Lost in Your Arms by Christina Dodd Read Free Book Online Page B

MacLean of the Isle of Mull.” She stopped there, waiting while he tasted the name on his tongue.
    “Stephen MacLean.” Were the syllables familiar? Were the sounds a compilation of him? He shook his head. “I dinna ken.”
    She chuckled, but her laughter wobbled with emotion. “You have been sick, if you’re speaking a bit of the Scot. You had nothing but scorn for Scotland before.”
    “The best place on earth,” he said, and frowned. He had no memory of ever saying those words before, but he spoke them with involuntary fervor. “Who are you?”
    She stared at him as if weighing his strength.
    How dare she even consider that she had the right to make decisions about his well-being? He, who was the . . . who was he? Spacing the words like a slow, measured threat, he said, “You will tell me who you are at once.”
    With a scornful smile and a toss of her pretty head, she announced, “I am your wife.”
    Never taking his gaze off the woman, MacLean ignored the pain in his body and gradually lifted himself onto his elbows. “Liar.”
    Her eyebrows lifted. Her mouth opened slightly. She stared at him, then threw back her head and burst into laughter.
    If he could have stood, he would have strangled her.
    But she stopped laughing almost at once. “Well, I’ve imagined this scene many a time, but I never imagined that response.” Drawing nearer in a slow, cautious pace, she asked, “Why do you think I’m a liar?”
    “I don’t remember you.”
    “You claim you don’t remember anything at all.”
    This woman, this female, this liar did not believe his assertion that he had lost his memory. No one ever doubted his word, because . . . he didn’t know why, but he knew he was the pillar of honesty and integrity. He was .
    White with fury, he demanded, “You dare . . . doubt me?”
    “So we’re even.”
    His gaze measured her from top to toe. She wore a dark green cotton gown almost military in its severity and buttoned up to the neck. Her waist was trim, and if her petticoats hid the curve of her hips, well, he had an imagination and he used it now. A fine-looking woman. A little too thin, but she’d done something right in her childhood to grow into such a fine lass.
    If his appraisal perturbed her, she showed no sign. Nor did she show earthy enthusiasm or spicy interest. She stood with her hands clasped at her waist, looking at him with calm interest, waiting for his verdict.
    His wife? Not likely. His wife, if he looked her over with frankly carnal attention, would damned well respond with a smile and a flutter of sooty eyelashes.
    He sank back on the pillows. Married. No. Not to her.
    Without a qualm, he said, “You’re not my wife. No man would forget making love to you.”
    She didn’t blush or stir, and her voice contained all of the chill of the wind off the North Sea. “Apparently you have.”
    So they were at quits, and at odds.
    Why did she lie to him? Why was he here? A faint unease crawled up his spine as he tried once more to remember . . . remember . . . what? Something bad, something perilous. His instincts warned him of danger, and he always trusted his instincts.
    “What’s your name?” he demanded.
    “Enid MacLean.”
    “Enid.” A good name. He liked it, even as he wondered if she lied about that, too. “Where am I?”
    “In Suffolk, in England.”
    She answered him readily enough. “What happened to me?”
    “You were visiting the Crimea.”
    In his most neutral voice, he questioned, “Without you?” He detected a moment of hesitation in her.
    Then, “Yes. There was an explosion. You were hurt, another man killed.”
    The Crimea. He didn’t remember such a trip, although he well knew the Crimea was a bit of soil and sand sticking out into the Black Sea.
    Why did he remember that?
    An explosion. He tried to sit up and look down at himself, but he had exhausted his strength in his earlier, feeble struggles. And that enraged him yet again. “Are all my parts