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“What...” She had to stop and clear her throat. “What do you dream about?”
The lines about his mouth grew deeper, more grim. “I dream about the stink of men’s sweat. About bodies—dead bodies—crushing me, their wounds still open, still flowing with bright, red blood even though they are dead. I dream that I am already dead. That I died six years ago and never knew it. That I only think I’m alive, and when I look down, the flesh is rotting from my hands. The bones show through.”
“Oh, God.” She couldn’t bear hearing of his horrible pain.
“That’s not the worst,” he whispered so low she almost didn’t hear.
“What is the worst?”
He closed his eyes as if bracing himself, then said, “That I’ve failed my fellow soldiers. That I’m running through the woods of North America, but I’m not running to fetch help. I’m merely running away. That I’m the coward they call me.”
It was horribly inappropriate, ghastly, really, but she couldn’t help it. She laughed. Emeline stuffed her fist into her open mouth like a little child, trying to stifle the sound, but it broke forth, anyway, loud in the room.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m sorry.”
But one side of his mouth moved upward as if he almost smiled. He reached down and pulled her into his lap, her skirts dragging through the basin of bloody water. She didn’t care. All she worried about was this man and his hellish nightmares.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured again, dropping the bloody rag. She placed her palm against his face. If she could only absorb his pain into herself, she would. “Oh, Samuel, I’m sorry.”
He stroked her hair. “I know. Why did you laugh?”
She caught her breath at the tenderness in his voice. “It’s so ludicrous, the thought that you could ever be a coward.”
“But it isn’t,” he murmured as his face drew close to hers. “You don’t know me.”
“I do. I—” She had meant to say that she knew him better than any man alive, even Jasper, but his lips covered hers.
He kissed her tenderly, his mouth soft, and she swallowed sorrow from his kiss. Why this man? Why not some other man of her own rank, of her own country? She took his face in between her hands and pushed her mouth on his, and her mouth wasn’t soft or gentle. What she wanted from him wasn’t a gentle thing. She licked across his lips, tasting salt, then forced her tongue into his mouth. She turned her upper body and pressed herself against him without any artifice, a wanton woman. He broke then. His arms wrapped about her back, and he pulled her fully into his chest, holding her tightly as his tongue slid against hers. She felt the drying tears on her face, she felt the ridge of his organ, even through all the intervening clothes, and she felt an answering feminine thrill.
And then she felt him push her away.
She grasped his shoulders to keep from falling in the basin of water. “What—?”
“Go.”
His face was dark, working with some emotion. Had she misunderstood his interest? But, no, looking at his lap, it was all too evident that he’d been fully engaged in their kiss. Then why...?
“Go!”
He picked her up, placed her on her feet, and shoved her unceremoniously toward the door. “Go.”
And Emeline found herself outside Samuel’s room. She fled down the hall, her skirts dripping bloody water and her heart overflowing with pain.
Chapter Twelve
That night, when all was quiet in the castle, Iron Heart woke on the stroke of midnight. He felt a nameless fear, and leaving his marital bed and the princess asleep, he grasped his sword and went to find his baby son. When he reached the nursery, the guards were asleep outside the door. Quietly, he cracked the nursery door open, and what he saw inside froze the blood in his veins. For a giant wolf, its fangs glittering in the dark, stood over his son’s crib....
—from Iron Heart
Oddly, he’d slept well. That was Sam’s first thought the next morning. It was as if Lady Emeline had laid a balm not only on his feet, but also on his soul. Which was a strange thought. She’d laugh if she’d heard it; she was such a prickly little thing.
His second thought was that his feet throbbed with pain. He groaned and sat in the huge bed the Hasselthorpes had provided for him. The entire room—like the house itself—was magnificent. Red velvet curtains hung from the bed, the walls were paneled with dark carved wood, and a thick carpet lay on the expansive floor. The cabin he’d grown up in might almost fit in the bedroom. If this was what they’d given him, probably the least important of their guests, what had they given the others?
He grimaced. The thought left Sam disgruntled. He didn’t belong here in a house of velvet and antique wood. He was from the New World, where men were judged by what they achieved in their own lifetimes, not by what their ancestors had gained. And yet he couldn’t dismiss England altogether. This was Lady Emeline’s home, and she fit in as only one who was born into this country and class could. That fact alone should’ve been reason enough to stay away from her. Their worlds, their experiences, their lives, were too far apart.
But that hadn’t been why he’d pushed her off his lap the night before. No, that had been an instinctive move, one that had gone against his body’s own wishes. He’d been throbbingly hard, had been thinking of nothing save putting his body within hers, and then he’d known it wasn’t right. He’d not wanted her capitulation if it was because of pity. Pity wasn’t the emotion he wanted from Lady Emeline. Not at all. ’Course, maybe that made him a fool, because his cock certainly didn’t seem to care why she’d lain across his lap like butter melting on toast. It only knew that the lady had been willing, and like a hound set to a scent, it was already proudly awake and ready for the chase.
First things first. He smelled like a pigsty, the result of running the night before until the sweat streamed from his body. Sam limped to the door and called for hot water. Then he sat and examined his feet. Lady Emeline had done a good job. The bottom of both feet were covered with broken blisters, and he had a rather nasty cut on the right one, but the wounds were clean. They’d heal properly; he knew by experience.
