Briar Rose Page 2

  Carefully she got down out of the cart and tied him to a low-hanging branch. The last thing she wanted was to have to go chasing after him. She doubted he could rouse enough energy to run very far, but there was no point in taking any chances.

  She grabbed another basket dangling from the side of the cart. If there was something wounded taking shelter hereabouts, she didn't want to give it a chance to slip away. And she'd learned from bitter childhood experience that she wouldn't do the creature any good if she scooped it up with her bare hands and got the blessed daylights chewed out of herself. But even such reasoning didn't ease the trembling in her stomach. She'd made this journey countless times. Why did this time feel so different?

  Rhiannon moved toward the ring of stones, her bare feet soft and soundless as the vixen's paws, her gaze searching every clump of gorse and heather, every shadowed nook, looking for the tiniest glimpse of fur or subtle gleam of a wary eye.

  But she found nothing, no velvet-eared rabbit, no broken-winged hawk or lame fawn. Then why did she feel so—so odd? Her arm ached. Her left leg threatened to crumple beneath her. And her chest... a cord seemed to be tightening about it until it became difficult to breathe, her heart pounding so loud it seemed the birds overhead must hear it.

  She frowned, listening for the slightest stirring that might betray a hiding place, but she heard nothing. Perhaps if she climbed to a higher vantage point, she might be able to see better. That overturned slab near the largest crossbar of stone looked like a promising spot.

  She moved toward it and was knee deep in a tangle of gypsy roses the glorious mauve of a sunset when she scented something far different from the sweet flower fragrance or the meadow winds. The metallic tang of fresh-spilled blood. Burned sulfur... gunpowder. And pain—blinding red.

  Caution vanished in its wake. She scrambled toward the stones, certain that something injured lay nearby. Had some hunter found this place? Had his prey eluded him, dragged itself away to die? Wild creatures had a gift for hiding themselves, quietly bleeding to death where nothing and no one could find them. The thought of any living thing suffering alone, possibly dying without so much as a comforting touch to soothe it, ripped at Rhiannon's heart, more than she could bear.

  She hadn't spoken the plea since she was a girl, full of rich imaginings, still believing everything her papa had told her. But the aura of pain was so strong, the desperation so fierce, the hopelessness so deep, she couldn't help but use it.

  "Help me, Mama," she whispered to the wind. "Help me find—" The words died on her lips. She halted, a cry tearing from her throat as her foot nearly tramped on a man's bloodstained hand.

  She blinked fiercely, still scarce believing her eyes.

  Why in God's name hadn't she seen him from a mile down the road? His red coat gleamed like a fresh wound in the hill. The merest glimpse of the uniform sent spikes of unease shooting through her.

  An officer. English. Up here in these wild lands, alone. What could he possibly be doing here? She caught her lip between her teeth, hesitating, wary. Few times in her travels had she been afraid, but twice she and Papa had stumbled across soldiers reeking of whiskey and hostility. The first time Papa had distracted them with magic tricks he'd learned from Gypsy travelers, the second an officer with a Yorkshire accent and the loneliest eyes Rhiannon had ever seen had driven them away before more than a few pots had been broken. And yet she'd never forgotten the bitter taste of fear in the back of her throat, the sense of helplessness.

  Yes, an English soldier could be more dangerous than a pain-maddened wolf, and far more unpredictable. For an instant, just an instant, she wished she could turn, run back to her cart. No one need know she had ever found the officer. For all she knew, he deserved the bullets that had wounded him. And yet... even as the thought formed, she shook herself fiercely.

  He was hurt. Be he human or beast, English or Irish, that was all that mattered. She'd been given the gift of healing, not the power to decide who was worthy of life or death.

  Fighting to steady herself inwardly, Rhiannon dropped to her knees beside him, pressing her fingertips to the pulse point of his throat. The faint thrum of heartbeat against her skin jolted through her with the unearthly sizzle of lightning splitting a druid tree. It breached something deep inside Rhiannon, left her shaken.

