Untamed by Pamela Clare Read Free Book Online Page B

français?” Dark eyes glared down at him from beneath a powdered wig. A French officer. “Do you speak French?”
    Morgan didn’t answer.
    “What is your name?” The officer switched to accented English. “Speak!”
    Morgan met the officer’s gaze, pried his tongue from the roof of his mouth, and croaked out his reply. “Bonnie Prince Charlie.”
    A fist struck his face, the pain seeming far away. “You are Morgan MacKinnon, leader of MacKinnon’s Rangers.”
    “If you kent my name, why’d you ask?”
    “Where is your older brother? Why does he no longer lead?”
    Iain . The officer was asking about Iain. Was he hoping to find Iain and bring him back in chains to suffer a fate similar to Morgan’s? In Morgan’s fevered state it suddenly seemed so.
    An image of Iain as Morgan had last seen him came into Morgan’s mind—his brother standing tall and proud, beautiful Annie beside him holding their wee son in her arms, as the men paid Iain one last honor, shouting his clan name in tribute.
    MacKinnon! MacKinnon! MacKinnon!
    Anger, clean and bright, cut through Morgan’s confusion, fury that anyone should try to strike at Iain in his new life. “Thalla gu Taigh na Galla!” Go to hell!
    Another blow, and Morgan tasted blood.
    “Lieutenant Rillieux, you forget yourself! There will be no interrogations in my hospital!” The surgeon looked down at Morgan. “Besides, he is quite mad with fever, as you see. You will get nothing from him tonight.”
    The French officer stood, his angry face swimming out of view. “Get him to drink, by saints! Force water down his throat if you must! He must live!”
    “His will is strong.”
    “Then force more laudanum on him! Weaken his will!”
    And Morgan knew the hard truth.
    The battle over how he was going to die had begun in earnest.
    A malie dipped the cloth in the washbowl, squeezed the water out, and pressed it to the prisoner’s brow. He seemed to be on fire, burning up from the inside, his skin ashen, his lips colorless. He shivered, lost in a fitful sleep, murmuring in a language she did not understand. So heavily drugged was he that she knew he could not be in pain. Still, he seemed troubled, as if he were fighting—fighting still to die.
    For four days and nights she had tended him, watching him struggle against Monsieur Lambert’s best efforts to keep him alive. Had it not been for the laudanum, he might well have gotten his way. It had taken four men to force that first big dose of the drug down his throat, even injured as he was. But the medicine had overthrown his will, rendering him so helpless that it took only gentle coaxing to get him to drink.
    From sunrise till sunset each day, Amalie had bathed his fevered skin, given him sips of water and willow-bark tea, and changed his bandages, confused by the turmoil of her own emotions. Her confusion had grown each time he’d opened his eyes and looked at her, speaking to her in a tongue she did not understand, his gaze seeming to hold so much sadness. She wanted to hate him but couldn’t, refused to pity him and yet did, tried to escape feelings of guilt and was nevertheless smothered by them.
    She’d sought Père François’ counsel, confessing the conflict she felt at the thought of saving a man’s life so that he might be tortured to death.
    “It is never wrong to save a life, Amalie,” he’d told her. “Like you, I would rather no man be handed over to such a death, certainly not a Catholic. I have told Bourlamaque as much, but I doubt he will listen. He concerns himself with little beyond this war.”
    “I hate this war! I hate everything about it!” The words had burst out of her, surprising her as much as they did Père François.
    “And well you should.” He’d patted her hand. “But go back to your duties, and do not be troubled by your role in this. You are blameless. For his part, Bourlamaque has agreed to let me hear the man’s confession before he is given to the Abenaki, and I