Chapter 6 #2
“Whatever you think of me, jo, I’m not the sort of man who trifles with lasses to amuse myself. If I say I have a fondness for someone, I mean it. I haven’t met many people like you in my rough life. You captivate me.”
Their gazes locked, and a shiver of awareness traveled through her. There was something in his eyes, a curiosity, an interest that made her skin sensitive and her breath shallow.
She forced herself to return her attention to his injury. Hugh was a patient. He was also a criminal.
And a person didn’t find themselves attracted to several different people at the same time.
Desmond’s nearby presence thrilled along her nerves, and his focus on her was a palpable thing in the Blue Bedchamber.
He hadn’t stopped watching her. Even through the door to her bedroom, she’d sensed him, a potent energy that danced through her like currents of lightning, awakening her from the deepest slumber.
She still reverberated in the aftermath of spending time with Gideon, too. She’d never met a man who could be both achingly gentle and potently masculine at the same time.
Three men had turned her head in half a day, when she’d gone six years as restrained as a nun. Of course, in those six years, her needs hadn’t diminished. If anything, they’d grown sharper as the time had passed.
Perhaps this was the result of those abstemious years, with her scandalous secret books stoking her smoldering fire.
Those books promised such outrageous things, incredible things. And she craved them. So much so that she seemed to have forgotten what was fiction, and what was truly possible in the real world.
Yet her mind and her body both seemed to be in a riot, careening from one alluring man to the other.
But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t decent or proper. She’d been told so. Many times.
Arthur would have blamed her books, the ones she now kept hidden. But the books only revealed what was already inside her, aching to be free.
Carefully, Clara extricated her hand from Hugh’s. Something flashed across his face. It might have even been disappointment. But then his eyes glinted with humor and he offered another of his impish smiles.
“A fine feast of venison pie would set me to rights,” he said with a grin.
“Venison pie is not on the menu for anyone recovering from a gunshot wound,” she countered. “I’ll bring you broth shortly.”
“Broth!” Hugh made a noise of disgust. “No Scotsman ever broke his fast in so miserly a fashion.”
“I won’t tell Robert the Bruce if you don’t.” She pressed her palm to Hugh’s forehead, and he leaned into her touch. “You’ve a slight fever, so I’m afraid it’s broth and tea for the foreseeable future.”
“Keep your wee cool hands on me, lass,” Hugh purred, “and I’ll comply with any orders.”
“Will mine suffice?” Gideon asked, coming into the room carrying a book. He waggled the fingers of his free hand, and Clara was struck their beauty, long and graceful.
“Use those mitts to frig yourself,” Hugh answered affably.
Gideon only smiled, and Clara couldn’t look away from him.
Dear Lord, how in the name of Adonis could she possibly maintain any equilibrium when she was surrounded by so many attractive men? This had to be some variety of test or a judgment passed on her by a vengeful god, giving her exactly what she wanted, when she desperately did not want it.
There was a price for this, and he hovered in the doorway.
Cyrus watched Clara tending Hugh, a scowl creasing his face. The leader of the highwaymen would have also been considered handsome, fair and lean as he was, except he never regarded her with anything but barely veiled hostility, and violence glinted in his cool blue eyes.
Behind him, as always, was Liam. He ran one of his massive hands over his gleaming, smooth head, looking warily back and forth between Cyrus and Clara.
Navigating this treacherous sea strained all of her capabilities. After giving Hugh what she hoped looked like a reassuring smile, she edged around Cyrus and Liam, but not before grabbing her book. Desmond was quick to follow her, as was Gideon.
Cyrus jerked his head at Liam, who went into the Blue Bedchamber. Once Liam was inside, Cyrus closed the door to the bedroom. He, Desmond, Gideon, and Clara all stood in the hallway.
The blond man glowered at her. “How does Hugh fare?”
“There’s a small infection, and a touch of fever.” It astonished her that her voice only shook a little when she spoke directly to him. She added quickly, “I can treat both, however.”
Cyrus made a disgusted noise. “Bloody Scot is more trouble than he’s worth. Getting shot like a damned dolt.”
“If there’s a fault in any of this,” Desmond said curtly, “it’s yours. We never fire our pistols unless fired upon. But you broke with standard procedure.”
Clara’s brows climbed. They didn’t fire their weapons unless someone shot at them first? She had no idea what sort of highwaymen they were.
“Not my responsibility,” Cyrus fired back, “if Hugh can’t adapt with changing circumstance.”
