A Dangerous Courtship (5 page)

His skin was deeply bronzed by the sun, proof that he was a man who labored out of doors. And his hands, roughened and callused, though tender when he'd touched her, were further proof that this man obviously lived by the sweat of his brow and the strength of his back.

The one odd thing in the picture he presented was his perfect speech and cultured voice. It did not fit the puzzle of who he appeared to be. And in an age when fashionable men kept their faces cleanly shaven, this man sported a close-cropped beard—one, Veronica remembered all too clearly, had felt surprisingly wonderful against her soft skin.

Her quiet appraisal of him came to an end as they reached another stone structure of the abbey. This, too, was roofless and doorless, and it had long since been stripped of its windowpanes. It was more ruinous than some of the places of Fountains she had seen this night, but even so it seemed to be the stranger's destination.

He walked inside the structure, moving immediately to the right, where, Veronica noted, there was a cozy area with a small stone bench.

He set her down on that bench. Beside her, to the very farthest right, was a yawning archway cut into the earth. Cold air, which smelled of dirt and the far-flung moors high above, flowed freely from it, indicating that it snaked beneath the ground to some other opening far away.

"Wh-where are we?" she asked.

"One of the abbey's many outerbuildings," he said. "The grass we just crossed over was probably a garden at one time, long ago. Doubtless it was watered from the River Skell." He indicated to her left.

Veronica turned her head, catching her breath at the sight that greeted her. She'd been so intent on the man that she'd barely noticed anything else—but, oh! what a sight she now beheld.

The opposite wall of the structure had long since fallen away, leaving in full open view the winding River Skell. The river now glistened a perfect silver hue beneath the moon's light, and it was skimmed here and there with feathery wisps of fog.

The arches and foundations of Fountains thrust up and out of her waters like majestic monuments of old, and the Skell, as though to keep hidden some of her ancient secrets, appeared to be a silver ribbon lacing tightly around their bases.

"Oh, my," Veronica whispered. "It—it is beautiful. Stunning."

"Aye," he agreed.

"When I first saw this place, it never occurred to me that it could house anything so—so magical—so lovely as this."

"Aye," he agreed again.

Something in his tone caused Veronica to turn her gaze to him.

She was quite startled to find the man staring at her, transfixed—as though he'd been doing the very same the entire time she'd been talking about the view.

A deep heat suffused Veronica.

If he noticed, he thankfully made no comment.

"If you'll wait here, my lady, I've something for that wound."

"Oh, y-yes... my injury." Veronica glanced down at her habit—anything but look at him!—and spied a deep stain of red on her skirts. "Yes, of course I'll wait, sir. But where—"

She felt a shift of movement and looked up without finishing her sentence.

He was already gone.

Veronica leaned forward on the bench, peering into the Stygian darkness of the earthen passageway he'd obviously just entered.

She frowned, then tamped down a shudder of trepidation.
What was he about?

He returned a length of time later, carrying a lit lantern in one fist and a bottle of spirits and what looked to be bandages in the other. The glow of his lamp cast crazed shadows on what was left of the building's walls.

Veronica stiffened, easing back on the stone.

"Do not say you dwell in that cave, sir."

He shook his head.

"It is just a passageway, to another area of Fountains—her cellars and what were once prisons, to be exact."

Veronica relaxed somewhat.

He knelt before her, setting down the lamp, bottle and bandages. His eyes on a direct level with hers, and his face eerily lit from the lantern below, he said plainly, "It isn't the cave where I dwell, my lady, but the prisons. I find them very roomy."

Veronica forced down a gasp. "Surely you jest, sir. No one in their right mind would... what I mean to say is, why would anyone
... oh, blast.
Tell me, sir, are you a criminal or not?" she demanded.

"I assure you, I am no criminal."

"Are you on the run, then? Perhaps hiding from someone?"

Again, he answered in the negative, though this time not as swiftly or as surely as before.

"Earlier, when my coachman fired his gun, you—you thought that shot was for you, didn't you?" Veronica asked, deciding she might just as well plunge ahead. After all, she and this stranger had shared kisses and touches. What were a few personal questions compared to that? "You even said you'd been 'found out' What did you mean by that, sir?"

"Exactly what I said. One can never be too careful these days, no matter where one dwells."

Veronica blew out a breath of agitation. "I vow, sir, you are being deliberately vague."

He arched one brow at her. "Am I? Forgive me." Even as he spoke, he lifted her left leg.

Veronica winced, not realizing how much her injury had pained her until now—as he forced her to straighten her leg out.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

Veronica nodded. "Yes, yes. I just... I am afraid to have a look at it, sir, for fear, as you said earlier, it—it may need a stitch. Or two." She prayed that wouldn't be the way of it.

"I have a lamp now. I'll be able to see the damage fully." With his left hand cradling her calf, he skimmed up the skirts of her habit with his right hand, pushing the material up past her thigh.

Veronica squeezed her eyes shut tight. "Well?" she murmured, thoroughly drowning in the throes of embarrassment and shame as he viewed her uncovered leg. "Is it terribly bad, sir?"

"Not as terrible as I had at first thought."

"It needs no stitch, then?"

"Not a one, my lady. 'Tis a nasty scrape, but not the gouge I'd feared."

Veronica opened her eyes. "Thank goodness."

"It will need to be cleaned though. And wrapped."

She looked down at him just in time to see him lift the bottle he'd brought. Brandy. A very old bottle, to boot. And what she'd thought to be a bundle of bandages weren't bandages at all, but a clean white shirt. His own, no doubt. And doubtless his only extra one, by the looks of his clothing.

He uncorked the bottle with strong white teeth and spat the cork down to the ground.

