The Bodyguard (22 page)

As Ian dropped Alex onto the stout wooden bed, he said, “Maybe now you’ll admit a woman has no business on a raid. If this man dies ’twill be your fault. We’re not safe yet. The soldiers will be searching for any who are wounded.

“If fortune favors us, Fletcher will be able to work a little tomorrow, so he’ll not be suspect. Choose a husband, Katherine. Choose me and end this foolishness.”

Kitt began to shiver as the adrenaline that had sustained her through the raid and their flight from the soldiers began to dissipate. “I dinna like you, Ian. I dinna desire you. I dinna love you. Even more, I dinna trust you.”

Ian’s face flushed visibly in the candlelight. “Whether you want me or no, whether you trust me or no, I will have you to wife, Katherine. Make up your mind to it.”

Ian took a step toward her, but when her determined eyes met his, he changed his mind. “When this stranger is dead and gone, I’ll be back to claim what’s mine.”

Kitt shuddered as he stalked away, then shook off the foreboding she felt at Ian’s threats. She hurried through the cottage gathering the things she would need to treat Alex’s wounds.

Would it make any difference to Ian if she explained that she planned to marry the Earl of Carlisle to help the clan gain back what they had lost? More likely he would be enraged that she contemplated making an Englishman laird of Clan MacKinnon.

Kitt heard Alex muttering in her bedroom and called out to him, “Be still. I’m coming.” She arrived at his bedside moments later carrying a knife, a bowl of water and a cloth, a collection of herbs and salves, and what remained of a bottle of good Scottish whiskey that had been untouched since her father’s death.

Alex was moving restlessly on the bed, and she realized he could not be comfortable lying on his wounded back. However, she also needed to treat the wound on his thigh, which she could only do from the front.

The whiskey first
, she thought. She held Alex’s head up and tipped the bottle against his mouth. “Swallow some of this, Alex.”

“What is it?”

“Something to ease the pain.”

He swallowed, coughed, and swallowed again. “I’ve used this before to ease the pain,” he said. “It doesna work.”

“Drink enough of it,” she promised, “and it will.”

When she thought he had drunk enough, she let his
head rest on the pillow again and set the near-empty bottle aside. “Lie still,” she said soothingly. She brushed back the hair that had fallen over his forehead, loving the feel of it, loving the thought of doing it, wondering why she hadn’t done it before.

“Am I going to die?” he asked in a quiet voice.

Kitt couldn’t speak. She could not bear the thought of Alex dying. But sometimes the flow of blood from such a wound could not be stopped. Sometimes wounds did not heal at all. And Alex was sorely hurt.

Finally she said, “You’ve been shot twice, Alex. You have a flesh wound in your thigh that needs tending, and then I must remove the bullet from your back. I’ll try not to hurt you any more than I must. Should I tie you down?”

“I’ll lie still,” he said, then added with a rueful twist of his mouth, “As still as I can.”

He lay still even though she was hurting him, and she was only cutting away his trousers to expose the wound on his upper thigh. She heaved a sigh of relief when she realized the bullet had passed completely through the fleshy part of his leg. A few stitches would be enough to close the wound, but she needed to hurry, because Alex was losing blood at an alarming rate.

She quickly gathered needle and thread, worried by Alex’s silence. “Alex?” she said softly, peering into his face. His gray eyes were glazed with pain. He had lost so much blood he was chalky white.

“Yes, Kitt, what is it?”

“Lady Kath—” She bit her lip on the correction. If
he lived, there would be time enough to correct him later. “I must stitch the wound on your leg. It will cause you pain.”

“Do what you must.”

He grasped the bedsheets tightly in both hands but didn’t move a hair as she cleansed the wound, making sure there was no cloth from his trousers left inside. She pushed the needle through his flesh as quickly as she could, closing the wound with small, neat stitches, so the remaining scar would not impair his ability to walk or to ride.

Sweat dotted his forehead by the time she was done. Her father had lain still for her ministrations, but he had yelled like a child from the pain. Alex’s stoicism was disturbing, almost frightening, because she thought perhaps he was too weak to yell. “I must turn you over now, Alex.”

