Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel) - By Shelly Thacker Page 0,28
stretched into uneven squiggles, faint, faded... as if they had happened when he was very young.
Who was this man?
She hadn’t dared ask before, but now the question hammered at her temples like a headache. Her gaze shifted to the unbreakable chain that bound them together, and she had to press her palms against the cool, damp earth to steady herself.
Who was this man with the cold eyes and unsettling strength and scars that bespoke years of pain? She knew he wasn’t the footpad that the marshalmen had believed him to be. But she didn’t know anything more about him.
Except that he had been willing to risk his life to escape from the law. His life, and hers.
She couldn’t blot from her mind the image of him beating Swinton with his bare hands. The way he had killed so brutally. Mindlessly.
Yet those same hands had shaken when he held the pistol. And his aim at poor Tucker had been miles off the mark. As if he’d never held a gun before in his life.
Who the devil was he?
Abruptly she turned away and busied herself tearing another strip from her petticoat for a fresh bandage.
Because some instinct warned her that she didn’t really want an answer to that question.
“Are you going to be all right?” She fought to keep her voice even.
“Aye.”
That single strained word didn’t sound very convincing. And he was bleeding, much worse than before. “I... I think I should try to close the wound somehow.”
“Give her a knife and she thinks she’s a doctor,” he muttered weakly.
She ignored him, thinking, looking around at the meager resources available—leaves, sticks, puddled water. Nothing. Less than nothing. “I could... what is the word? Cauterize it. With the flat of the knife. If I build a fire—”
“No,” he said sharply, lifting his head. “Don’t be a fool. The smoke would... lead them straight to us.”
“But if I can’t stop the bleeding, you won’t be able to keep going. And then where will you—I mean where will we be?”
“I’ll be fine.” He struggled to push himself up, talking through clenched teeth. “I’ll just have to—”
“I could stitch it.”
That shut him up for a second. Balanced on one elbow, he blinked at her.
Then the mocking glimmer that she was learning to hate flared in his eyes. “Yet another brilliant idea, your ladyship. And what are you going to use?” he asked between ragged breaths. “A twig and a blade of grass?”
She stared back at him with regally cool silence. Then she turned her back, not bothering to explain, and reached into her bodice.
And unpinned the small gold needle case from the place she always kept it, over her heart.
It was the only bit of her past she still owned. The only remembrance she possessed of her home, her family... her mother. She wore it every day to keep it safe from prying eyes and greedy hands. Untying the ribbon knotted around it, she unraveled the necklace and slipped the fine gold chain over her head.
The cone-shaped pendant slid down between her breasts, the richly engraved surface, burnished by generations of wear, gleaming in the sunlight. She opened the exquisitely fine clasp at the top with one fingernail, and took out a needle. One of her mother’s silver lace-making needles.
Turning around, she held it up triumphantly.
He didn’t even have the decency to look surprised, much less apologetic. “What sort of locket is that?” he asked, staring.
“It’s not a locket, it’s a needle case. Haven’t you ever seen a lady’s needle case before?”
His eyes met hers. “Haven’t spent much time among the quality.”
“Oh.” She was silent for a moment. “I see.”
The lame reply made her feel foolish, and in truth she didn’t see at all. Most ladies of gentle birth—even those of the lesser aristocracy, like herself—wore a needle case at one time or other. What kind of life had he led, what kind of world did he come from, that he could be unfamiliar with so common an item?
A life and a world, apparently, far different from the one she had been born into.
His gaze slid back down to the dangling bit of gold, the expression in those green depths not admiring or curious but simply covetous. That was the only word for it. Sam had to subdue an urge to reach up and cover her pendant.
Not to mention her décolletage. She could feel his regard as surely as if he touched her with his callused fingertips.
That strange, tingly sensation coursed through her again, unnerving her