  In that instant his features seared themselves into her consciousness. Silvery-blond hair tangled about a face no one could look upon and ever forget. Papa had told her once of a prince so beautiful no one could ever tire of looking upon him. They'd buried him in a magical coffin of glass when he died. She'd thought the tale absurd until now.

  Power emanated from every line and curve of the man's countenance even in unconsciousness. Strength and intelligence etched the broad brow, ruthlessness and arrogance shaped the angle of prominent cheekbones, yet there was just a hint of softness about his parted lips, so subtle few would have been able to discern it.

  This was absurd! she raged at herself. She had to tend his wounds, see how he'd been injured. Just because he was alive at this moment didn't mean he would remain so while she stood here gawking at him like a dolt.

  Scrambling to gather her wits, she searched for the wounds—a torn and bloodied sleeve. Another ragged, glistening tear in his left thigh. The large amount of blood told her that this wound was obviously worse. Cursing herself for her ridiculous hesitation, she ripped off a strip of her petticoat and wrestled with the deadweight of his injured leg as she tried to tie it above the wound to stop the bleeding. Then, fishing in the pouch she ever kept tied at her waist, she took out her papa's penknife and worked to cut the fabric away from the wound.

  The slightest groan squeezed from between the soldier's white lips, and he shifted, trying to get away from the pain. If he awakened, the process of baring his wounds would be all the more painful. He might hurt himself or fight her—and he had the look of a man who could overpower her in a heartbeat, wounded or whole.

  Voice unsteady, Rhiannon began to sing, low, soft, the soothing song she'd always used to quiet her animal patients. The song Papa had insisted Mama brought from the land of the fairies. Whether it was just another of his stories, Rhiannon was never certain. But the haunting melody did seem to hold its own brand of enchantment. The soldier knotted one of his hands in Rhiannon's skirts, as if to assure himself he wasn't alone. Then he quieted, allowing her to bind the nasty gash in his arm.

  She glanced back at the smear of color that was her gypsy cart, uncertain. God above, what was she going to do? She'd stopped the worst of the bleeding, but she could hardly treat his wounds here. What if the men who had done this to him returned to make certain he was dead? She'd have no way to fend them off.

  What if you discover he deserved the bullets that felled him? a voice whispered in her head. "That's absurd," she said aloud. "I'd be able to feel it." Truth was, she should have been able to sense his goodness or wickedness. From the time she was a babe, she'd had that gift as well. She should be able to probe into the essence of his soul with just a touch. But it was as if this place, with its ancient voices, was hazing this man in its mist. Or wasn't it this place at all? Was it the man himself who was so resolutely closed to her, closed to anything or anyone that might breach his defenses? Whatever kind of man he was, she couldn't leave him to suffer.

  No one deserved this kind of agony. The only thing to do was to patch him together to the best of her ability.

  Climbing to her feet, she stumbled toward the cart, determined to lead Socrates as close as possible. She prayed she could get the officer inside.

  She had to lift him into the wagon and then hasten as far away from this place as she could, to someplace where she could care for his wounds, help him regain his strength. Someplace where even the fairies could not find them.

  Perhaps the devil was short of assistants, Redmayne thought through a haze of pain. The torturing demons were doing an exemplary job on his thigh and his arm, but the rest of him seemed relatively untouched
.

  He fought to detach himself from the agony, float above it, beyond the reach of fiery pincers, a ploy that had stood him in good stead during countless other battle wounds. "Control it, Lionel," his grandfather's steely voice reverberated inside his head. "They can touch you only if you are weak enough to allow them to." But it wasn't the pain crushing him in its grip this time. It was the barren reaches inside his soul, the overwhelming sense of waste....

  What did it matter if he screamed for an eternity? No one would hear him. No one would care.

  Fool, he derided himself in disgust. Don't be a fool. Whatever lies beyond this mist, face it like a man. If it's hell you're in, you deserve it. You've earned it.

  If they kept a tally of sins in the Dark One's kingdom, Lionel Redmayne's must be long indeed.