“Circumstance you caused,” Desmond replied, cold. “There’s a coachman dead at your hands.”
“Which is why we need to move on from here,” Cyrus said. “We should go. Today.”
“Hugh can’t be transported,” Clara said, then shrank when Cyrus glared at her.
“Hugh stays behind,” the blond man snapped.
“Abandon him?” Gideon’s eyes widened.
“He’s slowing us down,” Cyrus clipped, “and we could get pinched.”
“Absolutely not.” Desmond’s words were definitive. “Hugh is pack, and pack stays together.”
Clara frowned. What an odd word to use—pack.
“He’ll hold out until tonight,” Gideon insisted.
Clara shook her head. One night wouldn’t heal Hugh, but they kept insisting he only needed to get through the next twelve hours.
With another sound of disgust, Cyrus stalked away. He went into one of the bedchambers and slammed the door behind him.
“Do you think Hugh heard?” Gideon murmured to Desmond.
“I can’t see how he wouldn’t.” Desmond shook his head. “Cyrus was never much for discretion.”
They stood in awkward silence. Their leader’s belligerent temperament was a live fuse on the verge of detonating.
“I need to go to the glasshouse,” Clara said in the quiet.
“Hardly seems the time to arrange flowers,” Desmond noted.
“I grow medicinal plants,” she replied tartly. “They’ll help Hugh’s recovery.”
She walked briskly along the corridor, then down the stairs.
Both Desmond and Gideon trailed after her, which wasn’t a surprise.
Privacy for her ended in the middle of last night, when they’d appeared at her door and demanded entry.
Everything she’d carefully constructed for herself no longer existed, but, hopefully soon, her life would return to normal.
Her steps didn’t slow. Yet, she didn’t know if she wanted her life to return to the way it was.
Of course, she did. Living in fear like this was no way to exist. And yet…she hadn’t spoken to anyone for this length of time. And, other than Cyrus’s bullying, talking with these highwaymen had been tolerable. Pleasant, even.
Perhaps more than pleasant.
She glanced behind to see Desmond and Gideon walking with her through the house, modifying their long-legged gaits so that they didn’t outpace or overwhelm her.
They were all of them a puzzle. Highwaymen who didn’t fire their weapons first. Other than Cyrus, the men had also been surprisingly gentle with her.
Sympathetic. And, in a few cases, flares of desire seemed to smolder beneath their dealings.
She was merely a lonely widow, searching for signs of attraction that weren’t truly there. She did read a considerable amount, and now she embroidered interactions to suit her taste for tales of princesses and enchantments and amorous bonds created in an instant.
There were those other books, as well. The ones full of wicked acts and unashamed desires.
She’d always been drawn to such books, but perhaps Arthur was right.
Perhaps they’d corrupted her. Filled her with thoughts of scandalous deeds that no decent woman should ever consider, let alone wish for herself.
And there was that moon, which would be full tonight. It played havoc with her wits.
“My thanks,” Desmond said gruffly.
She stopped walking and faced him. “What reason have you to thank me?”
“You were gentle with Hugh as you treated him,” Desmond explained, “when you have no cause to be.”
“I’d be a poor sort of doctor if I let my feelings color how I deal with a patient.”
“You laughed at his appalling jests and tended him with kindness,” Gideon said. “No doctor ever performed their duties with such graciousness.”
“It wouldn’t be so difficult for you to find some way of worsening his injury,” Desmond added. “Speeding his decline.”
She stared at them. “My God, what sort of people have you been dealing with that you could even consider I might do such a thing?”
Both men wore equally grim expressions. Desmond said, “Kindness isn’t something that either of us have much experience with.”
“I…” She looked back and forth between them. “I am sorry for it. Everyone deserves kindness. Well,” she amended, “not everyone. But many do.”
Gideon tilted his head as he regarded her. The deep liquid gentleness of his gaze stroked all the way through her. “You’re sincere.”
“I’ve no reason not to be.”
“Many aren’t,” Desmond said simply. “Not to men like us.”
“Highwaymen,” she mused.
“Yes, right,” Desmond answered after a moment. “Highwaymen.”
Gideon added a belated nod, and she frowned at the two men. It was as though…they meant something else, something that wasn’t the fact that they were thieves.
There was so much more to these men, every moment revealing depths to them she hadn’t considered. And secrets, as well.
But what those secrets were, and what truths they concealed, she’d no notion. Just as she had no notion of where she fit in within those enigmas.