She tried to do it by herself, but he was too heavy. Kitt realized she probably should not have sent Ian away. “Alex, I canna turn you by myself. You must help me.”

“I shall try, Kitt. Be patient with me if I cannot do as you ask.”

Kitt frowned. The sentence had sounded unlike something Alex would say, but she didn’t have time to think about it, because he was trying to turn himself over. He moaned through his teeth as she shoved at his shoulder until at last he was lying on his stomach.

“Thank God that is done. I trust you will be careful when you cut out that ball. I think I shall sleep now, shall I?”

Kitt stared at Alex in alarm. “What happened to your accent, Alex? Alex?”

He had fainted.

Kitt stared at the wounded man lying on her bed. He had spoken like an English nobleman, his voice crisp and condescending.

Maybe I imagined it
.

But she had not. She knew she had not. Kitt said the words over in her head. They sounded just as foreign. Alex Wheaton—or whoever he was—was no simple sailor, she realized. Who was he? Why had he come here? And what did he want from her?

Her pulse began to race. If he truly was an Englishman, why had he let them go through with the raid? Perhaps even now the soldiers were on their way to her cottage. Perhaps even now her clansmen were being arrested.

Could Alex really be an Englishman, and thus her enemy? As much as she wanted to deny the possibility, she could not. The clues had all been there from the start, but she had ignored them: the lack of calluses on his hands, the ignorance of how to cut peat, the way he had mastered the unconquerable Thoroughbred stallion. The English arrogance and condescension had even been there when he greeted the Earl of Carlisle.

She knew her father would not have hesitated in making the decision to let Alex die. It would be enough to leave the wound in his back untreated. He would slowly but surely bleed to death if she did nothing.

But I am not my father. Or my father’s son
. She was
a woman. Who felt a great deal more than she should for an Englishman. Her enemy.

The fact that she could not contemplate killing Alex did not mean she did not recognize the danger he presented to her clansmen. If only she knew whether Alex had told anyone where he was going or what they had intended to do tonight. Was Patrick Simpson even now being recaptured?

Kitt brushed her fingertips across Alex’s broken nose. The marks on his face were real. Whoever he was, he had enemies of his own. Perhaps he was fleeing the law in England. Perhaps he was an outlaw. Kitt was torn, uncertain what to do next. He was far too dear to her to be the enemy.

Save his life. Then you can worry about whether to choke the life out of him for keeping his true identity a secret
.

She used her knife to cut a slit down the back of her father’s shirt to expose a ragged wound that seeped blood. It would not take much to make the blood flow more freely, to make the end come more quickly. She was careful not to let that happen.

Kitt’s stomach revolted at the thought of digging for the musket ball in Alex’s flesh, and she swallowed back the bile that had risen in her throat. She had no choice. He would die if she did not retrieve the metal ball from his body. She reminded herself that Alex had been wounded saving her life. That she might have been the one who needed surgery if it had not been for him.

The task became easier once she got started. She
removed his bloody trousers, then cut off the remnants of the shirt, glad there was no one present to see her hot flush as she remembered how powerful, how virile Alex had looked walking toward her at the loch. She kept her eyes averted now, but it was impossible not to see glimpses of his flesh. If only he had been a simple sailor. If only he wasn’t an Englishman!

By the time Kitt finally dug the ball from Alex’s back, her shoulders ached from bending over him. He was conscious enough to feel pain, because he twisted away and moaned when she used a warm cloth to cleanse the wound.

She once more brushed the blond hair from his forehead and said, “Be still. I willna hurt you.”

Not yet
.

Once she had tended to Alex, Kitt settled herself on a pallet near the warmth of the hearth to wait for Moira’s return. But she drifted into sleep.

Kitt was woken by muttering in the next room. To her surprise and alarm, the sky was already lightening with the beginning of day. How could she have fallen asleep! She rose and hurried into the bedroom to see how Alex had fared during the night.

“Where is she?” Alex muttered. “Drunk as she is likely to be …”

Kitt wondered who “she” was. She put a hand to his forehead. It was feverishly hot. She should have expected it. She should have stayed awake to watch over him.

Kitt leaned close when Alex began to speak again
and realized that she was hearing that same clipped, upper-class British voice he had used last night.

