Colorado Dawn (9 page)

“Just a few months ago? No wonder it still pains you.”

“Two years ago.” Deciding to get it done so she would leave him to get on with his business, he added impatiently, “Bits of metal and wood lodged inside and prevented healing. A surgeon in London removed the last piece just before I sailed. And I truly do need to relieve myself, lass, so I’m asking you to leave. Now.”

She left, calling back over her shoulder as she disappeared around the boulder, “Don’t worry about hunting something for our meal tonight. We’ll make do with leftover hardtack.”

When he led Lurch out of the woods an hour later with four grouse dangling from his hand, he was greeted by the smell of woodsmoke and the sight of his lady wife cutting the old man’s hair while she lectured him about threatening strangers. “We’ve come to take photographs, not shoot people, Mr. Satterwhite. And no more brawling. Or drunkenness. Do please remember that. There. All done.” With a final pat on his head, she stepped back and assessed her work. “You look quite lovely.”

Lovely? Satterwhite?

At Ash’s approach, she looked up and smiled. “Excellent. You’re just in time. Mr. Satterwhite, if you’ll tend to the animals and those fine grouse, I’ll get started on Lord Ashby.”

Started on what? And when had he been elevated in rank from Ashby to
Lord
Ashby?

Satterwhite rose. Scratching at the back of his now-bare neck, he walked over to take Lurch’s reins and the bird carcasses. “Watch yourself,” he whispered. “She’s in a mothering mood.” The old man nodded his shorn head toward the fire. “She’s cooking that for you.”

Ash looked at the pot of something chunky and whitish yellow
sitting over the low fire. A rancid odor rose with the curling steam. “I’m not eating that,” he muttered.

Satterwhite grinned up at him. His crooked eyes darted back and forth, the right eye meeting Ash’s gaze for a second, then the left. It was unsettling. Ash wasn’t sure which one to look at.

“It’s not for eating. It’s a poultice.” The old man cackled nastily. “Good luck, Your Majesty.”

“Sit, please,” his wife called, patting the chair.

Ash glanced at the mound of white hair that had once warmed Satterwhite’s pate, and shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“No?” Wearing a sweet smile that was at odds with the resolve in her brown eyes, she pulled a folded straight razor from her apron pocket. “You would rather start with a shave?”

“No. No shave. I’ll do that myself.” And what was she doing with a straight razor?

She dropped the razor back into her pocket. “A trim it is, then. Sit.”

It was odd. Through all the years, in different times and other circumstances, Ash had had his hair hacked off by a sergeant’s bayonet, delicately trimmed by a dandified barber in a London gentlemen’s club, and cut in various camp followers’ huts on foreign fields of battle. But none of those experiences made him quite as nervous as seeing his wife come at him with a pair of pointed scissors. The woman had stored up a wealth of anger in his absence, and it seemed, unaccountably, to be aimed at him. But he had faced rioting sepoys in India, Russian artillery in the Crimea, Irish insurgents, and more than a few Scottish brawlers. And Angus Frederick Wallace, Fifth Viscount of Ashby and retired colonel of the Prince of Wales’s Own Tenth Royal Hussars was definitely not a coward.

So he sat.

Maddie studied the silver streaks in the glossy waves that hung over the banded collar of her husband’s shirt. For most women, turning gray was a disaster. But in men, it could be an enhancement, lending
a bit of dignity, an assurance of maturity, stability, and even a hint of wisdom gained through hard experience. In Ash’s case, the gray threaded through the deep sable was such a striking contrast to the dark brows and lashes it made him appear even more virile than when he’d left her six years ago.

Deserted
her. She needed to remember that.

The soft, silky waves were especially eye-catching against such a strong neck. Incongruous. Sensual. Like satin sliding through a man’s fingers, or lace draped over a muscled arm, or a broad callused palm stroking a woman’s pale hip.

Her satin. Her gown. Her hip. Images that were burned so indelibly into her memory that even after all these years they still whispered through her mind like a lover’s sigh.

Nitwit.

Furious with where her thoughts had strayed, Maddie snipped off a great chunk of hair at the back of Ash’s neck, then stared at what she had uncovered. A long ridge of scar tissue wound above his ear and up to his temple—from the same explosion that had scarred his side? But even more curious were the markings on the back of his neck. A square cross surrounded by four smaller crosses, and beneath it in block letters,
ICH DIEN
. “What’s this?” she asked, running her fingers over the markings.

