Cates, Kimberly (11 page)

Most aggravating of all, the woman was right! It
would
look suspicious if Sir Thorne and his comrades saw the caravan traveling so soon after their visit. Suspicious enough to bring them all charging down on his head! But that was a risk he was willing to take, not because he was so eager to ferret out the traitors who stalked him, or because he was eager to reach his command, but rather because he would have charged through the devil's own army to get away from
her.

Why display such unseemly haste? For the simple reason that the woman was driving him mad. Not since his grandfather had anyone or anything raked at his nerves this way. He hadn't allowed it. But something about Rhiannon Fitzgerald made him feel closed in, as if the air had become too thick to breathe, not unlike the way a falcon must feel, imprisoned by the bars of a cage, a mocking voice purred inside his head.

"Captain Redmayne?"

Being jerked back to the present was a most annoying sensation.

"I know you are not accustomed to taking advice, but I'm going to suggest this to you anyway." Her voice lilted with Irish music, yet was more resolute than that of any besieged soldier he'd ever heard. "I've been snarled at, snapped at, and bitten more than once, all to no avail. It would be far more practical to use your energy to get well rather than to attempt to bully me into changing my mind. But it is your decision."

Was the woman actually
patronizing
him? Captain Lionel Redmayne? Something hot and uncomfortable knotted in his gut. Anger? Uncertainty? Maybe a little of both.

He could scarce believe it. Her eyes met his directly, no fear, no distrust. Didn't the woman have the wit to realize what he was?

No. She had a clear enough picture. Her observation echoed in his mind: "used to getting your own way by fair means or foul." But she was determined to defy him.

So the woman wanted to cross swords with him, did she? She thought herself a worthy opponent? Fine. He'd never been able to resist a challenge. After all, he'd been schooled by the most ruthless man alive.

But how best to defeat her? He mused for a long moment; then his eyes narrowed. Of course. There was only one thing to do. Make his stubborn guardian angel as anxious to be rid of
him
as he was to be rid of
her.

Yet she was unaffected by the sharp wit and the cold glares that had always been his most finely honed weapons. There had to be another way to break Mistress Sunshine's resolve. How could he horrify her so completely that she would abandon her high principles, happily dump him at the garrison's doorstep, and drive her ridiculous horse and wagon away at breakneck speed?

Redmayne turned toward her, his gaze snagging on the rosy curve of her lips. Generous and inviting, dewy fresh, they shone, glossy in the light of the sun. He would wager his soul that those lips were as untouched by man as the briar roses tangled in a secret glen. What would happen if he plundered them?

It was a despicable plan. Made more loathsome still by everything she'd done for him. He actually felt a twinge. Fortunately, his conscience was so out of practice it was easily silenced. He didn't
really
intend to ravish her, after all, only scare her a little. And whatever his motives, she would benefit from the results as well. Be safer. Released from this crucible of betrayal he was embroiled in, a deadly game in which each move might be the last.

Come to think of it, his plan was fitting, somehow. Poetic justice. She seemed so smug, so certain she understood every secret corner of her wounded creatures' hearts. It was time to discover whether the lady had any idea what it felt like
not
to be the savior but the prey.

Redmayne had always loved the hours before a siege—time to plan the perfect battle, play out the scenes in his head again and again until no lives would be lost to carelessness or flawed logic. Mistakes, costly at any time, were paid in battle with men's blood. Yet this campaign was different. He'd never before given a damn about the effect the altercation would have on the enemy. Enemy. A green-eyed woman with roses in her cheeks and stubbornness ingrained in every fiber of her being, stubbornness that had saved his life and tried his renowned patience.

With every moment that crawled past as the sun made an agonizingly slow arc across the Irish sky, he found himself unaccustomedly edgy. He had to wait, of course. Be patient.

Only a fool would go charging in at once, brandishing either sabres or kisses. Rhiannon Fitzgerald had a keen enough mind and an uncanny ability to uncover secrets in a man's eyes. If she got so much as a hint of what mischief he was brewing, she'd likely meet his amorous attempts with laughter or with a blistering scold.

