A Highlander's Heart: A Sexy Regency Romance (Highland Knights Book 1) (3 page)

“Claire?” he asked in his familiar Scottish rumble. She’d missed it so much.

He looked suspiciously at her, then down to the man that lay by his feet, and finally back up to her again.

“What’re ye doing in this accursed place?”

“I came for you,” she said as she took the final steps toward him. Every cell in her body demanded she throw herself into his arms, but something held her back. His hands had remained clenched at his sides, he was so pale, and the way he was looking at her… It was almost as if he was afraid.

“You canna have me,” he said gruffly. “Not without young Archie.” He braced his feet in a defensive posture as he gestured down at the boy lying at his feet.

She frowned at her husband, confused. He must still be dazed from battle. “Of course,” she murmured. She held out her hand. “Come with me, Rob.”

He took a step back, staring at her hand as if it bore a lethal weapon.

And then he fell to his knees, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped forward.

He’d fainted.

Claire rushed over to him. He must be injured after all, she thought with a twist in her gut, to have fallen like that.

She attempted to turn him to no avail, then finally managed to move his head so he could take in air unimpeded. As her hand slipped over the back of his skull, her fingers slid over a bump the size of her fist. She quickly moved her hand away from the area, so as not to disturb it, and gently turned his head to take weight off the injury.

She cradled his cheeks in her palms and stared down at him. Mud and blood caked his face, and his unshaven skin was rough in her hands. His eyes were closed, and in spite of the muck, he looked peacefully asleep, russet brows long and lush arcing over his eyes, his chest rising and falling in slow, deep intervals.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to him, because it was safe now that he couldn’t hear her. “I wish I’d never said an unkind word to you.”

She pressed a kiss to his dirty brow, then lifted her head. The mist had cleared a bit, revealing Stirling walking tentatively at the edge of the battlefield and looking green about the gills. “Captain Stirling! I found him.”

Stirling gathered some men, a sprung carriage, and a cot to transport Rob to the field hospital at Mont-St-Jean. But when they arrived, a surgeon told her there was no room for him there, especially given his comparatively minor injuries. Even unconscious, evidently, her husband was considered one of the walking wounded.

It was ultimately a relief—Claire didn’t want him in that fetid place anyhow. Instead, they returned him to the 92nd camp and laid him in a tent.

What wasn’t a relief was that when they arrived at camp, she learned that the regiment had received orders to march that afternoon. Wellington was leading his army to Paris.

Certainly they did not expect her unconscious husband to march with him!

Apparently, however, they did.

Claire frantically attempted to find an officer with the power to give her husband leave to stay behind and recover. But Rob’s colonel had died back at Quatre Bras. The commanding officer of the brigade had been injured, and the leader of the Fifth Division, General Picton, had been killed. The chain of command had fallen apart, and while the army was quickly scrambling to reorganize, thoughtful care and arrangements for the injured seemed to fall by the wayside.

As Claire was about to pull out her hair in frustration, the Duke of Wellington, of all people, entered the camp. He drew Captain Stirling aside and spoke to him for several moments, casting several long glances at Claire. Then he gave a small bow in her direction, turned, and walked away.

Stirling took a moment, seemingly to compose himself, then he strode over to Claire, wide-eyed.

“The duke has arranged a house for the major in the village.”

“Really?”

“Aye. His Grace said that Major Campbell and I, as well as a few others, are not to march with the regiment this afternoon. We’re to stay in Waterloo and await further orders.” He sounded completely bewildered.

“Is this…unusual?” she asked.

“Aye, it is. I’ve never even laid eyes on the duke before, save at a distance. Though he does owe Major Campbell his life. Did ye ken your husband saved Wellington from certain death once?”

Claire puffed up with pride as she always did when she thought of how Rob, a captain at the time, had risked his own life in the Battle of Salamanca to rescue Wellington from a collapsing bridge. After the battle, he’d been granted a baronetcy and promoted to major…which was the turning point in her father’s approval of him.

“Yes, I did.”

Stirling’s brow furrowed. “So…the major is relieved of his duties for the time being while he recovers… Yet why must I remain as well? I’ve no injuries. I should be marching with the regiment, but I am ordered to stay. It makes no sense at all.”