“A tattoo.” He shrank away from her touch. “Don’t do that.”

“Does it hurt?”

“No. It…ah…tickles.”

“What does
Ich dien
mean?”

“ ‘I serve.’ ’Tis the motto of the Tenth Hussars.”

She traced the center cross with her fingertip. “And the design?”

He shifted in the chair. “A Jerusalem cross. The Prince of Wales got one during pilgrimage several years ago, and eventually most of the officers in his regiment followed suit. Are you finished with my hair yet?”

Strangely, the longer she touched his neck, the redder his ears became. “Are you blushing?”

He turned his head and looked up at her, and when she saw the
look in his mossy green eyes, she snatched her hand away. “Do turn around so I can finish.”

“Finish?” His slow smile revealed his lovely white teeth. He had lost none of those, she saw. But the tiny chip in the corner of the third on the left was new. It gave his smile an almost boyish appeal, which was totally at odds with the unboyish heat in his remarkable eyes. “Finish what, lass?”

She cleared her throat. “Your hair. Turn, please.”

Laughing softly, he did.

She continued to comb and trim and cut while he sat stiffly, his shoulders wider than the slatted back of the chair, his bent knees splayed, his big hands resting on his thighs. He wasn’t a patient man, she remembered, and he seemed no better now, as evidenced by the drumming of his fingers on the top of his thighs, and how every now and then, his chest would rise and fall on a deep sigh.

“Be still,” she admonished him.

“I’m trying.”

“Are you still in pain?”

“No.” The answer was as curt as a slammed door.

“You shouldn’t sleep in the open on the cold ground.”

“A soldier’s plight. Are we done yet?”

“When the weather is inclement,” she went on, ignoring the question, “Mr. Satterwhite sleeps beneath an oiled canvas, which he attaches to the front roof of the wagon and drapes over the driver’s bench. He says it works beautifully and keeps him warm and dry.”

“The bench is too narrow. And my feet would stick out.”

She smiled, seeing the image in her mind.

On the other side of the clearing, Mr. Satterwhite finished staking the mules and Lurch. Then he picked up the grouse carcasses and, trailed by both dogs, took them down to the creek and away from camp to clean them.

She snipped and cut.

Ash fidgeted.

On the fire, the cornmeal poultice began to bubble.

Using the end of her apron to protect her fingers from the hot metal, she set the pot on a rock to cool. “Or…” She hesitated, undecided. Then discarding her reservations and all rational thought, said, “Or…I suppose you could sleep in the back of the wagon.”

His hands stilled. Beautiful, strong hands. Looking at them sent quivers of awareness dancing along the nerves beneath her skin. She remembered them well. Her husband might have wielded a sword, but he also knew how to touch a woman.

“Do you think your bed would be big enough, lass?”

She frowned at the back of his head. Then realizing where his thoughts were headed, she let out a breath. “No. But the floor would.”

He turned to look up at her again.

She thumped his shoulder. “I invited you into my wagon, Ashby,” she said, fighting back a smile. “Not my bed. Now take off your shirt.”

That was a mistake, she realized as soon as the unveiling began. Not only because seeing the puckered ridges of scar tissue brought tears of sympathy to her eyes, but because even with the scarring, Ash’s body was a thing to behold. Unlike many men of his age and station, he was still lean and firmly muscled from his years of military service, and the sight of it—the memories of it—awakened yearnings and feelings Maddie hadn’t felt in years. She found it odd, though, that the graying on his head didn’t extend to the dark hair on his chest or the long thin arrow of it disappearing past the waistband of his trousers.

Wadding up the shirt, he tossed it aside, jarring her back to attention. “Get on with it, love, before I die of the cold.”

Instructing him to stand, she handed him the piece of muslin she had earlier coated with lard. “Wipe this over your side. It will keep the poultice from sticking.”

Wrinkling his nose at the smell, he did as instructed while she smeared the hot cornmeal and flour paste onto a folded strip of linen. “It might seem very warm at first,” she said, seeing his flinch
as she laid the linen over his scars. “But as it cools it will draw out the pain.”

While he held the poultice against his side, she quickly wrapped strips of muslin around his rib cage to anchor it in place, following that with wide strips of cotton batting to hold in as much heat as possible.

