“What do you have on under that dress?” Whatever she had expected him to say, it certainly hadn’t been that. She stared at him, her eyes going suddenly enormous.
“Well?” He sounded impatient. Amanda wet her lips before replying.
“A petticoat,” she whispered. She was not going to describe her underclothing in any more detail than that.
“Is it clean?” he demanded.
“Of
course,
” Amanda retorted, stung, before she remembered her situation and hastily subsided.
“Take it off.”
Amanda blanched. Oh, dear God, surely he didn’t mean to … to ravish her? Sheltered as she had been, she knew that low men sometimes forced women to perform indecent acts, and a murderer was about as low as one could go. She stared fearfully at him. He was eyeing her, his expression unreadable, his teeth clenched against the spasms that racked him, as they seemed to periodically.
“No. Please,” she breathed, knowing it was useless to beg but not willing to resort to physical resistance unless she had no choice. Incapacitated as he was, she had little doubt that he was still considerably stronger than she, and she was afraid of putting her assumption to the test unless and until it became absolutely necessary.
At her whispered plea, his eyes raked her from head to toe as she crouched beside him, her head bent with the weight of his hand in her hair. Although she did not know it, her small, slender body looked very young—and very vulnerable. His mouth twisted sardonically.
“Despite anything you may have heard to the contrary, I’m not in the habit of raping children,” he rasped. “You’re perfectly safe from that particular fate, I assure you. Now, are you going to take off that damned petticoat—or do you need help?”
That threat, plus his assurance that he had no intention of raping her—which, oddly enough, she believed—sent her fumbling under her skirt for the tapes to her petticoat. But with his eyes watching her every move, and obviously noting with interest the slender, white-stockinged ankles that she could not help but reveal, she could not seem to untie the knot, and her awkward position made it doubly difficult.
“Hurry up,” he said through his teeth. Amanda thought that he looked quite fierce as his eyes moved from her ankles to her face. She did her best to comply with his order, then swallowed nervously.
“If you would close your eyes—and let me stand up,” she tacked on hopefully, “it would help.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he muttered, but he did close his eyes. Amanda guessed that she would have to be content with that concession; she hadn’t really thought that he would let go of her hair so that she could stand up. Moving as quickly as she could, wanting to get the business done before he could open his eyes and catch her with her skirts up around her knees, she at last managed to loosen the tapes of the petticoat. The white linen garment crumpled into a heap around her feet. His lashes flicked up just as she kicked free of it. Seeing his eyes on her fallen undergarment, she felt sudden color heat her cheeks.
“Tear a couple of strips off it,” he directed. Amanda, thankful not to be told to remove anything else, obediently picked up the petticoat and proceeded to try to do as he bade her. It was, however, easier said than done. Finally she had to resort to chewing the edge of the linen between her teeth. When at last the material gave with a loud rip, she felt a small spurt of satisfaction as she tore several long strips out of the skirt. She looked up to find his eyes on her.
“I took a bullet in the hip,” he said abruptly. “It’s basically just a flesh wound, the bullet went on through, but it’s been bleeding like be-damned. I want you to bandage it for me.”
His fingers slid beneath the tails of his tattered, once-white shirt to unfasten the buttons of his rusty-looking breeches as he spoke. Amanda stared, horror-stricken, at the movement of that hand, then jerked her eyes back up to his face. He
surely
was not intending to remove his breeches in front of her?
He saw the frantic expression in her eyes and had no trouble interpreting it. One corner of his mouth turned down in an expression of pure disgust.
“I have neither the inclination nor the strength to pander to your girlish modesty,” he said coldly. “I’ve been shot in the hip, and the wound is bleeding and needs to be bandaged. If I could do it myself, I would. But I can’t. You, however, can—and you will. I’ve already told you that I have no intention of raping you. You’ll be perfectly safe—as long as you do as I say.”
His eyes were hard, his expression stony as he stared at her. Amanda swallowed, then nodded slightly. Of course, tending the sick was the Christian thing to do—the nuns did it all the time. The mere fact that he was male, and his body was therefore strange to her, should have no effect on her as his nurse. But still … She couldn’t prevent the fiery scarlet color that spread from her neck all the way to her hairline.
