Authors: Lynn Viehl
Frostfire (39 page)
She nodded. “Wasn’t me.”
He didn’t see any medical equipment around the bed. “We’re not at a hospital, are we?”
“I don’t where we are, Sam,” Charlotte admitted. “I was kind of hoping that you did.”
“I’ll have to disappoint you.” Luxurious and unique as it was, he didn’t recognize the room. “How did we come to be here?”
“The last thing I remember was passing out in the back of my unit.” She straightened. “Yesterday I woke up here with you. That’s all I know.”
“Yesterday?” He frowned. “I’ve been unconscious that long?”
“At least a day.” She made a helpless gesture. “Maybe two or three, or even a week.” She looked as if she wanted to say more, and then subsided.
“But you woke before me.” A vague memory of Charlotte’s urgent voice came back to him, and without thinking he reached across his abdomen to touch the wound in his side.
“It’s okay. It’s already healed.” She pulled down the sheet covering him to expose the unmarked skin over his ribs. “The stitches I put in popped out during the night. There isn’t even a scar. Maybe you can explain that to me?”
“I’ll try.” Taske had not enjoyed such a rapid recovery from a serious wound in years, but that was not the only revelation that stunned him. When he had moved, he had felt nothing.
“What is it?”
He frowned as he carefully drew his arm back, and then moved his legs just enough to shift the lower half of his spine. “I don’t feel anything.”
Charlotte turned and touched his thigh. “You can’t feel my hand?”
“No, I have feeling in my legs.” Still not trusting his body, he bent his arm to prop his weight on his elbow and roll onto his side. His muscles felt stiff, but the searing coil of nerves around his spine didn’t offer even the slightest twinge. “Charlotte.” He stared at her. “I need you to tell me precisely what happened to me.”
“When I woke up yesterday I found you in shock from the blood loss. You were left here bleeding from a reopened wound.” She ducked her head. “Your heart stopped, and I had to perform CPR, but I got you back. I had to give you a vein-to-vein blood transfusion, and then I stitched you up. Fortunately we have the same type. I’m also tested regularly for my job, so don’t worry about it. I know I’m clean.”
“I remember you asking me about my blood type.” She had given him her own blood; no wonder she looked so drawn and pale. “What did you do to my back?”
“Nothing.” She put her hand on his arm. “You probably wrenched it on the bridge. I’ll see if I can find something for the pain.”
“Pain.” He laughed a little. “That is the problem. I’m not in pain. I feel no pain whatsoever.”
“Okay.” She looked uncertain. “This is usually a good thing, right?”
“After fifteen years of enduring crippling pain every day—often every hour of every day—this is an incredible thing,” he assured her before he frowned. “An impossible thing.”
“Sam, while I was working on you, you had some kind of seizure,” she told him. “It could have been a small stroke, and that can cause nerve damage.”
“I don’t feel any paralysis.” He looked down at himself. “Everything seems to be working very well.”
“Yeah, but you were in shock, too. Sometimes a combination of these things can do some weird stuff to the body.” When he was about to sit up the rest of the way, she pressed his arm. “Take it slow. If you fall, I don’t think I can pick you up.” She put her arm around his back. “Anytime you want to stop, just tell me.”
As he moved into a sitting position, Taske’s head remained as clear as his sight. He felt no discomfort, numbness, or any sensation other than that of his muscles coiling and uncoiling to accommodate his movements. As Charlotte stood up and watched him, he eased his legs over the side of the bed, and then slowly rose. Expecting his knees to buckle, he put a hand on her shoulder, but his legs remained strong and steady.
“I’ve walked with a limp since I was a teenager.” He took one step, and then another, and suddenly, effortlessly, he was moving across the room. It had been so long since he’d walked without using a cane that his hand and arm felt odd, but not once did he lose his balance or stagger. Joy rushed through him, a genie released after a thousand years bottled up, granting his dearest wish without his even asking. He turned around and strode to Charlotte, seizing her by the waist and lifting her off her feet to whirl her around.
“Look at me.” He laughed. “Charlotte, I can
walk
. I think I can even run.”
walk
. I think I can even run.”
“That’s terrific, Sam.” Her hands clamped on his shoulders. “Would you put me down now?”
“I’m sorry.” He laughed again as he lowered her back to her feet and pulled her against him in an affectionate hug. “You can’t know what this means to me.” He cradled her face between his hands. “I thought I was a dead man—God, I knew I was—and now I wake up and I can walk.” He stroked a hand over her hair before he kissed her pretty mouth.
The delight pouring through him grew heated as he tasted the sweetness of her lips, and suddenly his excitement became urgent and dark. He filled his hands with her hair and nudged her lips apart, inhaling her startled breath and tasting her with his tongue. Her hands slid up his chest, pressing for a moment before they curved around his neck. He wanted to laugh again as he splayed his hands over her back and worked them down to the luscious curves of her hips. Before this he could only look at her and wish, but now that he was healed, now that he was strong, he could be like any other man and take her to his bed to give her hours and hours of pleasure. . . .
His bed was in Boston, not here.
Taske lifted his mouth from hers. Charlotte stood very still, her eyes wide and fixed on his face, her cheeks rosy. She looked as appalled as he was astonished. He intended to apologize, instantly and profusely, but the words he spoke had nothing to do with regret.
“I know you.” He lifted a length of her hair to his nose, breathing in before he let the golden-shot strands fall back into place. “Your scent, the feel of your skin, everything about you is new to me. We’d never met before I saw you on the bridge. I’d swear to it. But . . . I know you.”
She shook her head. “Sorry. I’m pretty sure I would remember meeting a guy your size.” She eased out of his arms and turned her face away. “Maybe in another life.”
