed the very breath from her lungs. For a single heart shuddering second the world fell away, and there was nothing—not the pounding of the rain, or the blaze of the fire—save for the two of them. The swirl of his eyes was a physical entity pulling her toward him, body and soul. An invisible string wrapped around her heart and he alone held the ability to manipulate it.
“Of course ye yap a fair score less when ye’re mad. It does create a tempting incentive to cross you.”
And that quickly he ruined it.
If the heavens had not unleashed a fury of rainfall upon their small haven she would have stormed righteously from the house dressed or otherwise. His words were the kindest, if not the only, compliment anyone had ever given her. Betrothed at fifteen men had never seen fit to court her, what would be the purpose, and so she’d never been blessed with nonsensical poems or plied with flowers and trinkets. No one had bothered to call her pretty. The viscount certainly never paid her any special mind—the viscount did not pay special mind to any living creature save for his hounds and horses—and it was no kept secret that his interest in their marriage was limited to how her inheritance would flatten his debts. Sir William was militaristic to a fault and she could not recall a single occasion for a compliment to have escaped his throat. Olivia never failed to tell Lydia she was lovely, but if such were true shouldn’t someone other than her mother take note?
At parties she was always the girl left along the wall. The outcast. No one bothered dancing with her. She was just Lydia Covington, daughter of an important man, but little more than a social climber, and far too plain to be tempting. For a split second she’d almost believed her eyes were something other than boring and brown, that her cheeks were not a little too round, she’d almost believed there was som
ething special about her.
And if the whole of the conversation—if not the situation—wasn’t mortifying enough Lydia felt the fresh hot sting of tears not threatening to spill forth, but choking her. God, please, no, I can’t cry. Not here. Not now. Anywhere but in front of him. Panicked she spun away from Brian’s probing eyes, busying her hands with assessing the dampness of her gown.
Gasp.
It was still wet but not so much that she couldn’t suffer through wearing it, dressing would give her something to do, distract her long enough to beat back the urge to cry. If only she could manage without Brian’s assistance.
Hiccup.
A fat tear slipped over her bottom lid and plopped onto the back of her hand. A sob slid up her throat impatiently battling the frantic swallowing intended to keep it down. She sucked a whistling breath deep into her lungs, and held it.
A rustling toward the back of the room indicated Brian rising from the straw mattress. He cursed under his breath, a word she didn’t recognize, no doubt one of the colorful adjectives soldiers were so privy to. “Lydia,” his tone was patronizing in its gentleness, “are ye cryin’, lass?”
A croaked, “No,” was all the reply she managed.
Tingles marking his approach tickled the nape of her neck. Tingles can’t be good. She tried her damnedest to ignore the sensation, to shove away his effect on her, but his essence pervaded every corner of the small room, engulfing her. She meant to grab for her gown and maintain a face of indifference, really she did, but his hands found her shoulders in a touch so soft she could almost believe it caring. And…
She crumbled.
Sobs erupted with gale force, racking her body with such intensity it hurt. His arms snaked around her. “Don’t touch me,” she shrieked. “Let me go!” She shoved against his chest, wrestling the strong hold, but Brian held firm securing one arm around the small of her back and the other against her shoulders, burying his hand in the tangle of her hair. Imprisoned against the wall of his chest, the heat of his arms seeped into her in bittersweet bliss.
Forget Me Not Page 9
