Free His Heart's Obsession by Alex Beecroft Page B

was. It was he, after all, who crouched by Hal’s side now.
    “Hughes?” It hurt even to whisper. When he tried to pull his hand away, a lancing, brilliant pain sliced across his chest. But Robert, startled as if he’d been struck, sat up at once and gave him a look more convincing than anything he had ever said, eyes bright with unshed tears.
    Nice eyes. Hal marvelled at the fact. It no longer felt disloyal to notice the way that Robert’s nondescript brown eyes caught the sunlight and disclosed unexpected shades of warm amber, beautiful and rare.
    “You…you’re…” Robert’s mouth hung open, a trail of saliva drying on his chin. He wiped it off, hid his face in his hands, his shoulders hunched.
    Hal, who had felt like laughing at the rumpled, early-morning look, found himself asking instead, tentatively, “Hughes? Will you…?”
    Whatever emotion Robert had been hiding was wiped away as he straightened with a smile that rivalled the sunlight. He twitched the blanket unnecessarily over Hal’s bandaged chest. “What can I do? Anything.”
    “Count my legs?”
    Robert’s lips quirked up. Hal braced himself to weather some cheerful, thoughtless remark that would leave him feeling stupid. But it didn’t come. Instead, sobering, Robert untucked the sheets and looked. “All present and correct,” he said, reassuringly. “Can’t you…can you feel them?”
    One of the boys with whom Hal had entered the service had lost an arm soon after. He vividly remembered finding him sobbing, his nonexistent hand driving him insane with the need to scratch. But Hal felt too tired to attempt to explain the sensation that plagued him, the phantom absence of a morbid love. The scar, scabbed and healing, where it had been cut away. “I dreamed I’d had it amputated. It signified…never mind. Is the captain…?”
    Robert turned abruptly away. His cheekbones and jaw stood out, made him resemble a heathen figure from Easter Island, ugly with jealousy.
    Seeing it, Hal’s scattered thoughts ran together like sand in a furnace, becoming clear as glass. God! He knew what that felt like. Every time Miss Georgiana Tillyard had deigned to smile at William, every time William had gazed at her, that same jealousy had clawed Hal. Had he really tormented Robert the way William had tormented him—oblivious, stupid, self-absorbed, like his captain?
    “Captain Hamilton is fine.” Robert sat down again with a small, worn smile. “He looked in a couple of hours ago, before Dr. McCready told him that if he didn’t rest willingly we’d buckle him down to his bed.”
    Hal sighed, the wound waking up along with the rest of him. Trickles of red discomfort warned of worse to come, a pain he deserved. “Wanted t’tell him…” he tried, “to tell him he’s lost his chance. Ah, damn, Robert is there anything to drink?”
    “A drink? Yes. I’ll get you something.” Robert lurched to his feet. He had reached the doorway before the first sentence registered and he stopped as though he had walked into the wall. “Wait. What did you say?”
    “I am sorry.” Hal allowed himself to admire the vigour of Robert’s gestures, the constant, good-humoured smile, and the strong, masculine face. Experience had marked crow’s feet around Robert’s eyes, roughened his hands, led to the dedication with which he sat, bloodstained, bruised, stiff and hungry beside Hal’s bedside, so that Hal should not wake alone. To think, he had had all that within his grasp for years and had ignored it in favour of a phantasm. The thought intoxicated him. Love? Oh yes, please. He did so want to be loved. “I concede the point. I am convinced by your proofs.”
    “Hal?” As he interpreted Hal’s gaze, Robert’s expression melted from mystified to terrified hope. He took a step, then he rushed forward and his hands enfolded Hal’s face. Their noses hit one another with a strange, twanged-ruler kind of pain.
    “Ow! Fucking clumsy bastard!”
    “Oh, I’m