“My brother … and my wife … together. Please, God, no! Not mine? The twins … not mine?”

Kitt listened, fascinated and appalled.

“Get out before I strangle you … Hate you … hate you both … for deceiving me …”

Kitt could hardly believe what she was hearing. It was easy to piece together a whole from the fragments Alex had given her. It was nothing she would have imagined. Apparently Alex’s brother and Alex’s wife had lain together and Alex’s children—twins?—were not his, but his brother’s.

How awful for him.

There was more to the story that she did not wish to contemplate. He hated his wife and his brother. He had threatened to strangle someone. Had Alex murdered his wife or his brother or both? Was he a wanted man in England? Was that why he had come to Scotland and pretended to be someone he obviously was not?

“Who are you?” Kitt looked into his gray eyes, which were open but appeared blank, unseeing.

Alex moved restlessly, wincing and moaning with pain. He stared sightlessly at her.

“Who are you?” she repeated. “Why did you come here?”

“Blackthorne,” he whispered. “I am Blackthorne.”

Kitt jerked away, stunned. “ ’Tis not possible. The duke is dead. Drowned in the …”

Alex Wheaton had come from the sea. She had brushed the sand from his face, taken the seaweed from his hair.

Alex Wheaton is the Duke of Blackthorne in disguise
.

Kitt shook her head in disbelief at such an incredible idea. Why would Blackthorne pretend to be someone else, especially such an insignificant someone else? Why not return to Blackthorne Hall instead of staying with her? Alex had slept on a bed of straw!

The Alex she knew could not be the detestable duke. He had held Brynne so carefully in his arms. And swum naked in the loch. And downed a pint or two with Fletcher. And kissed her and touched her until she was half in love with him.

Kitt felt like howling. It wasn’t possible!

But what if it was true? What if Alex was the duke?

She could not see him committing murder, not even for such a terrible offense as what his brother had done. He would be more likely to hide the truth than to admit he had been cuckolded. Perhaps Alex had run away for a while to lick his wounds and ended up here, acting out a charade for his amusement.

How dare he! To make sport of her and her people, why, it was diabolical! Kitt stared at the man, aghast as she realized she had told him her father’s plan.

I planned to seduce Blackthorne and get myself with child
.

Kitt groaned. No wonder Alex had been so furious
at her plan to trick the duke. He was the very man she had planned to deceive. Kitt felt her chin quiver and bit down to hold back the tears of anger and frustration and defeat.

Blackthorne knew everything. All was lost.

Unless the Duke of Blackthorne remains dead
.

Kitt reached for the knife she had used to save the duke’s life, and raised her hand to plunge it into his back. There was no question of murder. The duke was already dead, drowned in the sea. He was her enemy. He and his father and his father’s father had stolen the lifeblood from her people and now threatened to starve them off land they had claimed for generations. Justice was on her side.

She gripped the knife with both hands to still her trembling. She must do this. It would be better to end the duke’s life and to marry the earl instead.

A picture flashed in her mind of Alex putting his body between her and the soldier’s musket, so he had been wounded and she had remained whole.

Surely he deserved mercy for such a sacrifice.

“What are ye doing?”

Kitt started and looked up to find Moira standing in her bedroom doorway. She realized that she was still holding the knife and set it down. “He says he’s Blackthorne.”

Moira nodded, as though she had thought as much all along.

“You dinna seem surprised.”

Moira shrugged. “I knew he was no ordinary man, though I didna suspect he was the duke. What is it ye plan to do now?”

“I dinna know what to do,” Kitt said, letting out a gust of trapped air. “Perhaps he will die and save me the trouble of deciding.”

Moira stepped closer to check Kitt’s work. “This was well done.”

Kitt pursed her lips. “I should have let him bleed to death. He’s likely to have us all transported.”

Moira shook her head. “Wait and see what the man has to say for himself on the morrow, my darling Kitty. If he is Blackthorne and he had wanted to stop the raid, he could have done so. He obviously intended for Patrick to be freed.”

Kitt thought about that for a moment. “Maybe you’re right. He’s weak enough that I can just as easily kill him on the morrow.”