"Did—did you unearth that in the cellars of this abbey, sir?"

He shook his head, his lips tilting upward in a slight smile. "Until this night, my lady, I've found very little of worth within Fountains."

What a goose she was being, Veronica knew, but she thought his smile just then was the most handsome of things. And she found herself wondering how his face might look when wreathed in a full smile. On the heels of that came another thought—a puzzle, actually—of what he could have possibly meant by his words just now.

But in the next instant he motioned for her to take the bottle of brandy, and Veronica was brought out of her reverie.

"Though crass this might seem, perhaps a bit of this would fortify you for what is to come, my lady."

Veronica, her usual pragmatic self coming at last to the forefront, said, "Perhaps you are right, sir."

She took the bottle he proffered, put the end of it to her lips, and tipped back a swallow.

The liquor burned all the way to the pit of her stomach, and though her eyes suddenly smarted, Veronica mentally applauded herself for not choking on the stuff.

She handed the bottle back. "Thank you," she said simply.

"Brace yourself, my lady," he advised.

Veronica did just that, curling her gloved fingers about the lip of the stone bench, her body rigid and filled now with a healthy dose of brandy.

Instantly she felt cool liquid splash against her thigh, then cascade in rivulets into her wound and beneath the rent in her stockings.

First came a raw burn, bone deep, one that radiated from her cut all the way through her body to her brain. It seemed that every nerve ending in her thigh was aflame and throbbing with each long, drawn-out beat of her heart.

And then... ah, then, Veronica miraculously felt nothing but the slow, steady caress of the stranger's open palm along the underside of her thigh. Up and down, and back and forth, slowly... gently... methodically. He could not have thought of a more effective way to take her mind off what he was doing.

As he continued the light massage, he poured more of the brandy into the cut. But Veronica felt none of the liquor's sting, only the warmth of the man's large hand, the touch of his fingers higher... higher... and then, swirling down once again, painting a path with his fingertips to the area just beneath her knee.

Veronica let out a breath, tipping her head back against the ruinous wall behind her, embarrassed at her predicament and yet not so embarrassed that she wanted him to stop his caresses. All she could see above her was the moon and the stars and the black sweep of night.

"Are you all right?" he inquired.

"Yes," she said.
No,
she thought.

"The wound is not bleeding as much now. Very little, in fact."

"That is good news, sir." Did he not realize how he'd stirred her senses with his bold touch?

"I'll bind it as tightly as I dare. You'll have a physician tend to this on the morrow, yes?"

"Yes. Of course." But what about the rest of her? Veronica wondered. Could a doctor tend to all that this man had unleashed within her?

She heard the rent and tear of fabric, and then the feel of his hand was about her thigh once again as he gently dabbed at and around the scrape, pouring more of the brandy atop it. That done, he steadied her booted heel atop his own thigh as he used both hands to bind the wound with fresh strips of cloth.

Veronica, all the while, watched the play of starlight above, not really seeing the twinkling lights but seeing instead the remembered sight of the man's eyes and his half smile of a moment ago.

"Do you know," she whispered, head still tilted back, "I-I don't even know your name."

"You never asked."

She glanced down at him. "Will you share it with me?"

There was a long pause, and then: "Aye. I will." He tied a knot in a strip of the fabric about her thigh. "'Tis Julian, my lady," he said, his gaze on hers, watching, perhaps waiting to see what her reaction would be.

Julian.
A name as refined as his voice, yet as unsuited to the look of him and the fact he dwelled in some ruinous prisons, obviously poverty-stricken.

"Just—just Julian? No last name, sir?"

"Just Julian."

Veronica let forth a small breath of sound, the brandy in her belly and in her wound both warming and relaxing her, possibly even making her feel bold. "I hadn't expected you to actually share your full name with me, sir. Obviously you—"

"Julian" he cut in. "Call me Julian."

"As I was saying, sir... er Julian," she corrected, "you are obviously a man with secrets. I mean, you navigate the stones of Fountains as though you were born to them. You slip in and out of caves carved in the earth as though you'd made them yourself... and you—you clearly believed that my coachman's gun was pointed and fired only at you. Why is that? What are you hiding from? From
whom
are you hiding?"

It was the wrong thing to ask. Suddenly there was thunder on his brow. Finished dressing her wound, he lowered her booted heel from his knee, then got to his feet. He loomed over her, bracing his hands against the crumbling wall behind Veronica, lowering his face near to hers.

"You ask a lot of questions for someone who appears to have some train of her own in motion, my lady," he murmured softly. "Tell me, why is it
you
are here? Why do you hide from your hired man? And what is it you were seeking when I rescued you from the dogs?"

Veronica blanched. The storm in his eyes and the thrust of his questions were like a blast of cannon fire in her face. Suddenly, the effects of the brandy washed away and she felt fully the throbbing in her thigh. She was no longer certain she should have spoken so freely with this man. He appeared as he had when she'd first met him, when he'd lifted her up and away from the dogs—like danger on the hoof.

"Please," she whispered, "do—do not hover over me. I-I am suddenly feeling ill at ease."

"I don't doubt that. 'Tis a wild evening you've had. I'd wager it's not every night that you allow a strange man to touch you, kiss you, as you've allowed me to do."

Heated shame suffused her. Rude of him to remind her. More appalling, however, was the fact that he was absolutely correct.

"Or am I wrong?" he went on, purposely goading her. "Do you, perhaps, simply have a penchant for quickly becoming familiar with
any
man you might encounter?"

Anger flared in Veronica. She shoved her skirts back into place and straightened on the bench—but the latter movement only served to align her face with his. The sight of his black gaze, so close to her own, was unsettling.