Yes, he knew what had to be done, but in this case spontaneity was the key. It didn't take a great deal of plotting. Nor should it take an overabundance of loverlike skill to singe the hair ribbons off someone as innocent as Rhiannon. Just cup that soft, impossibly obstinate chin in the palm of his hand, lower his lips to hers and taste... what? What would she taste of? Sweet milk and warm honey? Cinnamon?

He grimaced. It didn't matter. He was only going to kiss her for effect, after all. Still, it had been a long time since he'd kissed a woman. He'd have to keep that in mind.

Even the kiss mustn't be too abrupt. He'd have to tease her with hot looks, tempt her with a brush of his hand against hers. And then he'd level her with a lightning bolt of pure sensuality. That should send Miss Innocence diving for shelter. Especially when she came into the caravan to lie beside him in that ridiculously tiny bed. What was it she'd said the night before? She was used to sharing the bed? She'd just think of him as an extremely large hound. He'd wager that would be more difficult after he kissed the blazes out of her.

Impatience stirred, and he arched one brow in surprise at the sensation. He wasn't eager to kiss her, he insisted to himself. It was just that he had too much time on his hands at present. He'd been forever busy, strategizing, planning, working to unravel the secrets that lay in other men's minds. He'd always believed he'd spent most of his life thinking. Strange to suddenly realize it wasn't true.

Here in this tiny glen there was a sudden silence, an unexpected idleness. The sense that he was no longer in control was both baffling and appalling. This lunatic angel of his was far too adept at peeling away a man's defenses to peer inside him. It was one thing to be the probing intellect doing the analyzing. It was another altogether to have some wind-tossed, dewy-eyed little optimist regarding him with enough compassion and understanding to make him want to throttle her.

Rhiannon Fitzgerald's probing was disturbing enough on its own. But equally surprising and unnerving was the knot that had tightened in his gut the moment she mentioned the names of the men who had sought him.

Sir Thorne Carville. There was little to astonish Redmayne there. He'd known from the first he would have to deal with the man again someday. As for the Irishman, it was all too easy to recall how he'd earned the man's enmity. During his first months in Ireland, Redmayne had planned to break the Irish people's ties to their past by destroying the monuments that were a constant reminder of glory long faded. Standing stones and passage tombs, mystic rings of stones and ruins of enchanted castles. The first victim to fall at his orders had been a passage tomb near O'Leary's cottage.

But neither Carville nor O'Leary had disturbed him. He'd had plenty of enemies before and had never allowed that fact to trouble him. It was the presence of the third man that gave him an unexpected twinge.

Barton.

"Were those men your friends?"
He recalled the echo of Rhiannon's question and his own hard laugh of dismissal.

"Give me credit for better taste, madam,"
he'd scoffed.
"If lever stooped to make a friend...
" They'd been nothing but careless words. He knew he never would call anyone by that name. But Kenneth Barton had been too thick-headed to realize it.

Redmayne grimaced. He'd all but drowned in the youth's hero worship when Barton first became his aide-de-camp. An awkward, fumbling, beardless boy who had an irritating habit of dropping things the instant Redmayne entered the room. It wasn't an unfamiliar reaction—Redmayne had always disconcerted those around him. What had unnerved Redmayne far more was the day Barton had stopped dropping things. The day Mary Fallon Delaney and her husband had ridden away from the garrison, and Redmayne had let them go.

It had been futile to pursue the matter any further, Redmayne had claimed. He'd believed that was his reason for releasing them. Barton had not believed it for a moment. And once the whole affair was over, no matter what efforts Redmayne made to push the man back to a comfortable distance, he couldn't escape the knowledge that Barton might yet be awed by him, but that maybe, just maybe, the incomprehensible man also
liked
him.

Even the promotion Redmayne had arranged hadn't sobered the man one bit. Hopeful as a puppy, Barton had always hung about. And Redmayne had had to shove him aside more than once, since dealing him a sharp rap on the nose lacked the dignity required in the army.

From the instant Redmayne had scanned the note alerting him to a traitor in his own garrison, he had thought it was immaterial who had betrayed him. Why did the mere possibility Barton might be involved affect him so strangely?

