Free The Wild One by Danelle Harmon Page A

stirred
tonight when she'd seen his brother — beautifully masculine,
powerfully muscled — lying in his bed, his nakedness covered only
by a loose sheet. Something she hadn't felt in a long, long
time.
    Desire.
    She shook her head. No wonder she didn't
feel Charles here. How could she, with the image of that splendid
younger brother emblazoned so vividly across her brain?
    "Ouch!" Charlotte had grasped a lock of
Juliet's hair, yanking it hard from its pins and reminding Juliet
that she had someone else to think of besides herself. Gently, she
pried the hair from the baby's fist and pulled up a chair, where
she sat nursing her daughter and staring into the red embers of the
dying fire. She thought of Charles. She thought of her reaction to
Lord Gareth. She thought how horrible she was for even having such
a reaction.
    And eventually, she became so tired she
didn't think at all.
    The water was cool by the time she had
finished tending to Charlotte, shed her soiled clothes, and
crawled, shivering, into the bath. It had grown much colder still
when she finally emerged. She toweled herself dry, put on her
nightgown and crawled beneath the cool, crisp sheets, her cheek
sinking into the feathery softness of the pillow that had once held his dear head.
    His pillow, his room, his bed.
    And he had probably been the last one to
sleep in it.
    She pulled the other pillow close and curled
her body around it, hugging it and staring at the shadows
flickering against the far wall. Then she closed her eyes ... and
dreamed of Charles.
    She saw him again, the fine British officer
on his mighty charger, surveying his troops with a coolly assessing
eye as they filed smartly past. She lived again that moment when
he'd first caught her watching from the window and had touched his
cocked hat in acknowledgement. And she was there once more, on that
day he'd finally stridden into the shop ... spoken to her ... met
her behind the woodshed two weeks later, where they'd shared that
first magical kiss, and she had found herself enfolded within the
hard circle of his arms. Oh, Charles. She sighed softly and
turned over, sinking back down into the depths of sleep.
    The dream faded out.
    Charles?
    Oh, my dearest love, come back!
    But Charles was no longer there. Someone
else was coming toward her now ... someone riding out of a rainy
English night, lifting a pistol, tumbling through fierce, stinging
nettles to shield the child in his arms even as the ball tore into
his side.
    She ran to him, and when she lifted his head
from the nettles, the sleepy, down-tilted eyes that gazed up at her
were not Charles's, but Lord Gareth's.
     
     

Chapter 7
    Gareth awoke, briefly, sometime just before
dawn. Faint light was just starting to creep through the parted
drapes, and from somewhere outside the first blackbird was calling.
He shivered, pulling the covers up over his shoulders. The room was
cold and empty, the hearth a pile of dead ashes, his friends long
gone. Lucien must have kicked them out sometime during the night,
he thought, not sure whether to be grateful or annoyed. As he lay
there wondering if it was worth moving to retrieve and use the
chamber pot, the words of the doctor played through his head like a
litany.
    You were lucky, damned lucky, my lord ...
another half-inch and you would've lost your rib; a little more
than that your lung, and very likely your life.
    It was a sobering thought.
    They'd told him the ball had peeled a strip
of flesh off a lower rib, plowing a furrow in the bone and leaving
a loose flap of skin that had bled profusely. As wounds went, it
was far less serious than it had initially looked. But plague take
his rib, Gareth had thought then — and thought now as he groaned
and finally reached for the chamber pot, it was his head — the
entire left side of his face — that was killing him.
    He'd do well to stay out of the nettles in
the future.
    And, he allowed ruefully, Irish whiskey.
    Still, he knew that if he had the chance