  With fierce determination, he tried to force his eyes open, the lids so heavy they seemed nailed to his cheekbones. Spears of light screwed relentlessly into the center of his skull, his stomach threatening revolt as he struggled to focus.

  What the blazes? The thought streaked through his beleaguered brain. In his famed Inferno, Dante had neglected to mention this garish form of torture—hell was decorated in colors that would make any rational man seasick. Bright blue blotched with gold. Sour-apple green and bile yellow with something like red snakes writhing about.

  Most alarming of all, bare inches from his nose a single green eye in a distorted, hirsute face peered down at him, unblinking. Instinctively he tried to shift away from it, but it moved with him, inescapable.

  Suddenly something swept it out of the way, a voice, a low, scolding murmur, drifting through the haze. Another figure appeared in its place. A soft, pale oval swam before him—large, troubled green-gold eyes, spice-brown hair. A mouth carved with generosity and sweetness. An angel? He marveled. Was it possible?

  "Whist, now, lie still." An Irish angel, her voice filled with winsome music, her brow creasing in concern. Heaven... was he in heaven? He swallowed hard. There must be some sort of mistake. God knew, when they found it, he'd be hurled down into the abyss. He had to lie still, quiet, not betray the truth about himself.

  She leaned closer, her bosom brushing against him, the kind shaped to pillow a man's weary head, soft and inviting and... askew. Her lace collar was half turned under one ear, a button had popped off, wisps of hair tumbling in a most troubling disarray. An untidy angel? He couldn't remember any such in the pictures he'd seen as a lad. Every wing feather had been in place with military precision, every golden tress expertly curled. She evidenced a most appalling lack of heavenly discipline.

  He tried to speak through parched lips. "Wh-who are... Wh-where..."

  "I'm going to take care of you. I promise," the angel vowed gravely. "It will all be over in a moment."

  "Over? Wh-what?"

  She drew something from behind her. Redmayne shrank back as he stared at the fire poker, glowing white-hot, coming nearer, nearer.

  This must be hell after all!

  Her hand was quivering so hard it would be a wonder if she didn't set the whole place on fire—as if the devil needed any assistance. "Forgive my shaking," she apologized, polite demon that she was. "I've done this to several dogs, but never to a man. It must work about the same, don't you think?"

  "Torture... dogs in... hell? What for? Biting masters? Stealing old women's parcels?"

  "Hell? What are you talking about? You've been shot. I just mean to cauterize your wounds. It's the only way to make certain they don't putrefy."

  He struggled partially upright, his head cracking into something hanging above him. "Cauterize my wounds? That means I'm... still alive." He felt no particular pleasure in the realization.

  Those green eyes widened with astonishment beneath ridiculously thick lashes. "Of course you're still alive!"

  "I prefer to stay that way. Give me... that."

  "Wh-what?"

  "The poker. I'll do it myself."

  Horror flooded a face far too tender for such a cynical world. "You can't possibly—"

  "I'm afraid I must... insist. You're shaking so hard you'll never hit the wound. I prefer only... one attempt."

  She still didn't look ready to surrender her mission, but he grasped her hand where it was curled around the poker. Warm, soft, capable, her skin shielding him from the hardness of the metal. He steeled himself; then ruthlessly he glared down at the wound in his leg and shoved the hot end of the poker onto the ragged flesh.

  Agony seared through every pore in his body, sweat breaking out, but the only cry came from the woman—miserable, soft. He made not a sound, fighting back the sickness from the stench of burning flesh.

  Twice more he applied the hot iron to his own wounds before the agony took him to blessed blackness, an abyss of silence. Peace.

  Yet even as he let go of consciousness, something pried its way into his mind. Something warm, wet, splashing onto his skin. Tears. The woman bending over him had tears streaking her face. Perhaps she was an angel after all, Redmayne marveled. For only an angel would cry over him.

  CHAPTER 2

  Rhiannon hurled the iron poker out the rear door of the caravan, the instrument clattering to the dirt. Horror reverberated in the pit of her stomach. She gripped one of the roof braces to keep her knees from buckling, despising herself for her own weakness.