“It does seem a little odd,” Claire agreed—it was a mystery, but she refused to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Can we have him brought to the village right away? I want him to be comfortable.”

They employed some soldiers to put Rob back in the carriage, and then they slogged through the traffic and mud to the village of Waterloo, which was stuffed to the gills with injured men and soldiers on important business running this way and that. Rob slipped in and out of consciousness, and whenever he woke, he seemed disoriented and confused.

The house Wellington had procured for them was far better than most of the hovels in the village, with six rooms and modern appointments. Its owner, Madame Lucien, graciously opened her door to Rob, and to Claire, Grace, and their maid.

As they passed through the entryway, two men bearing his cot on each side, Rob woke and attempted to get up, grumbling that this wasn’t where he was supposed to be and shoving at one of the privates who’d been tasked with carrying him.

“Nay, ye’ll be listening to me for once, Major,” Stirling said good-naturedly, though that haunted look still hadn’t left his eyes. He gestured at Claire. “Ye’ll stay here until you identify the bonny lass who’s come to fetch you.”

Claire had no doubt that her husband had identified her—he’d known who she was the moment he saw her. What was confusing was his reaction to her. She had expected anger, but wariness and fear rolling in sheets off her husband when he looked at her was as unfamiliar to her as staring into the eyes of a chimpanzee.

Rob’s blue gaze slid in her direction. He stared at her for a second, then slumped back onto the cot, the fight leaving him.

They settled him in the bedchamber, and Stirling put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll be returning to the lads. I must see them off.”

“Of course,” Claire said. “You go ahead. I’ll sit with him.” Realizing she had been so focused on Rob she hadn’t seen Grace in at least a half an hour, she added, “Have you seen my sister?”

Stirling nodded. “Last I saw, she was helping the surgeon with the wounded.”

Claire sighed. “I see.” Leave it to Grace to make herself useful, no matter the situation.

“Will ye be all right, lass?”

“Yes,” Claire said firmly. “Go, sir. Your men need you.”

“There’ll be two guardsmen posted at the door. Dinna hesitate to ask them to send me a message if ye require anything.”

“Thank you.”

Stirling took his leave, and Claire pulled a chair to her husband’s bedside and watched him sleep. He hadn’t budged since his stirring as they’d walked him into the house, not even when they’d rather awkwardly dumped him onto the bed.

Should she try to wake him? No… She’d heard somewhere that healing was better accomplished in sleep. She’d just sit with him until his body told him it was time to wake. But she could try to clean him up a bit.

She unbuttoned his coat, which was tight across his wide shoulders. He was too heavy for her to remove it completely, but at least opening it would give him a little more room to breathe.

There was a pitcher of clean water on a plain square table in the corner, and a drawer containing folded towels beneath. Once the towel was damp, she began the painstaking, gentle task of cleaning her husband’s exposed skin. There was so much mud and blood, it took nearly an hour, and she ran out of water before she could call him even close to clean. During that whole time, he didn’t move, but his breaths turned heavy and even as if he were in a deep sleep.

Finished with her tasks, she sat, watching him. Midday melted into afternoon, and the rattle of carts and the rise and fall of voices on the street outside the bedroom window never ebbed.

Stirling stopped by to check on her in the late afternoon, and about an hour later, a sweaty and dirty Grace arrived.

Her critical eyes, the same sapphire blue as Claire’s own, swept over Rob. “How is he?”

“No change.”

Grace turned her focus to Claire. “And you?”

“No change,” she repeated, feeling no desire to delve into her current emotional state. “What about you? What have you been doing?”

Grace crossed her arms over her chest. “They are grossly lacking in transport to the hospitals. Each carriage can take eight men, but there are so many…” She looked away, swallowing. “Anyhow, at first I was sitting with some of the men—those still on the field—trying to provide them with a bit of comfort as they waited for transport. This afternoon I’ve been working at the hospital. There are not nearly enough surgeons for that many wounded.”

“You are so kind to help them, Grace.”

Grace shrugged. “It’s all I can do. I wish I could do more. Ease their pain somehow. Or heal them. God, I wish I could heal them.”

