The Crimson Lady by Mary Reed McCall Read Free Book Online Page B

shallow breathing filling his ears.
    God help him but the blackness was winning, and he knew he had to tell her something important before it overwhelmed him entirely. He had to make her stay. He couldn’t let her escape after he fell senseless; not when he needed her help so badly.
    He had to make her stay for Elizabeth…
    “Lady, you must listen to me,” he tried to say, though the words refused to push past the scorching needles that raked his throat. Ignoring the torture of it, he made himself swallow again.
    “Don’t try to speak,” she cautioned.
    “Nay,” he said hoarsely, grasping her hand in a death grip as he struggled to lift the lead weight of his head off the floor. “You must listen, lady—the one who has Elizabeth…it is Kendrick de Lacy…Lord Draven.”
    “ Draven? ” Fiona said, frowning more deeply than before. “The fever has muddled your mind; Draven is the man who bought me those many years ago. He has nothing to do with your foster sister.” He saw the lines of disbelief etched into her face as she looked away from him toward the stairway. “I’ll have you brought above stairs. You will feel better after you rest.”
    Braedan shook his head, desperate to make her understand before his senses slid completely from his grasp. “He will bring her to shame,” he muttered, digging his fingers into Fiona’s sleeve so tightly he could feel the delicate fabric shredding beneath his nails. He pulled her closer—close enough to hear his impassioned whisper even as the darkness rose up, trying to drag him down into the oblivion he craved.
    “You can’t leave…promise you won’t leave…I need your help to stop him, now more than ever—”
    “What are you talking about?” she murmured, her stricken look belying the composure of her question.
    “I need to tell you, lady…you must listen—I know he has Elizabeth, because Draven is my…”
    Braedan’s voice trailed off, his mouth refusing to form the words anymore, as Fiona suddenly started to shatter and dissolve before him, fading into the whirling, black storm that finally began to close over his head. But just before it pulled him under, he managed to add in a mumbling whisper, “…he is my uncle.”

Chapter 4
    F iona wanted to curl into a corner and sleep for a week, so deep was her weariness. She tossed the water-soaked cloth back into the bowl before sinking down next to the hearth again. Sighing, she leaned back onto the warm stones, wavering a little in her battle with exhaustion, though she knew that by resting at all she risked unleashing the demons that had begun returning to haunt her. They’d become stronger these past few days, slithering out whenever she wasn’t completely vigilant against them. She pinched the bridge of her nose, lifting her head to watch Braedan and trying to keep his condition and not her own fatigue at the center of her thoughts.
    He slept quietly now, though his peaceful state had been hard-won; it had taken most of the past three days to bring him to this point, and then only thanks to her near-constant attention with the cooling rags and dosesof herbed wine she’d managed to make him swallow. He’d been senseless through most of it, either deathly still or thrashing with fever, his body’s heat searing through the garments she’d eventually stripped from him in order to cool him.
    It was that action that had finally produced success—and some unexpected information as well. She’d discovered that he’d been beaten and confined recently, the raw, festering rope marks on his wrists and mottled bruises over the rest of his tautly muscled body giving evidence of a less than pleasant captivity. But it was the other partially healed injuries she’d found—the painstakingly carved gashes on his torso and arms—that had sent a chill of foreboding through her. She’d treated the cuts with her herb poultices, but the very sight of them had sent her demons into a wild frenzy again. It had