  What right did she have to be so shaken? She hadn't had her flesh seared, hadn't felt the piercing of a bullet or the crushing hopelessness as her blood had ebbed into the dirt beneath where she lay. She hadn't waited, alone, for death, like the man whose inert body overwhelmed her small bed.

  And yet her nerves were as raw as if she'd suffered that, and more. Her whole body ached from the herculean effort of dragging the wounded officer to the caravan, her nerves frayed by the desperate ride away from the ring of standing stones, her eyes searching the wild lands for any hint of his attackers returning to make certain their quarry was dead.

  But most disturbing of all was the memory that had seared itself into her mind—the officer's features when he'd grasped her wrist and forced the glowing point of iron into the raw mouth of his own wound.

  If eyes were said to be windows into the soul, the view beyond his was a frightening vista. Terrifyingly cool, his mouth white-lipped, yet curled in something akin to amusement, his voice pain-racked, and yet so—so cynical: "You're shaking so hard you'll never hit the wound. I prefer only one attempt."

  What kind of man could be so completely untouched by his own agony? A dangerous man. One completely unpredictable.

  She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and turned back to look at him, so still, so seemingly vulnerable, helpless. But he wouldn't be thus forever. Her fingers stole up to the place where her lace collar sagged open, her throat bare. There she touched the fading scars that marred the smooth skin, a tracery of teeth marks that might have ended her life.

  She closed her eyes, remembering the wolf she'd once found, so weak it couldn't lift its great head. She'd tended it, trusted it. But the instant it was strong enough, she'd opened its cage, only to have the beast try to tear out her throat. If she hadn't managed to grasp the broom handle, strike the creature in its wounded side, God alone knew what might have happened.

  Yet even as Papa had tended the gashes left by the fangs, Rhiannon hadn't blamed the animal. The fault had been her own. She'd known what he was when she took him in.

  The wolf she'd been able to lock away in a cage, but she couldn't handle this English officer so simply. The one thing she was certain of was that he was a man wreathed in violence—his very life's work was bound up in hurting instead of healing, imposing the will of a mightier country on a weaker one. And that was not the least of her worries.

  One of the first lessons she and her father had learned on the road was that a traveler depended on the goodwill of the settled people to survive. Even the villagers Rhiannon had come to trust might now become foes because of this Englishman.

  She shivered. The wounds f
rom the rebellion were still raw years later. There could be little doubt that she had crossed an invisible line the moment she took the Englishman in. Many in Ireland would see that as treason.

  Even once he got well, she could hardly just open the caravan door and set him free the way she did her creatures. God above, what had she gotten herself into?

  "Whatever it is, you're in it neck deep," she told herself. "You can hardly dump him in the middle of the road now. Best to do your utmost to make him well and hope that he doesn't leave any teeth marks before he goes."

  If that was to be her plan, there was a great deal to do before he awakened again. She had to make him as comfortable as possible now that the first stage of his ordeal was over—after all, an uncomfortable wolf had a tendency to bite.

  Steadying herself, she moved toward the bed. She needed to get him out of those bloody clothes, wash them in the stream, bathe the grime and blood from his skin. Poultices to help soothe the cruel burns. And gruel... he would need some hearty gruel when he awakened, to help him regain his strength.

  More than any of that, she needed a name to call him as she tended him. She doubted he'd appreciate her christening him after some long dead poet or philosopher.

  Yet despite all the things she needed to tend to, she hesitated, her fingers gripping the crossbar of wood as she stared down into the officer's face, uncertain as if... as if what? He'd snap off her fingers with his teeth?

  "This is absurd," she muttered to herself. "Do you want him to awaken and have to endure being shifted around, having his wounds jarred because you were a coward?" Besides, this was a military man. He'd understand her need to discover his identity. It wasn't as if she meant to rifle through his pockets to steal his watch!

  But there were things far more precious and sacred than mere bits of gold, private dreamings, tender secrets of the soul. Even English officers had to possess a few of those, she believed, although there were plenty in Ireland who would insist there was nothing but a yawning black cavern where their hearts were supposed to be.