“There,” she said, after tying off the ends of the wrappings. “Hopefully the heat will last three or four hours. Try to move as little as possible so the wrappings don’t come loose.” She straightened to find him studying her with a bemused, thoughtful expression.

“That’s a fine field dressing, lass. Where did you learn such a skill?”

“I wasn’t always a viscountess.” Waving a cornmeal-caked hand toward the trees and the rocky peaks rising behind them, she added with a wry smile, “One can’t live in this raw place without learning a thing or two about survival.”

“Verra wise.” He picked up his wrinkled shirt and pulled it over his head. “Can you shoot, as well?”

Her smile faded as less pleasant memories tugged at her. “A dear friend was abducted by Indians several months ago. She survived, thank the Lord, even though she is still struggling to come to terms with her ordeal. But now I carry a double derringer in my reticule, and I have a scattergun under my bed. And, yes. I can shoot.”

“That’s wise. This stinking poultice could draw unwanted company.” His gaze drifted past her to where Mr. Satterwhite and the dogs were walking out of the trees, then made a slow sweep of the brush surrounding the clearing. “And bears might not be the only predators roaming these woods.”

Five

“M
r. Satterwhite,” Maddie said later as they were finishing their evening meal beside the fire, “I’ve decided to alter the sleeping arrangements.”

The elderly man looked up from his seat on an overturned water bucket. Ash was leaning against a boulder nearby, the dogs waiting patiently at his feet as he stripped the meat from a drumstick with his teeth.

An innocuous scene…had her husband not been eyeing her like a starving dog in a butcher shop throughout the entire meal.

“Alter how, missy?”

“The ground is too cold for Lord Ashby, so I’d like for you to set up the photography dark tent for his use.”

“Too cold? Even for a Highlander?” The old man smirked over at Ash, who had stopped chewing and was watching her through narrowed eyes. “Then by all means, let’s set up a nice comfy tent for the wee lad.”

Taking advantage of Mr. Satterwhite’s distraction, Maddie slipped the last bits of charred grouse off her plate and into the fire. “I think that would be best, in view of his condition.”

“Condition?”

Ash tossed the bone into the brush. “I have no condition.”

“And predators,” Maddie added, wiping her fingers on her apron.

Mr. Satterwhite’s skewed eyes widened. “Predators? You mean like bears?”

“Those, too.” She sent Ash a questioning look, a bit confused by his stiff, angry posture. “A reasonable concern, considering all the bones he’s been tossing into the brush. But he may have a point. So in the event unwanted guests do come calling, Mr. Satterwhite, I think it prudent if you were to stay in the tent, as well.”

Mr. Satterwhite blinked from Maddie to the glaring Scotsman. “Both of us in there? Together?”

“Why not? It’s warm and safe and dry. That way we will all be out of the weather, off the cold ground, and safe from any wandering bears.” She beamed brightly at the two men staring at her.

Neither smiled back.

“Excellent. Then if you will set up the tent, please, Mr. Satterwhite?”

“It smells in there,” Satterwhite complained.

“That’s the eggs.” Resting her palms against her bent knees, she explained to her husband, “I have to coat the print paper with egg whites, you see, although it’s the sulfur in the egg
yolks
that makes them smell, and not…well, never mind. It won’t harm you, Mr. Satterwhite.”

“What about all those other chemicals you use? I could blow up in my sleep and never know it. And that tent won’t stop a bear.”

“Oh, I doubt—”

“Go!” Ash waved an arm toward Satterwhite. “Set up the tent. But be assured I willna be staying in it with you.”

Muttering, Satterwhite tromped toward the wagon.

“My Lord, there’s no need to badger—”

Ash whirled, his expression thunderous, his brogue even stronger in his anger. “You insult me, madam, to treat me like an old man with aching bones, or a cripple who must be coddled.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I may no’ be the soldier I once was, but I can still do my duty without hiding in a tent!” Spinning on his heel, he stalked away.

Maddie blinked after him, her face hot with embarrassment. She had only meant to make him more comfortable. And also, after thinking through her earlier offer for him to sleep on the floor of her wagon, she had realized that would never do. Neither of them was stupid. They both knew if she allowed Ash into her wagon, it would only be a matter of time before he charmed his way into her bed, as well. And what if she became pregnant? She would have to return to Scotland then. And that would ruin everything.