A Night to Surrender (Spindle Cove #1)(44)

As his eyes fluttered open, questions teased at the frayed edge of his mind. Where was he? Just who was touching him? And how did he make sure it never, ever stopped?

“Oh, Bram.” Susanna’s voice. “My goodness. Just look at this.”

He struggled up on one elbow, wincing at the sudden lash of pain. He saw a tangle of white sheets. He saw his own dark, hairy legs. He saw her hands on his skin.

Her bare, ungloved hands.

He fell back against the mattress, seeking sleep again. Obviously, he was hallucinating. Or dead. Her touch felt like heaven.

“This explains so much,” she said, clucking her tongue in mother-hen fashion. “You’re compensating for this withered appendage.”

Withered appendage? What the devil was she talking about? He shook his head, trying to clear it. Colin’s dire predictions of shriveled twigs and dried currants rattled in his skull.

Wide awake now, he fought to sit up, wrestling the sheets. “Listen, you. I don’t know what sort of liberties you’ve taken while I was insensible, or just what your spinster imagination prepared you to see. But I’ll have you know, that water was damned cold.”

She blinked at him. “I’m referring to your leg.”

“Oh.” His leg. That withered appendage.

How long had he been unconscious? An hour? More? She’d changed into a frock of striped muslin, but her hair was still wet, combed back from her face in dark amber furrows.

Her hands kept stroking. He saw that her fingers were glistening, coated with some sort of liniment. The herbal scent of it filled his head. Lust sent his blood rushing everywhere else. It had to be a sign of his prolonged celibacy that viewing her ungloved hands aroused him more than a woman’s full nakedness had in the past.

Or maybe it was a sign that he wanted this woman more fiercely than he’d ever wanted another.

“Where are we?” he asked, looking about the room. A light, airy bedchamber, done up in chintz and hardwood. The mattress beneath him felt bowed like a hammock, strained and tested by his weight.

“Summerfield.”

“How did we get here?”

“With great difficulty. You weigh as much as an ox. But you’ll be glad to hear your men rallied to the challenge.”

Deuce it. Damn it. Devil take it and fling it off a cliff. His second full day in command of new recruits, and he’d capped it by dropping unconscious, felled by a squinty bluestocking and her reticule. They’d carried his dead weight all the way here, likely passing through the village on the way and attracting a crowd of onlookers. Even the sheep had probably watched the processional, bleating with smug satisfaction. He was their lord and commander, and now they’d all seen him at his most feeble.

“Must have amused you, seeing me bludgeoned so soundly by a girl.”

“Not at all,” she said. “I was terrified.”

She wasn’t terrified at the moment. Just look at her leaning over him, giving him bold flashes of her pale, freckled bosom. Stroking his bared leg with talented, fearless fingers. Earlier, she’d called him a beast. Now she was treating him like a broken-winged bird.

He snarled down at his wounded leg. Withered appendage, indeed.

“Here.” She pressed a cup into his hand. “Drink this.”

He eyed it skeptically. “What is it?”

“Relief from pain, in liquid form. My own special preparation.”

“You’re a healer?” He frowned, and it hurt. “Should have figured you for one of those females with her little basket of herbs and sunshine.”

“Herbs are good. They have their uses. For a wound like this, you need drugs.”

He sipped. “Ugh. That is vile.”

“Too much for you? If you like, I can add some honey. That’s what I do for the village children.”

He tossed back the rest of her potion without comment. He truly couldn’t comment, what with the bitter taste scorching his throat.

After setting the drained cup aside, she returned her attention to his leg. “What happened to you?”

“A bullet happened to me.”

“It’s a miracle you didn’t lose the leg.”

“It wasn’t a miracle, it was sheer force of will. Believe me, those bloodthirsty field surgeons tried to take it.”

“Oh, I believe you. I’ve known my share of bloodthirsty surgeons. My youth was rife with them.”

“Were you ill as a child?”

She shook her head. “No.”

She dipped her fingers into the crock of liniment and moved her attentions up his leg, to his aching thigh muscles. Of course, by soothing the pain in those muscles, she was only creating new aches in his groin. Didn’t she know how dangerous it could be to provoke a man this way?

He ought to tell her to stop. He couldn’t.

Her touch was . . . God, it was just what he’d been needing. She was talented indeed.

“So how did you fend them off?” she asked. “The field surgeons.”

“Thorne,” he said. “Sat by my bedside with a pistol cocked, ready to fire at the first gleam of a bone saw.”

“I imagine Thorne could have scared them off with a look.” She traced a scar on the side of his knee, a thin line that stood out against the gnarled mess. “But someone operated here. Someone skilled.”