Bertrice Small - Captivated

Robert toasted bread to a fine turn. And spread strawberry jam lavishly.

She waved her cup toward the cupboard. "There's butter insidenot much, so unless you want to save it for later…"

His gray eyes darkened. He met her gaze, a half-brooding, half-searching look. "Why did you pull away last night?"

She squared her shoulders, fully prepared to lie. If he had not discovered her faults, who was she to point them out? Instead, she said, "You were taking my hair down."

"You have beautiful hair, Abigail."

"I have gray in my hair, Robert."

She did not expect evidence of her rapidly approaching old age to inspire laughter. But it did.

She tilted her chin and held up her cup of tea with her little finger sticking out at the required degree. "I am glad you find my age amusing, Robert."

"Abigail, I am five years older than you are. And if you had any gray hairs, I would not be laughing."

"But I do," she stubbornly insisted.

"Then I don't see them."

"A woman my age should not let her hair down."

"Perhaps that is why there are men like me, to take it down for them."

She lowered her eyelashes to block those pewter eyes before she started believing in the impossible.

"Is your leg well?"

"Which one?"

Abigail's gaze rose to the bait. "Your left one"

Only to be stopped by the glint in his eyes.

"You have a wicked sense of humor, ColonelRobert."

"And you have a sore bum to look after, MissAbigail."

"It is not my bum that is sore."

"I know what is sore. And I know how to make it better."

The bucket of water on the stove hissed. He added it to the hip bathand disappeared behind a fog of steam. Vigorous pumping sounds penetrated the gray mist; they were followed by the cascade of water pouring into water. The writhing steam thinned, revealing Robert leaning over the tub, checking the temperature with a seductive swish of liquid.

He straightened. "Your bath, madam."

Abigail approached the tub and boldly dropped the blanket. Robert just as boldly picked her up.

He kissed her.

His tongue was scalding hot. It was flavored with strawberry jam.

The bathwater was just as scalding hot, with none of the sweetness.

Disregarding dignity, Abigail threw a leg over each side of the tub and heaved herself up. Robert was equally determined to hold her down. And far more successful.

"Let me up! This is scalding!"

"Hold still, Abigail. The water is not going to do you any good unless it is hot."

"Only a lobster would benefit from water this hot!" Closing her eyes in pain and frustration, she tried a more civilized approach. "Please let me up."

"Did I tell you how beautiful you are?"

Abigail knew perfectly well that she wasn't beautiful. Her eyes snapped open. "You are fond of the color red, I take it?"

A low, masculine laugh filled the hot steam. "Abigail, you get much redder when you blush. I promise that after you've soaked for a while, you will feel much, much better."

"You mean that after I have soaked for a while, I will be well done."

"Done enough to eat."

The blistering heat that flooded her body had nothing to do with the water.

With a little sigh, Robert sat down on the floor at the head of the tub. "Lean back, Abigail."

With an answering sigh, Abigail leaned back. The hair on his chest made a wiry pillow. A sure hand came up and brushed the damp hair off her forehead. It repeated the soothing motion until the water and the caress became one and Abigail felt as if her bones were dissolving. She tilted her head back.

His head tilted forward to meet her gaze.

She felt her heart skip a beat.

He looked so alone.

No man, regardless of what he had done, deserved to bear that much pain.

"Tell me," she softly commanded.

The gray eyes grew opaque. Bending his head down, he rubbed his nose against hers. "Tell you what?"

"Tell me why you entered the Army at the age of thirteen."

"But you said that was illegal."

"And then tell me what you did in the Army."

He raised his head. Thick black lashes veiled his eyes.

"I enlisted in the Army because I was ambitious and I wanted to see the world. I was a big strapping boyno one questioned my age. No sooner did I sign on as a drummer boy than my dream came trueI was shipped to India."

Steam collected on his lashes, pearled on the black stubble covering his face.

" India is a diverse country," Abigail prodded. "What section were you stationed in?"

The thick black lashes lifted. He looked so terribly remote, staring at her out of eyes that were looking back twenty-two years. "Have you been there?"

"No."

"You are correct, India is a diverse country. It has jungles. It has deserts. And it has mountains. When the morning sun rises over the mountains, it turns the sand blood red."

"It sounds beautiful," Abigail said quietly, cautiously, wondering what could possibly have happened there to put that kind of expression on a man's face. "Were you there for the Sepoy Rebellion?"

The pewter-gray eyes filled with cynicism. "It's ironic, actually. The Sepoy Rebellion started because the Muslims and the Hindus objected to the British use of rifle cartridges greased with pig and cow fatwhereas the British infantrymen would have been perfectly happy to have some of that fat on their hardtack."

He shrugged, a fleeting scratch of hair and muscle against her back. "No, the rebellion was over by the time I arrived in India. My regiment was stationed at the foot of the mountains. I sneaked away to practice my drumming one morningit's easier to drum than to sew and cook, which were the duties assigned to me until I learned how to properly drum a march."

Robert paused, lifted his right arm. Long fingers gently stroked her throat.

She arched her neck, giving him access to her body, the only comfort, she suspected, that he would accept. "So that morning did you learn how to drum?"

"No. A Sepoy a Bengal army mancame upon me where I was playing in the ravine. The rebellion wasn't over for him. He thought it sport to kill a drummer boyone less British soldier to deal with in the future. Not worth a bullet, but certainly I was worth the effort of skewering on a bayonet."

Abigail writhedinside. Outside, she calmly held his bleak gaze and accepted the gentleness of his touch while she tried to imagine her eldest nephewthirteen now, still playing with hoopsin the Army facing death.

"What happened?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes." Her voice was firm.

"The Sepoy taunted me, rushing me with the bayonet, drawing blood, pulling back. After a while he got overconfident, thinking that the English boy with blood and sweat and snot and tears running down his face was no threat. He forgot about the drumsticks. They're tapered, you know, and made out of good, solid wood. I drove the first one into the soft part of his belly."

Abigail's breath caught in her chest, seeing the blood red sand, seeing the Sepoy, seeing the child Robert had once been.

"Did it kill him?" she asked evenly.

"No. But it took him off guard."

The fingers thrumming her skin pressed down at the base of her neck where her pulse wildly drummed. "I drove the second drumstick into his throat. The moment I did it I wanted to take it back. I will never forget the look in his eyes. He pulled the stick out and stood there staring at it while blood and air gushed out of his throat and I thought, he's not going to die. But it was too late, there was no stopping it, the blood, it kept coming even when the wheezing breath stopped."

Hot, salty steam ran down Abigail's cheeks.

"When my commander saw what I had done, he gave me a rifle. The rebellion hadn't really ended; wars never do. We weren't there to establish peace, but to establish British rule. I killed my first man three months to the day of my enlistment, Abigail, and I have been killing ever since."