Cates, Kimberly (7 page)

Over the years, Redmayne had worked hard to perfect his gift for seeing into other people's minds—into their motives and fears, weaknesses and vices—for to know one's opponent was vital in the vast game that was life. Yet he always viewed whatever he discovered with detachment. Why was it that the picture of Rhiannon Fitzgerald stung? A wistful woman-child's face peering out of the back of the bright-painted caravan, straining to catch a last glimpse of her world before it disappeared?

God's blood, if he didn't feel an uncharacteristic urge to utter some word of sympathy or comfort! Useless rot. It would change nothing that had happened. Still, he couldn't help but wonder just a little about the young girl and her father, cast to the winds of fate on the open road.

"It was difficult, no doubt, wandering about, suddenly paupers."

The woman actually broke into a smile. "I was homesick for a little while, but there was no use in grieving. Parties and beaux, all the pieces of that other life were gone."

Of course any suitors would have abandoned her. It was to be expected. She was a woman without a dowry, whose father was little more than a benevolent madman. What benefit could be derived from taking such a wife? And yet not every suitor would have turned his back on Rhiannon Fitzgerald, Redmayne acknowledged with an unaccustomed twinge of bitterness. There were some noble fools sprinkled in among the ranks of men. Fools like the man who had won the heart of Mary Fallon Delaney, a man who would have slain dragons in her name.

"Once we were on the road, this life grew easier. The countryside was so beautiful, it soothed my spirit. Perhaps I no longer had my mother's roses, but all Ireland was my garden now, Papa told me." Her mouth softened, sweetened, her eyes touched with a faint, pensive shadow. "And I was his briar rose because I bloomed wherever I was planted, and always turned my face up to the sun."

A briar rose... it fit her, that sobriquet. Untidy, tangling every which way, petals fragile, and yet too busy thriving to realize it should be battered and withering under such harsh conditions.

Redmayne's own memory stirred, a deep voice, as warm as summer sun, his own father's strong arms outstretched: "Fly to the sky, my little lion...." Even now there were times when he could almost remember what it was like to be tossed high above his father's head, to hear the echoes of his own squeals of delight as he flew, certain Papa would always be there to catch him. Another fairy tale. Another lie. That boy had lost the life he'd known, too. But he hadn't turned his face to the sun.

He shook off the unwelcome memory, wishing the infernal woman would drown the shades of his past in her chatter. But the stubbornly genial companion who had been so talkative moments before had vanished. She'd lapsed into silence, concentrating on threading her needle, her lashes lowered, her full lips pressed together. Tending a quiet heartache, the loss of her father? Why should it matter to Redmayne? Silence was what he craved, wasn't it? Then why the devil was he suddenly prodding her to go on? What was it about her
story
that sounded all too familiar?

"This man who took Primrose Cottage, I don't suppose he had a name?"

"It was so long ago... and Papa didn't speak of it to me. He believed in filling his daughter's head with fairy stories, her arms with flowers, and her skirts with meadow breezes. I knew so little of his business affairs. But I did meet the man once. Paxton, Papa called him. Mr. Paxton."

The hand that held Redmayne's spoon halted midway to his mouth. "It's a common enough name, one would think," he reasoned, loathing himself for his unease.

"Perhaps. But the man wasn't common." He saw a fine tremor work through her. "I glimpsed him once and felt so—so cold. I'd never felt quite so cold. He had the strangest eyes I'd ever seen. Pale and empty, as if—as if there wasn't a soul inside."

"He was an Irishman?"

"No. Nor English either, though he spoke it well enough. It was as if the flavor of half a dozen different languages was still on his tongue. But whenever he came to the cottage, I'm ashamed to admit I did my best to avoid him, ran off to work in the gardens or something. It was too cold with him in the house."

If this Paxton was the same man Redmayne knew, he could understand the urge. How could a starry-eyed briar rose like Rhiannon Fitzgerald know that she could never run fast enough or far enough or hide herself well enough to escape those eyes that had so disturbed her? If Paxton Redmayne wanted to find her, hell itself wouldn't be deep enough to hide in. Or had her father merely been a minor amusement for the old man? Something to allay his boredom until a quarry worthy of his intellect came along? Paxton could never resist toying with people's lives, like a cat with its prey. And yet a country barrister—a bumbling philanthropist, no less—was not his usual quarry. But that was the genius in the old man—that he was as changeable as water, taking on the shape and form of whatever vessel he chose to inhabit at the moment.