Doubtless that was Rhiannon Fitzgerald's fault, too. All those sorrowful glances she'd given him beneath those absurdly long eyelashes. The soft ache in her voice, as if she grieved for his loneliness.

The woman should look to her own situation! She talked to animals, for God's sake! She rattled about the countryside in this garish little nutshell of a wagon, totally defenseless. As unfit to be wandering about as a babe who'd toddled off into the forest. She'd lost her home, her father, and the servants who'd doubtless looked after her every need, but she considered herself fortunate, rich. Why? Because she dared to love everything and everyone with the same abandon, from a recalcitrant falcon to a shimmer of mist atop a hill? Because she chose to see what was good—even in a wounded officer who had deadened his heart long ago?

Blast, had she meddled in his mind so much these past few days that he'd begun to sort through his acquaintances, searching for someone who might give a damn if he died?

If he
had
been such a fool, even in his subconscious, then the arrival of Barton had been well timed indeed. An appropriate reminder of why he'd always held himself aloof from his fellow creatures, completely unattached to anyone or anything.

She'd thought he was in pain because he'd been betrayed. But he knew the truth: no one could betray you unless you were foolhardy enough to care about them in the first place. Despite his small stumbles over Mary Fallon Delaney and Kenneth Barton, he was no fool, and not even the softest green eyes in Ireland were going to make him one.

"Captain Redmayne?"

He started at the sound of her voice at his shoulder. He turned to see her standing there with fresh if somewhat threadbare towels draped over her arm and a pot of soft soap in her hand. "Is there anything I can do for you before I go down to the stream? I'll only be gone a little while."

Her cheeks were tinged with pink, her gaze flickering away from his. She was going to bathe, Redmayne realized with a swift surge of satisfaction. What more auspicious opportunity could there be to begin his siege? He would wait a little while, long enough for her to begin, and then...

"Captain Redmayne?"

He glanced up at her, hastily concealing any hint of the machinations going on inside his head. But she gazed at him with eyes so guileless, so soft with concern, that he felt as if someone had layered a fine coat of silt over his body.

"I hate to leave you alone." She hesitated.

"Go ahead. I'm used to it." Damnation if that didn't sound a trifle weary, almost wistful. The words, not his tone. He grimaced and said what he'd meant all along: "I prefer it that way."

"I know," she replied, but something about her voice infuriated him. It was not as if she agreed with him but rather as if she knew some truth he wasn't ready to admit to.

He was still attempting to think up an appropriate reply when she started down the grassy bank to where a copse of trees sheltered a bend of the stream from view.

Graceful and light as petals caught on the wind, she glided along, her skirts swaying like the cup of a bluebell, rivers of golden sunlight streaming through the dark flow of her hair. She had none of the elegance of the worldly beauties who had graced Redmayne's bed, none of that practiced perfection, and yet there were men who would think her even lovelier.

In place of satin she trailed an astonishing warmth, a vibrancy in her wake, as if even the sunlight couldn't resist that intangible aura she spun. Instead of jewels gracing her throat and wrists and the tender lobes of her ears, stars sparkled in her eyes. And her hands were scented not with attar of roses but rather with cinnamon and vanilla and something far more rare: genuine compassion.

His hand knotted into a fist. Blast! One would think he'd taken that bullet in his head! He'd never been a man to spin out such absurdities over any woman.

Why, then, did he feel this strange fascination? This need to follow her with his gaze, this anticipation, waiting to see what she would say next? It was merely that she was a curiosity, he assured himself. A woman unlike any he had ever known.

Even Fallon had been all fire and defiance and tempestuous emotions. She was a woman who would keep a man racing in circles just to keep up with her. Rhiannon had the same measure of courage, but there was something else in her—a gentleness, despite her humor, an indefinable quality that invited a man to rest.

He surprised a laugh out of himself, his injured shoulder aching. Rest? The woman hadn't given him a moment's peace since she hauled him into her caravan!

Swearing under his breath, he surveyed the path she'd taken, realizing that sometime during his nonsensical reverie the woman had disappeared from view.