The breeches were unbuttoned now, and he was lifting his hips from the shale, trying to pull the garment down with one hand. As Amanda watched, mesmerized, he winced and fell back against the ground. His eyes closed for an instant, his pain obvious. Then they opened again, faintly cloudy as they met hers.
“You’ll have to help me,” he muttered. “Pull these damn things down so that you can get to the wound. And don’t worry—it’s pretty high on my hip. You should be able to bandage it without swooning.”
This last was said with such a sardonic inflection that Amanda bit her lip. But, she thought hotly, her confusion was very natural under the circumstances. No gently reared young lady could be expected not to feel some trepidation at the prospect of looking at an unclothed male body … He was glaring at her. Amanda closed her eyes, sent a brief SOS to God, and did as he’d told her. The material of his breeches was coarse and cold and wet under her hands; the furred, tautly muscled flesh beneath was fiery hot in contrast. He wore no underdrawers, Amanda noted with embarrassment as she eased the breeches down over his hips. The sight of a neat, round navel cozily nestled beneath a covering of curling black hair brought more color flooding to her cheeks. She averted her eyes abruptly, looking at the sky, the sea, anything except him. He groaned a little, bringing her eyes swinging back around, first to his face, which had paled, and then to his now-bared abdomen. She had uncovered the wound. It was, as he had said, fairly high up on his hip, a jagged gash plowed perhaps a half inch deep into his side. The edges of the wound did not mesh properly, which was probably why blood continued to ooze sluggishly through the opening, which was about six inches long. Dried crusts of blood here and there attested to the fact that the bleeding had stopped several times, only to start again. In order for the flesh to heal properly, she guessed, he would have to remain quiet for some time.
“What are you trying to do, memorize it?” he demanded testily. “Bandage the thing and have done with it.”
Amanda flushed at the thought that he might imagine her to have been staring at his body, and reluctantly set to work. Folding a scrap of petticoat into a pad, she laid it over the wound. Then she picked up the strips that would bind the pad in place.
“Lift yourself up, please,” she said faintly, trying and failing to achieve a fair imitation of Sister Agnes’s no-nonsense voice. Sister Agnes was a weathered, salt-and-pepper-haired former fisherwoman who had taken the veil ten years before after losing her husband and two sons, fishermen all, in a sudden off-shore squall. Her keen eyes and brisk efficiency, to say nothing of her sharp tongue when provoked by slow or incompetent helpers, had won her the respect of every resident of the convent and, indeed, of the entire village. She had a knack for healing—Amanda often wondered if it didn’t have a great deal to do with the fact that the sick were simply afraid not to get better when she ministered to them—and had taken on the role of lay doctor to half the population of the county. Amanda, whose unprecedented refusal to swoon or get sick when presented with a gruesome injury had won the old woman’s curtly nodded approval, was often called upon to assist her. With females and children, of course. Sister Agnes tended to the needs of the men and boys herself.
“Yes, ma’am.” There was a spark of humor in his voice that sent her eyes flying up to meet his. She must have been mistaken, she decided, meeting those stony eyes and seeing the hard, unrelenting set of his mouth, which was just barely visible through the bristly beard. Her eyes dropped back to her work; with commendable efficiency she wound the strips of petticoat around him, trying to make as little contact with his bare skin as she could. She couldn’t help but notice that, from the feel of it at least, the lower part of his back was not covered with hair like his belly and chest. The pattern of hair on his front side was very interesting, she decided almost subconsciously as she knotted the ends of the bandage directly over the pad. His shirt was pulled up around his ribs, leaving bare the lower part of his chest and abdomen to where the breeches rested low on his hips. There seemed to be a thick growth of hair on his chest—at least, what she could see of it—that narrowed until it was hardly more than a silky trail once it got past his navel. From there the trail began to widen again down the center of his abdomen until the breeches abruptly cut off her view. She wondered how much hair he had lower down—and was horrified at the thought. This time her blush was almost painful. To hide her confusion, she quickly pulled the breeches back up over the bandage, apparently hurting him in her haste because he grunted. But he didn’t say anything, and she sat back with a feeling of relief, leaving him to fasten the buttons himself, which he did one-handed. His other hand showed no signs of releasing its tether hold on her hair.