God, how the old bastard would laugh if he could see Redmayne here now in this cart with this innocent-eyed woman who had been so desperately wronged. It was the kind of jest Paxton Redmayne enjoyed the most.

Redmayne struggled not to betray the vise of grimness tightening inside him. Why the devil had he been cursed enough to run afoul of the woman? Was this some kind of cruel jest of fate? Or was it the pull of destiny she'd spoken of when she refused to desert him?

He'd been flung in the woman's path. She'd snatched him from the jaws of certain death only to tell him that the dragon who had haunted his boyhood nightmare might have stalked her as well. Might still be stalking her, oblivious as she was to it.

What had she claimed? That the man who had broken her father's finances and taken her cottage away had been called Paxton? The whole affair reeked of his grandfather's ruthlessness. And if the man Rhiannon remembered was Paxton Redmayne, she could have no idea how much danger she might still be in. No game of wits was ever over until Paxton declared it so. No one knew that better than Redmayne. A subtle chill tracked down his spine. He crushed it ruthlessly.

It wasn't that he was afraid for the girl or that he felt responsible for her in any way, he told himself. Whatever disaster her father had gotten her into was purely incidental to him. But there were other matters to consider. He'd never been one to cast away opportunities fate presented him. And the chance to thwart the old man... it was a temptation tantalizing beyond imagining.

Perhaps fortune had thrown him into Rhiannon Fitzgerald's path for a purpose. Some small half-forgotten force called conscience winced at the thought, but he crushed it, gaze fixed intensely on the woman now bending over her needlework. If she had run afoul of his grandfather, it was possible, just possible, that she might prove a valuable pawn in the endless game of chess between Redmayne and the man who still haunted his nightmares.

"Captain Redmayne?" Her worried query startled him, drawing him back to the present—the cramped confines of the gypsy cart, the penetrating warmth of her hazel eyes, and the unnerving awareness of his own stupidity. He'd left himself vulnerable during those moments when he allowed his mind to wander.

"What is it, madam?"

"Is something amiss? You look so... strange."

Redmayne drew his accustomed cool mask over his features. "A hazard of getting oneself shot, I fear. All that grimacing and groaning, trying to put on a brave face. It gets wearing after a while."

The woman looked so chagrined that any man with a drop of compassion in his veins would have wished the words back. "How utterly selfish of me! Prattling on about things you can have no interest in."

"You mistake me, madam. You've distracted me marvelous well."

Heavy lids drooped low over his eyes, so he wouldn't have to look at Rhiannon Fitzgerald's innocent face. Yes. She'd given him something
else
to think about besides his wounds. For only an idealistic fool would refuse to use a weapon fate might well have cast into his hands.

CHAPTER 4

Night songs drifted in from the distant sea, a fairy murmur beyond the secluded glen. Few could hear it anymore, Rhiannon knew. Not because it was so very difficult, but because they were too busy to listen. It had always comforted her somehow, the bittersweet lullaby of the waves making love to the shore. She'd closed her eyes, sensing generations of women, quiet, pausing still in their busy lives for a moment to listen to the sound of eternity.

But tonight the familiar melody only lapped at the restlessness inside her, not soothing but stirring up so many feelings, so many doubts, so many memories, so many fears.

Emotions awakened by the enigmatic man whose white-gold hair lay tangled upon her pillow. As she sat in the cart, chattering away, she hadn't realized the reverberations he'd managed to set off with his questions, and the merest flickering of an eyelash, or turning of the corner of his mouth.

It was only later, as she went about her tasks, that she became aware of the consequences of their conversation.

Strange, she'd been so determined to leave Primrose Cottage behind her, that life and the starry-eyed seventeen-year-old who had lived it seemed almost spun of fairy tales, belonging to someone far different from herself. She'd made a conscious choice to look ahead in the five years since the gypsy cart had rumbled away from the cottage. She'd vowed to accept life's unexpected gifts instead of yearning for a life that had vanished.

