Cates, Kimberly by Briar Rose Read Free Book Online Page B

Mistress Sunshine. An hour in her company and he'd be confessing to crimes he hadn't even committed.
    "I'm so glad you're finally awake!" she said, energetically stirring something in a blue bowl. "It's so hard to be quiet on such a lovely morning, and entertaining company is so rare here, I hate to waste a moment of it. I've made you the loveliest breakfast. Exactly what you need to strengthen you up."
    Perhaps there were some benefits to having fallen under her care. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten. "I'm most obliged, madam."
    She drew a stool near his bed, and before he could object, tucked a napkin under his chin as if he were five years old. For the first time in his life, Captain Lionel Redmayne couldn't think of a single thing to say. Then she plopped down on the stool, bowl cradled in her lap, and took up the spoon. The woman couldn't possibly intend to feed him thus!
    "You'll find it quite delicious, I'm certain," she said, scooping up a spoonful of some gray-white speckled glop. Perhaps she was in league with the assassins after all and was attempting to poison him.
    "What is... this?"
    Guileless eyes met his. "Gruel."
    Redmayne raised one eyebrow, staring at her as if her hair were afire.
    "Miss... er, Fitzgerald, I've fallen beneath pistol fire eight times in battle, and no one has ever dared present me with such... slop."
    Her smile faltered. "I made it myself, stirred in some lovely herbs that will help you to heal. You do want to get strong again as fast as you can, don't you?"
    "Not if it entails eating that." Most women he knew would either be running for cover, wailing, or raging at him in high dudgeon. Rhiannon Fitzgerald merely sat there, gazing wistfully into the accursed blue bowl. He should have been relieved. He'd taken the bounce out of the woman—that was what he'd desired from the moment he heard her chirping away, wasn't it?
    "I didn't mean to offend you," she said. "I tasted it myself, and it was tolerable enough, I hoped."
    Redmayne felt a twinge of a most unfamiliar kind. It couldn't possibly be guilt. He didn't believe in it— a waste of time and energy. What was done was done. And yet, as he looked at those downcast eyes with their ridiculously long lashes, he recalled everything the woman had done for him since she'd discovered him bleeding. He stunned himself by growling, "Give it to me."
    "Wh-what?"
    "The bowl, Miss Fitzgerald."
    She grasped the crockery against her middle as if she expected him to snatch it out of her hands. "Don't feel obligated to—"
    Obligated? He was obligated to the woman for his very life. If it would please her to see him choke down the odious stuff, he'd humor her. Perhaps he could feed it to the cat when she left the cart. After the claw marks the beast had left, it deserved to be poisoned.
    "Miss Fitzgerald, I'll eat it—by my own hand, if you please."
    She handed the bowl over, looking so pleased it made the twinge he'd felt all the sharper. "Let me help you out of your shirt. I thought I would mend it."
    He didn't like the idea of surrendering anything to the woman, but if it would keep her too busy to think up any more herbal concoctions to plague him with, it would be a small enough price to pay.
    She reclaimed the gruel, placing it on a precariously narrow ledge as he tried to wrestle his way out of the garment. But the slashes in the linen and the throbbing wound in his shoulder made the task difficult. Of course, she would bustle over to help him.
    She'd removed every stitch of clothing he wore while he was senseless, but this time he was aware of her deft feminine fingers brushing his skin, not even briskly, but rather with a kind of inborn tenderness he sensed was as much a part of the woman as the spattering of freckles on her nose. It was an alien thing to him, such gentleness in a touch. Dangerous. Like the juices of the opium poppy, it held the power to numb self-control, dulling a man's will, fettering his independence. It had the