“But I’m sure you do something no surgeon can,” Claire argued softly. “You ease their spirits.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I know I’m right.”

Grace made an awkward gesture toward the door. “I ought to go back.”

“Of course.” Her sister could help so much more out there than she could here.

Grace hesitated. “Will we be returning to Brussels?”

“You and Mary should. I’ll stay with Rob until he recovers.”

Grace pressed her lips together. “If he wakes, he mightn’t agree.”

That was true, but Claire had come all the way here, and she wasn’t leaving until she’d said her piece. She reached out and squeezed Grace’s hand. “Go back out there, Grace. They need you.”

“You know I won’t leave you alone. Mary and I will stay here.”

Claire nodded, unsurprised.

Once again, Grace’s gaze flicked to Rob. “Send word to me if there’s any change.”

“I will.”

Grace left, and Claire turned back to her husband, picking up an edge of his kilt and rubbing the wool between her fingers.

Afternoon trailed into dusk, and still her husband didn’t wake. The surgeon came in and pronounced that Rob had been knocked on the back of his head and that they should let him sleep it off, as if he’d drunk too much whiskey and needed a night to recover. After he left, Claire stared in the direction he’d gone, her lips pursed. The man hadn’t told her anything more than she already knew.

The urge to wake Rob up and speak to him was almost overwhelming. But she didn’t.

She sat at his side until late in the night, when Grace returned and said good night before retiring to the small room Madame Lucien had set aside for her and Mary.

Finally, Claire put her head on her arms and fell asleep at her husband’s bedside.

It hadn’t gone away, the pain in his head. It only felt sharper now, more piercing. That pointed arrow digging through his skull.

He forced his rebelling lids to open. There wasn’t much light, but there was enough to see his surroundings well enough. It was an unfamiliar place—a very simple room, with a desk on one side and a small table on the other. A lamp flickered on the table. The bed he lay upon was surprisingly comfortable, given the starkness of the furniture.

There was a weight on his arm, and he looked to the edge of the bed to investigate. Lamplight splashed gold onto the blonde tresses framing the pretty face turned in his direction.

Claire, fully dressed, was sitting in a chair at his bedside and had evidently fallen asleep. What was she doing here? He couldn’t be back in England, could he?

He tamped down the instinct to wake her and demand she tell him immediately what was going on. Instead, he turned his focus to the ceiling and racked his brain, trying to remember.

He’d awoken on the battlefield, he recalled. He hadn’t been able to find any of the Gordon Highlanders. Except…Archie MacNab. Archie MacNab was dead. Rob closed his eyes briefly as sorrow washed through him.

As he was kneeling over Archie, he’d looked up and… God, Claire had been there. He’d thought she was an angel. He frowned. He’d said something to her, but he couldn’t quite remember what it had been.

He turned back to his wife. Goddamn, but she was beautiful. She was radiant, even in this meager light. When he’d first seen her, four years ago in a ballroom, he’d been transfixed. She was so lovely. Small and slender, with burnished gold hair and delicate, aristocratic features.

Colonel Cameron had been an acquaintance of her father, the Earl of Norsey, and Rob had begged for an introduction. The colonel had been more than happy to comply, and when Rob had taken Claire’s hand in his own and pressed his lips to the back of it, erotic pleasure had burst through him, and he’d thought,
good God. Bedding this woman might just kill me. In the very best way.

He’d been smitten from that moment on. Claire was everything he was not: petite and delicate, refined and educated in the ways of society, cheerful and saucy while at the same time brimming with sweetness and innocence.

He’d wanted her, but he was realistic enough to realize that actually having her was a far-fetched dream. The daughter of an earl was too far above him. Her father would never agree to a match between his daughter and a lowly Highlander.

Later, he’d learned that Claire had been single-minded in her attempts to persuade her father to allow Rob to court her. And when Claire set her mind to something, she was a true force of nature.

She’d been close to convincing the earl, but their destiny was sealed when fate took an odd turn and Rob saved Wellington’s life in the Battle of Salamanca. Afterward, he’d been lauded as the “Hero of the Highlands,” promoted, and granted the baronetcy, and the earl, always thinking of political advancement, began to see a certain advantage to connecting himself to Rob.