She and Papa had still had each other. That was all that had really mattered. No power on earth could steal away the love that had been the very core of Rhiannon's being. But tonight, tears she'd never shed pressed against her heart, and for some reason, Papa felt very far away.

The officer, Captain Redmayne, had made it seem so. No sympathy in his face, no discomfort at her revelations. Rather, a steady gaze stark with understanding, as if he'd seen past everything, to the most secret, tightly locked box she'd buried deep in her soul, the place where she kept anger and loss, grief and blame, and the haunting image of eyes like cold stones.

Now it was as if his probing had jarred a half-healed wound, made her intensely aware of it when she'd wanted with all her heart to let it fade into a soft-edged dream that could never hurt her.

Milton sidled up, rubbing his great head against her, nudging her hand as if to say,
I'm here. I know you're sad.

She stroked his silky ears. But even that familiar comfort couldn't still the restlessness, the unease, coiling ever tighter inside her. Always before, the night had seemed soft and full of mystery, a time to stare into the fire and dream. But all that had changed in the hours since she'd discovered Captain Redmayne lying wounded among the standing stones.

Somewhere in that darkness a thousand unanswered questions still lurked about the loss of Primrose Cottage and the man who had stolen it away. Dangers stalked beneath night's black curtain—the captain's attackers wandering about, toasting his supposed death? Or hunting, trying to make certain that their victim was on his way to hell?

Almost more frightening was the knowledge that plenty of Irish crofters between this glen and Redmayne's garrison would be all too happy to give the English captain a helping hand along that deadly journey. She shivered, the night wind turning chill and damp. She was never alone. She'd been so certain of that when she'd brushed aside Triona's fears on the last visit to the farm.

But tonight the isolation pressed against her, the uncertainty, the strain, exhaustion weighing her down like rain-sodden skirts. Quietly she slipped into the caravan and locked the small wooden door. Then she turned in the cramped quarters to where Captain Redmayne lay sleeping on the narrow bed.

She gazed down at him a long moment, needing desperately to... to what? Feel even the slightest human touch? An idea flitted into her head as she gazed down at the sliver of mattress not swallowed up by Redmayne's body, and she plucked at some loose trim on her cuff, uneasy.

Triona—and even Papa—would be appalled at the very thought of Rhiannon even
considering
committing such an immodest act. Lying down with any man, especially one she barely knew. But it wasn't as if she wanted to ravish Captain Redmayne, she reasoned, she only needed to sleep. And he had lost a great deal of blood. He'd be in no condition to ravish
her
even if he'd wanted too.

Wasn't that one of the lessons she'd learned on the road? Not to be tyrannized by other people's arbitrary rules? She was only being sensible. If she slept beneath the wagon, as Papa so often had, she wouldn't hear the injured Redmayne cry out if he needed something.

"Stop rationalizing, Rhiannon," she muttered in self disgust. "Admit the truth. You're afraid. You need this far more than he does."

She eased off her boots, loosened the tightest buttons at her throat, and edged onto the mattress.

It was as if the bed had shrunk somehow, its size devoured by Redmayne's long, lean body. And yet over time she'd grown used to taking up as little space as possible, after nights of keeping baskets of injured creatures close beside her. She would just think of the elegant Captain Redmayne as a particularly large hound.

She might even have managed a smile at her attempt at humor, but Redmayne wasn't any tame hound. More like the wolf she'd tended—fiercely intelligent, untamable, dangerous. His breath stirred the fine hairs at her temple. The warmth of his nearness seeping through the chill inside Rhiannon.

She'd worry tomorrow about being devoured. Tired... she was so tired. She curled up on the edge of the bed and let her eyes drift shut.

Redmayne awoke with a jolt, pain shooting through his shoulder as he struggled to get his bearings. Something warm was pressed up alongside him, silky strands of sweet-smelling hair straggling across his jaw, the pillowy softness of a breast nudged his rib cage. Muttering a curse, he propped himself up on his uninjured arm. What the blazes? The woman had crawled into bed with him!