“Good job,” he said approvingly as he fastened the last of the buttons. “Now see if you can dry my hair. It feels like it’s turning into icicles around my ears.”
It took Amanda an instant to realize that he meant for her to use what was left of her petticoat for that purpose. Hesitating only a moment, she picked up the ragged garment and, inching closer to his head, began rather gingerly to dry his hair. The icy wetness of the curling black strands soon penetrated the thin linen of her petticoat, chilling her fingers. He was soaked to the skin; she could feel the muscles of his neck and shoulders trembling with cold. If she hadn’t been so afraid that he meant to murder her at any minute, she would almost have felt sorry for him. After all, she wouldn’t have been able to stand seeing even a mad dog in his condition without wanting to do what she could to alleviate its suffering. But, then, a crazed murderer, sick or well, was a different proposition from even a mad dog …
Finally his hair was as dry as she could get it, and she sank back onto her heels, eyeing him, the petticoat in her lap.
“Wrap that thing around me as well as you can, will you?” he requested next, and it was a request, not an order, despite the gruffness of his tone. Amanda did as he told her, spreading the damp linen over his chest and tucking it in around his shoulders and neck. It covered perhaps a third of his body, leaving his hips and long legs protected from the wind only by the raggedy breeches. The petticoat could not have provided much comfort, but he snuggled into it as if it were the woolliest of blankets.
“What did you say your name was? Amanda? Amanda Rose?”
Amanda nodded, slowly backing away from him as she did so, eyeing him warily. Now that she had seen to his comfort to the best of her ability, would he decide her usefulness was at an end and wrap those long, strong fingers around her neck?
“What are you doing wandering around in the dark, Amanda Rose? Did you sneak out to meet someone? A man, perhaps?”
“Yes.” Her voice must have been a shade too eager, because he looked at her silently for an instant before slowly shaking his head.
“Don’t lie, Amanda.” It was surprising how formidable he could sound, even lying flat on his back with his body racked by tremors and his shoulders huddling into her torn petticoat.
“I’m not,” she began, then gave it up. She had always been a dreadful liar anyway; it was no wonder he could see through her clumsy attempts at subterfuge. “I often walk on the beach before the sun comes up. I … like to be alone.”
“So you weren’t looking for me?”
“
No.
” She spoke so fervently that his lips moved in the semblance of a wry smile. Amanda stared at the crooked twist of those lips, thinking that it made him seem suddenly so much more human. Maybe he wasn’t totally evil after all, she thought. Maybe, just maybe, he had done what he had out of sincere political convictions. If so, it meant that he was that much less likely to murder her out of hand … she hoped.
“No, I suppose not.” He forced the words out through teeth that were clenched suddenly to stop them from chattering. The ghost of a smile vanished as suddenly as it had come, and for a moment he closed his eyes. Amanda watched him hopefully. If she was lucky, he might pass out …
“I presume your family has a house somewhere nearby?” His eyes were open again, but Amanda thought his voice sounded a bit weaker.
“N-no,” she answered, then as he looked at her sharply her tone became defensive. “It’s the
truth.
I live in the convent at the top of the cliff. I’m a pupil there.”
“I see.” He was silent for a moment, apparently digesting the information. When he spoke again, she knew she was not imagining the weakening of his voice. “Are there any outbuildings? A place where I could rest—out of the cold and this damned wind?”
Amanda thought quickly. The only outbuilding the convent possessed was a small tool shed well within the grounds. If she could get him up there, all she would have to do was scream and the entire population of the convent—eleven girls and twenty nuns—would be out upon them in a matter of seconds. And he couldn’t possibly kill thirty-odd females. She didn’t think he had a weapon.
“Yes,” she said at last, but again she must have hesitated too long because he eyed her with some suspicion.
“If you’re lying to me …” He let his voice trail off, but the threat was unmistakable. Amanda shivered. When he spoke like that, she had no difficulty believing that he was capable—more than capable—of cold-blooded murder.