Read on for an excerpt from Lynn Viehl’sEvermore
A Novel of the Darkynwhere Nottingham was first introduced
“W
hy did you not come to the hall last night?” Farlae asked as Viviana finished tidying the workroom. “You missed quite a show between Locksley and this Nottingham of Florence.”
hy did you not come to the hall last night?” Farlae asked as Viviana finished tidying the workroom. “You missed quite a show between Locksley and this Nottingham of Florence.”
Viviana had gone to the assembly with Harlech, but had slipped out as soon as Nottingham had arrived.
“I felt weary,” she lied. “You have been using us like deck slaves.”
“Aye, I have.” Farlae’s black eye seemed to pierce through her head. “Yet here you are, hard at work with the sun still in the sky.”
She gathered the cording for the lord’s new bed curtains and sat down well away from the window to work on it. “The work will not do itself.”
“Vivi.”
“Don’t.” She did not look up. “I have never asked why you and Rain always go to town on the same night, or come back smelling of each other, have I?”
“If you think to shame me into abandoning my regard for you,” the wardrobe keeper advised her, “you will have to work harder than that. Everyone knows about me and Rain. We’ve been together since the British invaded for the last time.”
“Forgive me.” She put down the cording and rubbed her irritated eyes. “There is much I have done in my life, before I came here, that I regret. I was reminded of that last night. That is all.”
“No, it is not,” he said, giving her a wry smile, “but very well. You know where my ears and my shoulder are.” He picked up a stack of newly hemmed table coverings and left.
Sewing had always been a mindless, soothing occupation for Viviana, but today the familiar play of needle and fabric gave her little relief from her thoughts. Her mind had become a snarled nest of fear and anger, bound tightly with despair.
Now that he is come, all will be revealed.
She had not wished to keep this secret. Indeed, she had tried to confide in Harlech a thousand times, but the right moment had never presented itself. No, to be brutally honest, she had made excuses so as to keep her husband in ignorance. Harlech would never expose her, but she had feared that the truth would drive him away from her. Surely after all that had happened, after all that she had lost, she deserved some happiness?
The answer to that came from behind her, in a voice that seemed too lovely to belong to a man. “How delightful it is to see a woman at such gentle work.”
The hot, heavy scent of aniseed closed around her like a black wool cloak.
She bundled up the satin cord, tangling some of the shining strands she had been wrapping as she went to put the pile into her work basket.
“Ana.” A black-gloved hand stopped her, trapping her fingers between the cord and the soft leather. “Are you not happy to see me?”
She faced him. “What would you know of happiness?”
“Not the welcome I expected, but it will do.” He straightened. “It is astonishing how well you look. Your pretty face is the same as it was the day that my mother gave you to me.”
“I am no longer an ignorant child desperate to feed my family. The family your mother let starve.” She lifted her left hand, showing him the plain gold band that Harlech had placed on it. “I have protection now.”
“My seneschal told me that you had taken a husband. Interesting news, I thought, considering your past . . . and mine.” He walked around her, inspecting her as he might a horse. “I feared that time would somehow ravage your beauty, but you truly are as you ever were: a flame among ashes.”
“The past is dead, and I belong to another.” She felt his hand tug at her headrail, and she grabbed it, outraged. “You will not trifle with me. Not if you wish to continue this obscene charade.”
“Why, Ana, was that a threat? You have grown up.” He smiled. “I confess, I was shocked that you ran from the room as soon as you laid eyes on me. I expected the charade to end then and there, for you have been made an honest woman. You did tell this husband about me, did you not?” He bent close. “Oh, my. You kept your secrets from him. What a pity.”
“Harlech did not know me until after the
jardin
wars were over. We have never discussed what happened to us before we met. It was not important.” She refused to cower. “What do you want?”
jardin
wars were over. We have never discussed what happened to us before we met. It was not important.” She refused to cower. “What do you want?”
“Power. Pleasure. Many things.” He took a tendril of her hair that had escaped her headrail and tickled the side of her jaw with its ends. “We have so much to talk about, you and I. You will come to my chamber tonight, after your husband retires.” His other glove traced the arc of her breast. “I look forward to how we will become reacquainted.”
“No.”
“That was not a request.” He jerked off her hair covering, seized her hair in his fist, and used it to drag her up against him. “You will come to me, Ana, and you will do exactly as I say. Otherwise, your husband will have to be made aware of many things.” His hand closed cruel and tight over her breast. “I think I will start with from where you come.”
Viviana drew her dagger and pressed it against his ribs. “If you wish me to keep my silence, you stay away from me and mine.”
“Or what?” The tip of her blade pierced his tunic and pricked his flesh, but he didn’t flinch. “You will expose me? You cannot do that, my love. Not if you wish to go on living. Old memories being what they are.”
She knew that if she gave in to his demands, he would take everything from her anyway. “Test me and find out, my lord.”
He put his mouth on her cheek, cupped her hand with his, and pushed it against his body, inhaling deeply as the tip of the copper cut through his side. “There, the angle is better. One thrust and you will have my heart. You did covet it once, I think.” He held her in place as she jerked. “Don’t be timid, Ana,” he whispered, his cool breath caressing her ear. “You’ve held my fate in your hands before this. You’ve always done the right thing.”
Her hand went numb, and distantly she heard her dagger clatter on the stone floor.
Nottingham lowered his head, kissing her stiff lips before he smiled against them and stepped back. “Tonight, in my chambers.” He replaced her headrail and arranged the veils around her face. “Wear your hair down for me.”
Viviana closed her eyes, and kept them shut until she heard the latch fall. She looked at the cording, which during the struggle had fallen to the floor. Her hands had torn and shredded it beyond repair.
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