Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel) - By Shelly Thacker Page 0,29
so badly she almost dropped the needle held between her thumb and forefinger.
“Now then,” she said briskly, trying to distract both him and herself. “All I need is some good strong thread.”
He looked up at her with a dubiously raised brow. “Don’t tell me—you’re an expert seamstress as well as a thief, forger, and attempted murderess?”
She shrugged. “Something like that.”
If he could be mysterious, so could she. She wasn’t about to tell him the truth.
Besides, even if he believed her, he would only laugh at her again. And she had had quite enough of that.
Concentrating on the task at hand, she cast a critical eye over his clothes—the discarded shirt and waistcoat, his snug black breeches. Plain, homespun fabrics, which would have been sewn with plain, homespun cotton thread.
She glanced down at her own garments with a disgruntled frown, realizing she was going to have to decimate either her ruined gown or petticoats a bit more. Made entirely of silk and fine lawn, edged with lace she had made herself, all had been sewn with the best silk thread, which would be stronger and more suitable for this particular purpose.
The gown was already beyond repair, spattered with mud and torn in a dozen places, her beloved lace ripped and drooping. She told herself a little more damage wouldn’t matter.
Sighing mournfully, she lifted her needle and began to unpick a seam in her sleeve, using a light touch, carefully removing the thread stitch by stitch. In a matter of minutes, she had an ample supply of pale silk spooled around her thumb.
Feeding one end through the needle, she glanced at her patient. “I’m ready. I’m afraid this is—”
“Going to hurt.” He lowered himself back down into the leaves. “What a surprise.”
Sam bit back a reply as she positioned herself beside him again. She was doing her best to help him—and her only reward was a constant stream of sarcastic comments. He had to be the most irksome man she’d ever met.
Perhaps he was entitled to be unpleasant because he was in pain. Perhaps. She held her tongue and her temper, took a deep, steadying breath, and went to work.
The stitching progressed fairly easily, since the wound was relatively small. She just couldn’t believe she was using one of her mother’s heirloom lacemaking needles to close a bullet hole.
The thought brought a sudden rush of memories, of a life so sweet it seemed to belong to someone else. Of a drawing room, a fire on the hearth, three women gathered around it in overstuffed wing chairs, silver needles flashing, voices filling the room with laughter, a man seated nearby smoking a pipe and smiling indulgently, content merely to watch them...
No. Blinking furiously, she fought the tears. She didn’t dare remember. All of that was gone. Forever. The love, the laughter. Gone. It was futile to long for the life she had once lived.
There was only now. Today. Survival.
And this stranger, this maddening rogue, whose life had been tangled up with hers by a trick of fate and a chain of iron.
He didn’t flinch even once, didn’t make a sound as she worked. As if he were made of iron himself.
“All done.” She finished the stitching and tied off the thread, then cleaned the needle, using the scrap of fabric she had torn from her petticoat. She placed it safely back in her needle case. “It looks like this will stop the bleeding.”
She reached for his shirt, intending to make another bandage of the ragged remains.
But his hand shot out and he snatched it away from her. Pushing himself up to a seated position, keeping his back to her, he pulled it on, slowly, being careful of his new stitches.
She sat back on her heels, frowning. “You’re welcome.”
He remained stonily silent.
Fine. So he wasn’t big on gratitude.
She decided to make one last attempt at being civil. “I suppose we have to call one another something,” she ventured. “You may call me Miss Delafield.”
It wasn’t her real name; it was the one she’d chosen after leaving London. She’d taken the name of the first parish she’d come to.
It was the traditional way that orphans were named.
“I’m not of a mind to be sociable,” he muttered.
Irked to the limit of her patience, she stood up and stalked around to stand in front of him, the chain clattering. “Surely you must have a name. You could always make something up. Or would you prefer that I call you something simple like—”