Cates, Kimberly by Briar Rose Read Free Book Online

as those equine teeth sank roundly into his left buttock.
    An oath tore from Redmayne's lips. Damned if he'd let a dumb animal get the better of him! With a fierce yank on the bridle, he disengaged the horse's teeth.
    Then, sweat beading his brow, he swung up, clinging precariously as waves of agony jolted through his thigh and shoulder, black dots swimming madly before his eyes.
    But he'd triumphed. He'd won. He struggled to clear his head, clinging to the sense of satisfaction. Socrates gazed up at him for a moment through a veritable forest of forelock, then, with a gut-splitting sigh, let his knees buckle.
    "What the devil?" Redmayne muttered, kicking at the beast with his good heel, but Socrates was oblivious. Ever so slowly, the horse lowered his massive bulk down to the ground with a thud.
    Redmayne barely yanked his good leg out from under the horse's belly before Socrates crushed it Redmayne glared at his nemesis ever so coldly, but the horse was patently unmoved.
    "Are you all right? I'm afraid he won't move until you get off." Miss Fitzgerald was wringing her hands apologetically.
    Waves of dizziness assailing him, Redmayne surrendered, climbing off of the horse. "Someone ought to shoot you," he muttered.
    Rhiannon Fitzgerald hastened over to help him get to his feet but an unforgivable dimple danced in one of her cheeks. "I suppose I should be grateful I lost your pistol."
    Redmayne turned a cold eye on her. "I have to get to the garrison," he said slowly, as if speaking to a particularly dull child. "Have you any idea how dangerous the men who attacked me are?"
    "I was the one who found you bleeding." She sobered, something soft and wounded in her eyes. "Perhaps some of the soldiers who came with you got away. They might be bringing help."
    "I very much doubt it," he observed wryly.
    That tendril-scraggled brow crinkled in disbelief. "But surely you must have brought someone to assist you! You were hunting for information about a traitor!"
    Redmayne's gaze sharpened, unease trailing like a blade down his spine. "A traitor? How did you know?" Unless she'd known his assailants...
    "I read the letter in your pocket—to find out your name," she confessed, as distressed as if she'd betrayed state secrets. No one this flustered over such a minor incident could survive being wrapped up in a conspiracy, Redmayne thought with a touch of grim amusement. Still, the notion of someone prying through his pockets while he was incapacitated was enough to make him most displeased.
    "I believe the custom is to write the name on the outside," he enunciated carefully.
    "I know. I just... I knew nothing about you, and you were so very ill. I hoped that there might be something in the letter that would help me to help you." She looked down at him, sorrow and sympathy haunting those incredibly soft green eyes. "It must have been dreadful, discovering that there was a traitor amid the men you served with for... how many years?"
    "Three."
    "Such a very long time! Perhaps there is someone new among your men, someone you don't know very well."
    Three years a long time? It was not even a single grain in the sands of time. She looked as if it were an eternity.
    "At least you weren't alone in seeking this villain," she continued, grappling, he could tell, for something brighter, more comforting. "There must have been men you could trust to ride with you."
    "No one."
    Rhiannon stared at him in surprise, dismayed, uncertain what disturbed her most—that there was no one this man could trust, or the way he revealed it, as if that fact didn't hurt at all.
    She'd always abhorred violence, and war was the ultimate obscenity. But she'd assumed that soldiers, embattled, with such a tenuous hold on life, drew closer. Men who trusted each other with their very lives from heartbeat to heartbeat must trust their fellow officers with things even more precious.
    "My affairs are none of your concern, Miss Fitzgerald," her patient said with icy calm. "Since